After Peire Vidal, & Myself

for Shelley Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star Of all my lively loves, all Ladies, & to whom once I gave up My heart entire, thenceforth yours to keep forever Locked up in your own heart’s tiniest room, my best hope, or To throw away, carelessly, at your leisure, should that prove Your best pleasure, Who is that dumpy matron, decked out in worn & faded Shabby army fatigues which pooch out both before & behind, now screeching Scoring me painfully in philistine Commedia dell’arte farce, low summer fare Across a pedestrian Ferry’s stretch of water in some meshugganah Snug Harbor And once more, even, fiercely pecking at me in the cold drab Parish Hall of Manhattan’s Landmark Episcopal Church, where a once Avant-garde now Grade School Poetry Project continues to dwell, St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bouwerie, whose Stones hold in tight grip one wooden leg & all of Peter Stuyvesant’s bones? Who is that midget-witch who preens & prances as she flaunts her lost wares, Otherwise hidden beneath some ancient boy’s flannel-shirt, its tail out & flapping, & who Is shrieking even now these mean words: “Hey     Ted!”     “Hey, you Fat God!” & called me, “Fickle!”         “Fickle!” & she points a long boney finger at me, & croons, gleefully. “Limbo!”     “That's where you really live!” & She is claiming to be you as she whispers, viciously, “Alone, & In Pain, In Limbo, is where you live     in your little cloud-9 home     Ted! Pitiful!” She has a small purse, & removing it from one of her shopping bags She brings out from inside that small purse, my withered heart; & lifting it high into the air over her head with her two hands, she turns it upside down unzips its fasteners, & shakes it out over the plywood floor, happily. “Empty,” she cries loudly, “just like I always knew it would be!” “Empty!” “Empty” “Empty” I watch her, and think, That’s not really you, up there, is it, Rose?     Rochelle?     Shelley? O, don’t be sad, little Rose! It’s still Your ribbon I wear, your favor tied to the grip of my lance, when I ride out to give battle, these golden days.