David Lewitzky
Poem Beginning With a Line by Christopher Smart

“Rejoice with Pegasus The Flying Horse – there be millions of them in the air”
Rejoice with Icarus The Foolish Falling Child – there be a million pulsing sunbeams of him, bathing us, anointing us – that we be filled with derring–do and dreams

Rejoice with Magic Carpet, Tour Guide, Barker, Tout and Train – there be millions waiting in the alleyways, hanging out at bus stops, right outside our door – that we may learn to locate joy

Rejoice with Pineapple Orange Grapefruit Lemon Lime – there be citrus magnifications of millions on all the tables of the sky – that we may lick and sip them as we please – that we may gorge ourselves with beauty

Rejoice with Pastry Shop and Soda Shop and Chop House – there be a million cities filled with them eternal everywhere right here – that we may dine on good red meat and all the ice cream we can eat

Rejoice with all the Slapstick Comic Angels Vulva Penis Boobs and Butt – there be a million of them, troupers all and free of charge, in vaudeville burlesque music hall temples churches tabernacles – that we may live and die in sexual joy and laughter, top banana, open zipper, pie in the face

Rejoice with Charlatan, Snake Oil Scamp, and Yellow Brick – there be millions of adventurers in skyfield, townfield, worldfield Edens – that we may walk down golden roads and dream

Rejoice with Roughhouse Gibraltar Ape our pal and bodyguard – there be a million poses of him, playing and wrestling, tickling us in our back yards – that we may live our lives with trust

Rejoice with Spider Web and Silver Dew for artistry and longevity – there be a million galleries filled with them in the galleries and attics of the sky – that we overflow with beauty, ceremony, creativity

Rejoice with Quasimodo and his telescope – he be multitudes, looking after us from a million cloudy steeples – that we become companion to invisibility

Rejoice with Bach the organist and family man – there be a million choirs and combos of him, a million minyans of him in the morning air – that we may wake up blissfully

Rejoice with crazy old Kit Smart – he be a million children singing love and joy to us in wacky and naïve, prophetic voices; calling out to us from a phone booth in a loony bin in Paradise – that we may walk courageously through life

Rejoice with Roget, Webster, Samuel Johnson – they be an endless stream of drowsing lexicographers in a million heavenly lecture halls and classrooms, dreaming into our dreams a stereopticon of words and histories and visions – that we may speak together ceaselessly with fondness

Rejoice with Gandhi, Isaiah, Mary the Madonna, Martin Luther King and Rodney King, rejoice with all the Peacemakers – for they be our friends and family, and they climb stairways, mountains, ladders, and return multiplied in millions like the rain, and bring us into light – that we be blessed and we endure

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David Lewitzky is a retired social worker in Buffalo, NY. He’s had recent work in Nimrod, Red Wheelbarrow, Rabbit Catastrophe Review and Third Wednesday among others and forthcoming work in Passages North, Puckerbrush Review, Roanoke Review, and Crosstimbers.

<< Back to Issue 16, 2013