"Remember," he said to me,
"in this type of work, the meaning
of the words
becomes secondary to their sound,"
and then he stood at the podium
and convened
a parliament of ghosts
and by ones and by twos and by scores
they came,
levitating and falling
and cursing, cursing
their untamed deaths —

Who was there to see it
when Confucius petitioned
Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan,
and the other robber barons?

And who was there to note
the one seed, the one acorn
in the soil of a lifeless
universe
and to nurture it
and to watch it
change and blossom and grow?

— "Remember," he said to me, winking
like everyone's favorite politician,
"You've got to keep them coming back,
coming back
         for more."