More than a third of a century later,
meeting for the first time in almost all those years,
we face each other’ s still somewhat familiar faces
across a table in a California restaurant,
and wonder why we did it, why we suddenly said
that night in July in Greenwich Village
“Let’ s go to Connecticut,” and got on a train
and ended up at midnight in Old Greenwich, Connecticut,
holding hands on an empty road that wound past
serious grown-up sleeping houses....
1.
Book of Splendor
2. family ways
Oh family ways, ah family ways
Even in fortunate times,
The nectar is spiked with woe.
Gods are incorrigibly
Capricious, and the needy
Beg in Nineveh or sleep
In paper-gusting plazas
Of the New World’ s shopping malls.
Meantime, the tyrant battens
On conquest, while advisers,
Angling for preferment, seek
Expedient paths. Heartbroken,
The faithful advocate looks
Back on cities of the plain
And trudges into exile.
Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’ t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’ s — oh
joy — actually scared. Sniff the wind, then
I’ m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’ re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,
Sirs, when you are in your last extremity,
When your admirals are drowning in the grass-green sea,
When your generals are preparing the total catastrophe —
I just want you to know how you can not count on me.
I have ridden to hounds through my ancestral halls,
I have picked the eternal crocus on the ultimate hill,
I have fallen through the window of the highest room,
But don’ t ask me to help you ’ cause I never will.
Jesus, I want my sins back.
My prattle, pride, and private prices —
climbing, clinching, clocking —
I might loan you a few for the evening,
so you don’ t show up at your own crucifixion
naked of all purpose.
But for God’ s sake, don’ t spill any
redemption on them! They’ re my
signature looks. Body by Envy.
Make up & wardrobe provided by Avarice. Lord,
if you take away my inordinate cravings,
what the hell’ s left? Do you know
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home.
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call
I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest wits —
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’ t care
if I never taste your fine food again,
neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes
Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.
