The Tiger Menace of the Things to Be

Which can never tell us
What it knows, what we wish
To know. Poor young Rimbaud,

Poor drunken Dowson, poor
Successful Ashbery,
Your original lines

And lines in translation
Intertwine now idly,
Books on the shelf or screen,

And all the things that are
Around us, all these things
Not what you thought they’d be,

Not what you could have thought,
Cup your lines of absinthe
And coals, and breathe and drink.