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from A Coney Island of the Mind
Lawrence Ferlinghetti10
………….I have not lain with beauty all my life
…………………..telling over to myself
…………………………………………………….its most rife charms
……..I have not lain with beauty all my life
…………………………………………………..and lied with it as well
……………………..telling over to myself
………………………………………….how beauty never dies
……………………….but lies apart
……………………………………..among the aboriginies
……………………………………………………………………….of art
…………………………and far above the battlefields
……………………………………………………………………..of love………….It is above all that
………………………………………oh yes
…….It sits upon the choicest of
……………………………………………….Church seats
…..up there where art directors meet
to choose things for immortality
………………………………………………And they have lain with beauty
………………………….all their lives
…………………………………………..And they have fed on honeydew
……….and drunk the wines of paradise
……………………………………………………………so that they know exactly how
…………….a thing of beauty is a joy
……………………forever and forever
…………………………………………………..and how it never never
………………………..can quite fade
………………………………………………..into money-losing nothingness…..Oh no I have not lain
……………………………………on Beauty Rests like this
………..afraid to rise at night
……………………………………..for fear that I might somehow miss
..some movement beauty might have made
…….Yet I have slept with beauty
………………………………………………..in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
……………………………………………………………..with beauty in my bed
…..and so spilled out another poem or two
…………and so spilled out another poem or two
……………………………………………………………….upon the Bosch-like world
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