The 10 Days Of Gregory Corso's "Clown"

5

Proud boastful buffoon! at full your fancies
swing swift youngyear to oldyear.

Is it for Death you rend black profit,
this meagre vanity deserved me?

It is life has flawed my gentle song;

sad intelligence examples my secret rich behavior,
o foremost physician at my dying side.

Good tricker! I distinguish your twisted floors
your ribboned furniture, your anguished doors.

Ho! you good mad pest of joy!
I won't stab your eyes with night,

or place a watchman's apey grapple
to nab you with his moral tickle.

You are not laughable
You have never been laughable
You have always been you, clown!
--a graft of lunacy on heaven's diadem.

Yet I die in thee;
fill your heart my tomb--

Forgive me, lovely one;
o there's that in me wishes each laugh
would knit an eternity of hilarity!

No, I shan't crowd your brainy grave;
it's enough I climb your jolly ladder
and have planets kick dust in my eyes.

Don't despair kind child of joy,
you'll get to God
and ease His dreadful tightrope.