You’ re rich, lady, hissed the young woman at
My mother as she bent in her garden.
Look at what you’ ve got, and it was
Too much, the collards and tomatoes,
A man, however lousy, taking care
of the bills.
That’ s right, said the cab driver,
Turning the corner to the
Round-a-bout way,
Those stupid, fuckin’ beggars,
You know the guys who
Walk up to my cab
With their hands extended
And their little cups?
You know their problem?
You know what’ s wrong with them?
They ain’ t got no brains.
I mean, they don’ t know nothin’
I was born in Boston in
1949. I never wanted
this fact to be known, in
fact I’ ve spent the better
half of my adult life
trying to sweep my early
years under the carpet
and have a life that
was clearly just mine
and independent of
the historic fate of
my family. Can you
imagine what it was
like to be one of them,
to be built like them,
to talk like them
to have the benefits
of being born into such
a wealthy and powerful
American family. I went
to the best schools,
uuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuu uuu ray light morning fire lynch yet
uuuuuuu, yester-pain in dreams
comes again. race-pain, people our people
our people
everywhere... yeh... uuuuu, yeh
uuuuu. yeh
our people
yes people
every people
most people
uuuuuu, yeh uuuuu, most people
in pain
yester-pain, and pain today
(Screams) ooowow! ooowow! It must be
the devil
(jumps up like a claw stuck him) oooo
wow! oooowow! (screams)
Having been tenant long to a rich lord,
Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.
In heaven at his manor I him sought;
They told me there that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.
Listen. Put on morning.
Waken into falling light.
A man’ s imagining
Suddenly may inherit
The handclapping centuries
Of his one minute on earth.
And hear the virgin juries
Talk with his own breath
To the corner boys of his street.
And hear the Black Maria
Searching the town at night.
And hear the playropes caa
The sister Mary in.
And hear Willie and Davie
Among bracken of Narnain
Sing in a mist heavy
With myrtle and listeners.
And hear the higher town
Weep a petition of fears
“Son,” said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
“You’ ve need of clothes to cover you,
And not a rag have I.
“There’ s nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with
Nor thread to take stitches.
“There’ s nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman’ s head
Nobody will buy,”
And she began to cry.
That was in the early fall.
When came the late fall,
“Son,” she said, “the sight of you
Makes your mother’ s blood crawl, –
up a little,” he says,
shutting the rusted tailgate,
“maybe at least lean
down from your high horse
and look busy,” picking up
his work gloves and his spade.
“You’ re not the only
hick on the clock
with an education,” he says, half-
laughing, half-wheezing,
and spits, his bottom lip bulging
with a load of Skoal,“even
if you do think pretty highly
of your poetry.”
Lame again, I limp home along Lawn Terrace
with a flowering sun star in a paper wrap
then back to the village with a lame cat
twisting and woeful in her cage.
Bread these days isn't baked to last:
how sad those posh loaves thudding off
in pine breadbins all around the Heath:
soulless latterday pets, frisky for a day
or two, then binned or thrown to foxes,
loaves just an inch of gloom below
the caged birds you notice in corners
of those same mansions when you seek
Aloft between heaven and them,
I babble the landscape — what staunch, vicious trees,
what cluttered roads, slow cars. This is my
country as it was gifted me — victimless, vast.
The soundtrack buzzing the air around my ears
continually loops ditties of eagles and oil.
I can’ t choose. Every moment I’ m awake,
aroused instrumentals channel theme songs,
speaking
what I cannot.
