711. 100 LADDERS

100 LADDERS
(Forethought and Malice)
Foster kids' group growing up.
Seeded apple fields with rows of
fenceposts and the footings for 100
ladders. The splash of such large
undertakings is yet here and about.
'One time we gave the kids a choice,
and it only turned to baseball - my
God, a five-hour game with little to
show. But they had fun.'
-
'Could you once bring me something
from another clime?' Chance words
encountered sideways between
two walls. Duffel bags filled
with old equipment.
-
I'm watching the girls with cameras;
they're trying to take pictures of something.
I don't see much. The room seems too dark,
and the one in the green shirt is standing
on a chair. Forethought and Malice, I name them.
No, nothing like that really - and hangings
sell better postcards anyway.
-
I have often, far too much, paraded
down the street with witless gendarmes,
rulers of doctrine and the keepers of
philosophy's key. I know my scene has
changed. The entire world altered.
Ballet Russe, some Diaghilev fusion.
'Perfect ballet, you know, can only be
created by the fusion of three elements -
dancing, painting and music.'
-
Those baseball kids should know that.
Yet now - and standing alone between two
forces - I can only witness : from someplace
between late Wittgenstein and early Pynchon.
A Siege of Malta and the hard, logical Must,
so recently discredited and now left, largely
forgotten and abandoned.
-
100 ladders in the rain and snow.
100 ladders in the apple trees.
They died for being rather than
professing to be. Forethought
and Malice seemed their
names to me.