So this is how you
think it is—hypocrisy
and exhaltation,
the rumble and rout
of papier mache floats
like river barges
piled with double decks
of bead-pitching drunks rolling
porte-flambeaux from
Tchoupitoulas Street
clear to Canal, heads all John-
the-Baptist on plate
collars, and dancing-
Salome spilling Vedic
agni out in hot
dribbles of burning
kerosene, and the little
children in the street
brawling for spilt beads
and the raw venal changes
of heart that render
the sickness of youth.
It’s not the why that matters
so much as the how
damned long. Farewell, you
say to the rutting-fat doves
squatting among the pearls
strung on a live oak’s
consequential limbs, farewell
to the flesh of kings
and salty idols,
to the thin-laid screed of puke
you skate across like
whimsy, to feathered
boas and happy-are-we
anthems in the gloam,
to the shuttered glam
and heave of morning in which
it does not matter
how the sun finds us
just so long as it finds us,
and our soft voices
syrup-simple tease
the dying city into
ruin and delight.
(Parade of the Krewe of Hermes, New Orleans, 1989)