Cold rain all December day
and damp air from cracked-open windows
shivering through thick heat
from old radiators
in the large glaring room
on West 44th Street
where yesterday David Ignatow
ignited flecks of life
and today Grace Schulman
recalls Marianne Moore.
As Ted Weiss thanks
the dripdried handful
honoring QRL’s 50th year
he doesn’t hear
the heavy door creak
or see you enter
gaunt face cocked high
like a bird that’s heard
some distant call.
Your drab olive slicker
drapes over your arm
revealing a grey cardigan
and royal blue shirt
with large open collar
surrounding an ascot
the color of orange sherbet.
Your light brown pants
lump over laces of cordovan shoes.
Slipping into a one-armed
classroom desk
you cross a leg
and flip through
the Small Press program
with thin tan hands:
the posture of a patient prince
who knows his turn will come.
And soon Renee Weiss
discovers you
halting Ted’s monologue
with a gentle nudge and laughing
“Look who’s here. It’s James.”
Ted’s face glows as if he were canonized.
His soft, high voice calls out
“James! We thought we had missed you.”
You rise like a calm dancer
float to the front
your cool baritone responding
“I read my name in the New Yorker
and thought I’d better show up.”
From unwrinkled typed paper
you read two new poems
one about your dog
the other your computer.
Rhythms and images
and priest-like peace
of your resonant voice
somehow connote
all in the world’s mad scene is forgiven.
I whisper to Tom Tolnay
how your bony face
stabbed by sharp nose
crowned with horn-rimmed glasses
creates an image of Eliot.
Tom’s salt-blond eyebrows rise
as he smiles a soft “Yes.”
Later he says, “You should go meet him.
He’s one of the great ones.”
But I am too shy
with no new words for you to hear.
Now a year later
I push through icy February streets
to the courtyard office
where Howard tells me
you have died.
A heart attack in Tucson.
He read it in The New York Times.
Roger Armbrust
February 1996
(Published in the New York Small Press Center’s program for its annual book fair and readings.)
