My Danse Russe Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Could I turn back time if I bought
The house on Anastasia Island, the one
Built in the middle of last century, before
Even Tolkien had discovered a voice
To decry machines, the lines of tattoos
In modern English,
An ubi sunt sweated from his hands,
And brow furrowed the way the farmer
Attends his field, or would I just be putting
Down more inattentive drifts,
Right around the time my parents were
Coming into thoughts, as Einstein invented
The bomb while gossiping around the
Coffee table, Sylvia Plathe having lunch
With dollops of cream cheese, a horse
Fly draining the scar on her cheek, not yet
Knowing she would rest under the calligraphies
Entombed, like Sara Teasdale in St. Louis,
Her Pulitzer wreathed to her feminine bones,
Like a starving worm, her blood still warm
Though now ethereal; Even then, I could not
Join them, video games the brail on the torpid
Computers of lazy Titans,
Men still wary of Martians, the wives good
Cooks, pot roast, and missionary positions,
Black & white televisions, bomb scares,
The kids running down the street with b.b. Guns
And tomahawks, Oldsmobiles, John Wayne
Immortality, toy trains around Christmas;
William Carlos Williams writes his
Danse Russe, and I am naked in my room,
“The sun a flame white disc in silken mists”
And I am lonely by H.G. Wells,
Going back into her, says the waves going,
Eyes the stains of radiation, thighs glowing,
Just after New Years, fireworks in Miami, I would
Have enough to make an offer, to step back into
The halls preserved by the island, to see my grandmother
And walk my dogs until people visit
And play games where they would count
And then jump the curb,
If they opened their eyes and called
And prayed, they could find my grave
And maybe put flowers on it.