Been staring out at an empty Seventh Street,
but mostly watching Easter weekend Bible movies,
and suffering Bible movie passions, now with Debra Paget
in The Ten Commandments. How she yearns for Joshua
while clinging to the Golden Calf, then down comes Moses
and saves her from the idolaters all swallowed by the riven earth.
John Derek as her Joshua, so forgettable
he seems, and is. And his famous wives: Bo Derek,
Linda Evans, and Ursula Andress, still languish
in the cave of blond oblivion, banished from biblical drama
and gladiator epics. Do you wish me to return
to my view of the empty street? To vapid observations,
declining into bathetic metaphysical suppositions?
No! I cannot! Conducted now by King of Kings into
ever deeper Bible movie passions, I refuse. And who
would I not behead, for the Salome of Brigid Bazlen?
Shall I confess that my Bible movie passions only ape
those of Barabbas, overplayed by Harry Guardino,
or Rip Torn’s troubled Judas, a pathetic mook!
And Jeffery Hunter, who, because his eyes were pretty
was cast as Jesus Christ, though his Bible movie passions
all lack chaos, compared to mine. But those peepers did the job,
and he was anointed the undisputed Christ of Camelot,
and nearly became the captain of the starship Enterprise.
“COVID-19 Lockdown, Easter Weekend” was published in Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, ed.Alice Quinn (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020).
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