Borges at the Northside Rotary (by David Kirby)
Borges at the Northside Rotary (by David Kirby)
Original Text
David Kirby, The Ha-Ha (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003).
This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2004 International Shortlist).
1After they go to the podium and turn in their Happy Bucks
2 and recite the Pledge of Allegiance
3and the Four Truths (“Is it the Truth?
4 Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill
5and better friendships? Will it be beneficial
6 to all concerned?”), I get up to read my poetry.
7and when I’m finished, one Rotarian expresses
8 understandable confusion at exactly what it is
9I’m doing and wants to know what poetry is, exactly,
10 so I tell him that when most nonpoets think
11of the word “poetry,” they think of “lyric poetry,”
12 not “narrative poetry,” whereas what I’m doing
13is “narrative poetry” of the kind performed
14 by, not that I am in any way comparing myself
15to them, Homer, Dante, and Milton,
16 and he’s liking this, he’s smiling and nodding,
17and when I finish my little speech,
18 he shouts, “Thank you, Doctor! Thank you
19for educating us!” And for the purposes
20 of this poem, he will be known hereafter
21as the Nice Rotarian. But now while I was reading,
22 there was this other Rotarian who kept talking
23all the time, just jacked his jaw right through
24 the poet’s presentations of some of the finest
25vers libre available to today’s listening audience,
26 and he shall be known hereafter as the Loud Rotarian.
27Nice Rotarian, Loud Rotarian: it’s kind of like Good Cop,
28 Bad Cop or God the Father, Mary the Mother.
29Buy Low, Sell High. Win Some, Lose Some.
30 Comme Ci, Comme Ça. Half Empty, Half Full.
31But in a sense the Loud Rotarian was the honest one;
32 he didn’t like my poetry and said so--not in so many words,
33but in the words he used to his tablemates
34 as he spoke of his golf game or theirs
35or the weather or the market or, most likely,
36 some good deed that he was the spearchucker on,
37the poobah, the mucky-muck, the head honcho,
38 for one thing I learned very quickly
39was that Rotarians are absolutely nuts
40 over good deeds and send doctors to Africa
41and take handicapped kids on fishing trips
42 and just generally either do all sorts of hands-on
43projects themselves or else raise a ton of money
44 so they can get somebody else to do it for them,
45whereas virtually every poet I know, myself included,
46 spends his time either trying to get a line right
47or else feeling sorry for himself and maybe writing a check
48 once a year to the United Way if the United Way’s lucky.
49The Nice Rotarian was probably just agreeing with me,
50 just swapping the geese and fish of his words
51with the bright mirrors and pretty beads of mine,
52 for how queer it is to be understood by someone
53on the subject of anything, given that,
54 as Norman O. Brown says, the meaning of things
55is not in the things themselves but between them,
56 as it surely was that time those kids scared us so bad
57in Paris: Barbara and I had got on the wrong train, see,
58 and when it stopped, it wasn’t at the station
59two blocks from our apartment but one
60 that was twenty miles outside of the city,
61and we looked for someone to tell us how
62 to get back, but the trains had pretty much stopped
63for the evening, and then out of the dark
64 swaggered four Tunisian teenagers,
65and as three of them circled us, the fourth
66 stepped up and asked the universal ice-breaker,
67i.e. Q.: Do you have a cigarette?
68 A.: Non, je ne fume pas.
69Q.: You’re not French, are you?
70 A.: Non, je suis américain. Q.: From New York?
71A.: Non, Florida. Q.: Miami?
72 A.: Non, une petite ville qui s’appelle Tallahassee.
73dans le nord de … And here the Tunisian kid
74 mimes a quarterback passing and says, Ah,
75l’université avec la bonne equipe de futbol!
76 He was a fan of FSU sports, of all things
77so we talked football for a while, and then
78 he told us where to go for the last train.
79Change one little thing in my life or theirs
80 and they or I could have been either the Loud Rotarian
81or the Nice one, and so I say to Rotarians everywhere,
82 please forgive me,
83my brothers, for what I have done to you
84 and to myself as well,
85for circumstances so influence us
86 that it is more than an accident
87than anything else that you are listening to me
88 and not the other way around,
89and therefore I beg your forgiveness, my friends,
90 if I wrote this poem before you did.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011