Something of hemp there might
have been, of sawdust, pulleys
in that swarthy woman, picaresque
in her wrestler’s shoulders.
Something of tendons, of pain
in the taste of the drooling
tooth-pocked rubber bit she took
in her teeth to hang by her neck, twirling
midair, head yanked all
the way back.
When the baby elephant-tusks
hacksawed off for the tentative safety
of cash-was ushered out,
a moral might have been in the hook
at the tip of the gentleman’s cane
the ringmaster like a conductor
used to collect the slack
clay folds of the animal up
onto the stool,
a moral on which even the elephant,
its eye a knot in rock,
concentrated with philosophical calm.
The April sun stained the patched sails
of the big-top. Over
the din of the generator
an electric organ maintained the fanfare.
You might have smelt elegy there—
the idea of a brass band, tubas
harrumphing, spitting the sunlight, nodding
yes up Main St. on Saturday morning,
new paint on the wagons,
their fools-gold gingerbread cornices
polished, the horses’ sides
flush with the June sheen of meadows,
the lions dragging the rasps in their throats—
a parade as startling, brave
as the tulips. None of this
could happen.
Though the clown in the baggy pants
was too drunk to be sad,
and the juggler could never quite find
all the red balls at once,
this was not even the Circus of Failures.
It was no more than the world, no more
than the sum of its parts.
One-Ring Circus
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