Portrait


(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
Or five books in one year,
To be the painter and the thing painted,
… where are we, bo?

Wait-get his number.
The barber shop handling is here
And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
And the flame orange scarf.

Yet there is more-he sleeps under bridges
With lonely crazy men; he sits in country
Jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children
Of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
Cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson’s
Father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.

Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
And be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
And feel the tall grass coming up in June
And the ache of the cottonwood trees
Singing with the prairie wind?


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Portrait