1. AL's Broken Promise to Alice 2. What AL Told Alice When She Called From St. Louis in 1958. 3. What AL Was Thinking When He Hung Up Twenty Years Later.

1.

Dear, I'll take you dancing
in a club for madmen only.
I move like a falling star--hold tight!
We'll shoot above the dance floor
like swirling shafts of light,
but when we strike the earth, my love,
great heaven splits a seam,
and I'll hand out immortality
like rainbows on a stick,
and all our friends turn into gods
when they partake of it.

2.

The days are hammered in
like mending nails,
working on me, sugar,
like wind on sails,
and I never thought
it could feel so good,
shaking that Faustus hood.

3.

These ties,
enter the heart,
lace through the brain,
entangle the soul in a Gordian knot.
I never was the Alexander type;
I'm a sucker in slow motion.


(Clifton, University of Cincinnati, Summer 1988)