Variations At Home And Abroad Poem Rhyme Scheme

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It takes a lot of a person's life	A
To be French or English or American	B
Or Italian And to be at any age To live at any certain time	C
The Polish born resident of Manhattan is not merely a representative of	D
general humanity	E
And neither is this Sicilian fisherman stringing his bait	F
Or to be any gender born where or when	G
Betty holding a big plate	F
Karen crossing her post World War Two legs	H
And smiling across the table	I
These three Italian boys age about twenty gesturing and talking	J
And laughing after they get off the train	K
Seem fifty percent Italian and the rest percent just plain	K
Human race	L
O mystery of growing up O history of going to school	M
O lovers O enchantments	L
	-
The subject is not over because the photograph is over	N
The photographer sits down Murnau makes the movie	E
Everything is a little bit off but has a nationality	E
The oysters won't help the refugees off the boats	L
Only other human creatures will The phone rings and the Albanian	B
nationalist sits down	O
When he gets up he hasn't become a Russian migr or a German circus	L
clown	O
A woman is carrying a basket a beautiful sight She is in and of	D
Madagascar	N
The uniformed Malay policeman sniffs the beer barrel that the brothers of	D
Ludwig are bringing close to him	P
All humanity likes to get drunk Are differences then all on the surface	L
But even every surface gets hot	Q
In the sun It may be that the surface is where we are all alike	R
But man and woman show that this isn't true	S
We will get by though The train is puffing at the station	B
But the station isn't puffing at the train This difference allows for a sense	L
of community	E
As when people feel really glad to have cats and dogs	L
And some even a few mice in the chimney We are not alone	T
In the universe and the diversity causes comfort as well as difficulty	E
To be Italian takes at least half the day To be Chinese seven eighths of it	U
Only at evening when Chang Ho repast over sits down to smoke	V
Is he exclusively human in the way the train is exclusively itself when it is	L
in motion	B
But that's to say it wrongly His being human is also his being seven eighths	L
Chinese	L
Falling in love one may get say twenty percent back	W
Toward universality though that is probably all Then when love's gone	X
One's Nigerianness increases or one's quality of being of Nepal	Y
An American may start out wishing	J
To be everybody or that everybody were the same	Z
Which makes him or her at least eighty percent American Dixit Charles	L
Peguy circa	A2
The good Lord created the French so that certain aspects of His creation	B
Wouldn't go unnoticed Like the taste of wheat sirrah Or the Japanese	L
So that someplace on earth there would be people who were	N
Writing haiku But think of the human body with its arms	L
Its nose its eyes its brain often subject to alarms	L
Think how much energy work and time have gone into it	U
To give us such a variegated kind of humanity	E
It takes fifteen seconds this morning to be a man	B2
Twenty to be an old one four to be an American	B
Two to be a college graduate and four or five hours to write	C2
And what's more I love you half of every hour for weeks or months for	D2
this	L
Nine hundred seconds to be an admirer of Italian Renaissance painting	J
Sixteen hours to be someone awake	E2
One is recognizably American male and of a certain generation Nothing	J
takes these markers away	F2
	-
Even if I live in Indonesia as a native in a hut someone coming through	S
there	G2
Will certainly gasp and say Why you're an American	B
My optimism my openness my lack of a sense of history	E
My distinctive facial muscles ready to look angry or sad or sympathetic	H2
In a moment and not quite know where to go from there	G2
My assuming that anything is possible my deep sense of superiority	E
And inferiority at the same time my lack of culture	N
Except for the bookish kind my way of acting with the dog come here	I2
Spotty God damn	J2
All these and hundreds more declare me to be what I am	J2
It's burdensome but also inevitable I think so	L
Expatriates have had some success with the plastic surgery	E
Of absence and departure But it is never absolute And then they must bear	G2
the new identity as well	K2
	-
Irish or Russian the individuality in them is often mistaken for nationality	E
The Russian finding a soul in the army officer the Irishman finding in him	P
someone with whom he can drink	L2
Consider the Volga boatman One can only guess	L
But probably about ninety percent Russian eighty percent man and thirty	E
percent boatman Russian man and boatman	B
A good person for the job a Russian man of the river	N
This dog is two fifths wolf and less than one thousandth a husband or	D2
father	N
Dogs resist nationality by being breeds This one is simply Alsatian	B
Though he may father forth a puppy	E
Who seems totally something else if for example he the Alsatian is attracted	M2
To a poodle with powerful DNA The puppy runs up to the Italian boys	L
who smile	N2
Thinking it would be fun to take it to Taormina	A2
Where they work in the hotel and to teach it tricks	L
A Frenchwoman marvels at this scene	O2
The woman bends down to the dog and speaks to it in French	P2
This is hopeful and funny To the dog all human languages are a perfumed	Q2
fog	R2
He wags and rises on his back legs One Italian boy praises him Bravo	L
canino	L
Underneath there is the rumble of the metro train The boy looks at the	A2
woman	B
Life offers them these entangling moments as who on a bicycle goes	L
past	S2
It is a Congolese with the savannah on his shoulders	L
And the sky in his heart but his words as he passes are in French	P2
Bonjour m'sieu dames and goes speeding off with his identity	E
His Congolese millennial selfhood unchanging and changing place	L

Kenneth Koch

Variations At Home And Abroad Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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