Leo Yankevich

John Clare Escapes the Essex Asylum

How romantic they are in his mind,
crouched around the fire singing songs,
their sad emaciated dog behind
them, barking at the moon. He counts the wrongs,
pities them in his way, himself not right
in life, or ever in his troubled head.
He, too, beholds things in a different light.
Today the ale was malty, amber red,
yet like a grunting badger he now runs,
looking for Mary in the hazel woods.
He will not find her, or their ghostly sons.
He’ll spend the night outside the Gypsy camp,
pipe in his mouth, bag full of stolen goods,
his mind warmed by sweet dreams, his body damp.

Hank

He finds himself alone again, pig-drunk
on the third planet from the sun, his thought
maudlin, stale as umpteen years ago,
but fresher than the whisky in his mouth.
Through failure he finds solace in the funk
of 10 o’clock. The Nashville moon has not
yet touched him like the talons of a crow.
One with the evening, he will not fly south,
guitar strapped just behind the sprawling wings
of a misunderstood angel, cough and voice
inspired in the wake of careful choice.
He’ll linger in the drawling words he sings,
the hero of this blue and lonesome story
while love moves on, and basks in all the glory.

Companion Piece

Heraclitus

a dry soul is wisest and best

Biographers write that above all men
he was a lofty and hubristic spirit.
A walking contradiction, he would shout
that Homer should be turned out of the lists
and beaten, and Archilochus as well,
since better to extinguish impertinence,
than to put out fire. He felt that men
should fight for law as much as for their city.
Yet, when requested to make laws for them,
he turned them down, by arguing their city
already had a faulty constitution.
Besides, he had important things to do:
a game of dice with children at the Temple.
(It was there his magnum opus lay.)
Turned misanthrope, he headed for the hills
where for years he fed on grass and plants,
Only when afflicted with edema
would he come back down, asking the physicians
if they could bring drought after heavy rain.
When they said no, he smeared his trunk and face
with ox manure, and dried out in the sun.
He was discovered dead the following day,
his parched lips now two gates to the sahara,
the river in his veins not quite the same.