Classic Poem

Wise men, when Crosby died, looked on each other
And saw musicians, who did not mistake
The catgut of their intruments for heart strings
Withered by necessary, if regretful, Life.

—Wise men, presented in self-portraiture—
Presume to hold your scales, like Rhadamanthus;
And weigh yourselves and Crosby; your own scales
(After due vacillations of the dart)
Will rest, to show your reassured eyes
A pound of lead outweigh a pound of feathers.
Crosby, in feathers, danced through a sealed house
Which he unsealed, whose Idol's cerements,
In ever-lessening spirals, he unwrapped
With helian desire to grasp the Sun.
And saw no sun, but saw the uncovered skull;
Shuddered upon a sharp and fleshless mouth;
And then, to warm his covered skeleton
Fired his borrowed feathers. A night bird
He blazed in plumes of smoke before the crowd.

A traveler once wrote home from Africa:
“I saw the fowl. But the time was out of season.
It was only a chick. And when young, the Phoenix
Is no more astounding than a barn-yard cock.”

Hierophants, turned neophytes, adore
This worshipper of Faithfulness in wolves,
Wisdom in doves and Gentleness in snakes.
Let not New England join, from whence he sprung
Towards which he looked, too eager to amaze,
And wondered, “What may Boston say about me
Now”; and dying, exulted, wondering “What
Can they now say?” State Street, maintain your silence.
His mad impiety is holier than your sane
Infidel doubt; but, you sane infidels
You wise men, named in Crosby's diary,
Whose words are linked with his words, he discreet
And please the financiers, who have exacted
Murder and suicide with Investment Council.

Let men made easy by his death keep silent
Resenting Crosby's life, and Crosby's death
Resenting. Poetry has saints. He was not of them.
His death was his best poem, and Crosby, dead
Shall live in history, like the marauders
Infatuate of new-found luxuries
Who fired the scrolls of Alexandria
To warm the waters of the public baths.

Wise men, without regard to almanacs
Be amorous, opulent, inebriate
Penurious, abstinent and solitary.
Wise men are moon-gazers, who never challenge
The fisher of tides to mesh them in her net.
Wise men have built, with calm of Antonine
Their philosophic membrances, which absorb
From toxic chaos, only pleasing lies.

Magnanimous in bronze, and straddling a stallion
Over the Roman Capitol, diffusing
A green benediction, rides serene Aurelius.