The Operas Of Their Truancies’ Jubilant Moods Poem by Robert Rorabeck

So cold,
The wind nibbling at the bones,
The winter is taking off work from the mountains
And coming down;
It doesn’t have too far to go,
And already it can smell the impatient girls all
Dressed and lit in the well-displayed town;

And I once was at the top of the mountain,
And I could see all the forest fires burning around me,
The politicians swearing,
The tomboys spitting and stealing candy;
But I was never in any real danger,
And I would only go out as the sun was coming home,
And all the cherished cars returning around and around
To the pies wafting from the warm-mouthed sills;

Nothing was perishing-
It was beautiful,
And everything was greenly mowed,
And even the juveniles were vibrating
The operas of their truancies’ jubilant moods,
And I could skip off school and go anywhere across
The canals,
And dream of girls all alone in the arcs of the
Swing sets neatly on speckled lakes,
And parks, and quickly constructed tombs
Making me an offer;
Make them smell of meatloaf and oleander,
Put cottonmouths in their wonderfully fluid means,

But now I sleep in the cot of the aqueduct,
Down with the disposed who having had everything have
Since rolled down,
Heavy nursery rhymes now out of fashion:
The working girls with broken legs who are useless,
Flirtations at baseball games no longer cottoned to,
The housewives whose children have grown off the suckling
Vacation;
And the banks are fat and sumptuous above our heads,
Gilded in glass coffins and filled with raven-haired,
Rose lipped, round breasted savants,
Refracting gluttonous through the smothered zones,
And the chainsaws sing, rippling with the brilliant teethed
Innuendos, down to our wasted grotto,
Mouths wide open,
Vilified by the clams,
Eyes the same but all dumb-
Bullsh*t: The senses washed,
The stores closed-
Everyone down here who doesn’t bother anymore,
Wears cement shoes,
Like offerings at the bottom floor of the department store
Permanently condemned
With nothing else to give.