Brother George
I wonder now if it was Bush who wrote
my early poems. He was at Yale when I was,
before women, though a type my type avoided:
drunk from Thursday through Monday
and, when the Smithies were bussed in for dances,
vomiting, sometimes collapsing in their path.
And yet, however sullenly or idly
one sat in class – perhaps especially then –
one couldn’t help but learn the crucial thing,
that truth was elsewhere. Our rooms
(even the legendary ones
reserved for Vanderbilts and Morgans)
with fireplaces full of beercans,
as cheerless as the company of men;
H. Bradford Westerfield III
each end-of-term projecting
an Omega Point where Communism would fall
(the Company recruiters descending
on those who applauded loudest); Wimsatt and Brooks
excising the poem from the world – didn’t they all
tell us that truth was a distant, possible
woman? Her sensuality reserved,
her smile of steel; one who would keep us in line
yet unconditionally agree with us?
It is no Atlas that holds up the world
but a frail mistrustful being, all mind, all wrong.
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