sw00339fdl-entry1of9

[ The poem being introduced here is a lyric narrative centered
   around a persona walking through a part of his hometown at the
   time of the 1960's Los Angeles riots.  Originally written in
   1966/67 while I was attending the Writers' Workshop in Iowa City,
   it owes its existence to an intuitive challenge from my mentor. ]  
   -
   [ insert from May 10, 2003 ]
   During my first year at Iowa, I had written a number of short poems;
   but had been devoting myself to fashioning a fantasy epic in stanzas
   of nine lines rhyming aababcbcc, a nasty scheme I then thought I had
   invented; and even to this day I have not done the research I would
   need to do to be sure.  So, if I want, I can go on thinking of it as the
   "Salchertian Stanza"; but it will only be more proof of the foolishness
   in my ego.  Blessedly, my mentor, George Starbuck, seeing what was
   in me and what was not, said I should write from something I was
   more familiar with; and so by the prongs of his pitchfork/ enabled me
   to make the primal leaps of a literary/mind-cracking journey I am yet
   on, and expect to persist on, no matter the opinions of others [thank
   you, Pushkin] who happen to encounter--here & there--a sentence
   or more I have written, or a simple sketch.




Fond du Lac


          The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
          Is the wisdom of humility:
                        from East Coker by T. S. Eliot

Prologue

Believing/ as might wings/  Earth ferries deaths
my essence should not tolerate, I've tried
to lose its factories, its predators
under the shadows of my flight; to drift
among hills in ages gentler than mine.
Rebellion: over beauty, over truth;
Idea: over the badinaged smile
in the empty bottle.  Rather than attempt
to find and crush one berry for those mouths
hidden in the small caves of tunnels, cans,
I have hid my own.  There were summer days
I moved, a neurotic rook, turning
left, right,left at each new corner, entranced
toward a Circle, to see this planet dim;
to dream.  And there was a night, cooled with mist,
when shoes were mostly home, I hung near a pool
in Taylor Park to--"Only the Lonely"--hum,
wanting, off from the square pavilion there
(shelter for the custodians of cards,
the cutthroat Sheepshead house), to harmonize
me/you/and that: October-loaded world.
But having to choose, ignorant of . . . sullens;
my eyes itch, ache; their eyelids give to sleep.






 Fond du Lac: page 2
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Brian A. J. Salchert