Circus.

The quacking clowns
Escort the intelligent sheep
With a bloodless grin
At the barbed [unclear: fences]

White rippled thighs
Decked with dead tinsel
Essay delicate evolutions
In the billowing roof

Chair and sharp whip
Mock the li the brute
The lovely tiger springs
Through the fire-ringed hoop

Remembering his emblems gouged on the tree-trunk,
The omnipotent and the contorted animal,
Desiring the obscene embraces of the vampire,
The precocious adult,
Dulled by the commandments of his father's father,
Laughs insecurely,
And applauds with sincerity the dappled horse.

You may remember their admiration,
You whom we stupidly quicken with life,
When the blind forces whirl into unity.
And you shell not being to dream
Until the wire-walked fails at the command performance,
The tricks of the conjurer are penetrated by children,
And the last absurd elephant excreting,
Is led ponderously from the trampled ring.

R.L.M.