When Kenneth Koch
picked up a black camel
so neatly with his fingertips
and held it to the light —
yellow and red plaid,
and several dozen of those jackets please —
the face of the earth
had shadowy clouds over it,
tall hay waving in the wind
and pleasant adjectives alongside the brook.
Some airplanes appeared
but they were only one inch long
and so far away you have to smile
because some yellow triangles
have entered the air,
sent by the goddess of Geometry,
and whose figures are transparent
like our souls, sort of existing
and not existing at the same time.
from Ron Padgett’s book The Big Something
|