[stylist] Poem - "David" - ??? Draft

[Jackie Williams]

Bill,
This poem is both sensitive and strong. I marvel at your use of similes so
effectively in all of your poetry.

Jackie 

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
Houts via stylist
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 6:14 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Poem - "David" - ??? Draft




Hello,

Here's a kind of eulogy for my friend David, who died about twenty years 
ago.


--Bill


---


*David*

Lightning bright, his mindfire gave wonder

to snailslow teachers, snug

in their certainties. There were a swarm of us,

high flyers, ace brained and mocking,

and David, mad as a candlestar moth,

heard light lucid choirs, as sure

in their cadence as marching drums.

We were, half of us, gay as chimes,

and pelted half laughing, half dance

through gasping yards, while parents hummed

over beers, so baffled drunk high:

that one's mine, O see how he wins the air prize,

his black besalted hair so thick

it catches hickory smoke and spring,

and he so blond, and he so brown, and he so quick

it shudders the lungs.

But David the fleet was mad as a purple

eclipse:sun-bright behind, and moon-dark before,

and Orion belt stars between.

He was dark, and strange, and prince of dreams

and fevers; and in our day, together we ruled

old Starling Street; but afterward he fell

into plague and drained away, he drained away.

My fevers cooled, I think, and write, and take my meds,

and count my sainted laughing dead.












-- 


"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"

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