34

Shakespeare was Bacon on a sunshine stage,
a secret agent, or     unperfect actor
and if this is a crown
it's a fool's crown, or
crown of dogwood splinters, wreath'd
with your absent part     & three parts rage

Is it megalomania or is it shame
that drove me from the Doctors into wilderness
& set me spinning toward your globe of fame?

& when those Aprils born of tenderness
hail down sweet kelsons of the cosmic frame-
up     I'll be standing in my shepherd's weeds--    a wildness

tamed     by what I know comes not from me:
adhesive happenstance--O     Chair     of Anonymity



Henry Gould | Island Road 35
Contents | Mudlark No. 6