James Dickey: The Selected Poems

The Celebration

THE CELEBRATION All wheels; a man breathed fire, Exhaling like a blowtorch down the road And burnt the stripper's gown Above her moving-barely feet. A condemned train climbed from the earth Up stilted nightlights zooming in a track. I ambled along in that crowd Between the gambling wheels At carnival time with the others Where the dodgem cars shuddered, sparking On grillwire, each in his vehicle half In control, half helplessly power-mad As he was in the traffic that brought him. No one blazed at me; then I saw My mother and my father, he leaning On a dog-chewed cane, she wrapped to the nose In the fur ofexhausted weasels. I believed them buried miles back In the country, in the faint sleep Ofthe old, and had not thought to be On this ofall nights compelled To follow where they led, not losing Sight, with my heart enlarging whenever I saw his crippled Stetson bob, saw her With the teddy bear won on the waning Whip ofhis right arm. They laughed; She clung to him; then suddenly The Wheel ofwheels was turning The colored night around. They climbed aboard. My God, they rose Above me, stopped themselves and swayed 80 Fifty feet up; he pointed With his toothed cane, and took in The whole Midway till they dropped, Came down, went from me, came and went Faster and faster, going up backward, Cresting, out-topping, falling roundly. From the crowd I watched them, Their gold teeth flashing, Until my eyes blurred with their riding Lights, and I turned from the standing To the moving mob, and went on: Stepped upon sparking shocks Of recognition when I saw my feet Among the others, knowing them given, Understanding the whirling impulse From which I had been born, The great gift ofshaken lights, The being wholly lifted with another, All this having all and nothing To do with me. Believers, I have seen The wheel in the middle of the air Where old age rises and laughs, And on Lakewood Midway became In five strides a kind ofloving, A mortal, a dutiful son. Buckdancer's Choice 81 ...