Just Before That Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Down at the powers of guilt,
I drink my fill with my reindeer and the jack a lopes;
And the really retches wanders come it,
Thumbs stiff from fornications with scuppernongs,
And all of the jewelry of the dear
Dead grandmothers hung around so nonchalantly gaudy
Like Christmas trees who don’t even know who
They are:
But we all keep inside, because not so very far from here
You cannot breathe,
And we clap our hands together, and count and
Smell:
For from the windows you can see cathedrals and ballrooms,
And the grottos of the metamorphosed king:
And anyways, in make-believe spindles of forest fires that
Just keeping getting up and up:
And they go past your bedrooms or ballrooms anyways,
And how is it that I cannot keep from talking to myself,
And the families lie here just as puzzles as rulers who can no longer
Count;
And the fun of it begins with the first animal who learned how
To clean itself:
As the otter laid across the mermaid’s bosom for awhile,
Before moving on a pace; and maybe it even went to school and
Learned something, but before that: and just before that it
Learned: it just learned how to enjoy itself.