4042. THE SPORTING LIFE OFSIDNEY BARROW

THE SPORTING LIFE

OF SIDNEY BARROW

(near Christopher Street, 1986)

If I have left you standing alone in these torrents

of rain and ice, well, that is my nature and you

should be man enough to take it. Instead, as I

see it, you have carped and cried and wagered

like a woman for a most romantic ending.

-

Suppleness like leather is a face, a look, a

misappropriated glance : this is a crowd

of weeping homos, here, in front of the

churchyard lawn, sobbing and gesticulating

for the cameras, like Jews hawking streetside

wares or explorers bent for oblivion.

-

Too little, too late, too far, too much.

They have catty names, not real at all -

poor boys a'lit from ghettos of the mind,

placebos for their own wear and tear. I

will not take that apocalyptic coat

and wear it....

-

For I know - and have seen - miracles that

occur; things that change both numbers and

aims, both endings and desires. So much of the

altered mind is in the interpretation of what is

being seen. Present at the creation, disposed to

love and giving, the glance that causes things

that stay  -  like holes in the hand, or thorns

upon the head. Should we not mark the passage?

Loaves and fishes are multiplied in the mind :

'I must only have thought I was hungry."

-

[Too little,

too late,

too far,

too much].

-

Collonade, Astor Place,  MacDougal Alley -

places in the mind are often not real at all.