News at Eleven: Consider such phrases as these: "the old lullaby of alibis"

or "the kisslessness/Of emptiness" or "Choice roses chucked from Rolls-Royces" or even "the wheeze and laze of asthmatic days." Sometimes the lines are neatly satirical: "To pose under a portico in a nimbus/Of self and with a dead animal for a hat." Others are full of black humor: "the splendid official, who on a lark/Hopped a daytime train without his papers,/Now pickaxes ice with a quiet tribe of lepers." Some pack a story into a simile: "Like a happy man undone by an alley-flash of lace."

from The Washington Post: Osip Mandelstam: 'Stolen Air: Selected Poems'

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