In Memoriam: Gregory Corso

3/26/1930-1/19/2001

Mikhail Horowitz

Adios, Mad Yak!
& if in the tender scheme of things you do come back,

as a herald bearing scented wine
for those whose criminal nimbi shine,

or a lucid oaken Druid mentoring
lithic hipsters in the art of off-centering,

or a scamming jackal in Pharaoh’s boat,
or simply as a clear eye in God's mote,

I pray we tarry here to hear you still:
your wide-eyed melodious wiseguy trill,

your deathless heckling of lesser psalmists,
minor croakers & tenured embalmists,

your corvid kvetch & unkempt caw,
of scoffless cosmos the last scofflaw.

Meanwhile, the poems — they're what we keep
as you with Keats & Shelley sleep,

& reading them we have the best
of Gregory, that illumined pest

who drove his picaroon Muse to drink
& climbed Parnassus to pee in the sink.

c.2001