Tie, The

The other time I wore a tie my friend Mark

had called me that Berrigan had died

and there was a funeral at St Mark's

and Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery were speaking

on his behalf to those who guard the mountain

and admitting it was a hundred stages I stopped in

a Goodwill to purchase the tie and a jacket as well

which made me gaze like a priest or a head

waiter at a French restaurant in the upper Fifties,

the tie alone gave similar a look of dignity

and smooth stiffened my neck when it came to lowlife

poet and painters, dozens of whom were there

filling up the pews; and there was a painting by

Alice Neel of Berrigan in an armchair

facing the slips and afterwards we walked, even

sort of marched down next to the first Avenue to the apartment,

someone in forehead holding the painting up,

only Berrigan was naked and the fat rolled

over the cutting side of the armchair and Alice-Alice

Notley-was sitting in the back bedroom

to escape the praises and afterwards Mark and I

walked back to my car and upon the way I threw

the tie and jacket into a large wire basket,

my short-sleeved shirt was soaked and we told stories

about his life in the Polish and Ukrainian marshes.

Copyright World verse Incorporated May/Jun 2004

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