Thursday, July 30, 2009

Gary Margolis Poem Inspired by Gates v Crowley

From the Boston Globe:
Ajar

Who hasn’t lost the keys to his
own house, searched for a window
to crawl through, kicked a back door

open, to see if it was left open?
Frost did at his Ripton farm house.
I’m telling you I climb through

a window when he isn’t there so I can
look around. No one’s around to call
the police who rarely exist up there.

Frost is a bridge to Cambridge.
He lived there, too. And now
Henry Louis Gates Jr. who the police

find in his own house. Mr. Gates
isn’t broke and entering. He lives
in his own house. Frost didn’t have

to carry an ID. Berryman found
the key to his own Henry and then
water under a bridge, I’m sorry to say.

The police want us to think it’s all
water under the bridge. I have to say
I’m sorry. For them. Someone has to

pay his respects. I expect we haven’t
heard the last of this. A poem needs
its refrain. White-haired Frost doesn’t

leave a key under his mat for me
when I come home late, when I’ve
forgotten which window I’ve left unlocked.