Reynolds and Midway 43

                 ...when loth at landfall soft I leave.

                        - John Berryman, Dream Song 12 

Now let us tell of Bawby, most hushhush

and bring the whole tale out. Let William Tell

the truth, and nodding but,

but sideways slantwise lest the prickéd ears

and opend eyes of lil ones lying abed

take fright and swing their bedfellows to bear

adown the necks of them that tuck them in !

We heard that minstrel in the gallery

who sang of sperm in gutters by the Thames,

who whistled on the 7^th day and piped

in woodes and in the valleys, who purchásed

6 bay mares and 6 golden apples, who

astride his horse of air did gallop by

Scotch Corner at one hundred 20 M

PH and paid the Piper w/ a tenner;

who [summoned am to tourney] came w/ hair

of Adam, Abraham, and Allen, who

was Kral Majales, King of May, and crownd

and carried beaming proud like Quasimodo,

whose 1 good eye was teary and whose ears

were stufft with bronze from bells too deftly swung

like birches, which now swings us back to Robert,

not that Robert, Duncan neither, nor

that Celtic Plant who pushd love to his baaaaaabe

(whom Midway hereabouts sang heretofore)

in wanton song and denim, for this Bob

is mine alone, and he is quite a dry-Bob,

neither Sordello's, nor that Zimmerman

who fancied southern Timrod° in Deluth—

Henry,° like him whom John Allyn Smith

fashiond in Dream Songs, like those Henrys

Stephen made, whom Willa Cather sd

was not a poet, though War Is Not Kind

but red and of whom Junior wrote a book,

before he went one day and, Brodie-like,

leapt to the Mississippi far below

to rid himself of 45 sad yrs

of anger and forgiveness— How I wish

his beard would billow and his fall estÓp

or he be caught midfall by Jesus Christ

… Amen at 44°59'N 93°16'W …

and taken to the Father's loving breast

and laid more gently down to rest.

6.10.14