Collected Poems, 1954-2004 by Irving Feldman

Page 33:

Articulate he was, but mistrusted eloquence,
For that pretends that something is real and, like Nature,
Can crumple one's performer's-smile with easy indifference.

Collected Poems, 1954-2004 by Irving Feldman

And yet Prometheus saw the sardonic humor of the place,
How the mountains tilted back their heads against the sky
And twisted out a smile; a smile passed on his face.
After a thousand years he thought he saw the joke,
And began, almost nostalgically, to giggle; even his joints
Felt a certain lightness, it took so little to provoke
A knee, merely, say, the wryness of two opposing points.
Another aeon passed and he laughed outright;
He felt himself, in fact, the universal satirist,
The final glittering of the rictus of cosmic spite.
So nothing really mattered; and his mirth bubbled off in mist.
What terrible cackle bounds blatant through the vale?
O come to the mountain and see a suit of clothes on a nail!