AT BALZAC’S MONUMENT

       I turned the corner. At my approach,

       Balzac, you rose before me like a ghost,

       a slow up-pouring of volcanic force

       arrested in the stillness of this place.

       You stand as if blasted by God’s eye of wrath

       and weathered into desert stone

       like Lot’s wife at her turning back

       toward the destruction of her city.

       I stopped, astounded by 

       the gouged eye-sockets staring forever, 

       the stumps of your severed hands—
       a martyrdom inflicted by implacable art

       for having gazed too long at the obscene

       spectacle of our stupidity.

       —Thus the sentence. But on whom,

       you or us, has the judgment come?

       The answer, if there is one, bides

       within the sunlight and torrential

       silence that clothe you.

       And in your keeping still your vigil

       over this old French city of small souls.

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       Photo from   bluffton .edu/~sullivanm/rodin/balzac.html

VANITY FAIR

     You wake up, out of nowhere, in a carny county fair,

     And everything’s for sale, and you are poor.

     Like most, you pay for the right to pay more and more

     For less and less: cracked kewpie doll, torn teddy bear,

     Grease-soaked corn-dog that clots to glue in the throat,

     And a chance to gawk at the two-headed man

     And the woman with the legs of a goat.

     Your head whirls till flat earth’s a tilted carrousel,

     And you stagger among the enameled saddles,

     A child bedazzled by every twirly, flashy thing;

     You lurch to the hysterical calliope,

     You lunge for the flying brass ring.

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