Rodney Nelson

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CALIFORNIA HALL

no rain that winter night in a kind of wartime

and more than it could hold were there

                     wanted to see

and hear the poets if they could

                     mainly to be

at the reading and in a velveteen jumpsuit

Ferlinghetti strummed an autoharp and intoned

                                       get the hell outta

                                       here Doctor Hare

                     McClure in

a leather jacket ran the word out to the crowd

in the street

                     Levine did not have a blue collar

Brautigan did a navy p-coat and were smoke

and words and gallon jugs of wine but no mention

yet of the wanted hunted hero they meant to

raise money for

                     the wife’s late arrival brought that

word and from the lectern sumptuous Levertov

handed out syllabi that no one could pocket

                     the very short

poem Brautigan read had the

name

                                       Rommel

                     in it and a Bishop of too much

elegance and dignity got up also with

a cant on an earlier marked dark hero in

                                       bedlam

and all had come to the hall this one time

in this time and city not only for a man

but to decry the kind of war going on in

the night around it and with smoke and wine and loud

poetry to celebrate the light they would make

within

                     so everyone belonged

                     elegant

                     other

it seemed everyone had moved toward

everyone

                     many would not belong again