At His Last Gig, By Hayden Carruth

At his last gig in horrid Amsterdam--

City to which Camus consigned the fallen--

Ben Webster, Uncle Ben, then on the lam

From Denmark, escaping as always, swollen

And rheumy-eyed, spoke in a somewhat sullen

And more than somewhat smashed voice to the jam

Out front. It was his first speech, and a melan-

choly occasion. “You’re growing and--” ham

That he was “I’m going,” he said. No scam,

However commonplace, wherever stolen;

He said it and he died, and no flim-flam.

But it was obnoxious. He was a felon,

A brute, a drunk, a sob-sister. Yet song

Was in his paradox his whole life long.

From “The Best American Poetry 1993” (Charles Scribner’s Sons: $25.) The editor this year is Louise Gluck. 1993 by David Lehman and Louise Gluck