Our Literary Heritage Poem by Louis Edward Sissman

I. Riverside Drive, 1929

" ‘Good-by, Ralph. It should end some other way.
Not this,' Corinna said. ‘Now go away.'
No. Rhymes. It's ludicrous. Try ‘Dear, good-by.'
No. Repetitious. Maybe ‘Dear, farewell.'
No. Stagy. Out of character. Oh, hell.
Time for a drink." The Smith-Corona heaves
As he retracts his knickerbockered knees
To rise. Outside, a southbound tug receives
The sun broadside, and the bold Linit sign
Pales on the Jersey shore. Fresh gin, tk-tk-
Tk-tk-tk-tk, quite clearly fills his glass
Half full from the unlabelled bottle. Now
His boyish fingers grip the siphon's worn
Wire basketweave and press the trigger down
To utter soda water. One long sip
Subtracts a third of it for carrying.
On the way back, he pauses at the door
Beside his football picture, where a snore
Attests that all is well and promises
Him time to work. To work: before the tall,
Black, idle typewriter, before the small
Black type elitely inching on the blank
White sea of bond, he quails and takes a drink.
First, demolitions: the slant shilling mark
Defaces half a hundred characters
With killing strike-overs. Now, a new start:
" ‘Good-by, Ralph. I don't know why it should end
Like tihs,' Corinna said. ‘But be my friend.' ''


II. Hotel Shawmut, Boston, 1946

(From a commercial travellers' hotel,
Professor S. jumped straight down into hell,
While—jug-o'-rum-rum—engines made their way
Beneath him, one so cold December day).

While he prepares his body, cold gears mate
And chuckle in the long draught of the street.
He shaves; his silver spectacles peruse
An issue of The North American Muse.
He uses Mum; outside him in the hall,
Maids talk their language; snow begins to fall.
He puts on his old clothes. The narrow room
Has nothing, nothing to discuss with him
Except what time you should send out your suit
And shoes for cleaning. Now he stamps his foot:
Outside the window, not saying anything,
Appears a seagull, standing on one wing;
A long-awaited colleague. With glad cry,
Professor S. embraces the white sky.

While S. demolishes a taxicab,
His spectacles review the life of Crabbe.

(From a commercial travellers' hotel,
Profesor S. descended into hell.
But once in April in New Haven he
Kissed a friend's sister in the gloom of trees.)


III. Deus Ex Machina, Flushing, 1966

La Guardia. Knee-deep in storyboards,
I line up for the shuttle, which arrives
Outside the gate and off-loads shuffling streams
Of transferees—each in his uniform
Of sober stuff and nonsense, with a case
Of talents at his side—who pass our line
Of somber-suited shuttlers carrying
Our cases on. Then one appears, a rare
Bird in migration to New York, a bare-
Crowned singer of the stony coast of Maine,
And of Third Avenue in rain; a bard.
The way of the almost-extinct is hard.
He peers through tortoise-shelly glasses at
The crowd, the place, the year. He is not here
And is. In his check jacket, he describes
An arc of back and arms as he proceeds
Between two city starlings, carrying
His store of songs in a beat leather grip
And a dried drop of his brown lamb's blood on
His wilted collar. A Time-reader in
Glenurquhart plaid identifies his bird—
"Godwit, the poet"—to a flannel friend.
The bard stalks on on his two legs, aware
He has been spotted; in, I'd say, some pain
At an existence which anticipates
Its end and in the meantime tolerates
Intolerance of the wing, the whim, the one
Unanswerable voice which sings alone.


IV. Lament of the Makers, Including Me: 1967

New-minted coin, my poet's mask
(A small denomination in
Demotic nickel, brass, or tin)
Passes from hand to hand to hand
Beyond my six acres of land.
Did I desire such currency
Among the meritocracy
Of tri-named ladies who preserve
The flame of art in mackled hands,
Of universitarians
And decimal librarians
Who shore and store up textual
Addenda, of asexual
Old arbiters and referees
Who startle letters with a sneeze,
Of critics whose incautious cough
Halts a new wave or sends it off
To break on uninhabited shores,
Of publishers, insensual bores
Procuring art—"A maidenhead!"—
To Jack the Reader, of well-read
Young underfaced admirers who
Impinge on undefended you
At readings in all colleges?
No, I did not; but knowledge is
All-powerless to seek redress
From injuries to innocence.
I think continually of
Abjurers, who, fed on self-love,
Housed in an incommodious cave,
Clothed in three-button sackcloth, crave
Indulgence of no audience
But their own laudatory ears.
Alack, this anchoritic few
Dwindles; these ticking times are too
Struck with celebrity's arrears,
And heap past-due advances on
The embryonic artisan;
All hours from dawn to night are lauds,
All auditors are all applause
(However electronic), all
Tempters conspire in Adam's fall.

The world turned upside-down, without
A beast in view, without a doubt,
Recalls its exiles and bestows
On them the palm, the bays, the rose
(Art sick?), the Laurel Wormser Prize,
Whose debased dollar only buys
More nods, more goods, more fame, more praise:
Not art, as in the rude old days.

Now worldward poets turn and say,
Timor vitae conturbat me.