KARL SHAPIRO
I insist on the middleaged poet. Brats of the drunken boat, centurions
in the pay of Congress, gray and forgetful, purposefully stupid
-God bless you, and Congress.
Marvelously recapitulating man, the child, reviving literature, in–
vents religion. The dog flops on the floor with graceful disgust.
Goldfish, I loved you. When you died I cried. I'm no biologist.
I did my best. I know. I overfed you. I was warned on the box.
(The air-force officer has a tropical tank. His fishes glitter like
a jewelry store.)
*
*
*
New York, my love, we never went to bed. (You never asked me.)
New York, my ]ewess, you read me Kierkegaard on the subway,
standing up. I didn't give you a chance to kill me, N.Y.
Chicago, what did I do to you? What's another stab in the back,
Chicago?
New York, killer of poets, do you remember the day you passed me
through your lower intestine? The troop train paused under
Grand Central. That line of women in mink coats handed us
doughnuts through the smutty windows. They were
all
crying.
For that I forgive New York. (We smuggled a postcard off at
New Haven.)
Chicago, smothered in boredom and pigs: your gothic universities,
your Portuguese wines, your bad baseball.
New York, island of prisons. New York of a billion black Rimbauds.
Chicago of dreamy cardinals.
What was it like, New York, when the skyscrapers were white? New
York of Hart Crane. Harlem of Lorca.
Chicago of T. S. Eliot (his city). Chicago of bad impulses.
*
*
*
All things remain to be simplified. I find I must break free of the
poetry trap.
The books I hunger for are always out, never to be returned:
illuminations, personal bibles, diatribes, chapters denied ac–
ceptance in scripture, Tobit blinded by sparrows muting warm
dung in his eyes, immense declarations of revolt, manuals of
the practice of love.
