Tonight it is theatre & it is theatre only.  It is the culture 
of spectacle.  It is what is on the marquee. It is the theatre 
of bell ringers, grand boulevards, the chairs of brasseries 
turned toward the street, toward the promenades of pedestrians,
the flowing scarves, the diatribe, the sweat of speakers 
on the concrete stages of persuasion.  It is the night 
of the illusionist, the one black leaf stuck to the pavement with rain. 
 
The mural of history is theatre, the gold statues in city squares 
are theatre, churches, theatre, the military in their engagements  
and in their parades, the dramas that take us in, surround us, 
and promise liberation, and so it is always theatre marvelous, 
theatre compelling, theatre corrupt, the monk in his cell in love 
with martyrdom is the theatre of the one soul, the spectacle 
of the floating self, the artist, diplomat, the industrialist in gold-plated 
rooms, and the vision of the individual and the national community, 
and every organization, all theatre, but for the anonymous who 
perform only as they must, for their daily bread and do not live 
from the manipulation of others as lawyers live in the theatre 
of fabricated characters, and outside the courtroom, in nature, 
there is theatre, eruptions of mountains, panoplies of elegance 
and violence, and the cosmic displays of great cataclysms, whirling 
oscillations and contractions, flamboyant effusions and death star 
collisions, and tonight there is the quiet theatre of poetry, the poet, 
and the poem.