R. D. Lancaster
Genius Threatens Kiddies
Young Goethe, suitless, surfaces.
These reeds shiver with little girls
Darting after sly fawn fishes.
With nets and jars, excited curls
And long smooth brown legs, girls don’t see
A gentleman with nothing on.
His ripples smooth and vanish. He
Longs for this kind of abandon.
Sun, blue sky, stream, fish: each is part.
Omitting garments. Parents, too,
Proud folk suspicious of the heart
As something in a novel you
Forget; police and magistrates
Who’ll recognize the (pace Freud)
Sex criminal, the Decent State’s
Arch villain, citizen of Void.
How in this future could one keep
Biography apart and make
The poem independent? Deep
Back down he dives. For the truth’s sake
His own time’s surfacing reveals
A mermaid; shocks one girl who in
Her village moonlight stares and squeals
And runs. She’ll scream back home. That skin
Is crystal clear, that flying hair,
That silhouette.... And more, in time.
Enough of the young Goethe bare
For legend. No one mentions crime.
Page(s) 20-21
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