Poems
O Taste and See: New Poems (1964)
O Taste and See
The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination's tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
l. 2 enough: After Wordsworth's sonnet "The world is too much with us" where he criticised materialism and proposed a return to nature and simple life.
l. 3. Cf. "O taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Psalm 34:8)