NOVEMBER 9TH BIRTHDAYS


It's November 9th with
a wonderful birthday wish
for Anne Sextant
and James Schuyler
are still here in a city vista
seen by critics or academics
in a brief era winding by
to the extant that words,
suffering, identity, love
still matter between earth
above summits of the sky
in this time of sensation
publicity, and celebrity
of do, die or acquit
from a untamed anger
a competent shame
of deep benevolent feeling
and close enchantment
between poet and reader
that a life's pulpit confessional
was more than a scattered obit
like filtered water
for a returning bird feeder,
when a son or daughter
who discerned about suffering
was asked and then learned
to come out in practical life
not to be hidden as in a veil
or under a holiday's
forbidden mask
in a free pass
or press expression
or from a Village gossip column
for more than a concession
in a miracle moment's pause
but today there are few
solemn hours of care
for such expression,
yet why not for us
to remember them
with a single candle incident
as November 9th births
of Anne Sextant
and James Schuyler
for all their laughter and tears
of their vigilant fans behalf
after these writer's have gone
there is a now a neophyte
vocal chorus of shared souls
living fearless among scandal
in their local place
surrendered to leaving us more
than a loving covenant
of two added names on a roll
of all these unscrolled years
in a wired newspaper dispatch
as a crowded afternoon fades
they are not anonymous now
knowing how wronged they were
snatched only for our eternity
in their own famous
mad Sixties time and space.