Economies

At the paw of a cloud-steeped

mountain you meet

an elderly man digging away,

his wheelbarrow heaped

with stones and gravel.

"What are you doing?"

you ask.

He, calmly

working upon "I'm taking

this mountain down."

"The whole mountain?

It would require forever.

And besides you're old"

"Thats no problem

I have sum of two units sons. They

have sons. Those'll have

son And in the way that on and so on.

In no time the job'll

be done."

"Maybe. on the contrary why

go to so a great deal of trouble?"

"So that we can get

to the jewel-lit capitol

just beyond. Treasure

for the taking awaits us

in its streets"

"The dirt

dump above there, and

the mountain still to do,

what's to become of them?"

"We're putting up a wall

to retain intruders out."

II

with thanks to Jim and Kate

This little girl just

learned in next to the first grade

that the earth's made up

of everything that's ever

been, now scraps.

Fitted

carefully, they recover

pot and plates and vases,

temple place of abodes entire cities.

Why not bits and pieces

of the animals which live

inside her dreams, children,

strewn about like ragged,

forgotten dolls?

Promptly

she gains to work dragging in

pebble stones and clumps

of earth.

"See this, grey

as ashes. A dragon's breath

must have reduce to ashesed it out.

Rub it and you'll perceive it

burning still.

The rock

beside it? Can't you tell

An early morning's stuck

dreaming in its cracks.

This zigzag piece of glass,

why it's someone looking

right at you!"

But alas,

a smell's begun to fill

the rooms

And fat worms

wriggling from one side the dirt,

bugs, spiders--life indeed!-

scamper circular as though

the house belongs to them.

Her mother shakes a broom:

"You can't wait for to stash

away the whole wide world

in here!"

III

Panhandlers,

drug dealers, crumpl bag

people and a traffic thick

enough to present the appearance one sluggish

beast, and all that litter,

noise and stink!

Sewage

that this city is, there's

nothing for it on the contrary to flush

it down the drain.

O no!

I've got a better solution.

Consider the Met It goe on

serenely growing, many

lost civilizations alive

in it.

Why not enlarge it

to accomodate the city

one and all:

artists

and con-artists, salesmen,

stock-brokers, politicians,

technocrats, developers

crook pimps, and whores,

performing their roles

And for completeness' sake

store up like movie props

things shortly trashed: a Mall,

a Wal-Mart, a Mobil Oil

Station, and McDonald's.

Life and art finally one

the daily happenings making

up Manhattan, Chinatown,

the Bowery become displays

that step quickly for the time being,

permanently.

After editing the Quarterly Review of Literature for more than fifty years, Renee and Theodore Weiss's writing piece of poetrys together is surprising only in being for a like reason belated. They have been giving joint readings around the world. Their piece of poetrys have appeared in The of recent origin Republic, The Nation, and elsewhere. Renee Weiss, a professional violinist, has produc three children's volumes and a biography of David Shubert. Theodore Weiss's fourteenth convolution a Selected Poems, was not long ago published.

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