ROBERT GIBB

Water Fountains, Vero Beach, 1956

Standing side by side in a back corner
Of the grocery store, identical except
For the hand-lettered signs taped
Above them—COLORED and WHITE— 

That I made a beeline for, drawn
To what I thought were exotic waters.
Imagine my disappointment when
No rainbowed arcs shot nozzle’d 

Into the air, and no milk-hued nectar.
Nor did any of my next attempts
Fountain a single prismed jet,
Which is when the obvious finally

Dawned on me. Hardly the stuff
Of lunch-counters and protests,
The couple of mouthfuls I’d downed
When crossing the color-line, 

Primed for imagined tints. Nor much
Of a protest for those waters, piped
And divided, that I wound up with,
Though in that I was hardly alone. 

 

 

 

Days of 1968

 

i.

“'Let’s talk all night,' he says, 'and live it up,
And not one word about the war!'" 
Du Fu drinking with friends in Chang’an,
Diverting their despair into the poem.

For me, it was the night in San Angelo
When we lived it up with mescal, licks of salt, 
And fresh-cut wedges of lime, the soundtrack
To The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

That someone bought as a joke growing
More vertiginous every time we played it.
My second year in the Air Force, stationed
Again in Texas—miserable, complicit,

The war in Southeast Asia an enormous grave
Into which they kept tossing bodies.
“Indian Country,” they called it, fighting
The wars of the Wild West once more. 

ii. 

The poster on the back of the record jacket
Hawked the Civil War as “practice”
For the cartoon mayhem of the characters,
Though “The Death of a Soldier”

Was scored for those battle-hymn strings
Where the music grew solemn as the scene.
After that we were back on track
And then some, the final cut on the vinyl

Conjuring up its crescendoed gunfight again—
The shootout in which the titular
Bad man dies. We can almost see
The good-by-definition killer as he plunders

Treasure from one of the graves,
Then leaves the third world ugly in the lurch.
A delirium of shrieks and trumpets.
Nixon in New Hampshire shilling “peace.”

 

 

Want more from this poet?
You can buy Sightlines here, Winner of Prize Americana.

              

                                                                          

       

           

         

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