Surrealism, Sort of

You almost hate to surface
For a few weeks from thick clouds—
The simplest language stumbles

Between the arts, no longer
Content to name moth or bird,
Then spot a cat in the grass—

Sophistication matters
Again, and Greek forsaken
For the production of forms

That are error, error raw
Til the next elaborate
Exercise in memory

That may not rescue you
By some hopeful thing you glimpsed
In a corner of the world

Someone’s brittle scholarship,
Someone’s fierce revolution
Someone’s sophistication,

Which now you have to muster
In clever comparison
To keep your poems in the game

Instead of simply writing,
There was a midnight-colored
Dove in the afternoon sun

Doing nothing much tempting
But being the wrong color
For a dark dove in the sun.