Back to history again, and then we'll
move on to some non-historical things.
The ending image may require some explanation, because even
I'm not old enough to remember the Hindenburg trying
to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937.
But I've seen film of it, and maybe you have too.
You recall from that that the Hindenburg
was a large-- what do they call them-- blimp,
zeppelin-type dirigible crossing the ocean to the United States.
And I guess it just about hooked up on the tower
in Lakehurst when it broke into flame.
And I suppose all the people, or most of the people,
died in a terribly dramatic incident.
And some reporter-- I've heard recordings of him--
was describing the landing and, of course, not
expecting anything to go wrong.
And suddenly, this thing burst into flames in front of him,
and he just about flips out with panic, with hysteria.
Very dramatic recording if you ever hear it.
So at least that brief picture is
essential to the understanding, at least
at the end of the poem, because that's
the last line of the poem.
Also, as TS Eliot said, a really good poet doesn't borrow lines,
he steals them.
So I stole one line from Washington Irving,
of all places, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
and plugged it in there.
Maybe you will hear it as it goes by you.
Also stole the first line from a radio
shrink who was trying to solve the woes of America
by proselytizing that a dog or a cat
can make you feel less lonely in life.
And I find this radiotherapy incredibly bizarre, if not
saddening in its simplicity.
But in any case, it's supposed to be a happy poem.
It's called "Acolytes."
An acolyte is a religious beginner,
someone who serves the priest.
"A dog or a cat can make you feel less lonely in life.
They're as good as the gun collector's magazine
that you've always wanted to read,
and going to the drugstore you find it,
or a favorite radio program broadcast only
from Grand Island, Nebraska.
For weeks, you scheme, turning the backyard
into an aerial jungle of wires run between garage,
and shed, and clothesline.
And on the designated night, hunched
before you're set in a snowstorm,
you turn on the radio, and there it is, sheaves of grain
flying through the rain.
The best things, after all, in life are free.
They hardly eat anything, crumbs from your cake,
scraps of newspaper you find under hedges.
And you can take them out for walks, ducks and geese wobbling
ahead on strings.
New converts or brides going to church
while waving from their windows, the neighbors seem a bit more
piscivorous and passerine.
But home again, you're as weary as those baseball players just
finished a game of extra innings.
Yet still not diminished, you slump in the chimney nook
while the rabbit, looking like Friedrich Nietzsche,
huddles in the corner and just breathes,
watching the smoke from your pipe rise up among the rafters,
among the chains of dried apples and the gay festoones of pears,
watching it curl out under the eaves, begin to lift the thatch
roofed from its beams, as all by itself, here it comes.
General MacArthur once again announcing
the surrender of the Japanese with a reporter going out
of his mind, dancing at the landing of the Hindenburg
in Lakehurst, New Jersey."