On the World Food Conference

November, 1974

The peacock is gone, and the strident scream

that translated Yeats’ helpless silences

when most he tried to celebrate the dream

that drove him, abandoning the world that is

for images mocking his intellect.

Praising him, we praise valor that lives out

man’s deep suspicion that his myths reflect

passing truths only, which deeper belief must doubt.

But praising—the peacock heard, the wordless cry,

his shackled mind raging at mythic bars

he dared not break lest the mythic garden die—

praise too the divine stillness of the stars

that would not answer a less than human speech.

Juno’s antique bird cannot assuage

our desert starving. On Arnold’s man-made beach

we must word that summons from a future age.