I Mean, Damn

In the Days of Prismatic Color

not in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam
   was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the refinement
   of early civilization art, but because
of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the

mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation
   of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
   longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band
of incandescence that was color keep its stripe: it also is one of

those things into which much that is peculiar can be
   read; complexity is not a crime, but carry
it to the point of murkiness
   and nothing is plain. Complexity,
moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of

granting itself to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
   bout as if to bewilder us with the dismal
fallacy that insistence
   is the measure of achievement and that all
truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-

ways has been--at the antipodes from the init-
   ial great truths. "Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
   was torpid in its lair." In the short-legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiae--we have the
                                                   classic

multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
   Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says,
   "I shall be there when the wave has gone by."

--Marianne Moore

Come on, what do I have to do to get one of you guys to dress up as Apollo Belvedere for me? Get totally naked, I am thinking, except for a rakish cardigan; grow a mustache and let a baby steal all your cows; record your sexy memories in a diary; turn all the crows black with your biting wit.