Enter the Persian sailor, the Rumanian boxer,
And from Argentina, the tall cowboy.
Another round of drinks, another round.
From the window, looking out, you see Brooklyn
Across the harbor, and the tankers moving toward
The open sea. Another round of drinks,
Until, being drunk, you think of the haunted poet,
Demand of each stranger face, “Are you the man?”
Enter the English sailor, the Brazilian boxer,
And from Guadeloupe, the tall cowboy.
Another round of drinks, another round.
That poet who came from Cleveland, Ohio, to Brooklyn
Bridge, with his wild vision, driven toward
An American apotheosis, he needed his drinks.
It is difficult in America to be a poet:
His sensible father told him to be a man,
As quick with his fists as a gentleman boxer,
As agile in the saddle as any cowboy,
But his favorite horse was on the merry-go-round,
He cruised with his fears from Coney to Brooklyn:
If my life is a failure, then my poems shall lean toward
Glory, for the poems are my life, and the drinks
Purge all falsehood from my eyes. Poet,
Submerging, you plundered the sunken latitudes of man.
America of enigmas, bewildering homeland of the boxer
And jukebox, antelope and eagle, poet and cowboy,
The double play, the triple threat, the runaround,
The Bunyan palaver, endless bad jokes about Brooklyn,
Catalogue of confusion that brings one toward
Further confusions. See how the deer drinks
At the pool fringed in aspen! Hear how the poet
In New York speaks of his deer as if he were human!
It is a land too huge to need us. Boxer,
We are strangers though I shake your hand. Cowboy,
Come closer to me when the room turns round.
From Santo Domingo, first, my friend, to Brooklyn,
Three centuries of magnificence urge us toward
Each other, more than the counterfeit drinks,
Since first that wily Italian, crazy as a poet,
Sailed to a continent undreamed by man.
He knew, whose envy when drunk was of the boxer,
Who would have been happier born a cowboy,
That division is our fate, a going-round
From first to final rejection. So once in Brooklyn
He dreamed of the carib palm, and sailed toward
Bells blazing off Salvador. The drinks
Had betrayed him. He entered the sea, a legendary poet,
Brotherless, defeated, the loneliest man.
Farewell to him, farewell to us all: boxer
Or poet, sensible broker’s clerk or cowboy-
It’s death who waits us under sea or ground.
Suppose that fearful cloud exploded over Brooklyn,
And the taut bridge, like a snake, slithered toward
The oily water? Such visions poison the drinks,
They taste of death. And dead is that haunted poet
Whose voice, like a sea-bell, tells the life of man.
Leave a Reply