[basil ransome-davies]

Obviously still 'raw' & I'd welcome crits, but complaints from weirdos who dislike the comma splice will be disregarded. Meanwhile, I'm pissing my underwear at John's wicked wit.

I read it first in trancelike puzzlement.
Each word was clear, emphatic, but the sum –
the linkages, the upshot, the intent –
resisted, struck my comprehension dumb.

One element was solid: mastery,
the lyric conjoined to the technical,
the supple, plastic specificity,
the haunting logic, terse, subliminal.

Years later, at a lovely woman's wake
('She died with her tan on' her self-epitaph),
thinking what Stevens' tropes or statements make
of death, I found the drunken strength to laugh –

and thanked America, the home of hope.
'Death is the mother of beauty', that's for sure;
let metaphysics stay beyond our scope.
No thought could be less morbid or obscure.