If only there were something real, muse, a crystalline valley
Brimming with golden light, all colors, rapidity of hues
Autumn in their beauty, long and lolling waves
Of summer bloom. When lumber falls
(And only here through muchness
Of foaming springs) grey moss gathers
With mushrooms and clover
In gardens of grey antiquity,
Perfected, unsparing of succulent mists.

Instead there is the work:
Accomplish the brown little dregs
Of work, smash yourself in the red-forging
Flames, cook yourself all carmelized
Species, groan and rull
With the waves.

Pleasure I want,
Not rivers boiling over
In slick oil, rimming
The soiled banks. There is nothing,
Muse! in which mortals won't use
Their advantage: interest accumulates
In piling pages, and burns through the gloom.

So I'd rather be dead,
Engulfed in drifting flowers
Than live with livid flames.