spruces, over it a bridge planked
and inviting, which his erudite
whimsy in gratitude would chris–
ten ((Greenspan." As he began to
write, on unconvincing but quite
unique anticipations of the char–
acter of Claggart in Thoreau, he
saw or thought he saw a few last
cards, bordered in black, swim
past his dream-drugged eye:
By accident we find in Green–
span's death a double symbol, for
he met his end in a hunting mis–
hap with his lifelong friends Mase–
field, the pukka-Protestant, and
Brooke, the effete Apollo, on a
Grecian goat-shoot before Galli–
polio Brooke's gun slipped, fired;
Greenspan was hit and died within
the hour. The most original re–
ligious talent our alienated cen–
tury has known lies buried in a
basket on Mount Athos.
The reader sensitive to irony
will note that it was also on this
hunt that Brooke scratched and
infected his great toe; his lost im–
munity to streptococcus never re–
turning, it was only weeks before
Death summoned finally at Scyros.
Masefield's denial of the whole
affair is understandable but not
persuasive, and we may search in
vain through all the pages of his
Gallipoli
to hit on Greenspan.
One cryptic poem Greenspan
left undated-a glorious failure,
or a broken cry of death-stilled
triumph, like the trumpet call his
ancient Polish tradition traces to
the bugler arrow-strangled in mid-
blast (heard in our time on
Cas–
sino's bomb-scarred peak). We
know that Greenspan never trav–
eled West; but something from
his reading-or Gene Debs–
caught his colossal fancy, and Salt
Lake is clearly limned in oddly
modern verse. We let it stand
here as a final problem, magni–
ficently, darkly reticent, satIn–
cally called
Look Ma No Hands:
1 heard last night the blast of
caterpillars
gnawing rank on rank the raw
river bank
moving south to the thawing
water's mouth
breathless 1 woke to spring's
desert's death*
against the burden of grasshop–
pers no sea bird
riding over divide from salt to
great salt**
no carved gull sits in our starved
city square
ridding our air of the loud buzz–
borne cloud
instead harlot-hued parrots chat–
ter blue and red
*
The iteration of possessives here
brings to mind Hopkins, but the Jes–
uit has passed only his dim penumbra
over Greenspan's more brilliant and
defiant light.
**
The frequent symbolism of "the
divide" as well as Greenspan's obvi–
ous undinism- flowing perhaps from
his Caesarean birth- must await ful–
ler examination by the writer in next
January's issue.
