On First Looking Into Pretty Boy’s Basho
Now ’e don’t get into
the wife’s cups anymore,
’e’s in ’is own, like that poet,
Basho — wasn’t he always
getting drunk and falling into
the river, or was that
the Chinese guy? Who
knows, who remembers,
cares? The new technologies
make it so simple to place
oneself next to a name
that does one honor: gilt
by association. Stories
open into the past,
and the teller gets
the credit, not the dead
heroes, if heroic
they were. (Though what’s
heroic about falling
drunk into a river?)
I drove a young poet
to the airport once; he
said, Chekhov, out of the blue.
Just Chekhov, and it lay
there like a dime on a table.
When you’re in a good
mood, moves like this you
see through, and I felt good:
it was power, a play, a
way of distancing himself
from one with whom
he’d shared a few too
many the night before.
I looked at that big head
trying to lower itself
into its jacket. And said,
unable to keep from giggling,
“I wonder what you say
to a woman the next
day? Mansfield. Lollobrigida.
Or if she too has an MFA.:
Doolittle …”
-- James Cummins
