Best Poem - Angst

“I.

I should like to creep
Through the long brown grasses
     That are your lashes;
I should like to poise
     On the very brink
Of the leaf-brown pools
     That are your shadowed eyes;
I should like to cleave
     Without sound,
Their glimmering waters,
     Their unrippled waters;
I should like to sink down
     And down
        And down . . . 
            And deeply drown. . .”

“Picasso flies into a rage at Braque,
screaming, You have stolen my jaws!
bastard, give back my browns!
my noses! my guitars!

Braque, puffing his pipe,
continues painting in silence.
Aha! yells Picasso. Roast duck!
I smell roast duck!
Aren’t you even inviting me for lunch?

Wordlessly, Braque puffs and paints.

You know, says Picasso, more amiably,
that’s a pretty good job you’re doing there, Georges.
Tell me, isn’t that duck finished yet?

Voracious, Picasso is ready to devour the duck, the 
     canvas, the other guests.
But Braque only squints at his painting,
adding a dash of color here and there.

Disgruntled, Picasso slaps his mistress, boils his
     secretary in oils, casts a withering look at the art
     dealer trembling in a corner and

laughs,
biting the air
with 4 huge rows of teeth
blinking malevolently 
3 eyes”

He cleaned his palette with oil rags
And oakum from Seville wharves;
‘I am sick of painting painted hags
And bad ambiguous dwarves.

‘The sky is silver, the clouds are pearl,
Their locks are looped with rain.
I will not paint Maria’s girl
For all the money in Spain.’

He washed his face in water cold,
His hands in turpentine;
He squeezed out colour like coins of gold
And colour like drops of wine.

Each colour lay like a little pool
On the polished cedar wood;
Clear and pale and ivory-cool
Or dark as solitude.

He burnt the rags in the fireplace
And leaned from the window high;
He said, ‘I like that gentleman’s face
Who wears his cap awry.’

This is the gentleman, there he stands,
Castilian, sombre-caped,
With arrogant eyes, and narrow hands
Miraculously shaped.”