Who Am I Poem by Robert Rorabeck

S- begat the stars,
Began the clothes lines and haberdasheries of all science,
Begat this too:
This little wound, this thing touching down on the
Lemony promenade without any other
Traffic around,
Begat the bouquets in the thirsty windows,
Begat Arthur Rimbaud;
And Erin sat in the storefront and smiled:
Brown, brown eyes the epiphany of the earlier modern
Science,
Of men in light beards,
Of light bulbs.
She thought of me, and drank domestic liquor for
An awful long while,
Which was according to the Catholic Church and its great long
Antennae;
But I sat alone on my greatly unpublished perch where
I pretended that I was a pirate
With candles of virgins licking his beard:
I pretended I finally made love to someone or something
That was real,
And the wheels spun without moving, which was the
Sensation of all of this carnival,
But I only knew so many words, and I misspelled;
And I thought of girls in Colorado,
And beautifully made up skin,
And selling Christmas trees and drinking British gin,
And if I was a pirate,
Or a rumor I once heard, like a grand old ship floating up
In the trees,
As if the river was thirsty,
And I was petting my better hand through E-’s suppliant hair;
But, open eyed, she was making love to better,
Better men:
She never called,
She never wrote: she never footed the bill,
So who am I to care,
Care,
Care.