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By Root 479 0

showing, incredibly, where the funeral director himself lives, in his House of Death. “This is our home” Everything there was to remind of Death, and nothing in praise of hfe —except the roar of the humpbacked Merrimac passing over rocks in formations and arms of foam, at 11:15 P.M. Among the shrubs of wild grotto and senary funeral home I know there in the green opulence of dollars and in the grotto sorrows of rocks and plaster … gravel croaked and on-led for persetury investigators in the wrong roil road to the flaminary immensities and up-fluge of the poor bedight-ed, be-knighted Crown and Clown of sorrowmary doom in This anyway-globe … the Jesus most admirable in his height–in all this Doctor Sax I knew, I saw him watching from a shroud in the bushes by the river … I saw him flit across the moonlit rocks of the summerriver to come and see the visitors in the Grotto. I saw him flit from Station with his cape now hanging from the orphan home walls with a keen eye on our doings… I saw him flit from Station to Station, from the backs of em, in terrible blasphemy prayer in the dark with everything reversed–he was only following to see me, it was later when the Snake was ready and Sax brought me to see, which was the final thing that happened and I covered my eyes for fear of what I saw–

We made the stations to the ultimate foot of the Cross, where my mother kneeled, prayed, and worked a step up. the cross-mount, to show me how some people did it all the way up–to the foot of the Cross itself, tremendous ascents to blasphemous heights in the river breeze and views of long land vistas– We tramped back arm-in-arm down the gravel path running thru the grotto dark, to the lights of the street again, where we bade Blanche adieu.

I always liked to get out of there …

And headed towards home– There was a full moon that night.

(The following full moon, August month the next, I had my bus pass stolen from me as I stood with it clasped behind me in the glittering lights of Kearney Square and a sad bully of the Lowell alleys rushed up and stole it and ran through the crowd. “The full moon,” I cried, “twice in a row–it’s giving me–death, and now I get robbed, O Mama, God, what you,—hey,” and I rushed in the terrible clarity of the August full moon to hide myself from it … as I ran home across the Moody Bridge the moon made the mad white horses foam all beautiful and close and shiny so that it was almost inviting–to jump in–everybody in Pawtucketville had the perfect opportunity to commit suicide coming home every night–that is why we lived deep lives—)

The full moon this night was the moon of death. We, my mother and I rounded the corner of Pawtucket and Moody (cattycorner across the home of the French Canadian St. Joseph’s parochial Jesuit brothers, my fifth-grade teachers, gloomy men in their black mid sleep now), and stepped on the planks of the Moody Street Bridge and headed over the canal which after a huge stonewall offered the rest of the waterbed dug in primord-rock to the river that dug it with its lovekiss tongues–

A man carrying a watermelon passed us, he wore a hat, a suit in the warm summer night; he was just on the boards of the bridge, refreshed, maybe from a long walk up slummy swilly Moody and its rantankling saloons with the swinging doors, mopped his brow, or came up through Little Canada or Cheever or Aiken, rewarded by the bridge of eve and sighs of stone–the great massive charge of the ever stationary ever yearning cataracts and ghosts, this is his reward after a long dull hot dumb walk to the river thru houses–he strides on across the bridge– We stroll on behind him talking about the mysteries of life (inspired we were by moon and river), I remember I was so happy-something in the alchemy of summernight, Ah Midsummer Night’s Dream, John a Dreams, the clink of clock on rock in river, roar–old gloor-merrimac figalitating down the dark mark all spread–I was happy too in the intensity of something we were talking about, something that was giving me joy.

Suddenly the man fell, we heard the great thump of his watermelon