Artifacts Poetry, Ray Hinman

Priggish Fred finds his Misery

The Thing he performs obliges him like the river.
......... The watches the barges, listens to
the traffic, the chugging of old coal barges.
The river has carved the bank, defined the town,
now it is the towns to formulate, just as he
.........belongs to the thing that plays him.
Ithaca rises among the Alps, Doric columns
below Helen's palace.
He would have her Helen, have her Gretchen,
but he can't make the Rhineland sprout Olives.

His Wife's voice gleams across bright tressels,
rings through the court, stirring the bells
of Weimar; she talks funny, reeks cheap perfume:
"Vat little slut has ousted Lotte, she has seen
the duke, and vood the whizart of Weimar."

Something plays him like a drum.
The neoclassical shaman, Faust with a Ph.D.
But his wife prepares the tribal pit.
First Gretchen, then Helen, then coumn of smoke.
They watch the river, an infinity away from
Frankfort.

.........She exhales a puff of smoke,
he runs a knife across her throat.