Felled, all felled,
but neither worse for wear
nor place for verse;
like that beach—anyway, it was
too popular, by half
with vacancy of McKinsey staff
and no one road shall comfort me
where winter-lent chapbooks sung old Beat jazz.
Do you recall when they chopped it down,
to the generic and to size? When all scrolled
down—but that little jug of yellow and brown
transmutes wise with years, becomes
a volume parched itself
ever unlent, unloved, unsold
and that notion, more precious—imagine, still:
for just two-fifty, you’d be stumped
felled, all—by the broad
corpus of Callimachus.
I love the irony of the last line: Mega biblion, mega kakon!
He would have gotten it.