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Brian Burch
once
it did not take blandness
to provoke action
once joy was sufficient
once
the smile of a passing stranger
was reward enough
at one time
you would even laugh
without apparent reason
all that is gone
the costume must be chosen with care
the makeup must be correct for the role
once you tried freedom
no longer
for you
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine
floating like cotton-down,
And the harsh and terrible screaming,
And that strange vibration at the roots of us...
Desire, fierce, like a song...
And we heard
(Do you remember?)
All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue
And bugles in little home towns
And children's harmonicas bleating
America! And after...
(Do you remember?)
The drollery of the wind on our faces,
And horizons reeling,
Life flings weariness over me
Like a thick grey veil; I see
Through its mesh where suns are cold,
Nights are ancient and dawns are old.
Now at last with glamour gone
I can see the naked dawn;
Gauge the hollow depths of noon,
Coolly question star and moon.
And where fired sunsets pale
I, who wear life's grey veil,
Shall not marvel, shall not care.
No light of earth's however fair.
Robbed of the sting of its surprise,
Can delude my sober eyes.
When I was young
I used to say:
Romance will come riding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.
When I grew older
then I said:
Romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?
But now—
Alas! I only say:
Romance ever will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!
I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I lavished my admiration upon you,
You were to my mind the almost perfect man.
You devoured my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of a high-souled fealty.
And all my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were smelted up in the blinding heat
Of my devotion to you,
And molded into your image.
And then when I found what you were:
That your soul was small
And your words were false
As your blue-white porcelain teeth,
I said when they handed me my diploma,
I said to myself I will be good
And wise and brave and helpful to others;
I said I will carry the Christian creed
Into the practice of medicine!
Somehow the world and the other doctors
Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make
This high-souled resolution.
And the way of it is they starve you out.
And no one comes to you but the poor.
And you find too late that being a doctor
Is just a way of making a living.
And when you are poor and have to carry
The Christian creed and wife and children
All on your back, it is too much!
That’s why I made the Elixir of Youth,