I never went to Rutherford only
himself ever made me stand
in vision over the Falls
of the Passaic

can you imagine
what it would have been like
all of us around the Old Man
honoring him and being
honored by his genuine slippery
attentions? Paul
wanted me to go out with him
“many a time” but I’m probably
making up the many,

once upon a time
to Jersey
beyond the copper
domes of Jersey City

Hamilton’s Weehawken
valhalla, the fallen
meadows sprawled around Newark,
that insidious churchman
Archbishop Marchenna who
ran the diocese for the Primate
Gerald Shelley himself
the descendant of the same Mont
Blanc I sheltered under
word by word entrancing
enlacing
                     until the hour fell
and it was now,

and farewell Jersey.
Farewell Union City of burlesque and
Lenten Passion Play
“the Oberammergau of America”
Christ dying in purple light
while Meyerbeer’s march from Le Prophète
convulsed the auditorium,

one wept, one does weep
at such things, that simple death
meant to revive us

we live forever
it seems
in some fashion

Ceravolo, Brainerd,
Spicer, Olson,
Blackburn,
how are they different
having closed their books

except for us to open.
A cartoon of a man on his deathbed
worrying about a comma.
Tomb of the Unknown Poet
crushed under the bridge at Mostar,

what do we know of anything,
even the best of us just fantasy-mongers,
the silly narrative of Dante waking the dead.

OK. I have said some names
I honor. Steve Jonas
never had a chance. Listen to him
if you get a chance. He knew
how to make Pound’s text listen
to us. In those days they called that Jazz.

31 May 1994

https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/rk_manuscripts/1221/