SAVING CHRIST FROM CHRISTIANITY--Second Set

1

The Gospels give at least three sensible reasons

To follow Jesus:

The sermons

The miracle cures

The all-you-can-eat fish fries.

They give a fourth one--

Resurrection--

But that never made sense to me

Since I caught what they called 

His “second coming”

Back by popular demand 

At least a dozen times.

No need for him 

To come out of

Retirement

Once he stopped

Touring.

By then

There had to be

A second Beatle.

2

Look, the man said some gifted things,

Some of them as hard as diamond

And impossible to chew on.

Sink your teeth into

“Resisteth not evil.”

Try keeping your dentures intact with

“If thine eye offend thee

Pluck it out.”

3

If Jesus catches cold

His followers will tell you

He’s only being human

For a moment.

4

One good turn deserves another, right?

So if God could become Man

At his theoretical best

Couldn’t those who believe in Him

Return the favor

And start acting the same

Of at least comparably?

After all, if God is anything

He's a role model.

5

Moses left his people alone

For 40 days

To learn how

To take dictation.

When he returned

They had already forgotten 

The simple things 

He had taught them.

What's funny is that he thought 

The time was long overdue

For some serious teaching.

6

By the time Jesus came along

The priests knew better

Than to leave him alone

For even a few hours

To attain final knowledge.

Forget Sinai.

Using the sawed-off mountain top 

of the molehill called Calgary

Was risking too much.

Not without restraint

And heavy surveillance.

Nearly 2000 year later

the Son of God

Still Hangs 

As dead as a doornail

In his followers’ homes

Under strict house arrest.

7

It’s a mystery

Why anyone would leave a man

Nuts enough

Or with guts enough 

To call himself a messiah

Nailed to a cross

And left to die.

Asked why they didn’t intervene

To save their teacher

Several followers answered,

"If he’s who he says he is

He’ll come back down to earth

In a matter of minutes 

And have his father

Smite the shitheads 

Who did this to him."

When that didn’t happen,

Some swore they heard him

Promise a rain date

For any reckoning required

To teach those faithless bastards a lesson.

8

Call it blasphemy

To laugh at elevating a lynching

To holy murder

For a worthy cause

And a worthier effect.

Call it ignorance

To think a blood-stained corpse

A gift from God.

Call it stupidity

To think the victim

Of such shabby treatment

Would want a second chance

To make the same mistake.

Call it wisdom
To suppose the real Jesus 
Would quote Melville's Bartleby

And tell both God and Man

"I prefer not to."

--David Federman, July 15, 2019

SAVING JESUS FROM CHRISTIANITY

1

Look at him now a recovering evangelical

older and wiser

since he took his savior

down from the cross so both could get back on their feet again

2

That Jesus fellow

would make a better carpenter

than a rabbi

if only they would let him off

his cross

so he can use it

for lumber

3

If Jesus found his Christ

inside him

so can you.

So stop looking outside

at a lynched man

dying on the top of a hill.

Go save him

now

rather than asking him

to save you

later.

4

Jesus may have died for your sins

but he lived for

an entirely different purpose.

When you find out what it was

you will feel like

you can live forever.

5

Prove you're not a robot.

Stop being a follower.

Stop taking religious orders.

The only messiah you'll ever find

is standing in your

Nike shoes or Gucci loafers,

6

A Christian friend

claims the impossible:

to be pro-God

and pro-gun

at the same time.

You know how Jesus felt

about carrying knives.

Don't let him catch you

with a semi-automatic

or even a pistol.

If you must hunt

use a cross bow.

--David Federman, June 29, 2019

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GOD, INTERRUPTED, OR INGESTED

“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates-alcohol and "goof pills" in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.” 

--Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954, p. 20 

When John Lennon sings, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” I think he refers to the pain of duality and the constant sense of being a particulate separate “self” in a world of other particulate “selves.” Alan Watts called this feeling of identity as a sense of entrapment in a “skin-encapsulated ego.” My whole life has been a series of attempted ego-prison breaks and a quest for permanent reunion with the indivisible consciousness known as “God,” or, more accurately, “god-head.” I know it is a reality because I experienced being in God’s head on LSD. And my sense of the world on psychotropics matched the natural state of being Sufis and Zen Masters describe when they sing and sermonize about “ultimate reality.” 

A Frank O’Hara fragment comes to mind in which he describes a state in which “there was very little difference / in what was good / and what would happen.” Now that’s a pause in the pandemonium that truly refreshes.

I have long believed in “better living through chemistry.” Like one of the many wounded in a senseless war, I am rescued by a medic(ine), then taken by helicopter and dusted off somewhere between the heavens and a safe landing back on earth. “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” Yes, when your own body is the fountain of that blood. “Hey, Jesus, you paid for lunch. This feast’s on me.”

THE GREAT DIVIDE: POETRY VS. PROSE

I remember one snowy night in Pittsburgh, late January 1966, on acid and the world being divided into a sparse poetry of necessary things and a pent-up prose of unnecessary ones. We asked the circumambient (meta)physical world for some objective correlatives. Suddenly we heard the chinka-chinka of tire chains on the street outside. “What’s he doing driving around on a night like this?” I asked. “He thinks he will die if he doesn’t get laid,” my tripmate answered. “Doesn’t he know that even the whore houses must close this holy night?” We both agreed that attending to any daily, obsessive need constituted prose on a night when the world was supposed to be dedicated solely to poetry. 

“But what is poetry?” I asked. 

The clanging bell of a trolley car took me and my tripmate to a window to see it glide through the street-light lit tundra of Forbes Avenue with no occupants but the driver. “Anybody who boards this trolley tonight will have the uncommon and divine duty of saving the world,” I proclaimed with an indoor certainty born of and borne by his witnessing. We both looked outdoors and vowed to write poems as urgent and solitary as any rider called to board a trolley in a snowstorm. The world seemed to be waiting and willing to read the poetry of actions, deeds or words that would be asked of him on this squall-stricken, blizzard-blanketed night. 

That night 53 years ago remains vivid, begging for sustainability I have yet to find. 

I refuse to forget that night or give up hope of its permanent recurrence. Like Wordsworth, I live in a remembrance that will not renew its origins or release me from the exile of nostalgia for them. 

That night 53 years ago remains vivid, begging for sustainability I have yet to find. 

I refuse to forget that night or give up hope of its permanent recurrence. Like Wordsworth, I live in a remembrance that will not renew its origins or release me from the exile of nostalgia.

THINKING OF POET JACK GILBERT

I was thinking of poet Jack Gilbert (1925-2012) the other day, and his death, aged 87, from Alzheimer's: a curse for a writer as gifted as he was. My friend and fellow poet Daniel Abdul Hayy Moore, who died swiftly of second-bout cancer in April 2016, told me that the disease left him a "complete scarecrow"—hounded, haunted by a total lack of memory and absence of any knowledge. It reminded me of the Alzheimer's that devoured a photographer friend. His wife told me, "He used to watch TV. Now he just stares at it,"

Jack won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1962 and the next year was asked to read at the University of Pittsburgh, an event he enjoyed because Pittsburgh was his hometown. A small group of the university's young poets, including me, spent an evening with him. During a night of conversation, he temporarily detoured discussion to admit that he was worried because he had received a big advance for a novel he found himself unable to write. He plied us for remedies, but we had none. I think he even asked us to help him twist some plots. But again we couldn’t be of help. We resumed talking about poetry.

That memory of his writer's block returns every time I think of his death from the worst block--if not blankness--imaginable. Indeed, I wrote a memorial poem to him over the past few days, "Next To Never," and tried to fit him into a composite sketch of all the people I have known to suffer from this existential holocaust of memory. I'm affixing it after I print out the kind of Pittsburgh poem that a man destined for such dreadful permanent amnesia might write.

I remember Jack as a very direct, laconic, almost self-effacing man who seemed happier to talk about the poets for whom we shared mutual admiration than himself. Like Creeley, he told us there was nothing more to say about his poems than what they said. It was as if he was trying to tell us: Once a poem is written, the reader knows as much about it--or is entitled to--as the writer.

Trying To Have Something Left Over by Jack Gilbert (1925-2012)

There was a great tenderness to the sadness
when I would go there. She knew how much
I loved my wife and that we had no future.
We were like casualties helping each other
as we waited for the end. Now I wonder
if we understood how happy those Danish
afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk.
Often I took care of the baby while she did
housework. Changing him and making him laugh.
I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before
throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with
my mouth against the tiny ear and throw
him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up.
The only way to leave even the smallest trace.
So that all his life her son would feel gladness
unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined
city of steel in America. Each time almost
remembering something maybe important that got lost.

NEXT TO NEVER
For poet Jack Gilbert who died of Alzheimer’s

1
I remember
Enough about Time
To watch the sun rise and set
And wait
During interminable
Sleepless nights
For it to rise again.
I also know
I won’t keep such watch
Much longer.
There is an approaching point
Of no return
To any purpose
For waiting.
Then all life will be clutched
In one fell swoop
Of anonymity.


2
Imagine gazing
Driven by a reason.
Imagine a steady stare
At snowy peaks
That remind of
“Friends living and dead.”
Imagine tracking
Long distances
Where birds seem to dis-
Appear
But never cease
To be
Near.
Imagine gratitude for
Thoughts of people
You still know by name.
Imagine the habitual comfort
Of being someone to talk to.
Call me Jack
And I’ll call you Dave.
Oh! this ecstasy
Of exchange.


3
Sometimes America still stands for red wheelbarrows
And drinks at the Pink Parrot.
Then I can afford to squander
My remaining inheritance
On the shrinking multitude of things
I remember
Loving
With an intimate intensity
That re-
Minds of love.


4
No man should ever face
The false Nothingness
That stems
From incapacity
To know or acknowledge
People, places and things by name.
To know names
By recurrence and heart
Is to find Heaven on earth.
‘Hell' is to lose the stamina
For premeditated perceptions.
You feel damned to a nostalgia
For the time
When you could take things for granted.
Now you face a blankness so pervasive
That even sordid thoughts
Of broken commandments
Would be welcome
To restore you to a life
That is distinctly your own
And worth living.


5
The memory of Time
Begins to weaken
In a vagueness
That no longer divulges
Significant differences between
Day and Night.
Gradually, I will be left
No choice
But to dwell in Limbo
Like prolonged solitary confinement.
No pardon or parole
When days no longer count
Nor can be
Counted.


6
By the time
All names are gone
Mine will be among the missing, too.
I wonder if I will recall them
In my dreams
Which come from a deeper
Still un-
Stricken
Place.


7
Two names are still vouchsafed
At all times:
Mom and Dad.
Not their real names, of course,
But the dearest names
For the twins
Of lifelong deepest need
For respites from howling doubt
About a life of meaning


8
I fear having to relinquish
Any hope of feeling
At home
With this person
Staring back from the mirror.
Although the two of us look alike

All we have

In common

Is a stare

Of helplessness.

9
What is this drift
Of moments all about
Beyond a seethe of silence?
It sounds like surf.
A surf
That seems the surface
Of things?


10
Things go bump
In the light as well as night
Trying to jar
A sense of themselves
From growing more faint and foreign.
I want to weep
Each time I fail
To attract words for things
That summon attention.
It is then that seen and seer
Are both nameless
Objects.


11
I hear the word “shortage” from the radio
While out for a drive by the ocean.
I see a motel sign
That reads “Vacancy.”
I can’t help but wonder if the words
Have double meaning
Related to the life
I know more and more of
Yet less and less
About.


12
I am a superhero
Of tenuousness.
My sworn enemy
Is forsworn
To make me become invisible--
But only to myself.
To everyone else
I am a laughing stock
Of incompetent visibility.


13
I am identity-impaired.
Soon there will be
No ‘Me’
To love or hate.
I live with a trapped bumblebee’s
Fury to escape enclosure
For which there is
No escape.


14
Count as blessing each thing
With which you remain
On familiar terms—
Even if it turns
Hot stove and burns you
Back to remembrance.
Just to curse it by name
Seems a miracle cure
For erasure.


15
In recent antiquity
Things mattered
Beyond the moment
At hand.
Now forget-
Fullness
Seems out of hand.
When did so much
Slip beyond
Grasp?
When did things cease
To matter
And succumb
To ceaseless
Intangibility?


16
"And what do you want
From Santa Claus little boy?"
I prepare a list:
1) An impingement
Greater than pangs
Of fear or hunger.
2) A weighty worry
About politics or war.
3) An intricate memory
That holds a key to understanding
A life larger than the one I am living.
Santa shrugs, hands me back to my mother.
"For those you must sit
On the lap of God, son.
Only he is equipped
To feed such hungers."


17
Are you now 
Or have you ever been
A practicing poet?
Yes I tell the communion.
Are you ready to name names
Of fellow poets 
From your days as such?
Creeley, Spicer, Welch
Are last and lasting names
My heart strings
Together with what mind
I have left.
Then I add,
Olson, Whalen, O'Hara
to stretch this rare moment's
Clemency
Of coherence.

—David Federman, Ardmore, PA, June 11-14, 2019

DONALD TRUMP REFUSED ACCOMMODATIONS IN BOTH HEAVEN AND HELL

• Apparently, according to New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz, Jesus Christ refused a Facebook friend-request from Donald Trump during the 2016 primary season. More recent rumor has it that the real estate developer has asked evangelical superstars and close friends, Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, to intercede on his behalf to have his tweets to the Savior unblocked. However, in an explanatory press release from his latest chief booking agent, Pope Francis, the Savior is quoted as saying, “'I saved the president from stoning so many times and forgave him for cheating of so many sorts that I have run out of cheeks to turn. And I have it on good authority that he is as unwanted Down Below as Up Above. Lucifer, the Damnation-counterpart of Salvation, told me on his hot line he turned down Mr. Trump's application for a beach-front golf course by the Lake of Fire in his infamous equatorial hot spot. In fact, the Infernal One begged me to save him from having to personally refuse The Donald’s next request for retirement and residency at his permanent resort because the applicant has no soul to give as the required down payment and entrance fee',” adding, "And now Beelzebub is receiving pestering emails from Graham and Robertson complaining their dear friend is in grave danger of finding no place to stay once he departs this earth. 'Can't you find one more cheek to turn?' Satan tweeted early this morning.'"

  Trump’s Bid to Become Born-Again Fails as Jesus Turns Down Friend Request

  By Andy Borowitz
  June 27, 2016
  NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Donald J. Trump’s bid to become a born-again Christian failed over the weekend after Jesus Christ turned down his friend request, campaign officials have acknowledged.
  
  
  Jesus, who has not generally been active on Facebook, made a rare appearance on the social network on Monday to announce His decision to ignore the presumptive Republican nominee’s request for a personal relationship with Him.
  
  
  In a brief post, Jesus offered the following explanation: “Just everything.”
  
  
  The turndown from Jesus Christ, the inspiration behind one of the world’s most prominent religions, caps what has been a tough month for the Trump campaign.
  
  
  Privately, campaign staffers fretted that the candidate would pen a disparaging tweet about Jesus, which might alienate evangelical voters in key battleground states.
  
  
  But, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump made no reference to Jesus, and instead touted endorsements he had received from Gary Busey, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Joe (the Plumber) Wurzelbacher.
  • Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The 

DAVE READS THE SUNDAY MORNING MOEBUS STRIPS

1
From here
You can get to eternity
But only if you stay
Here
Within
Hearing distance
Of the moment’s
Voice


2
Every
Where
You go
Is a kind of
Afterlife
For the latest life
You have outlived
And shed
Like a skin


3
Wisdom is knowing
When it’s time
To leave
Well enough
Alone


4
You weigh practically
Nothing on the moon
Which is the weight loss
Space can bring
To outer life
But somehow
That paunch
Remains
A reminder of
An inner life
That is still
far from weightless


5
Try true life on earth
Where
Weight loss
Can be
A permanent
Gain


6
When clouds cover the glaring moon
They derail trains of thought
That were probably headed for
Auschwitz.
When clouds cover the sun
They bring a darkness
Where no one can find you
But yourself.


7
The dew-drenched grass
Gives new grounds
For Being.


8
His father
Was a communist
Who named names
Then changed his own
As a form of
Witness protection


9
To cite scripture
To mock or disprove
The evidence
Of your own senses
Is a form of
Witness tampering.


10
On your best days
You feel like
You will live forever
In splendor
And on your worst days
You feel like
You will live forever
In shame



11
Stop thinking about God
As something
That can be proven
True or false
Rather than proof of a
Persistent need
For more than
What is already there
And always within
Reach


12
The world
Is what God sees
With practiced steady gaze
No different from
Yours or mine
Once we learn
To look
With our own eyes


13
No need
For a second opinion
As long as first things
Keep coming first
To give
A fresh start


14
Bird songs
Are music lessons
Passed from
Parent to child
Until the young learn
To sing
On their own


--David Federman, Ardmore, PA, June 2, 2019

MISSOURI ON MY MIND

Missouri = Misery.

Have we come to the point where there will have to be "underground railroads" from Missouri and other states with draconian anti-abortion laws to states where abortion is still legal? A psychiatrist friend of ours says there will soon be drugs readily available through the Internet to women for safe stay-at-home abortions? His implication: no laws will be able to stop abortion; so stop worrying. "Excuse me, folks, but Amazon delivered my miscarriage kit and I'm getting up early tomorrow to induce one." 

The widespread availability of safe abortion-inducing drugs is no consolation because it allows doctors to skirt the legal, moral and social issues connected with abortion. If 1,000 prosecutors could send a letter to the Attorney General saying Donald Trump is guilty of impeachable crimes, certainly as many doctors can send a letter to the AG says abortion is a basic right. My doctor friend is, as far as I am concerned, defending illicit means to achieve what should be permissible ends. Drugs allow doctors to avert, rather than face and solve, a millennial predicament. 

Don't get me wrong. Drugs are an answer, but only after abortion is not only decriminalized--but de-stigmatized. Fetal heart beats, stowaway souls at conception--all of this is junk science; natal creationism, if you will. I've been studying scripture, trying to find where God, through one of his many messengers, forbade abortion--and I'm coming up as empty-handed as scripture-combers are empty-headed. 

I'm writing because I fear the steady, nearly unstoppable march of religious fascism. The Evangelicals don't just march to deafening drum beats; they march to imaginary heartbeats. Clarence Thomas even frames abortion as part of a monstrous eugenics crusade to kill undesirables like, you guessed it, black people in the embryo-stage. Crazy science borrowed from the heyday of genocidal eugenics back in the 1930s. 

ARE ABORTION BANS A FORM OF EMINENT DOMAIN? As it see them, anti-abortion laws are an attempt to claim eminent domain over women's wombs. States can forbid a woman from ownership of her uterus once it is "occupied" with an embryo--even if its presence is involuntary or unwanted. Note that recent laws forbid abortion even in cases of rape or incest. How ironic that a rapist can ben sent to jail but his victim is sentenced to an even worse punishment: full-term pregnancy. Indeed, a Michigan rapist was recently granted joint custody of his child. If pregnancy is a circumstance for there are no exceptions to permit abortion, this makes pregnancy a form of servitude. It is as unjust as any other form of enslavement. 

Okay, maybe I'm a libertine or a hedonist. But I think choice is a sacred right--at least, within a certain period of time when a woman can know and act on her own informed behalf and non-coerced will about her condition. That means at least a trimester--and, if left up to me, a helluva lot more time. Moreover, I think an abortion should be as easily chosen and scheduled as a colonoscopy. 

PREGNANCY AS PUNISHMENT FOR PLEASURE. Now you might argue that pregnancy is often an outcome of careless activity. Hence, there must be responsibility for this reckless behavior. The consequence of this activity--no matter if non-consensual or accidental--must be made inescapable. I would think any sane person would disagree with--indeed, repudiate--this punitive moralism. Sex is very often unplanned--a kind of spontaneous combustion of two libidos. Should a woman have to pay for an outcome of pregnancy? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Just as we have cooling-off, and change-of-mind, laws for major purchases, women should have laws that give there the right to second--and often first (when unexpected)--thoughts about pregnancy. It's that simple--and practical.

Perhaps, if we had better sex education and easier, affordable access to contraception, this whole issue would be moot. But behind the growing anti-abortion crusade is a looming crusade against contraception. What or who is to stop pro-life fanatics from introducing laws to ban contraception and criminalize vasectomies? Already health plans offered by companies whose owners are "religious" can deny employees contraception coverage with their health plans based on "belief." "My religion says all life is sacred and, therefore, you can't terminate a pregnancy." 

But, wait, things are getting worse as the pro-lifers arm themselves with a new specious legalism. Recently, a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that religious pharmacists or religion-owned pharmacy chains have a First Amendment right of "religious free speech" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to deny customer requests for contraceptives. As bad, businesses and corporations are allowed to offer health care that restricts distribution of contraceptions. It is amazing how the Extreme Right has turned the First Amendment inside out and upside down. Just remember this: the fetal remains portion of an Indiana law was upheld by a 7-2 SCOTUS majority. Liberals joined conservatives to vote for this requirement to give full burial rights to fetuses. The same number upheld the right of "religious" people to deny their services to gays and others who practice prohibited acts and live ungodly life styles. "If I knew you were coming, I still wouldn't have baked you a cake."

BACK TO BASICS. As I see it, abortion should be a routine medical procedure, like an appendectomy, and, as such, be performed as widely and safely as any other medical procedure--and not just in isolated clinics but hospitals: public and private. For me, the whole debate over abortion has forgotten or ignored that sex is as much, if not more, for recreation than reproduction. Just ask any sex doll or porn-atronic Internet partner. Pregnancy is often an unplanned consequence of a vital, necessary and, at its best, profound pleasure. And it strikes me as an undue burden on any woman to force her to see pregnancy as a great moral dilemma. 

I could go on, but I wonder what you think. This is an issue worth discussing among ourselves. The hour is late. Sales of erectile dysfunction meds are at stake. 

The real heart of the matter isn't the faint heart-beat of the unborn but the ever-more-faint heart-beat of Disestablishmentarianism--the crucial separation of church and state and freedom FROM religion. The battle over abortion rights is just one in an ongoing war against the First Amendment. Fundamentalist religion is destroying America! 

GARCIA LORCA'S CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

Granada in 1936 was as dangerous as Gangland Chicago a decade earlier. So divided was the city by the Spanish civil war, it hadn't had a mayor in months. Bravely, Manuel Fernandez-Montesinos, the brother-in-law of renowned poet Federico Garcia Lorca, volunteered for the job. A week later, on August 18th, he was assassinated and Lorca was arrested the same day by Franco's goons, along with three other men, all of whom were killed by a firing squad within 24 hours. Although Lorca had Loyalist sympathies and was a known socialist, Franco had him executed for the capital crime (to fervent Catholics like the Generalissimo, that is) of "bestiality," meaning his homosexuality. The martyrdom still haunts Spain and every place where poetry is honored. (By the way, his grave has never been found.)

Recently, I have begun what I call "The Lorca Project," whose purpose is to find all music written as a memorial for the poet after his death. So far, I have found only a three-movement chamber-orchestra homage by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and a violin-and-piano sonata by French composer Frances Poulenc. I'm sure there is more. Desperately sure, I admit, because I cannot imagine a world bereft of numerous outcries over Lorca's murder. Some day soon, I hope to share my findings with you.

Meanwhile, with summer nearly upon us, and seashore vacations in the cards for those of us with credit cards, I give you a poem written while Lorca was in New York City, studying at Columbia University, in 1929-30. If you think Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a summit of surrealist protest poetry, Lorca's "Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude" is a base camp for this peak. Certainly, it will prep you for future climbs with its hallucinatory anger. Sometimes, I think surrealism this savage is as much shelter as catharsis. As Robert Creeley memorably wrote, "To look at it is more than it was." Surrealism was a way of both bearing and baring witness in a reckless throes of molten free association and the ecstatic custody of wild imagery. Lorca was there when the bottom fell out of American life, and New York City (in his case, Spanish Harlem) was one of the most bottomless pits of the time. As you read this, see if you don't hear adumbrations of Kenneth Patchen in the 1940s and the Bob Dylan of the mid-1960s when he was rock and roll's Lorca.

My own Coney Island memory: My dad used to dock his small, beloved Chris Craft (I think that was the brand) at Coney Island and I'd accompany him on fishing trips. I still remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper" with him on a portable radio in the summer of 1967 while the boat was at anchor and we were eating lunch. "What do you hear in this music that makes you love it so much?" he asked in slightly testy bewilderment. I was at a complete loss for words. I thought the Beatles would be something we could have in common. After all, Aaron Copland had proclaimed admiration for it. So had Leonard Bernstein. But he refused to share their enthusiasm. For the good of all concerned, we changed stations. By then, there was as much to divide as unite us. But those dwindling points of agreement are another story. I still remember both of us awed by the sight of Coney Island's Wonder Wheel (built around 1920)--both off shore and on land. It was like a monument to merriment and summer--despite already having read and loved Lorca's "Poet in New York". Returning to the poem after 50 years or so, the opening line made me laugh. I remembered the cliche, "It ain't over until the Fat Lady sings." In this case, it must be modified to: "It ain't begun until the Fat Lady is sung about." Lorca, I plan to spend a lot of this travel-less summer with you. You set the itinerary. You'll be a great sherpa for any trips to the heights (or depths). You know these terrains so well.

Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (from "Poet in New York")

(Dusk at Coney Island)

The fat lady came first,

tearing out roots and moistening drumsticks.

The fat lady

who turns dying octopuses inside out.

The fat lady, the moon's antagonist

was running through the streets and deserted buildings

and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners

and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts

and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills

and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.

The graveyards, yes, the graveyards

and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,

the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,

pushing into our throat.

There were murmurings from the jungle of vomit

with the empty women, with hot wax children,

with fermented trees and tireless waiters

who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.

There's no other way, my son, vomit! There's no other way.

It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,

nor the vomit of a cat choking down a frog,

but the dead who scratch with clay hands

on flint gates where clouds and deserts decay.

The fat lady came first

with the crowds from the ships, taverns and parks.

Vomit was delicately shaking its drums

among a few little girls of blood

who were begging the moon for protection.

Who could imagine my sadness?

The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me.

The naked look on my face, trembling in alcohol

and launching incredible ships

through the anemones of the piers.

I protect myself with this look

that flows from the waves where no dawn would go,

I, poet without arms, lost

in the vomiting multitude,

with no effusive horse to shear

the thick moss from my temples.

But the fat lady went first

and the crowds kept looking for the pharmacies

where the bitter tropics could be found.

Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived

did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.

Federico Garcia Lorca, 1930

-Translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White