C.J. Whitman & 2 More

by Jack D. Harvey (July 2025)

C.J. Whitman
(Killed twelve, wounded thirty-three,
University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1966)
–
Blessed are those
who run amok
in our times
reason is not
the law of life,
never has been:
that’s why so many
ride the black horse
in Plato’s piece.
The tower is
lonely and high,
power comes easy
as we look down:
like boys playing
in a tree,
we throw apples
and exorcize hope
with bombs.
–
The phoenix
was a bird
that was idolatrous;
violence was no part
of its nature.
It lived alone
in the wastes;
but in its final flight
by desire
the finite became eternal;
in a bonfire of delight
the I murdered the me.
–
In the cities,
in the country,
there is no hermitage
and the madman
bolts the door
only in his dreams.
We are all plugged in;
wires stream around
us like Medusa’s
gang of hair.
–
You ask,
what does he do
in the tower?
This madman in sanctuary.
He sacrifices?
Or does he warn us
that the ark is ready,
and the iron-bound coast
even now hides its head,
as the flood creeps on.
–
–
–
Self-Portrait
–
Yes, that is me
on my pet pony
only two and a half years old.
–
Him? Father?
No, that’s me four years ago
in my forties.
That old man with
the big dusty hat
and the tired eyes,
that’s me on
three-quarters of a century.
–
Who inverted, who turned
the hourglass so fast,
bent me down and out
of shape like an old plough?
Like old beat-up iron
needing time on the anvil,
but there is no anvil,
there is no smith
to hammer me back in shape,
to straighten me,
to beat back the grains
of sand, falling, falling,
to the bottom of
the unturned glass.
–
Yes, that is me,
going along in time
with a heap of falling sand;
then nothing but ash and shadow,
dead bones
and I won’t be back.
–
–
–
Horace
–
Horace knew what
is winter
what was winter
writing
slow as molasses
by the fire;
centuries and centuries ago
immortal
–
Horace
so far across the sea.
–
–
–

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