THE TWO TATE'S

Allen,
we read you at university
of your agrarian history
ablaze with the Civil War
Confederate dead
for Lowell loved
your poetry
in his own curiosity
about lineage
and the language of ancestry
which may have contributed
to his own virtuosity;
James,
whom I heard read
at Amherst
is now gone
with his open wounds
and splendid words
manifest
as a passing swan.