Ambiguity

The tree trunks in our headlights are bright white worms,

inside a truck-shed, white tires are hung like paintings;

the best photographer dare not retouch them—

not everyone accepts their claim to greatness.

If blood doesn’t spurt from my eyelashes, when

I meet a work of art, it isn’t art—

too much persuasion is famine, enough a miracle,

yet God is good, he sees us all as straw dogs.

Even the toothless, trodden worm can writhe—

in the night-moment, even a halt-pacifist,

nursed on leaflets and wheat-germ, hears the drum-step

of his kind whistle like geese in converging lines,

the police weeping in their fog of Mace,

while he plants the black flag of anarchy and peace.

Robert Lowell. “Trunks.” In History. 1973.