LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

The city of stone is empty of nature. 'Yellow light flashes along the side of sad, worn buildings. Encapsulated music is driven through the brain like a weapon from ones worst enemy. Discordant acts filter through morning fog and play merrily on the rays of the sun. Parties of the initiated folk, fully disil- lusioned, rages wildly in the house of the Judge.

Why can't we take our minds to the sea?

They laugh at us, they who are filled with the salt-guilt of the stone city. They will come and pass, come and pass, touch the lovely items In the garden and speak pleasantly to the wild women who run antique stores.

Light traffic greets the poet when he emerges from his apartment. He looks Into the felicitous hills for comfort.

'For awhile I will seek out things that enhance my inspired mind. After all, the world is a kind of beautiful truth created out of the poetic imagination.

What is progress to the man who would just as soon be an old man in the Persia-of Xerxes a« a young man in America, on the west coast of things? 'Where,' he thinks, 'Is the bureaucracy that would pass me along through its system? All I am is a mind, a simple instrument, a world.'

Burnished coins fall from the face of the evening sky. Dirty deeds that are suffered, by the city and the earth vanish for a moment of time.

'I will not progress. I will stand the still ground and