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Cheerful, Peter Viereck, in English Clear filters

CheerfulPeter Viereck

The Sleepdancers

One crunch of fangs is all the thanks I'd get, Were I to join the waltz behind their bars. I tried to look away; but shan't forget This circus dance of sixteen mangy bears. Their jowls, like good sports in a comic paper, Grin their Indignity. Explore that word. Your "injured and insulted," here they caper. I wish I really thought they were absurd. And do you think so, snout-chained soul of man, You audience whose paws erupt that rumpus? You middle-aged and grouchy, gypped of fun. You growlers all, inelegantly pompous. And tell me, do they sleepdance, just like—you? Nightly do they keep step, the whole sixteen, When on the roof their plumpness teeters through The canvas of the carnival-canteen?
CheerfulPeter Viereck

Gladness Ode

Because you made me glad, I was the net. "Why do you haunt me?" asked the midnight lake. "To fish," I said, "that rounded fire. Am not afraid to fall." No, though that halo moved and moved and moved, It could not hide from me for all its slyness. (Beneath the waters warningly Moon's Icaruses sprawl.) High watchers glowed their pity on the lake: "To wear mere mirrored circle like a crown, Is it for this the young men drown?" But I, being net, must haul. Before you made me glad, I feared such splashing; Futile invoker then: "Dive me-ward, moon." But now it's I who dive defiant Cold curves like a ball.
CheerfulPeter Viereck

Dolce Ossessione

Will no one watch me? Look!, I'll dance on thread Or hold my breath for cameras till I burst. Step close, please; see, I'll pick your pockets first And shine—like truth?, like lies?—and then drop dead. Pathfinder, poacher, voodoo god, and quack: My names, unending as an almanac, Spin round me like a madman's spelling-bee. I am the prodigal who won't come back; Phobic of wheels, I'll hide beneath the sea. The sea! What beast existences I'll choose! At first I'll curl in wombs of shells and doze For years and years in tepid, crooning dark. I'll urge Obsession on: an eel, I'll swim To every far Sargasso of my whim. When I hear bathers laugh, I'll be a shark.
CheerfulPeter Viereck

The Slacker Need Not Apologize

ACT I (oak to willow) It's I, your gnarled accuser, here to scold. What REALLY do you know of earth and sky? Which different raindrops can you classify? How many kinds of dung identify? From too much staring at the shapes of winds, You're blinder than a stump to honest mold, Gall, mildew, all true tree-reality. Mad bird-cursed shaker of obstreperous crest, Listening as if to song yet bare of nest, Roost only of mist from whom all wings take wing: Even our God, the Weather, you deny; You blossom when you feel like blossoming, In a blasphemingly eternal spring. We have a word for such un-treelike stunts.

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