What is needed is a noticeable unnoticeable style,... a directness of speech that seems to one judging easily imitable, to one trying it nothing less… - J. V. Cunningham

What demon is our god? What name subsumes That act external to our sleeping selves? Not pleasure — it is much too broad and narrow —, Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride, And not in prowess, but pride undefined, Autonomous in its unthought demands, A bit of vanity, but mostly pride.

An old dissembler who lived out his lie Lies here as if he did not fear to die.

Plato, despair! We prove by norms How numbers bear Empiric forms, How random wrong Will average right If time be long And error slight, But in our hearts Hyperbole Curves and departs To infinity. Error is boundless. Nor hope nor doubt, Though both be groundless, Will average out.