Two Quits And A Drum And Elegy For Drinkers

A poem by Alan Dugan

1. ON ASPHALT: NO GREENS

Quarry out the stone

of land, cobble the beach,

wall surf, name it “street,”

allow no ground or green

cover for animal sins,

but let opacity of sand

be glass to keep the heat

outside, the senses in.

Then, when time’s Drunk,

reeling to death, provokes

god’s favor as a fool,

oh let a lamp post grow

out of its absence, bend,

heavy with care, and bloom

light. Let a curb extrude

a comfortable fault. Let

“street” become a living room.

Comfortably seated, lit

by the solicitude of “lamp,”

the Drunk and street are one.

They say, “Let’s have no dirt:

bulldoze the hills into

their valleys: make it plain.

Then take the mountains down

and let their decks of slate

be dealt out flat grey.

Let their mating seams

be tarred against the weeds

by asphalt, by the night’s

elixir of volcanoes hotly poured.”

Then the soulless port at night

is made a human, and the Drunk

god: no one else is here

to be so but who cares?

2. PORTRAIT AGAINST WOMEN

Bones, in his falling,

must have hit the skin

between themselves and stone,

but distances of wine

were his upholstery

against the painful crime

of lying in the street,

since “God protects them.”

He rolled onto his back,

his right hand in his fly,

and gargled open-mouthed,

showing the white of an eye:

it did not see the sign

raised on the proper air

that read: “Here lies

a god-damned fool. Beware.”

No: his hand, his woman, on

the dry root of his sex,

debates it: deformed by wine

and fantasy, the wreck

of infant memory is there,

of how the garden gate

slammed at the words, “Get

out you god-damned bum,”

and so he was, since she,

goddess, mother, and wife,

spoke and it was the fact.

Her living hair came out

gray in his hand, her teeth

went false at his kiss,

and her solid flesh went slack

like mother’s. “Now, lady,

I am sick and out of socks,

so save me: I am pure although

my hand is on my cock.”

Then he could rise up young

out of his vagrancy

in whole unwilled reform

and shuck the fallen one,

his furlough in this street

redeemed by her grace.

There would be the grass

to lay her on, the quench

of milk behind the taste of wine,

and laughter in a dreamed

jungle of love behind

a billboard that could read:

“This is YOUR Garden:

Please keep it clean.”

3. COURAGE. EXCEED.

A beggar with no legs below

the middle of his knees

walked down Third Avenue

on padded sockets, on

his telescoped or

anti-stilted legs

repeating, “Oh beautiful

faspacious skies!” upon

a one-man band: a bass

drum on roller-skates,

a mouth-high bugle clamped

to it, and cymbals interlocked

inside a fate of noise. He

flew the American flag

for children on a stick

stuck in a veteran’s hat,

and offered pencils. He

was made of drunks’ red eyes.

He cried, “Courage! Exceed!”

He was collapsed in whole

display. Drunkards, for this

and with his pencil I

put down his words drunk:

“Stand! Improvise!”

4. ELEGY FOR DRINKERS

What happened to the drunks

I used to know, the prodigals

who tried their parents’ help

too far? Some misers of health

have aged out dry; the rest

are sick and out of socks,

their skin-tight anklebones

blue as the mussel shells

that rolled in Naxos’ surf

when Bacchus danced ashore

and kicked them all to hell.

Oh gutter urinal,

be Dirce’s holy stream,

so lightning out of Zeus

can rage on Semele,

invited! Permit her son,

issuant of His thigh,

to rule her family

as Bromios, god of wine!

Oh Dionisos, good god

of memory and sleep,

you grace the paper bag,

stuck in the fork of a crutch,

that holds the secret sons

and furniture of bums,

since wine is the cure of wine.

It’s thanks to you that I,

in my condition, am

still possible and praising: I

am drunk today, but what

about tomorrow? I burnt

my liver to you for a drink,

so pay me for my praises:

for thirty-seven cents, for

the price of a pint of lees,

I would praise wine, your name,

and how your trouble came

out of the east to Thebes:

you taught the women wine

and tricked King Pentheus

to mask as one of them:

because his father died

to all appeals for help,

the rending penalty,

death at his mother’s hands!,

still fills The Bowery

with prodigals of hope:

they pray for lightning and

a dance to their god damn,

since wine is the cure of wine

and wine the cure wine cured

and wine the cure of wine.