Merrily We Live

        Sometimes the drums would actually let us play
	between beats, and that was nice.  Before closing time.
	By then the clown’s anus
	would get all chewed up by the donkey
	that hated having a tail pinned on it,
	which was perhaps understandable.  The three-legged midgets
	ran around, they enjoyed hearing us play so much,
	and the saxophone had something to say
	about all this, but only to itself.
	 
        Clusters of pollen blot out the magnolia blossoms this year’
	and that’s about all there is to it.  Like I said,
	it’s pretty much like last year, except for Brooke.
	She was determined to get a job in the city.  When last heard from
	she had found one, playing a sonata of Beethoven’s (one
	of the easier ones) in the window of a department store
	downtown somewhere, and then that closed, the whole city did,
	tighter’n a drum.  So we have only our trapezoidal reflections
	to look at in its blue glass sides, and perhaps admire—
	oh, why can’t this be some other day?  The children all came over
	(we thought they were midgets at first) and wanted
	to be told stories to, but mostly to be held.
	John I think did the right thing by shoveling them under the carpet.
	 
        And then there were the loose wickets
	after the storm, and that made croquet impossible.
	Hailstones the size of medicine balls were rolling down the slope anyway
	right toward our doorstep.  Most of them melted before they got there, but one,
	a particularly noxious one, actually got in the house and left its smell,
	a smell of violets, in fact, all over the hall carpet,
	which didn’t cancel one’s rage at breaking and entering,
	of all crimes the most serious, don’t you fear?
	 
        I’ve got to finish this.  Father will be after me.
	Oh, and did the red rubber balls ever arrive?  We could do something
	with them, I just have to figure out what.
	Today a stoat came to tea
	and that was so nice it almost made me cry—
	look, the tears in the mirror are still streaming down my face
	as if there were no tomorrow.  But there is one, I fear,
	a nice big one.  Well, so long,
	and don’t touch any breasts, at least until I get there.