The Originals
IT’S all not just for the sake of change.
Men partially will follow fashion,
Thinking some duty to the present
Requires an understanding of
New cars announced in spring;
And the newest music makes them dance;
Yet all of this is nothing like
A young girl’s passion to arrange
Some gay and unaccustomed thing.
It’s all not just for the sake of change.
Whatever’s made that’s really new
Compels so much men’s admiration
It stops their unaccomplished tongues
And makes their searching feet stand still
At what in no trunk tarnishes
And never rots in any rain,
And is not destroyed by its history,
Like linen or like stone.
Seeking the good they found the strange.
It’s all not just for the sake of change.
Men partially will follow fashion,
Thinking some duty to the present
Requires an understanding of
New cars announced in spring;
And the newest music makes them dance;
Yet all of this is nothing like
A young girl’s passion to arrange
Some gay and unaccustomed thing.
It’s all not just for the sake of change.
Whatever’s made that’s really new
Compels so much men’s admiration
It stops their unaccomplished tongues
And makes their searching feet stand still
At what in no trunk tarnishes
And never rots in any rain,
And is not destroyed by its history,
Like linen or like stone.
Seeking the good they found the strange.
It’s all not just for the sake of change.
REUEL DENNEY
Mr. Denney’s first book of poems, The Connecticut River, has been selected for the annual volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets.