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For Laurel and Hardy on My Workroom Wall

By David Wagoner b. 1926 David Wagoner

They’re tipping their battered derbies and striding forward

In step for a change, chipper, self-assured,

Their cardboard suitcases labeled

Guest of Steerage. They’ve just arrived at the boot camp

Of the good old French Foreign Legion

Which they’ve chosen as their slice of life

Instead of drowning themselves. Once again

They’re about to become their own mothers and fathers

And their own unknowable children

Who will rehearse sad laughter and mock tears,

Will frown with completely unsuccessful

Concentration, and will practice the amazement

Of suddenly understanding everything

That baffles them and will go on baffling them

While they pretend they’re only one reel away

From belonging in the world. Their arrival

Will mark a new beginning of meaningless

Hostilities with a slaphappy ending. In a moment,

They’ll hear music, and as if they’d known all along

This was what they’d come for, they’ll put down

The mops and buckets given them as charms

With which to cleanse the Sahara and move their feet

With a calm, sure, delicate disregard

For all close-order drill and begin dancing.

Source: Poetry (April 2001).

Biography

David Wagoner is recognized as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Theodore Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightful and serious body of work. He has won numerous prestigious literary awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and has twice been nominated for the National Book Award. The author of ten . . .

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