Ode To Stephen Crane And His Ilk Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Get on your high horse
And beat a dead dog-

I’ve always known who I am,
And never had to show you-

Here I am a furtive whipping boy,
The one-legged riffraff,
Like Dickens and Shakespeare,

Only half as sharp and waiting with my spoon,

One year older than Stephen Crane, the old boy,
When he was done god reincarnated him as a missive doe,
And set him out with the hunters for his lies,

But still he dances and has learned to leap from
Wave to wave,
A red sword in his singing chest,

So martyr me with your dissuasive etiquette,
I know the tune if not how to spell.