Nancy Kenney Connolly

Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds of John Cage

All the great mystics reach beyond words

to the beauty and terror of blackberries

to the shore of the sun, its

dazzling sizzle.

Or they chant a syllable so senseless

it flies untethered as an orange angel

and falls in a gutter flooded with moon.

Packed like a pimiento in his olive

Alfa Romeo, John Cage has nothing to say

and says it parked in the center of an intersection

smacking his lips over blackberries

while everyone else honks full-throttle,

swearing, Up yours with their hairy fingers.

Now John exhales in iambic pentameter.