1090. SANTERWHOPE THE BALTHAZAR

SANTERWHOPE THE
BALTHAZAR
(Christopher Street Piers, 1978)
'Well I came from Alabama with
my banjo on my knee. If it wasn't
true that the course of time absconds
with fate so little would there be.'

-
Outside the balancing act procession
there seemed nothing really there at all.
As I tried to enter the marriage palace,
a hundred people rushed me.
Wondering what to do :
glass globes the world a'wander.
-
Yellow taxis, big black truck,
Texas plates and three old policemen
gamboling and down on their luck sitting on
the rotted pier splintered and oiled wood
and the entire world, like a forest, shaded.
-
Take my hand, little lovely one.
There are holes in it, and my palm
is tattooed with early oil, marks from the
palm frond, messages from one lethal God.
-
Never knowing how I ended up here (I fell
from the stars) I stayed instead - walking
foul beaches with dead fish and birds scattered
and thrown (I prayed to the Heavens) I bent
down to touch the Earthly sand (feeding dreams
to rainbows and terns) and I laid my head down
where the water had been. The whole world was
dry. Like Alexander the Great, I had conquered
somehow all with little effort really on my part.
(I swore not to overstay). I could love you.
I could comfort the lost kitten crying in
the doorway. I could saturate the
world with one embrace.
-
The man asked me what it was I
wanted to do. 'I want to write
the world into a miracle'
was all I said to him.
-

(And the course of time
absconds with fate).