Contemporary American Poetry --- At the Rotary Club

After they go to the podium and turn in their Happy Bucks
     and recite the Pledge of Allegiance
and the Four Truths ("Is it the Truth?
          Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill
and better friendships? Will it be beneficial
     to all concerned?"), I get up to read my poetry,

and when I'm finished, one Rotarian expresses
     understandable confusion at exactly what it is
I'm doing and wants to know what poetry is, exactly,
          so I tell him that when most non-poets think
of the word "poetry," they think of "lyric poetry,"
     not "narrative poetry," whereas what I'm doing

is "narrative poetry" of the kind performed
     by, not that I am in any way comparing myself
to them, Homer, Dante, and Milton,
          and he's liking this, he's smiling and nodding,
and when I finish my little speech,
     he shouts, "Thank you, Doctor! Thank you

for educating us!" And for the purposes
     of this poem, he will be known hereafter
as the Nice Rotarian. But now while I was reading,
          there was this other Rotarian who kept talking
all the time, just jacked his jaw right through
     the poet's presentations of some of the finest

vers libre available to today's listening audience,
     and he shall be known hereafter as the Loud Rotarian.
Nice Rotarian, Loud Rotarian: it's kind of like Good Cop,
          Bad Cop or Buy Low, Sell High. Win Some,
Lose Some. Comme Ci, Comme Ça. Half Empty,
     Half Full. Merchant Copy, Customer Copy.

But in a sense the Loud Rotarian was the honest one;
     he didn't like my poetry and said so --- not in so many words,
but in the words he used to his tablemates
          as he spoke of his golf game or theirs
or the weather or the market or, most likely,
     some good deed that he was the spearchucker on,

the poobah, the mucky-muck, the head honcho,
     for one thing I learned very quickly
was that Rotarians are absolutely nuts
          doctors to Africa
and take handicapped kids on fishing trips
     and just generally either do all sorts of hands-on

projects themselves or else raise a ton of money
     so they can get somebody else to do it for them,
whereas virtually every poet I know, myself included,
          spends his time either trying to get a line right
or else feeling sorry for himself and maybe writing a check
     once a year to the United Way if the United Way's lucky.

The Nice Rotarian was probably just agreeing with me,
     just swapping the geese and fish of his words
with the bright mirrors and pretty beads of mine,
          for how queer it is to be understood by someone
on the subject of anything, given that,
     as Norman 0. Brown says, the meaning of things

is not in the things themselves but between them,
     as it surely was that time those kids scared us so bad
in Paris: Barbara and I had got on the wrong train, see,
          and when it stopped, it wasn't at the station
two blocks from our apartment but one
     that was twenty miles outside of the city,

and we looked for someone to tell us how
     to get back, but the trains had pretty much stopped
for the evening, and then out of the dark
          swaggered four Tunisian teenagers,
and as three of them circled us, the fourth
     stepped up and asked the universal ice-breaker,

i. e., Q.: Do you have a cigarette?
     A.: Non, je ne fume pas.
Q.: You're not French, are you?
          A.: Non, je suis americain. Q.: From New York?
A.: Non, Florida. Q: Miami?
     A.: Non, une petite ville qui s'appelle Tallahassee

dans le nord de.... And here the Tunisian kid
     mimes a quarterback passing and says. Ah,
l'université avec la bonne équipe de futbol!
          He was a fan of FSU sports, of all things
so we talked football for a while, and then
     he told us where to go for the last train.

Change one little thing in my life or theirs
     and they or I could have been either the Loud Rotarian
or the Nice one, and so I say to Rotarians everywhere,
          please forgive me,
my brothers, for what I have done to you
     and to myself as well,

for circumstances so influence us
     that it is more an accident
than anything else that you are listening to me
          and not the other way around,
and therefore I beg your forgiveness my friends,
     if I wrote this poem before you did.