The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith

Inamoratas, with an approbation,

Bestowed his title. Blessed his inclination.

He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat

Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fat

And fine this morning. Definite. Reimbursed.

He waits a moment, he designs his reign,

That no performance may be plain or vain.

Then rises in a clear delirium.

He sheds, with his pajamas, shabby days.

And his desertedness, his intricate fear, the

Postponed resentments and the prim precautions.

Now, at his bath, would you deny him lavender

Or take away the power of his pine?

What smelly substitute, heady as wine,

Would you provide? life must be aromatic.

There must be scent, somehow there must be some.

Would you have flowers in his life? suggest

Asters? a Really Good geranium?

A white carnation? would you prescribe a Show

With the cold lilies, formal chrysanthemum

Magnificence, poinsettias, and emphatic

Red of prize roses? might his happiest

Alternative (you muse) be, after all,

A bit of gentle garden in the best

Of taste and straight tradition? Maybe so.

But you forget, or did you ever know,

His heritage of cabbage and pigtails,

Old intimacy with alleys, garbage pails,

Down in the deep (but always beautiful) South

Where roses blush their blithest (it is said)

And sweet magnolias put Chanel to shame.

No! He has not a flower to his name.

Except a feather one, for his lapel.

Apart from that, if he should think of flowers

It is in terms of dandelions or death.

Ah, there is little hope. You might as well—

Unless you care to set the world a-boil

And do a lot of equalizing things,

Remove a little ermine, say, from kings,

Shake hands with paupers and appoint them men,

For instance—certainly you might as well

Leave him his lotion, lavender and oil.

Let us proceed. Let us inspect, together

With his meticulous and serious love,

The innards of this closet. Which is a vault

Whose glory is not diamonds, not pearls,

Not silver plate with just enough dull shine.

But wonder-suits in yellow and in wine,

Sarcastic green and zebra-striped cobalt.

With shoulder padding that is wide

And cocky and determined as his pride;

Ballooning pants that taper off to ends

Scheduled to choke precisely.

Here are hats

Like bright umbrellas; and hysterical ties

Like narrow banners for some gathering war.

People are so in need, in need of help.

People want so much that they do not know.

Below the tinkling trade of little coins

The gold impulse not possible to show

Or spend. Promise piled over and betrayed.

These kneaded limbs receive the kiss of silk.

Then they receive the brave and beautiful

Embrace of some of that equivocal wool.

He looks into his mirror, loves himself—

The neat curve here; the angularity

That is appropriate at just its place;

The technique of a variegated grace.

Here is all his sculpture and his art

And all his architectural design.

Perhaps you would prefer to this a fine

Value of marble, complicated stone.

Would have him think with horror of baroque,

Rococo. You forget and you forget.

He dances down the hotel steps that keep

Remnants of last night’s high life and distress.

As spat-out purchased kisses and spilled beer.

He swallows sunshine with a secret yelp.

Passes to coffee and a roll or two.

Has breakfasted.

Out. Sounds about him smear,

Become a unit. He hears and does not hear

The alarm clock meddling in somebody’s sleep;

Children’s governed Sunday happiness;

The dry tone of a plane; a woman’s oath;

Consumption’s spiritless expectoration;

An indignant robin’s resolute donation

Pinching a track through apathy and din;

Restaurant vendors weeping; and the L

That comes on like a slightly horrible thought.

Pictures, too, as usual, are blurred.

He sees and does not see the broken windows

Hiding their shame with newsprint; little girl

With ribbons decking wornness, little boy

Wearing the trousers with the decentest patch,

To honor Sunday; women on their way

From “service,” temperate holiness arranged

Ably on asking faces; men estranged

From music and from wonder and from joy

But far familiar with the guiding awe

Of foodlessness.

He loiters.

Restaurant vendors

Weep, or out of them rolls a restless glee.

The Lonesome Blues, the Long-lost Blues, I Want A

Big Fat Mama. Down these sore avenues

Comes no Saint-Saëns, no piquant elusive Grieg,

And not Tschaikovsky’s wayward eloquence

And not the shapely tender drift of Brahms.

But could he love them? Since a man must bring

To music what his mother spanked him for

When he was two: bits of forgotten hate,

Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts:

The little dream his father humored: the thing

His sister did for money: what he ate

For breakfast—and for dinner twenty years

Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts.

The pasts of his ancestors lean against

Him. Crowd him. Fog out his identity.

Hundreds of hungers mingle with his own,

Hundreds of voices advise so dexterously

He quite considers his reactions his,

Judges he walks most powerfully alone,

That everything is—simply what it is.

But movie-time approaches, time to boo

The hero’s kiss, and boo the heroine

Whose ivory and yellow it is sin

For his eye to eat of. The Mickey Mouse,

However, is for everyone in the house.

Squires his lady to dinner at Joe’s Eats.

His lady alters as to leg and eye,

Thickness and height, such minor points as these,

From Sunday to Sunday. But no matter what

Her name or body positively she’s

In Queen Lace stockings with ambitious heels

That strain to kiss the calves, and vivid shoes

Frontless and backless, Chinese fingernails,

Earrings, three layers of lipstick, intense hat

Dripping with the most voluble of veils.

Her affable extremes are like sweet bombs

About him, whom no middle grace or good

Could gratify. He had no education

In quiet arts of compromise. He would

Not understand your counsels on control, nor

Thank you for your late trouble.

At Joe’s Eats

You get your fish or chicken on meat platters.

With coleslaw, macaroni, candied sweets,

Coffee and apple pie. You go out full.

(The end is—isn’t it?—all that really matters.)

And even and intrepid come

The tender boots of night to home.

Her body is like new brown bread

Under the Woolworth mignonette.

Her body is a honey bowl

Whose waiting honey is deep and hot,

Her body is like summer earth,

Receptive, soft, and absolute ...

Source: Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963)