Hart Crane Homeward Bound XXI

Paraphasing the Paraphrase

you wag Hart, to pun on your name in paraphrase

to transform the whole into an organ, to have your beat

taken to heart,

now that is youth, to muck around with form, to tease

out parts from the whole, it is Aristotle and his categories,

it is good to have

geographies to work with like Donne, to train the antartic

see we have one of those commentaries, the type they cast

as insincere

you need to have more Hart, I think then of a lonely deer

see how I grip hold tightly of the pun, how I wring

for all its worth

but less artfully, I move in jest, though I think we are on

the same page, at least we are on board our junk as it sails

gently through paraphrase.