Friday Poem

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from A Coney Island of the Mind
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  

10 

.............I have not lain with beauty all my life
.......................telling over to myself
.............................................................its most rife charms
........I have not lain with beauty all my life
...........................................................and lied with it as well
..........................telling over to myself
.................................................how beauty never dies
............................but lies apart
............................................among the aboriginies
..................................................................................of art
..............................and far above the battlefields
................................................................................of love

.............It is above all that
.............................................oh yes
.......It sits upon the choicest of
.......................................................Church seats
.....up there where art directors meet
to choose things for immortality
......................................................And they have lain with beauty
...............................all their lives
..................................................And they have fed on honeydew
..........and drunk the wines of paradise
.....................................................................so that they know exactly how
................a thing of beauty is a joy
........................forever and forever
...........................................................and how it never never
.............................can quite fade
........................................................into money-losing nothingness

.....Oh no I have not lain
..........................................on Beauty Rests like this
...........afraid to rise at night
............................................for fear that I might somehow miss
..some movement beauty might have made
.......Yet I have slept with beauty
........................................................in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
.......................................................................with beauty in my bed
.....and so spilled out another poem or two
............and so spilled out another poem or two
.........................................................................upon the Bosch-like world

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