Apparently born of a hinny and her ass
he hee-haws awesomely: of the little words and letters
like ‘A’ and ‘and’ and ‘as’, and yet – alas, alack –
never saw the major work complete; of sawhorses
strung with lanterns in a Brooklyn
Street – wherein two ‘A’s made the ‘M’ of the Latin word ‘manes’
and therein made their manes; inverted they made ‘W’ for ‘Will’ – The Bard
[he pondered, exclusively on his Bottom]; of the city that never sleeps
– of whom another dared to think a geodesic dome, a la mode,
over New York like an atmosphere solidified –
that never sleeps except for the zed-zed-zeds of the fire-escapes;
of barely scraping his room and board
to light the low gas-flame or the ‘live flame
of tradition’ wherein they brook no line
that doesn’t sing as such: ‘If seahorses
could but sing Offenbach, Father’ – alas-alack –
of a man who for forty-six years watered a single letter, yet was
left with nothing but the odour of odourless zinnias.