We loved each other’s
understanding of the relationship between merits, markets, and the Second Gilded
Age. We were swans. Don’t ask which color. Swans in the sense of flightless
singers. We respected the limits of each other’s understanding of tolerance as a
requisite of power. We had been married for years; so many, in fact, the soft
round hills began to sag before we arrived at our summer cottage in
Poughkeepsie. The problem: we relished such different parts of the natural
world. She chased waterfowl. Like Franklin, I liked live oak for hide and seek
with gals who misreported deeds for the sake of the common good. I pointed
fingers at other offenders without saying what a positivist like Eleanor
believed did not exist. When speaking on public matters, I gave voice to Doxa;
she Episteme. When I referenced redemption, I was not, unlike Eleanor, thinking
of history in the Benjaminian sense. Rather, I was reflecting on how much a
handcuffed heart (symbolic) can hurt and go on beating while an embraced leg
(not symbolic) can merely harm. I remained as unsure about the material
redemption of the body in Christ as was Eleanor about Mao’s 3 Mountains. I was
breathless…she was calm. There was no such thing as paradox for us. Like Eleanor
and Franklin, once we saw the hills as breasts, but then as indoctrination.
Ah, Magoo
as if Franz Kline’s fusain “Study for High Street”
slashed through
rumbling blue --
Magoo’s mystic missive
as opening credits roll never was designed for kismet skid off the screen like a fluke losing footing or myopic death drive of Magoo’s Sunday outing but rather grace of girder’s
grave construction
of another incessant
skyscraper as Rutgers ’28 Triskelion
cliquey tycoon bearskin
beside yakking bulldog
McBarker a hunch of hoary nose behind the wheel of primordial automobile hood
accordion behind rumble seat of the obsolete jalopy the apparition of bridge
becoming airy avenue as
comfy puff of animated wheels discover atmosphere of bevel to be benevolence
