And gifted young geniuses go in and out
of advertising and movies and things like that.
They burn out just as concert musicians and dancers do so.
Here's an "Elegy for a Gifted Child."
"Elegy for a gifted child.
Ephemeron, it's over.
All the scales of the clock faces
are so heavy with life, so loaded
to capacity with eyelids and lashes
that they have come around again to zero midnight.
Since you were no Faust at noon, no Mephistopheles at midnight,
we'll reward your prayers with hell
and its continuous distractions.
It's just all over, Ephemeron.
Counter elegy.
Oh no.
I go on doing what I have to do because I do it.
I sat and sat there counting 1 plus 1 plus 1
while all the rest were somewhere else playing
in the tripe of a living horse and stroking its great eyes.
This took time.
Then at the end of that eternity they gave me
60 bucks, less taxes and dues and said,
come back tomorrow there is always work to do.
It was night.
I got stewed, screwed, and tattooed.
My skin read, I love my mother, in a heart,
pierced by a naked sword.
Weak in the needling it was therefore all lifelong
in the bent branch of my arm.
You think I just went off like a bomb and was all over.
But it has seemed long to me, slow as the explosion
of the whole life of the tree in which the birds evolved,
each one singing out its song."