Kenneth Koch (1925 - 2002)

Our Hearts

1
All hearts should beat when Cho Fu's orchestra plays "Love"
and then all feet should start to move in the dance.
The dancing should be very quick and all step lightly.
Everyone should be moving around, all hearts beating-
Tip tap tip tap. The heart is actually beating all the time
and with almost the same intensity. The difference is not in
our hearing
which is also almost always the same. The difference must be
really
then in our consciousness, which they say is variegated.
Black-and-white shoes, red dress, an eye of flame,
a teeth of pearl, a hose of true, a life of seethings. Would
you like to dance? The excitement, it is there all the time.
Is human genius there all the time? With the analogy of dreams,
which supposedly we have every night, one is tempted
to say, the seething is always there, and with it the possibility
for great art.

4
What do you think it is really all explainable by, this
mystery that has been built up by a natural process
and how much of it do we need? The foot of everyone is
advancing
and the knees of everyone should be flexing, legs dancing
and lips moving gaily up over the teeth
for the speaking, and hands driven into pockets, eyes
shining, stub-
bed toes forgotten as we walk down the somewhere else
saying God Damn
it's good to see you. But what shall we do? The greatest plan
is participate, aid, and understand. Every dog should be at the
foot
of every man. What evidence this past give us! Examples
with which we impregnate today. But the shirt should fit
over the chest, the light silk panties over the rear.
The sky is shining. The sun is a basket of wash
let down for our skin, and germs are all around us like cash.

9
To be a back, which doesn't break, and to hate what is
mysterious
that doesn't need to be, grant me O Athena
of the roses and the gamma globulin-however, prayer
is nothing I can ever be serious about (I think).
The answer is elusive and the work about it goes on
a long time and so we want our lives to go on
among other things in hope to find an answer. Though we
know
that the answer of eighty will not be the answer of eighteen.
En route we give titles to things, we further
complicate our own situation and that of other persons
and we get wiser, sometimes, and kinder, and probably less
exciting
(certainly so), and grow out of our illusions (sometimes)
and so
can look around and say, Oh! So! but usually without the
time
or power to change anything (sometimes-maybe a fraction-
if so, it's amazing!) then off we go.