Poet's Choice

Remember the fact of shock.

The abrupt conclusion, with "fact" and "shock" echoing the consonants of "joke" and "correct," makes its point by leaving the irony behind. Similarly, "The Mind" moves from a comic first image to a final, quiet one:

The mind wears many hats, many different wares.

Like a bird on a spit it turns in its living sleep.

It is quick, slow, open, secret, crammed with jokes, prayers.

It knows not what it knows deep.

Yet I have known one kind of mind whose vision

Is steady as the sphinx's, and whose mold

Is rock against all sea and salt and season.

Such a mind, soul, have the old.

They traffic in fixities; they sit in corners sipping.