Art is hard work and honesty

And understanding. And I don't care.

I had a dream once about my father.

I came into the kitchen: he stood there

Stirring an oyster stew on the stove.

Also he in canvas apron at the sink.

Also smiling in the middle of the room.

What could I do, what did I think?

Nothing. I think nothing at all.

Maybe I have three fathers. I don't know.

Some believe all poems are dreamed.

It's not that I give up people now.

The only people who make me laugh

Louder than dream-explainers can

Are interpreters of what the wish

For non-interpretation must mean.

I think that I have outlived thinking;

That all nine senses are one sense,

A wonderfully unnecessary to define

Vast dynamic indifference.

What is art? Not the fashionable

Shapes swirled on seawater for fun,

To play with the law of refracted light

On a sandy bottom from the sun.

Art may be whatever artists say it is.

Maybe the poem is the poem's intent.

Let it happen to itself alone.

Dream may be all the dream meant.

And my father? He was an engineer.

Of him it is furthermore true

That of things he made memorably well

One was Sunday morning oyster stew.