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By Root 549 0

the Boulevard lover lanes of cars, nightslap, and fried clams and Pete’s and Glennie’s ice cream–to the pines of Farmer Ubrecht Dracut way, to the last craw call crow in the Pine Brook heights, the flooded wilds and Swamps and swims of Mill Pond, the little bridge of Rosemont fording a Waterloo mouth of her backwood Brook in eve remnant mists–highway lights are flashing, I hear a song from a passing radio, the crunch of gravel in the road, hot tar stars, apples to pop signs with crabapples for posts– In the gloom of all Lowell I rush up to wrestle with G.J. and Lousy–finally I have Lousy on my shoulder like a sack, whirling him–he gets tremendously mad, never get Lousy mad, remember the balls, hanging helplessly in my grip upsidedown he bites my ass and I drop him like a hot worm— “Fucking Lousy bit Jack’s ass, did he bite his ass!” (sadly)—’lie bit his ass–did he bite!”—as we laugh and wrangle, here comes Georgie Bouen finishing his mile, unknown, ungreeted at the tape, comes puffing to the finish line in solitary glooms of destiny and death (we never saw him again) as ghosts wrestle–goof—laugh–all mystery Huge dripping on our heads in the Antiquity of the Universe which has a giant radar machine haunting its flying cloud brown night spaces of dull silence in the Hum and Dynamo of the Tropic–though then my dream of the Universe was not so “accurate,” so modem–it was all black and Saxish–

Tragedies of darkness hid in the shadows all around Textile–the waving hedges hid a ghost, a past, a future, a shuddering spirit specter full of anxious blackish sinuous twiny night torture–the giant orangebrick smokestack rose to the stars, a little black smoke came out–below, a million tittering twit leaves and jumping shadows–I have such a hopeless dream of walking or being there at night, nothing happens, I just pass, everything is unbearably over with (I stole a football helmet from Textile field once, with G.J., the tragedy is in the haunt and guilt of Textile field) (where also someone hit me in the brow with a rock)—

In the fall my sister would come see me play football with the gang, sock, crash bang, tackle,—I’d spin touchdowns for her, for her cheers–this was behind the grandstand as the Textile team scrimmaged with Coach Rusty Yarvell–great iron reds in the sky, falling leaves flying, whistles–raw scuffed cold horn chapped sidehands–

But at night, and in summer, or in an April windy rain wetly waving, this field, these trees, that terror of pickets and brickposts,—the brooding silence–the density of the Pawtucketville night, the madness of the dream,—the race being concluded in a vat gloom, there is evil in the flashing green round of brown night– Doctor Sax was everywhere in this–his glee supported us and made us run and jump and grab leaves and roll in the grass when we went home– Doctor Sax gets into the blood of children by his cape … his laughter is hidden in the black hoods of the darkness where you can suck him up with air, the glee of night in kids is a message from the dark, there is a telepathic shadow in this void bowl slant.

23

I SLEPT AT JOE FORTTER’s—many’s the time I could feel the goose pimples of his cold legs or the leather of his tar black heel, as we lay in dank barns and attics of his various homes in the Doctor Sax midnights of ghost stories and strange sounds–

I first met Joe when he lived on Bunker Hill Street a stone’s throw practically from West Sixth and Boisvert where the brown bathrobe warmed me in the sky at my mother’s neck– His mother and my mother worked side by side at the great St. Louis Paroisse bazaar–together they once visited the stone mansion castle on the Lakeview hill near Lupine Road that is symmetrical to Snake Hill Castle (and among the serried black pines of whose slope-grounds Gerard had slid in snows of my infancy, I remember I was afraid he’d hit a pine tree)— His mother and mine went in the “Castle” to see about some church affair, they came out saying the place was too spooky for the bazaar–my mother said there were niches of stone in the halls (the old sun must have