For Blue And Poets Who Were Not Blind

If, for instance, Ralph Waldo
Emerson decided
To inhabit, again, the Body of
A seventeen-year-old
Boy:
Colors, such as light-air green
And just-above-Spring
Creek-Blue to Create
Colors and color words
Even if they are not
His own.
O Emerson!
"Alienated Majesty" reigns
over American-dawn friezes,
the ancient-draped Capitals
of Mother-Europe and
stone Cathedrals.
O Emerson…if, in fact,
You
Desired to reanimate this
Husky world and dark
Blue midnight
Blue and all that.
It may come down to you.
In America, the peasant-
Image modernity
Equals Nothing
Without the realization
Of a "rude bridge" and Spirit.
Some Spirit!
They tell me in a quite
Anti-Homeric fashion that
Your eyes were clear
Intense Blue (midnight dark)
And who said to be great---
You had to be Blind?
No, Emerson, like every
Tyrant and blue-eyed Lover---
You only must be
Misunderstood