The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #49370   Message #746757
Posted By: Hollowfox
11-Jul-02 - 04:53 PM
Thread Name: Help: Peter Viereck poem: Sinister Potato
Subject: ADD: Peter Viereck poem: Sinister Potato
Here we go: this was printed with the author's permission in the record book. Here it is printed without permission, but with respect. It's from his book Selected and New Poems (1967, Bobbs-Merrill)

To A Sinister Potato

Oh vast earth apple, waiting to be fried,
Of all the starers the most many-eyed,
What furtive purpose hatched you long ago
In Indiana or in Idaho?

In Indiana and in Idaho
Snug underground the great potatoes grow,
Puffed up with secret paranoias unguessed
By all the duped and starch-fed middle west.

Like coiled up springs or like a will-to-power,
The fat and earthy lurkers bide their hour,
The silent watchers of our raucous show
In Indiana and in Idaho.

"They think us dull, a food and not a flower,
Wait! We'll outshine all roses in our hour.
Not wholesomness but mania swells us so
In Indiana and in Idaho.

"In each Kiwanis Club on every plate
So bland and health exuding do we wait
That Indiana never, never knows
How much we envy stars and hate the rose."

Some doom will strike (as all potatoes know)
When, once too often mashed in Idaho,
From its cocoon the drabbest of earth's powers
Rises and is a star

And shines
And lours.