Ellwood Colahan

I TRACED the comet’s tail of his renown

To Faure’s rotisserie somewhere up town.

Yes, he had hands and feet about like mine.

He didn’t mention winds and worlds and stars,

But subjugated poetry to wine

And burnt up time and money in cigars.

But I, young I, saw but the quick hot coals

Purging their fiery passion on the grate.

I thought: Beloved gossiper of souls,

If only I could be insatiate

As you could be, and scourge you fiercely on—

Leaping from dawn to dawn,

Your unstopped pipes forever at your lips

In free, untrammeled quest!

Instead I watched his drumming finger-tips

And heard his laughter at some still-born jest,

And wondered if this were the great, strange child

Who dreamt our dreams for us who only slept;

If this were he who wept when others smiled

And, further visioned, smiled when others wept.

How bitterly I rose and looked him through!

Then suddenly my pulses throbbed anew,

I could have howled for joy!—sure enough

He’d bent and scribbled something on his cuff!

The kind of soup, perhaps—but for myself

The toppling Joss was back upon its shelf!