Summer was closing, and he moved through the last of it,
finding a park with fairground music
coming from somewhere behind the trees.
Walking round, he understood that the funfair
is nothing to do with cork-shoots or coconut shies,
the carousel, the booster or the bumper rides,
not balloons-and-darts, not the cotton-candy,
ice-cream, salt water taffy or fries—it’s fear,
it’s the high-wheel of fortune and despair: that
thin glimpse of joy and freedom, before
rattling back to earth, loose-legged and spinning.The real carnival is the other side—
beyond the midway, the concession stands, ‘Hot dogs
a nickel, three for a dime’, the merry-go-round
with its lights and bobbing horses, the churning calliope,
shouts, screams, sprays of laughter, gimcracks, baubles,
stuffed animals, those feather-headed
Kewpie dolls on sticks,
the children crying out, the barkers calling.
Follow the lights:
the colored electric bulbs strung up
on spitting wires, the smell of burning fat and engine oil,
cheap perfume, sweat and food and dung.
Here are the pinheads, the half-boys, the lobster-boys,
snake-men, midgets; the cage
and the geek inside, the man with the horrors,
waiting to eat the heads off chickens
for a bed of wet straw and a pint of rye.This is not the worst.
The worst is the hall of mirrors
where you catch sight of yourself, twisted,
swollen, unrecognizable.
Then a beautiful woman—your wife, your lover.
Then it’s you again: old, crippled;
her as a turning witch, you as the held man.
And you blow every piece of your glass apart.
It’s the worst thing in the world,
catching sight of yourself.The next day, the carnival is gone.
All that’s left is the flattened grass
and trodden ground,
the litter of popcorn boxes,
Dixie cups and empty bottles.
It looks like the place
where some huge, fantastic beast had foraged
and lain for a while
before moving on.