Three Horse Operas

By Robert Polito b. 1951 Robert Polito

for Patti Smith

At the end of Bing Crosby’s Riding High his horse

Will be buried in the clay of the racetrack where he fell,

As a lesson for all of us. Sad, waggish Bing,

The Mob didn’t want Broadway Bill to win, so the jockey

Pulled on the reins until the thoroughbred, straining

Over the finish line first, collapsed, heart attack.

I loved you like a guitar string breaking

Under the conviction of a clumsy hand—

Something like that . . . I suppose I must have

Been thinking of you and your complex and beautiful band,

Except the image demands I hold the guitar,

If not you, and the broken string, as

Over and over loudspeakers call riders to the starting gate.

The track bartender and a teller, a sharpshooter and the chess master

Wrestler, the petty con man and a cop, reprise their parts.

The heist gang dons clown masks, and

Sherry will betray George, and Johnny can’t love Fay,

And the fortune in the suitcase just blows away.

Source: Hollywood & God (University of Chicago Press, 2009)

Biography

Poet and scholar Robert Polito was born in 1951 in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his PhD from Harvard and has served since 1992 as director of Creative Writing at The New School. On January 23, it was announced that Robert Polito will become the second president of the Poetry Foundation on July 8, 2013. Polito’s collections of poetry include Hollywood & God (2009) and Doubles (1995). His poetry blends narrative and lyric . . .

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