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What was I saying? An Egyptian king Once touched long fingers, which are not anything.

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Long
Egyptian
Twilight
Touched
King
Fingers
Kings
Saying
Anything

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All the sea-gods are dead. You, Venus, come home To your salt maidenhead.
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The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying Get up and once again politely lying Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe.
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In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
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I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw not seen even by me.
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What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
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Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
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We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
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Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.
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Poets, in their way, are practical men they are interested in results.
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A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three never less than all.
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
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Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!
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There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.
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Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.
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The twilight is long fingers and black hair.
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Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.
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