Work Text:
POEM
Listen, Ted. Enough. Enough with the alphabet already. We believe that you know it. Friday night, six inches of snow. (But that's CAMBRIDGE IN DECEMBER.)
There has to be a party somewhere. Something that doesn't involve tiny detailed black and white drawings of people who don't actually exist.
People, Ted. Without an audience there could be no ART. Even the Navy was more exciting than this. Even the South Pacific in the middle of a war zone. We had some times there (I wouldn't necessarily call them good times.)
Ted. Book. Down. NOW. It's Friday night. We are only young-- well, more young than old-- and listen closely Edward Gorey, there are drinks out there that aren't going to drink themselves.
Girls? How should I know? Probably there are girls. Girls are nothing to be afraid of. Some of my closest friends are girls, in point of fact.
Well, if we stay here we'll never know if there are girls hanging about or not, will we? That's reason enough to go.
You know I can never stand not knowing.
LATER. Gin & tonic, a little music, even a girl or two, not that Ted's looking for girls. Also there's an engineer from M.I.T. Leaning Suggestively against the bar. My favorite type of lean.
Four drinks and twenty minutes; bad idea for both Ted and me!
Shirtsleeves in January, O my Engineer. Still if I had arms like that (heavy with muscle, strong with honest labor, at least that is what I pretend!) I would wear nothing at all and glory in the stares of-- well, not your stares, Ted, obviously.
Another drink and I'll do something I regret, and as for my man Edward Gorey! No one is less likely to keep me from trouble! STRAIGHT ON, Ted.
Arthur Rimbaud lost himself in the beauty of words-- not I.
Not for me that “Barbarian” of his, with the 'flags of flesh', when I can engineer to have MY BARBARIAN in the flesh. Some things are more important than poetry. Without risk, what glory?
PERHAPS...OR NOT
Glory is not to be, not tonight. Me and Ted, Ted and I, fleeing dizzily through the snow. Oops!
In the future I will be happy, and Ted will be happy, and there will be someone for everyone ( ALWAYS assuming that WE WANT THERE TO BE SOMEONE.)
It will be MARVELLOUS!
Tonight is cold, and three drinks to many. Tonight is wet icy sidewalks and engineers with no souls, and I will go home to RIMBAUD and AUDEN and the beauty to be found in books. Also Ted can go back to his PICTURES and stop his WHINING, and we will never mention this--.
Yes, Ted, I think we've lost them, so why not one for the road.
Oh, very well. I'll pay!
Ahh, Cambridge. Jim's Place, warm and smoky, draft beer and pretentious undergraduates discussing philosophy as if they were experts at LIFE. As if they weren't still children, mostly. At any time on any day, somewhere in this fair city
later YET
One BEER two BEER THREE BEER FOUR
O Edward my friend, the streets are rumbling.
Of course it's the train. I know it's the train. Don't be so pedantic. I'm afraid there's no poetry in you at all, and that my friend is a TERRIBLE THING INDEED-- have another drink? (And to think you were a soldier once!)
This time I say home and mean it, this time I mean to dream of poetry (of Rimbaud, Auden, the lovely and brilliant Gertrude Stein, all of them making scintillating conversation in my dreams, in my head.) Yes, Ted, your arm.
The snow's stopped, the stars bright enough to rival the streetlights in the quiet-- oh. Those ARE the streetlights. You don't have to correct me every time. My thoughts were lyric
Shut up, Ted.
That will be the title of my masterwork, my MAGNUM OPUS. I shall call it, “SHUT UP TED.”
But where is our friend and mentor John Ciardi? The poet-in-residence deserves to be present at the beginning, the inception, the birth of an idea so fine. Birth? Nativity!
You're only saying tomorrow because you think I'll have forgotten by then.
A poet never forgets, Ted, and that is the difference between us.
Don't pretend you didn't have fun tonight, Gorey. Without me, you'd be terribly stuffy and dull.
LET the Dean hear me. Why should honest men be denied their leisure? All poetry and no play would make Frank O'Hara as dull as all art and no play has made Edward Gorey. And I don't think anyone, especially the Dean, wants THAT. Some advertisement that would be for his university.
I'm sure he does praise the Lord every day for the G.I. Bill. Probably praises the Germans for the war, too, the sour old--.
FINE. I SHALL NOT SPEAK ANOTHER WORD. EVER.
YOU'LL BE SORRY.
Well, we're inside now, ascending this ivory tower, bastion of knowledge, repository of learning! I meant I wasn't going to say anything else OUTSIDE!
I'd forgotten there were so many stairs in this building. Good thing I have my stout Ted to bear me up. Stout as in stalwart, not as in pudgy, so I can tell you now you needn't be offended.
We did have fun tonight, though, didn't we? DIDN'T WE? Oh, you're smiling. We had fun. Which is good, because after FRIDAY comes SATURDAY.
Well, yes, it is the Sabbath, but neither of us is Jewish. Tomorrow night—REPRISE!
It won't be the same without you. You have the rest of your life for drawing, but Youth is a moment, Ted, here and gone, forever missed
It's hard to be eloquent about losing something I haven't lost yet. I'll be young forever. Poets are IMMORTAL, IMMORTALIZED IN THEIR WORK, the ebb and flow of words like the tides, more constant than time--.
You'll be sorry, someday. Sorry you didn't hear the end of it.
As sorry as I am, about that engineering major. Those arms, Ted, those arms. Mortal man was never meant to have muscles such as those.
Really? You didn't see it, then? Not at all. Even when his sleeves were rolled up, and the shadows caressed--. FAIR ENOUGH. PUT OUT THE LIGHT, THEN.
Good night, my Ted.
<i>1948</i>