But your face darkens like a mountainside,
"Honor thy father and mother,"
and wanders off all day to read
in wounded, important displeasure.
And I and my friends appear, chanting
the names of our devils: Shit
the First, Fuck the First,
Mannerhater the Great,
and dream of the island where we are four kings
and the parents are kept in dungeons.
I see the long gray country rope you once
lashed me with,
for shaking it at you
when you called me a crybaby.
Then, nothing. . . rain-light. . . sad breath
as though still climbing the long stairs
of Chicago ...
One winter in Kansas,
you were measured for your first overcoat
and thought it was your coffin.
On the last day, you wished
to
be taken from the hospital
and thrown by the side of the road.
Here comes the rappers to send me to bed
They'll rapper my head offand then I'll be dead
But I can never get
around the crooked corners of your smile.
Alan Williamson
Note: For the italicized morris-dance rhymes, I am indebted to the mystery
novel
Death of a Fool,
by Ngaio Marsh. Other borrowings from Huizinga and
Donne.
