It is not
            cold fire
I see
     in you
            not
gem-like flame
which is silver
and spot cash.
It is more
            difficult:
exchange of gold
                        and warmer.
I do not call it poem
or you its poet
                   but
I have found your mouth
delighted
                   by its lack of speaking.

seriph
       fine-honed
changeling
       one for
another
       and the other
flourish
       by one
length
       changing
not changed
       the difference

—

I found this Theodore Enslin chapbook from 1964 in the John K. King bookstore in Detroit, where bad books go to rot by the thousand. Enslin is ripping off William Carlos Williams so hard it’ll make your head spin, but with different intentions. Enslin is an old-fashioned Romantic, featuring high diction, “flowers / and stallions / unicorns / and / white geese.” There’s nothing modernist in his poems, no distrust of the lyric impulse.

This poem is at the center of the book, along the gutter; it’s the first poem if you read if you let the book fall open. I was charmed by the spondee of “spot cash”, a metrical anchor for the sinewy lines that surround it. I also thought “changing / not changed / the difference” was a wonderful ending.