Dialectical Materialism

The material aspects of life
If there are any, a little tea
(One always says 'little',
Fascination with the small,
The tadpole containing its essence
Still in the thickening wideness
Of pools) bathed in translucid honey,
Amber beyond all horizons...

But things are ugly too, the tea is in
A room with a floor that is sticky as the honey,
A mother sucking her bright boy's scrape
To make it heal, that's how it clings,
And the blue bowls drip positively in a morass
Of dirty plastic cups and shoddy glass, strewn
Beer-cans, heaps of etc.'s and etc.'s. Still
There is the little cup of tea, small as we
Are, really, a kind of parable, a kind parable --

And it isn't all so bad as that: it is a hot
Cup of tea, a material thing, a small, resilient joy
Greeting the sunrise and throughout the day,
Shared by grubby hands and fine fingers,
Available in rilling curls ground black or bags
Of chopped greenery and standing neatly in rows, picked
From the dirt of harvests or risen high
In machines of irreparable hum, accompanied

By the most distinct thoughts and various persuasions
(Of which one is this 'poem', but others
Are God, lice, cancer, mice, poodles,
Euclid, wages, wages of sin, puddles of substance
Beyond substance, without substance --
Superficialities, makeup, flights
Of fancy, fights and partners making up,
Then other minds or perhaps robots
And maybe narcs)...

And there is really not much more to say about it,
Not much you don't already know.