TOPIARY

Failing sometimes to understand

Why there are folk whose flesh should seem

Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,

Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,

Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;

Why there are men without any legs,

Whizzing along on little trollies

With long long arms like apes':

Failing to see why God the Topiarist

Should train and carve and twist

Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes:

Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish

That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind,

Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind,

Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.