My Ambition

is to become a footnote

in a learned work of the

22nd century   not just a

“cf” or a “see” but a sol-

id note such as Raby gives

Walafrid Straho in Christ-

ian Latin Poetry or Ernst

Robert Curtius (the most

erudite German who ever

lived) devotes to Alber-

tino Mussato in his Euro-

teinisches Mittelalter   I

hope the scholar of the

22nd will lick his schol-

arly lips when he finds me

in some forgotten source

(perhaps the Obloquies of

Dreadful Edward Dahlberg)

and think here is an odd-

ball I would have liked,

immortalizing me in six

turgid lines of footnote.