Yes, yes I do know the putative prescriptive difference between the two. "Lie" is intransitive present where as "lay" is either transative present or intransitive past. I had intransitive past in mind, my dear Dr. Toilet.

But honestly, I find it hard to care. Furthermore, I loathe linguistic prescriptivism as I find it to be ignorant and pseudointellectual.

No. It's just rhymed spontaneously, as is Montale's fashion.

No, because "I tripped and saw...[it] creep,"

*Snarls* Killjoy!

I have admited on this very site that I am a pretentious fuck.

Well now I know whom to translate.

Good question. I'd ask Quevedo but he's a bit incommunicado.

Pshaw!

I want my poems to be at least pronouncable

The French poem from which I translated this has no punctuation either

Here are the first 6 lines in French, I've put punctuation marks in parentheses where they would normally be as prescribed by French writing conventions but aren't:

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine(,)
Et nos amours(,)
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne(?)
La joie venait toujours après la peine(.)

Vienne la nuit(,) sonne l'heure(.)
Les jours s'en vont(,) je demeure(.)

Yes, it's lyrical.

*Jumps out window at the rediculousness of the embedding of these comments*

True, but as I said before, there are some parts of cummings where not one word is complete or legible, which leaves one somewhere between a Steely Dan Lyric and President Bush's literacy.

Also formal poetry has an appeal to me simply because I like the way it sounds. The disadvantage of nonformal poetry is that you can break with the form to make a point or acheive an effect whereas the best you can do in a nonformal poem is jump into rhyme, which is a lot harder to do tastefully. I know of only one poet (Dana Gioia) who can do so successfully.

It does have repeating endlines especially at the end, so you'd be correct I suppose