for Nin Andrews
1.
Northrop Frye told the English majors,
“Read Blake or go to hell, that’s my message to the modern world.”
Of course, he may have been exaggerating, but Blake did write
“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be
……….restrained,”
sounding like a forerunner of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
How nice to be on a second-name basis with minds so far ahead of their
……….time
as Frye, Blake, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche
who thus were able to forecast the miserable future of the race,
realizing that “enough” could never catch up with “too much,”
and the road of excess would lead to the cavern of privation
if, in the minds of those who live in the mind,
and whose convictions reside in the cloud,
the theory of Marxism prevails over its practice.
2.
According to Frye, war was a species of auto-eroticism,
the youth of the privileged middle class
alone on a Saturday night dreaming of
shameless sex across the front bench of the car
before bucket seats were standard.
The consequences for the fighter saved by the bell
from his inevitable doom on the canvas
were as predictable as the crisis we now face
because the theory of Marxism has prevailed
over its dismal history in practice.
3.
Passion yes, friendship not possible, ecstatic
the conjoining of selves,
because the difference
unanticipated by the tenured professors of desire
meant the lovers understood the supreme importance of
……….the orgasm
and could never be satisfied by anything less
even if, in the corrupt and blasphemous temples,
the theory of Marxism continued to prevail.