The sunset, first cause
of Plato's perilous tilt toward beauty,
insinuates itself
like a stain across Lake Michigan--
news risen out of Grand Rapids,
motel booked in Sheboygan.

I confess that I too am stung by beauty,
how fair its con, old pro.
But let us not forget Aristotle.

Those three white pines on shore?
All the leaps of your imagination, miscreant,
cannot make them more. French philosophy,
Religious Science, semiotics, cannot make them less.

So what if the sun
drapes himself in apocalyptic plumes, some fancywork
of electrons glittering in the dust.
Those brass knuckles over Milwaukee
are one discrete cloud,
and not all your illimitless universe can make it more.

--Better yet,
give Plato sunrise, the naked flash,
gulls flying agate and porcelain.
Give Aristotle the lake, cooler after the sun goes down--
beauty in the lake, not above it.

But remember that this lake, this sailboat, are blau, bleu, azul,
even in Sudetenland,
And the mind is more than a posse of changing colors.

2

At this moment, the cloud-fist listing
leeward toward Chicago,
The Real, like the sun's rays, can be traced to its source.
Fresh evidence is always to be found,
my heart-beast,
however it swing and sway, triste or gaie, in Zwingli time,
toe tapping, table rapping.

Phyllis, keep your mind hard and flat-bellied.
Make it a taut bed you can bounce a quarter on.
--And you, anti-Hero,
who live mortified under the yellow sun (now red),

fortify your mind with a drop of bitter gravity
to free it from giddiness,
lusts, gusts, gauds, bawds or flutterings
of party-colored birdlets about to spook.

Repeat after me, Three Trees, One Cloud, now a wisp.
Under us, one blue lake, now a field of frothy purple iris.

And throughout, a steady mind--beauty picked up and made
portable, lilies headed for the honeycomb

--more than the time of day, as the sun
is more than white, yellow or red,
more than a welder's acetylene torch,
more than a burning zest of lemon,
more than a sleepy traveler at a Red Roof Inn
sinking into the sheets.

And here comes Night tumbling down on our heads
like a wooly mammoth
stampeded over a cliff,
uncovering a straggly row
of stern old cave-dwellers' eyes
peering over the rim--
winking back coldly from the lake

--appraising us, taking our measure.