Roy Scheele

Bare Ruined Choirs, Etc.

A sodden pile of sugar maple leaves,
last remnants of the weekend's raking,
lies drained of color under leaden skies.
They are the wind's now, free for the taking.

Quandary

Theseus. The best in this kind are but
shadows, and the worst are no worse,
if imagination amend them.
Hippolyta. It must be your imagination
then, and not theirs.
           ----A Midsummer Night's Dream, V, 1

So: shall I hole up in the senses' lair
till nothing but confusion is distinct,
or let imagination listen there
where knowledge is imparted through a chink?
These rude mechanicals see with the ear,
hear with the eye, let hand and heart conceive,
and Bottom wakes to find that nothing's clear,
yet everything pours through him like a sieve.
Lucretius hovers out of sight offstage,
and still his words resound until the Wall,
his part discharged, stiff as his equipage,
stumps off with no hope of a curtain call.
Imagination, though, 's of several kinds,
and Shakespeare's far surpasses these poor hinds'.