Satch Dobrey
A Drunken Toast
to the Memory of Nicholas Joost
(after ‘Enivrez-vous’ by Charles Baudelaire)
With the hollow men you walked, descended the stairs
. each day to punctuate literature
Scholar, editor, poet, decoder of signs
. once, steadfast in your work, now ravaged, gaunt,
though unsteady, “damaged goods” you marched on to teach,
. pausing before each classroom, you lingered
too long, looked skyward before opening the door
. where fluorescent light radiates your skull
and the day’s short dream begins where it last ended.
. With measured steps, to the pulpit of Lit
420 b, pause to catch fading breath, grasping
. lectern, you face improbability—
southern gentleman has entered prairie classroom.
. You lift your head, and, gazing beyond us,
The Dial long past, Mexico, the Netherlands,
. a sunset mirrored against the back wall,
you appear to drift in and out of consciousness
. to cryptic hallucinations of time
before contemplating the alexandrine’s rhyme
. and move to English and pentameter.
Your voice cracked; still you coughed a verse from memory,
. excused yourself, turning phrase into time
and time into rhythm that begs the mother tongue,
. for we must know why, one truth you divined—
‘Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps’!
. Clinging to this line, fist frozen and bent,
lifting a palm to your ear as if a seashell,
. upon hearing no ocean swell inside
or any sound at all from us gathered, lost souls,
. embark with symbolists you theorized,
the ghosts of the sea and the voices of the dead.
. From Coleridge and Poe to Baudelaire,
we watched the tortured albatross take flight once more
. and with your broken wing assuaged our fear
of death and all matters else left upon the shore.
About the writer:
Satch Dobrey has a B.A. in English from SIU at Edwardsville and an M.A. in International Affairs from Washington University in St Louis. Poetry appears in Bluestem, Rampike, PØST-, Grey Borders Magazine, Red Earth Review, Painters and Poets and Blotterature; fiction, in Tribe Magazine and the Blue Fifth Review and CNF, in O: JA&L.
Image: Fleurs du mal: Destruction by Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926). Illustration for Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal at Paris by Charles Meunier. 1900. Public domain.
