The Intellectual Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCBD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMM OMPM QMQM RMRM STST UVUV WXWX UMUM| What should the wars do with these jigging fools | A |
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| The man behind the book may not be man | B |
| His own man or the book s or yet the time s | C |
| But still be whole deciding what he can | B |
| In praise of politics or German rimes | D |
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| But the intellectual lights a cigarette | E |
| And offers it lit to the lady whose odd smile | F |
| Is the merest hyphen lest he should forget | E |
| What he has been resuming all the while | F |
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| He talks to overhear she to withdraw | G |
| To some interior feminine fireside | H |
| Where the back arches beauty puts forth a paw | G |
| Like a black puma stretching in velvet pride | H |
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| Making him think of cats a stray of which | I |
| Some days sets up a howling in his brain | J |
| Pure interference such as this neat bitch | I |
| Seems to create from listening disdain | J |
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| But talk is all the value the release | K |
| Talk is the very fillip of an act | L |
| The frame and subject of the masterpiece | K |
| Under whose film of age the face is cracked | L |
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| His own forehead glows like expensive wood | M |
| But back of it the mind is disengaged | N |
| Self sealing clock recording bad and good | M |
| At constant temperature intact unaged | M |
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| But strange his body is an open house | O |
| Inviting every passerby to stay | M |
| The city to and fro beneath his brows | P |
| Wanders and drinks and chats from night to day | M |
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| Think of a private thought indecent room | Q |
| Where one might kiss his daughter before bed | M |
| Life is embarrassed shut the family tomb | Q |
| Console your neighbor for his recent dead | M |
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| Do something die in Spain or paint a green | R |
| Gouache go into business Rimbaud did | M |
| Or start another Little Magazine | R |
| Or move in with a woman have a kid | M |
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| Invulnerable impossible immune | S |
| Do what you will your will will not be done | T |
| But dissipate the light of afternoon | S |
| Till evening flickers like the midnight sun | T |
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| And midnight shouts and dies I d rather be | U |
| A milkman walking in his sleep at dawn | V |
| Bearing fat quarts of cream and so be free | U |
| Crossing alone and cold from lawn to lawn | V |
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| I d rather be a barber and cut hair | W |
| Than walk with you in gilt museum halls | X |
| You and the puma lady she so rare | W |
| Exhaling her silk soul upon the walls | X |
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| Go take yourselves apart but let me be | U |
| The fault you find with everyman I spit | M |
| I laugh I fight and you l homme qui r t | U |
| Swallow your stale saliva and still sit | M |
Karl Shapiro
(1)
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