IOWA CITY JE REVIENS
By John Birkbeck

As Denis Diderot put it
(I translate recklessly)
It'd be better to be
crazy among the mad
than to be sane alone.

I remember
standing in
front of the
iron elevator door
which even then
was forty years old
waiting to ascend
to the bowels of
academic fright.

I blew the exam
and blew still another
due to short circuitry
involving linear logic
and the romance of
sleight-of-mind.

I remember
the posthumous
advice of
--again--
Monsieur Diderot
upon the loss of
my haunted Irish girl;
"... Love robs
those who have it
of their wit
and gives
it to those
who have none..."

Je reviens, Iowa City,
je reviendrai.

I've become the host and producer of a local cable show called The Poets' Corner. I was born 1930.