TWO GALLANTS - STEADY ROLLIN’

You might have seen me ‘neath the pool hall lights.
Well baby I go back each night.
If you got a throat I got a knife.
Steady rollin’, I keep goin’.

I don’t mind how quick the seasons change.
You know to me they’s every one the same.
The sweetest sunshine drips the drain.
Death’s comin’, I’m still runnin’.

Well I come from the old time baby,
too late for you to save me.
If I remain then I’m to blame.
But if you should ever need me,
I’ll go where’er you lead me.
It’s all the same, the same old game.

My lovin’ lady she’s a ball and chain.
I still can travel but my speed has changed.
I bring the money, I take the blame.
Steady rollin’, I keep goin’.

But I shot my wife today,
dropped her body in the Frisco bay.
I had no choice it was the only way.
Death’s comin’, I’m still runnin’.

Well I come from the old time baby,
too late for you to save me.
If I remain then I’m to blame.
But if you should ever need me,
I’ll go where’er you lead me.
It’s all the same, the same old game.

Out waltzin’ with the Holy Ghost,
from the Bowery to the Barbary Coast.
The land I’m from you know I love the most.
Steady rollin’, I keep goin’.

And everyday is just another town.
The more I search you know the less I’ve found.
Me, I’m a sucker, just a slave to sound.
Death’s comin’, I’m still runnin’.

Well I come from the old town baby,
where all the kids are crazy.
If I remain then I’m to blame.
But if you should ever need me,
I’ll go where’er you lead me.
It’s all the same, the same old game.

Sometimes, I really miss San Francisco.

SHADWELL STAIR

I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair.
       Along the wharves by the water-house,
       And through the cavernous slaughter-house,
I am the shadow that walks there.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
       And eyes tumultuous as the gems
       Of moons and lamps in the full Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
       Where I watch always; from the banks
       Dolorously the shipping clanks
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane
       And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
       But when the crowing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.

BATS

Bats

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives. They swim

the muddled air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound

we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can’t fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

Patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize. Revelatory

as a stranger’s underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought. Asleep,
you tear your fingers

and search the sheets all night.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

RAIN
by Claribel Alegría (translated by Margaret S. Peden)

As the falling rain
trickles among the stones
memories come bubbling out.

It’s as if the rain
had pierced my temples.

Streaming
streaming chaotically
come memories:
the reedy voice
of the servant
telling me tales
of ghosts.

They sat beside me
the ghosts
and the bed creaked
that purple-dark afternoon
when I learned you were leaving forever,
a gleaming pebble
from constant rubbing
becomes a comet.

Rain is falling
falling
and memories keep flooding by
they show me a senseless
world
a voracious
world—abyss
ambush
whirlwind
spur
but I keep loving it
because I do
because of my five senses
because of my amazement
because every morning,
because forever, I have loved it
without knowing why.

From Casting Off by Claribel Alegría. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Copyright © 2003 by Curbstone Press. Distributed by Consortium. Reprinted without permission of Curbstone Press. All rights reserved.

At the Entering of the New Year

        I (OLD STYLE)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
        On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
        ”Keep it up well, do they!”

The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
        The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
        Hailed by our sanguine sight.

        II (NEW STYLE)

We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
But our truest heed is to words that steal
From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
And seems, so far as our sense can see,
To feature bereaved Humanity,
As it sighs to the imminent year its say:—

“O stay without, O stay without,
Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
Though stars irradiate thee about
Thy entrance here is undesired.
Open the gate not, mystic one;
        Must we avow what we would close confine?
        With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
Albeit the fault may not be thine.”

December 31. During the War.

— Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), English Poet