Brooks Haxton, " Memorizing 'Lycidas' Under the Warhol at the Walker"

Though no one I had met believed it genuine, it gave me goosebumps.
I was learning the flower passage, and my shift was ending,
when the next guard caught me with my xerox reading on the job,
aloud, how "daffadillies fill their cups with tears." I saw:
he heard me. Pausing, pointing at me, he said, "Wait!
'To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.'" I didn't
know the man, but thought his name was Craig, or Greg.
Deliberate inflection counterpoised against the meter,
closing his eyes, he said: "Weep no more, woeful Shepherds,
weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead," dead
emphasized with feinted resolution---then, upon the upbeat:
"Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry floor," and with a leap
in pitch: "So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed, And yet
anon repair his drooping head"---I can remember still
the way he held that high note in the second syllable: "repairs
his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." He stepped down
beat by beat in pitch, and stopped, and looked for me to speak.
"Do you write poems?" "No," he smiled apologetically, "do you?"




Brooks Haxton

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