BOURGEOIS POET
407
I take my place beside the philistine and unfold my napkin. This
afternoon I defend the Marines. I goggle at long cars.
Without compassion I attack the insane. Give them the horsewhip!
The homosexual lectures me brilliantly in the beer booth. I can feel
my muscles soften. He smiles at my terror.
Pitchpots flicker in the lemon groves. I gaze down on the plains
of Hollywood. My fine tan and my arrogance, my gray hair
and my sneakers, 0 Israel!
Wherever I am I become. The power of entry is with me. In the
doctor's office a patient, calm and humiliated. In the foreign
movies a native, shabby enough. In the
art
gallery a person of
authority (there's a secret way of approaching a picture. Others
move off). The high official insults me to my face. I say nothing
and accept the job. He offers me whiskey.
How beautifully I fake! I convince myself with men's room jokes
and epigrams. I paint myself into a comer and escape on pulleys
of the unknown. Whatever I think at the moment is true. Tum
me around in my tracks; I will take your side.
For the rest, I improvise and am not spiteful and water the plants
on the cocktail table.
*
*
*
When I dismissed you, friend, why did I do that? The
J~das
in
me is strong. With an effort I regain my loyalty, and lose
it
again. These virtues incapacitate me. The solitude of the maso–
chist is mine.
Albatross of a prize, you who married me to a newspaper, you who
made me a government, why can't I thank you?
Kindness of deep hostility, my patience of a saint, endless capacity
for love-mother, did I have the breast really? (But you gave
me girls in your own likeness.)
This
laissez-alier,
this
Traumdeutung-am I really a poet? Do I give
a damn? That too I betray. I cross my fingers and exclude
bedfellow death. I rub the icebox with my swimming thighs.
I embrace the white rhinoceros; I propose to toilets.
What right have I to be healthy? What right have I to escape? And
what is it I have escaped? I explore opportunities. The rising
sun sits on my other head. My cancer is blooming.
