Barney’s in recovery
from lifelong bigshotism
and a PhD in wiseassery.

His world just wasn’t his’n,
having become too grandiose for Barney
to manage despite the unmerited grace of baptism.

His careen into carny
had derailed his family’s dreams
for him and he had dodged the army,

making his patriotic dad scream;
yet he didn’t know until late in the game,
when even dad’s ashes were downstream,

for whom he’d been named.
Fast friends had called him Barnum,
as in come-one-come-all, but his given name

not really so common
was in scriptural fact Barnabas
as in Cypriot-come-to-Jerusalem.

He’d always looked past
any connection to be seen
with a religious heritage vast.

So said Barney:
what does some old Jew
from Cyprus have to do with me?

It was, then, news
to him to learn, No Barnabas no Paul,
but Barney was so deep in the self-absorbed blues

that it took a great fall,
like Humpty’s from his wall
or that of the horse-riding Saul,
for Barney to have any chance at all.

His plans were not of speeches, hymns, or songs,
though “Lo, He Comes” and Psalm the First were tops
on any list he idly scribbled on
remaining scraps of foolscap in his head.
The planning was no act of art like, say,
by Balanchine or Serge Diaghilev.
The dancers had roles preassigned: the priest,
the altar boys, the undertakers bored
and glancing at their gold timepieces. No,

dear Barney, all his life, while drunk or dry,
was ever working on his last guest list—
who’d come, who’d weep, and who would blow him off—
then plotting ways to get them there en masse.
His life, past 25, was less a plan
for paradise than ruse for making sure
the pews would teem and tears would spurt
when he was taken for his final ride,
no matter what lame homily or
insufficient eulogy was said.

It was the old mindset from summer stock,
from road shows to the sticks and pissant towns.
For Barney it was all about the take:
beat drums and put those asses in the seats.
He knew (he’d been to funerals) that one
must not live past one’s time if one desires
what may be falsely viewed as a full house;
when seen in parallax from very back,
the scattered heads collapse into a mass
and late arrivals whisper to themselves,
”That Barney—boy—he had a lot of friends!”
Don’t live too long: the obsequies for men
past 90 can be quite the spare affairs—
which fed straight into Barney’s strategy:
to cultivate young friends who’d outlive him.

But even Barney’s bright enough to see
that all his planning is but vanity—
imagining what’s left from one-act plays,
what stays when lines are all soliloquies.

He knows full well that when the lights go black
and all rush toward the signs that say “He goes”
(sing ho for Barney’s little Latin joke)
and head into the street to find their cars
and hurry Barney-less back into life,
where he’ll be but a fading fetid scent,
his mien already dimming in their minds,
there’ll be, there is but one man left to give
a final thought to Barney now they’re gone.

The organist dusts lovingly his keys
and closes shut his hymn books in the choir loft.
This last lone mourner tugs at ragged coat
and trundles down the steps to where he lay
and even now gives one quick wistful thought
to Barney, humming “Lo He Comes with Clouds
Descending,” killing lights and shaking head
and creeping out into the fleeting world.

By rights this should be my last Barney poem, my sixth.
He’s dead, right? We shall see.

And sitting now above the view,
at peace upon a Common bench,
he gazes past the dry Frog Pond,
above still carousel as well,
to crisscross paths where men and girls,
quite Escher-like, perambulate.

He’s come at last to peace with age,
his awkward, daft ineptitude,
his failing grip on self and sight,
his ever-weaker grasp of things,
though certain as he’s ever been
of something real, not there, right here.

Back forty years ago, he sought
such peace beneath those trellised trees
dossed rough with other drunks—now dead,
he’s sure—how could they have dried out?
Now, Barney, sober, sane, unseen,
sits prayerfully awash in light.

This is my fifth Barney poem. The others can be found here.

It was written following a recent walk (mine, not Barney’s!) through the Boston Public Garden and Common. I was returning to the train at North Station from the Back Bay home of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, the beautiful St Clement Eucharistic Shrine. If you come to Boston, don’t miss it.

being forced to climb
a muddy slope
yet wasting time.

Too late, no hope,
and soaked in shame,
he clutches rope,

no one to blame
but some dumb sin
that isn’t named.

It’s there in him,
this nagging bell,
unlovely, dim.

What will he tell
when he gets there;
the stink of hell

is everywhere.
This endless road—
no light, no air.

He seeks a code
to calculate
how to unload

what at this date
is sopped in fear
but now—too late.

There are no tears,
just this dark dread
with no light near

and miles ahead
and hills to climb
and miles ahead

This is my fourth Barney poem, and I’m still not entirely sure who Barney is. The others are Barney’s Name, Changes in Barney, and, my favorite, Barney Rediscovers Improv.

I did write this poem after waking up from a dreadful dream, with a recurring shape and smell. Being a generally happy Christian man, I am rocked by dark dreams like this. What are they anyway and where from and then, so, who am I?

No script, no blocking, just a problem posed,
with but a single actor facing him,
he improvised as if afloat in air.
He felt such trust for what fell in between
the two of them: the single flood, plus truth,
plus quiet watchful eyes beyond the dark.

For reasons he could not explain, he felt
a safety in these unmoored colloquies
not felt again for forty-some-odd years,
not till he staggered reeking into church
(let’s make that, basement of a church) and said,
My name is Barney and I am a drunk.

The voices chiming Hi, Hi Barney, stilled
his hands, his quavering heart, his nattering tongue.
A peace he hadn’t known since that dark stage
came over him. He felt enfolded, safe
from all that hounded him or had till then.
Recovering at last, he came to faith.

In what? Improvisation with a twist:
abandonment to what each moment held
for him and those around him. Most of all,
in his director, unseen as before,
yet more sustaining, like his own true self,
a rhyming voiceless presence in the wings.

This is my third Barney poem, a series that began without knowing just who Barney was. The first poem, “Barney’s Name,” written to mark the memorial of St. Barnabas, is here. The second, “Changes in Barney,” is here.

The photo (reproduced below) is from a production of “The Knack . . . and How to Get It,” staged by the wonderful Jim Cavanaugh for the Mount Holyoke College Summer Theatre in 1970, the year I turned nineteen. I played Tom (right) and Michael Brindisi, whom I loved as a friend and admired as an artist, played Colin (left).

Recently, I searched for Mike on line and found that he had died. His story is here.

Our onstage hijinks were not improvised in performance, but surely they had resulted from much improv in rehearsal. Like Barney, I loved improv, and like him I rediscovered it in sober faith.

Imagine my surprise
when mad Barney marched by
like roses on parade,
his clothes not raising smiles
in editors of Style,
yet still, though missing teeth,
a gaze devoid of grief,
agape with unkempt joy.

The silly songs he sang
and sotto voce praise
now he had found a Friend
just made me laugh, just laugh,
as Barney danced straight in
and fell on bleeding knees
while weeping like a bride
borne above a threshold by the groom.

My second poem about Barney, though I’m still not sure who he is. The first poem is here.

His world just wasn’t his’n,
having become too grandiose for Barney
to manage despite the unmerited grace of baptism.

His careen into carny
had derailed his family’s dreams
for him and he had dodged the army,

making his adoptive dad scream;
yet he didn’t know until late in the game,
when even dad’s ashes were downstream,

for whom he’d been named.
Fast friends had called him Barnum,
as in come-one-come-all, but his given name

not really so common
was in scriptural fact Barnabas
as in Cypriot-come-to-Jerusalem.

He’d always looked past
any connection to be seen
with a religious heritage vast.

So said Barney:
what does some old Jew
from Cyprus have to do with me?

It was, then, news
to him to learn, No Barnabas no Paul,
but Barney was so deep in the self-absorbed blues

that it took a great fall,
like Humpty’s from his wall
or that of the horse-riding Saul,
for Barney to have any chance at all.

This strange poem had a strange genesis.

It has at least three sources: my desire to write for St. Barnabas Day (today, June 11); my confirmation sixty years ago at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church; and my friendship with CW, the poetry lover I’ve written about before, who turned me on to the Robinson poems of Weldon Kees (1914–1955?).

The result you have in front of you. Could it be the first of a set of Barney poems? Might they be autobiographical? Who knows?

If Weldon Kees and his Robinson poems are news to you, as they were to me, here’s an intro, including the poet himself reading three of the Robinson poems.