Sketch of a Man on a Platform

Man of absolute physical equilibrium

You stand so straight on your legs

Every plank or clod you plant your feet on

Becomes roots for those limbs

 

Among the men you accrete to yourself

You are more heavy

And more light

Force being most equitably disposed

Is easiest to lift from the ground

So at the same time

Your movements

Unassailable

Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet

The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée

Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links

 

Your projectile nose

Has meddled in the more serious business

Of the battle-field

With the same incautious aloofness

Of intense occupation

That it snuffles the trail of the female

And the comfortable

Passing odors of love

 

Your genius

So much less in your brain

 

Than in your body

Reinforcing the hitherto negligible

 

Qualities

Of life

Deals so exclusively with

The vital

That it is equally happy expressing itself

Through the activity of pushing

THINGS

In the opposite direction

To that which they are lethargically willing to go

As in the amative language

Of the eyes

 

Fundamentally unreliable

You leave others their initial strength

Concentrating

On stretching the theoretic elastic of your conceptions

Till the extent is adequate

To the hooking on

Of any — or all

Forms of creative idiosyncrasy

While the occasional snap

Of actual production

Stings the face of the public.