How it Goes


Someone has to be, in life, the minor hood
who gets wasted in the pre-title sequence,
“the little man in the yellow inflatable”,
the maid that screams…

I guess we would all bestride, if we could,
the narrow world like colossi; reticence
is what holds us back, surely: we’re capable
of prodigious dreams.

Yet on the vaporetto once, overheard:
“Lauritzen! you may be a millionaire, and I
a flea…” (una pulce, feminine) – shouldn’t I have cried
“Bedbug, where’s your pride?

Flea-men risk being taken at their word.
Blow your own shofar!”? However busily
siphonaptera circumambulate the walls,
Jericho won’t fall.

Now I like to think the screamer gets to squeeze
Bogey’s thigh at the cast party; in the rower’s
own mind at least, his inflatable’s bearing down
on Sword or Omaha.

As for the hood, I’m not so sure: some knees
are made for bending. Besides, he’s ‘gone over’,
as they say, ‘stiffed’ – and his widow about town
in a new fox-fur.

Philip Morre