A Poem for Trapped Things

                    John Wieners

This morning with a blue flame burning
this thing wings its way in.
Wind shakes the edges of its yellow being.
Gasping for breath.
Living for the instant.
Climbing up the black borders of the window.
Why do you want out.
I sit in pain
A red robe amid debris.
You bend and climb, extending antennae.

I know the butterfly is my soul
grown weak from battle.

A Giant fan on the back of
                        a beetle.
A caterpillar chrysalis that seeks
a new home apart from this room.

And will disappear from sight
at the pulling of invisible strings.
Yet so tenuous, so fine
     this thing is, I am
     sitting on the hard bed, we could
                 vanish from sight like the puff
                      off an invisible cigarette.
Furred chest, ragged silk under
           wings beating against the glass

            no one will open.

The blue diamonds on your back
are too beautiful to do
                   away with.

I watch you
           all morning
                         long.
With my hand over my mouth.




                    copyright 1964 by John Wieners,
                    from his book ACE OF PENTACLES
                    (New York: published by James F. Carr--Books,
                     distributed by The Phoenix Book Shop)