THAT MISERABLE MANUFACTURE
(Hart Crane, 1932)
That miserable manufacture, I knew it
wouldn't last. The way the hands on
that clock started drooping on rock - like
a Picasso still life on acid; and the way
the carolers walked thru the door without
stopping to sing. This life's a funny thing.
I remembered bowling once, with Hart Crane,
over at Bridge Lanes, somewhere in SW Brooklyn.
His stupid father has just blown in from
that candy-factory in Ohio. His mother, in turn,
leaving a note, had fled quickly. It was just us
three left, gay Hart, Harry Crosby and me.
All that Brooklyn Bridge reverence, I found out
later, was crap. All he really wanted to do, this
pigeon-poet sensitive character Hart, was cruise
for guys all along the piers. But, no matter to me;
he'd always written nice stiff - 'the apples, Bill, the
apples!' - probably my favorite line of his. Anyway,
as it was, I knew confused characters never last;
they're manufactured incorrectly, their jets finally
give out like some sick motorcycle carburetor of old.
Hart's solution was to jump from the back of a ship.
Some sailors had finally rebuffed his sexual entreaties.
Poetry had left him flat, his father had called him an ass.
It was all just bad manufacture - nice bridge or not.
They never even found his southernmost body in those
warm-climate waters into which he'd jumped.
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