1106. MEMORY

MEMORY
(all those old gangs are gone)
How many times I tried to cross your
body-blow that way - over the lawn,
past the landing, down to the pond. The
shapely Springer Spaniel ran to the well
once more with me, sprinting above the
field : we called him, because of scenes
like that, 'Riser'. Everything seemed new
again, and it all meant so much. Each time
I saw you, I would genuflect, and I never
knew why - though I sensed something
amiss. Then one day, like from the
Finzi-Contini's themselves, some
soldiers came and took
everything away.
-
How tempestuous do you wish it to be?
A fearsome faction? Some broken and
fragmented moments, recalled only later
in fascinating horror? Norman Mailer once
was heard to say - in a retort to the tumult
of his times - 'the best cure for cancer is
cannibalism.' He'd meant that the sickness
of his times, his years through the 1960's,
was so malignant that it had run through
all of society - the Left and its hippies
and yippies, and the Right with all that
Wallace and Nixon and Reagan stuff -
and now feasting upon it, from either
direction, consuming as well each,
other was the only way to cure it.
Thus the cannibalism he cited.
-
And probably right yes too.
I miss old Norman, and all his
pugnacious stuff - the bluster and
the homage and that grand old Brooklyn
waterfront promenade old home comfort;
those big, fat ideas and that crazed
ruminative puff.
-
How ferocious you want it? I haven't
heard you say. You've got bullets and
baldercorn, malarkey and fire - each
opposite's intention to aspire. Of course.
1950's teenage Spic hoodlums hanging out
in alleys where now Lincoln Center is, old
San Juan Hill I heard; and the old Dago Wop
killers, lurking at 116th, or far downtown, in
their cheap Italian dens, Mott and Elizabeth
and Sullivan and Prince - all streets from Hell.
Now fighting with Chinks. And all those downtown
dumb maniacs forgetful of both Death and Time.
-
Spinning spoked hubcaps and baby moons in
the constable's face, and whitening Blood Alley
with lime to sop up the blood and the juices.
Carnage and death make no difference now.
Now they're all ghosts, same as their fathers
before them. And I can only live in memory :
before the roads were paved, before the
intersections made. That's what it takes, with
a five in the hand and one memory grand -
a time to go to after the gangs disband.