Louis Gallo’s poem Dixie appeared here as part of Contributor Series 8: Feast and Famine. Is there a common theme running through that poem and this one?
Faust Now
By Louis Gallo
By Louis Gallo
I don’t know why I’m reading this stupid
History of American Pewter. Who cares
about pewter besides bald antiquarians
and fanatics of metallurgy,
though the stuff has been around since Rome,
probably before? Just tin mixed with
some bismuth, lead and copper.
I’m reading The History of Pewter
for the same reason I read that thick
Encyclopedia of Gems and Minerals,
The Hittite Civilization, Salt Throughout
the Ages … because I’m Faust who wants
to know everything, the nature of alloys,
of valences and isotopes, why the Medes
disappeared out of history, the atomic
structure of crystals, how anyone could
come up with the idea of making tankards
out of pewter, which I wouldn’t dream of
in a million years. Satan has never
offered me a deal, no omniscience,
no Helen of Troy, nothing for my airy,
ignorant soul. And don’t think I haven’t tried
to conjure Him up. We lose a hundred
thousand brain cells a day after age forty,
so it’s getting rough to be Faust.
Cells evaporating right and left,
each containing an iota or two of pewter,
a defunct Mede, quartz, sodium chloride …
no wonder deals are a
thing of the past,
thing of the past,
no wonder Helen swans her neck the other way,
no wonder I’m about to start
The Ultimate Periodic Table.
Faust is memory. Faust is desire.
Faust is hell. Faust is heaven.
To be Faust now you’ve got to
cram it in on your own time
and forget Green Stamps altogether.
