Statement with Rhymes

Plurality is all. I walk among the restaurants,

the theatres, the grocery stores; I ride the cars

and hear of Mrs. Bedford’s teeth and Albuquerque,

strikes unsettled, someone’s simply marvelous date,

news of the German Jews, the baseball scores,

storetalk and whoretalk, talk of wars. I turn

the pages of a thousand books to read

the names of Buddha, Malthus, Walker Evans, Stendhal, André Gide,

Ouspenski; note the terms: obscurantism,

factorize, fagaceous, endocarp; descend

the nervous stairs to hear the broken ends

of songs that float through city air.

In Osnabrück and Ogden, on the Passamaquoddy Bay,

in Ahmednagar, Waco (Neb.), in Santa Fé,

propelled by zeros, zinc, and zephyrs, always I’m pursued

by thoughts of what I am, authority, remembrance, food,

the letter on the mezzanine, the unemployed, dogs’ lonely faces, pianos and decay.

Plurality is all. I sympathize, but cannot grieve

too long for those who wear their dialectics on their sleeves.

The pattern’s one I sometimes rather like; there’s really nothing wrong

with it for some. But I should add: It doesn’t wear for long,

before I push the elevator bell and quickly leave.

Copyright Credit: Weldon Kees, "Statement with Rhymes" from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press. © renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Source: Poetry (May 1939)