RICHARD WILBUR
135
FLIPPANCIES
1.
The Star System
While you're a white-hot youth, emit the rays
Which, now unmarked, shall dazzle future days.
Burn for the joy of it, and waste no juice
On hopes of prompt discovery. Produce!
Then, white with years, live wisely and survive.
Thus you may be on hand when you arrive,
And, like Antares, rosily dilate,
And for a time be gaseous and great.
2.
What's Good for the Soul is Good for Sales
If fictive music fails your lyre, confess -
Though not, of course, to any happiness.
So it be tristful, tell us what you choose:
Hangover, Nixon on the TV news,
God's death, the memory of your rocking-horse,
Entropy, housework, Buchenwald, divorce,
Those damned flamingoes in your neighbor's yard...
All hangs together if you take it hard.
