POEMS
The gulls ride on the water, the gulls have come and gone,
The men on rail and roadway keep moving on and on.
The salmon climb the rivers, the rivers nudge the sea,
The green comes up forever in the fields of our country."
John Wheelwright
A FUNERAL PALL IN CELLOPHANE
An evil Boston woman loved the Virgin
with merely nearly mediaeval marvel.
When she grew old, she stuck together a junk shop
the texture of whose court, unfortunately,
inspired the taste of Alice Stone Blackwell
(I mean Alice Foote Macdougal)
R~staurants.
Fed by the interior court's interior life
she lived off canned baked beans and cold corned beef –
and bore false witness at the Customs House.
Her "guests" at restaurants paid their checks for dinner.
She threw nothing away. She was a mummy.
She gave good folks hysterics at the Opera
poking her magenta-ed hair and ostrich-plumed
monkey face at them between box curtains.
She scrubbed down Altar steps every Good Friday;
Sandow received her and her friends stark naked;
She had a Requiem Mass sung every Christmas,–
for the Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary.
"It's not a hospice; but a hoax," she said,
"There's not a charitable eye or ear in Boston"–
all this because they christened her Isabella.
She took as lovers Boston's public citizens;
Opera and Drama flourished in her life time
while Politics became brutal and dull,-
all this because her maiden name was Stuart.
19
