photo by Arthur Gary
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Sabbatical
for Doug Lang
We hear tales of a wonderful country called Wales
Only Wales is wholly imaginary, like Middle Earth
Or the Starfleet Academy
There is no holiday called Christmas
Children do not exist
Humans have as yet failed to discover
A reliable means of reproducing their kind
Except in elaborate fictions—a kind of imitation of life
Lana Turner has not collapsed, at least not yet
There was no ancient mariner
And he never stopped anybody
All the world is not a stage
Some people actually are islands
The world is not too much with us
All happy families are not alike
I know whether I am the hero of my own story
I think I am extremely likely to see
A poem lovely as a tree
I do not celebrate myself or sing myself
There is not much of me
And I don’t taste all that good
This not the saddest story I have ever heard
I am not a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together
Although I admit it must look that way sometimes
I did not place that jar in Tennessee
I didn’t eat the plums
In the beginning God did not create anything
This is not Illyria, lady
The answer is not blowing in the wind
You are not my funny valentine
Fish do not gotta swim, birds do not gotta fly
‘Twas not brillig
Lafayette, we are not here
I do not want you green
I do not wander lonely as a cloud
If clouds really are all that lonely
I took the road everybody else takes
And it hasn’t made any difference at all
A thing of beauty is not a joy forever
I don’t have to go down to the sea again
The sea is not calm tonight
I don’t remember
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Bernard Welt is the author of Serenade (Z Press), and poetry in journals including The Antioch Review, Sun & Moon, Little Caesar, and Z, as well as of Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in Contemporary American Popular Art (Art issues Press). His poem, “I stopped writing poetry . . .” appeared in The Best American Poetry 2001 (Robert Hass, ed., New York: Scribner, 2001).
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