Deniability

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[Note: I have been been reading Him again, after a long while away, and I confess I have never felt closer or more well disposed--to his genuis as well as his folly. Each poem makes me want to reply in kind, and so I have been. I've stopped counting, but I think there may be another little book in it. Would it be Talking Back? or A Bard Replies? Dipping HOney from the Tomb?]

Deniability

Well yes of course that--but not primarily that.
It may be needful at some later date
to squirm in the witness chair and say
Did I say that! Yes, Calamus--
and much else besides that might be thought
confessional--or else a mask, a masque,
a pageant of the shifting, shiftless Self:
You, Me, whomever, a literary sort of fellow
who says things that may seem
plain as the toes in your mouth
but are actually arcane, oracular,
and fully deniable from a legal angle.
But here, dear, in the glades
of sweet dalliance all that is deniable
is honey on the tongue and may be
kissed away. O sweetness of many
Whitman samplers! O manly love!
O icw cream from Eternity's deep freeze!
O please, my darling, encore!
which is Italian for more. And then again

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