Players Club, Gramercy Park, NYC, 11/24/11
To Jim and Brenda
Emma Ferguson stares from out her cabinet card;
David Garrick greets us at our table
To clarify that it was he who was the first to say
Comedy’s more difficult than dying;
Edwin Booth’s our gracious host
As long as we acknowledge
His Hamlet as the greatest in the sea.
All the Janus-mask personages
Are done up here in oils
More lucent than their most glorious personas
But still they cannot leave the stage…
They have to hear the applause of the forks and knives,
The drinking-game claims of whether Shakespeare
Is only realized in Russian
As Chekhov only speaks in the English tongue.
They take this kind of parlor talk so seriously
As if that’s all that matters of the losses in the world.
I know they want to kidnap me
When I hear of Mark Twain’s pool cue
Just waiting for me to see down in the basement.
Above this Indian burial ground, the owners of the world
Spin the finest dust in endless circles,
While on the boulevard are brand-new couples
Who hold new family’s love in tin-foiled pans, and ask
So lightly and so gay
The most important questions.
I see the shadow now of how tall my tales have become,
That they could be so stirring, though nothing ever moved.
I’m chasing something
Like a dog without thinking would chase a squirrel.
