Over the years--
I don't read much fiction.
I have read a lot of anthropology,
and I've read a lot about the history
of religions and whatnot.
And so for a period of time I read
a lot of the great historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, who
happens to have been we now know a fascist.
But what are you going to do?
He's a - no, I just read Bellow's new book,
Ravelstein, Ravelstein.
And there's a character in Bellow's book,
I can't remember his name.
He has a Romanian name.
And it's unmistakably Eliade.
And Bellow worked with Eliade for years
at the University of Chicago.
So presumably he had I mean, the worst dope one
could have about Eliade.
Anyway the title of this poem is, "The Bull Roars."
And you know what a bull roar is, right?
And the poem itself is in South Philadelphia.
Every year there is this big Mummer's Day parade
on New Year's day.
People get dressed up in these cockamamie costumes,
and whatever.
Make music with string bands.
The epigraph in this poem is from Eliade.
The title of the poem is "The Bull Roars."
"Young men in an Australian tribe are seized by masked men,
carried far from their familiar surroundings,
laid on the ground and covered with branches.
For the first time they face an absolute darkness, made
terrifying by the approach of divinity announced by the bull
roars.
They come from me when it gets dark.
Large and silent, wearing Mummer's masks.
Badger claws chinging at their waists.
Orange street cones on their heads
like party hats, tied with gut.
They lift and carry me from bed to a field by our red movie
house to bury me in the pit they've primed.
The stars rub their great noise on me.
I think I have my own things to bury before it gets too late.
Herewith first I bury anger.
May it's sparky pus not touch my lips again, not hardly ever.
Second into the pit I send greed.
May it choke on its ashen hairy tongue.
Go down you too covetousness and lick the Earth's dungy scabs.
But for myself I keep the following:
Lust, my favorite panic; Charity for my friends,
and a few exceptions; Desire, because what else
is there when warm chestnuts split their skins;
Last I keep willfulness to shoot my mouth off as I please,
even when the roaring buries me, and dirt crawls ear to throat
to tongue."