1
Among twenty snowy pages
The only piercing thing
Was the eye of the parody.
2
I was of three minds,
Like a book
In which there are three
parodies.
3
The parody slipped in among the
editor’s papers;
It was a small sabot in the
machine.
4
A poet and a poem
Are one.
A poet and a poem and an editor are
one
Huge parody.
5
I do not know which to prefer,
The parody of inflections
Or the inflections of parody:
The writing,
Or the whistling after.
6
Lines of cathartic broken prose
filled the long page
With barbaric gas.
The shadow of a parody
Crossed and re-crossed my mind.
The mood
Traced in the parody
An inexplicable snicker.
7
Yo, gangstuh rappuhz, hip-hoppuhz n
wannuh-be’z,
Why yo ice-cracks showz?
Don’t-chuh see, duh pa-ruh-dee
Dissin yuh durdy hoze?
8
I know the sober, stately cadences
of standard English,
Its friendliness to earthy,
concrete words;
But I know, too,
That the parody is involved. . .
.
9
When the parody was circulating,
It skated around and around,
Cutting many circles.
10
At the scoring of the parody’s
Open counterpoint on the page,
The hawkers of cacophony
Would gasp, aghast.
11
They overrode the country
In a million tour buses and DJ
vans;
They had no fears, no cares!
They never suspected
The parody would overtake
them.
12
Crowds are streaming overhead,
The Mall slides by.
Somewhere a parody is
hatching.
13
This Twilight has been a Dark Age
For ages.
An Ice Age has descended,
Colder than glaciers.
A parody poises itself
Among the pages.
