Hart Crane Homeward Bound (V)

The cargo, contraband, the treasure chest

of aphorisms from the Romans and Greeks,

Even the Byzantine and Egyptian, from the Book

of the Dead, from Tao, and from after your time

Hart, from Che Guevara, from Chairman Mao,

they are all from the culture of unreflected reading,

What Pliny the Elder warned about, gleaned from

T-shirt slogans, from the Couplands, from the Ellises,

from the stand up comics, from the Lenny Bruces,

It's in there, the Umberto Eco, "name that flower

in one", the thorns of sunrise from Ungaretti,

the masques of Ben Jonson, the persons of Pessoa,

the anus of Adler, the mouth organ of Byron,

the slender fingers of Swinburne, the snot

of the Jabberwocky, the end of all lists, all inside

the cargo, contraband, the treasure chest.