My Manhood

My head battered against the culvert wall, nose

letting down a dark sprig of un-Christian blood,

finally I just sat down in the ditch and gave up,

my oaths softened, all my victories compromised.

I knew the ball I had carried through cheers

would turn black and rot, what hearts I had won

would just as easily be lost. I raised my arms

and still the knee came up blunt against one ear.

The world shrieked at temple and rang in gut.

In my breath, which would not come, kings swallowed

their tongues, and in my right eye, which

would not open, Mussolini dangled from a hook.

If I could have, I would have taken it all back:

the heavy masculine god, the invincible ghost,

but I brought it on, raised it, and provoked it,

so I drank its puddle water and ate its dirt.

Finally, in the name of reason, I had to ask

the boot that kicked me to walk back to the job,

and I had to watch the bored face smugly turn

among those above me who had been my friends.

Surely defeat, like victory, is larger than man,

its legend stretched out long, imperfect as doubt.

My own ruined, at the most, two minutes,

and then work resumed, hammer and crowbar,

the boss coming, and four more forms had to

be ripped from the wall before quitting time.

What more was there to lose? The secret,

the bitter lie of triumph? The inviolable

face hidden beneath my face? I worked quietly

through the reruns where I won, and others

where I died, humiliated, slow, and small —

a wren wrapped in tissue paper, a salted slug.

This year I was never farther from all that.

This year was the breezy cafes along the Seine,

the doors of Ghiberti, the jewels of Van Eyck.

Very gently, south of Venice, the track unrolls

golden hills, tunnels, medieval villages

in the Apennines. My wife slept beside me,

a glad odor of peace, of watered leaves,

but I felt the power that blasted the gneiss

and heard the one who had laid the crossties

whisper, "On your knees, like it, now kiss it,"

and not the artisan of palaces and cathedrals

but the soldier filled me, the Hun included me,

helpless before his wrath, as he drove south,

indomitable, priapic beast who would claim

all beauty with his fists, not to love art,

but to hold it holy in his rough ideal of

dominion, in his dream of a perfect polygamy.