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From: mj@pur-ee.UUCP (Slartibartfast)
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: night of the iguana - excerpt
Message-ID: <4764@pur-ee.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 20:15:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: pur-ee.4764
Posted: Thu Oct  2 20:15:27 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 08:37:51 EDT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Department , Purdue University
Lines: 48

I was up at about 4am last week and saw "NIGHT OF THE IGUANA"
(or most of it) with Richard Burton.  It was great, and at the end
there was a fantastic poem ("fantastic" is a pun, 
if you know the play).


	Anyway, I looked it up, and here it is.  Since this is an
(albeit late) review of the play, no copyright infringement is
intended:


        How calmly does the orange branch
        Observe the sky begin to blanch
        Without a cry, without a prayer,
        With no betrayal of despair.

        Sometime while night obscures the tree
        The zenith of its life will be
        Gone past forever, and from thence
        A second history will commence.

        A chronicle no longer gold,
        A bargaining with mist and mould,
        And finally the broken stem
        The plummeting to earth; and then

        An intercourse not well designed
        For beings of a golden kind
        Whose native green must arch above
        The earth's obscene, corrupting love.

        And still the ripe fruit and the branch
        Observe the sky begin to blanch
        Without a cry, without a prayer,
        With no betrayal of despair.

        O Courage, could you not as well
        Select a second place to dwell,
        Not only in that golden tree
        But in the frightened heart of me?

                        From The Night of the Iguana, Act III
                             Tennesee Williams (1961)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark A. Johnson - Purdue University Department of Electrical Engineering
		(Department of Redundancy Department) 
UUCP:..allegra!purdue!pur-ee!mj USPS:Box 260, EE Building, Lafayette IN 47907