Coin

I

In 1900 they came like trodden fools
from the land of harlequins to amber
America, Vinland of contrasts, Mo-
hawk arrow, beaver, and bear. But
they didnt know what ambiguities
going back millennia would turn into:
wasted minstrels and lolling damsels
who with uncertain love would sit by
riverbanks in summer to dote on flowers
and the dappled birds as a cool breeze
blew in from the north on open mouths
and picnic eyes to a meat, cheese, bread
and a bit of butter on dainty knives
cut in Pittsburgh from ore driven down
ice-blue lakes full of trout and bream.

II

In the late twenties they went back
to Paris to drink and sit by women
of illusion and charm, to an art as
genuine as the moccasin, as the great
iron beams that spanned rivers; they
wandered west, hoping to meet in
Eurasia and claim it as one, Aswan,
the push of doers, the might of millions
teeming in so many contrasts: from
weeping pushcarts full of onions
to the Calvinist banks and Iowa loam,
Nebraska beauties, and Texas brick,
they wept to go back but couldnt,
so held tight their secret, shook
hands, and wrote lies so real and so
full of American Good Middle that art
came to them anon and nimble.

III

But sometime it had to break, all
the denial, all the restraint leaning
over a straight-back chair to gossip
with tea and in the night tell whispers
of evil and something, some thing they
could not name: a purpose maybe, but
not yet, it was after the great War
of Attrition, and the boys came marching
home to more of the same but with bands
and banners and sweethearts and roast,
something had changed and they asked why,
a question poised and planted like steel
on virgin wood three centuries ante, what
life was, and so they took to ’38 Hudsons,
decanted Buicks, some Fords with rust,
white-walled, beautifully gauche, a
bottle of Jack in a mason jar, and so
to the road for an amazingly beautiful
tour de ville.

IV

And what happened, they got laid, left
legacies and died, giving the Good Middle
the broad moon from the back of a truck,
to art, the pure, a consciousness for
what was always there, kept under wraps
for centuries while the church and magnates
bought bodies but left souls, much less
the spirit, which now after so long soared
like the eagle off cliffs to the ocean
that carried them so gently over her belly,
an ego wrapped in starch now finally
scratched, joyous, naked, celebrating
a consummate in-keeping with the stars,
a world at last, and with esprit they cast
their locks to the wind, found and took
to the press of antique rites, the way.

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© Richard Williams