The Ecphorizer

for A.L., 1900-1978

This is how glaze slips down
between retina and pupil, finds itself

in Warsaw getting off a train
after Vassar and the year in London
at the School of Economics.

"There were such lectures ...Shaw and Russell!
We were in the heart of it. The whole world
changing and we had to something.

You can't imagine the sad eyes of children
at the orphanage. I thought if I could just
give each one some small thing.

One boy who never spoke I brought
a mouth organ, how he played it.

Now that was music! Last month
when I was sick-what a marvelous ride.

Then for three days nothing. The past
flashes before me in such perfect detail.
Each night I'm dragged from bed and

write this down. The smell of
barracks where the children were.

What could we do? Nothing really.
Odd how I recall that one boy. He used to

hum although he never spoke and so
I thought mouth organ...how he played it!"

in iron of the night of Christ,
when florida thru keys is cased in 1
ice-cube, I-swoh summon the summer night
not far from Dimplestone, night when Ohio
forests of fireflies line the insides of
chagrin, its valley. "Luxury Mayonnaise,"
Mack intones to Lore & me, for we whirr
on blacktop thru the greening blackness, munching
slim spam on whitebread with the Heilmans dry
tractorgrease clotted. Thru windows of Ford
Woody the woody dampness, cool within warmth,
deluges us wolfcubs.