WEBVTT

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This poem is called "Childhood."

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First it was going to be
called "Childhood Continued,"

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but it didn't quite work
out to be about that.

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However, the poem has a great
deal of what I call apparatus,

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and I have to
prepare for the poem

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by describing the
apparatus first.

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It's dedicated to
what I call the poets

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of a mythical childhood, of
whom I named four out of many.

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Wordsworth, Rimbaud,
Hart Crane, and Alberti.

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And it has a little epigraph
from "Bateau ivre" by Rimbaud.

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Little drunken boat in its
travels exclaims at one point,

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I bumped up against, know
you, incredible Floridas.

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I happen to be from
Florida, and the line

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could not fail to
escape my notice

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and to hang around in
my memory for years.

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And the Floridas I thought
I remembered from childhood

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seemed to me incredible enough
to bump up against one more

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time.

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And it has a sort
of time and place

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setting designated like a play.

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Time, the '30s,
place, Miami, Florida.

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And then it has a
long-running marginalia,

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or gloss, if you
remember the way

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"The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" looks.

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And that's the way the
side looks in this poem.

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I wanted to write a poem
with such a margin for years,

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and I still think
I'll do it some time.

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In this case, it turned
out to be only notes,

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but I have to read
the notes, I think,

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because are only two other
living people who remember

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the Miami of my
childhood who also read,

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or read poetry anyway.

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And they both testified
to the authenticity

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of the recollections
in the poem,

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but you wouldn't recognize
the places and the things,

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I don't think, unless I read
you the marginalia first.

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So I'll read that first.

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And then the theory
that I'm operating under

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is that those references
will click into place

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as the actual text of
the poem is sounded.

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So here are the
marginal glosses.

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In Czechoslovakia, for example,
The Katzenjammer Kids, for some

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years the featured comic strip
of the Sunday Miami Herald.

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The Olympia Theater,
which was one

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of those theaters with
a domed ceiling in which

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the stars and the moon were--

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have you ever seen those
beautiful things from the '20s,

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usually.

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And then there'd be
little cherubic figures

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beside the lights that were
turned on between shows.

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Quasi-Italian naked
babies, and so on.

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And [INAUDIBLE].

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The hurricane season,
obsolete make of car,

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the Everglades on fire.

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My childhood illness,
osteomyelitis,

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which affected my leg
and the anesthesia

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from the surgery
connected with that.

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The Capital Barbershop,
M. Dupree, proprietor.

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Billy's Men's Shop.

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The principal east-west
street, Flagler, it was called.

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And Cromer-Cassell's, later
Richards department store.

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The shameful quote,
"white" and quote,

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"colored" drinking fountains
of those days in that region,

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against which we children
reacted in our own little ways.

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The five and ten cent stores,
a tray of unsorted eyeglasses

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and grants, at toy
display in Woolworth's,

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the northwest section
still under development.

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And some names, Sunny Isles,
Golden Glades, Buena Vista,

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as it was called down there,
and Opa-locka, and so on.

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OK, the poem.

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Once more beneath my
thumb, the globe turns.

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And doomed republics
pass in a blur of colors.

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Winter mornings
now my grandfather,

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head bared to the
mild sunshine, likes

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to spread the Katzenjammers
out around a white lawn chair

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to catch the stray curls
of citrus from his knife.

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Chameleons quiver in ambush.

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Wings of monarchs beat
above bronze turds feasting.

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And there are pilgrim
ants eternally bearing

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incommensurate crumbs
past slippered feet.

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There in the lily
pond, my own face

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wrinkles with a slow
teasings of a stick.

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The long days pass, days
streaked with the colors

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of the first embarrassments.

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And Sundays among kin happily
ignored I sit nodding,

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somnolent with the risants.

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Myriad tiny suns drown
in the deep mahogany

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polish of the chair arms.

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Bunched cushions prickle
through starched cotton.

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Already I know the pleasure
of certain solitudes.

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I can look up at a
ceiling so theatrical,

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its stars seem more aloof
than the real stars.

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And pre-Depression putti blush
in the soft glow of exit signs.

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Often I blink,
re-entering the world,

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or catch surprised
in a shop window

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my ghostly image skimming
across nude mannequins.

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Drawbridges,
careless of traffic,

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lean there against the
low clouds, early evening.

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All day there is a smell
of ocean longing landward.

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And high on his frail
ladder my father

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stands hammering great
storm shutters down

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across the windows of
the tall hotels, swaying.

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Around downed wires,
across broken fronds,

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our Essex steers,
barge-like and slow.

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Westward now, the smoky rose
of oblivion blooms, hangs.

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And on my knee a small
red sun glow, setting.

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For a long time, I'd
feel, coming and going

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in waves, the
stupid wish to cry.

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I dream.

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And there are colognes that
mingle on the barber's hands,

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swathing me in his striped
cloth Saturdays downtown.

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Billy the midget
haberdasher stands

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grinning under the winking
neon goat, his sign.

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And Flagler's sidewalks fill.

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Slowly the wooden
escalator rattles upward

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towards the twin fountains of a
mezzanine where boys, secretly

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brave, prepare to taste the
otherness trickling there,

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forbidden.

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And then the warm
cashews in cool arcades.

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Oh, counters of spectacles.

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Where the bored child first
scans new perspectives,

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squinting through
strange lenses.

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And mirrors tilted
offer back toy sales.

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Stiffening breezes towards
green shores of bays.

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How thin the grass
looks of the new yards.

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And everywhere, the
fine sand, burning

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into the bare heels with which
I learned to crush, going home,

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the giant sand spurs
of the vacant lots.

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Iridescences of
mosquito hawks glimmer

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above brief puddles filled with
skies, tropical and changeless.

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And sometimes, where
the city halts,

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the cracked sidewalks
lead to a coral archway

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still spanning the entrance to
some wilderness of palmetto.

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Forlorn suburbs, but
with golden names.

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