University of Northern Iowa

"I Don't Know Why You Say Goodby, I Say Hello": The BeatlesAuthor(s): Terry StokesSource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1968), p. 17Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116877 .

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MARRIED

Quakers perform their own marriage, but I couldn't pass. Your doctor-father

expected at least an Ethical Culture wedding like his. In the room

your mother'd frantically unchristened and reupholstered the week before

Christmas, Rabbi Jacob K. Shankman

presides?in the name of Moses and the God of Israel. Then the champagne? the old dragon knows his champagne?those effervescent relatives, and we

pose hand in hand and cutting the cake.

Twenty-nine stories over Central

Park, its skaters, zoo, and holiday lights. We went to bed early. We're blocked

by pain, fears, fail, wake unresolved from long dark. Rain on Friday. Look, down there's the Met; the American

Museum; that's the Delacorte, where we saw Love's Labour's Lost and Troilus

last summer, courting, promising. You've got an art journal to write; I take in El Greco's Vision; love's

uneasy. Night, Christmas Eve, and we

retired early again. Now marriage makes us, who'd pictured only starry nights, weep. We hold our bodies, our spirits brace, but there's a wall between us. Then between us the tense, immaculate fear gives way before your love. Your love,

my brightest crescent, Ares am I, above the city, the world, the dozen

gates of heaven squeak open; angels cry, carols rise from the ice rink

speakers. We exchange art books, beam, have breakfast in bed. Christ, I love you, Nancy.

John Morgan

GEORGE KEITHLEY, who has appeared in the NAH pre

viously, lives and teaches in Chico, California. "Ash Hol

low" and "After 7his Life We Will Listen" are from an

epic poem-in-progress concerning the ill-fated T)onner party.

JOHN MORGAN, whose poems appear in Paul Carroll's

recently-published anthology, The Young American Poets

(follett), began teaching this fall for the University of Vir

ginia.

TERRY STOKES teaches for Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Tie owns several cats and a Mustang. Tie has

published almost everywhere.

Morgan/Stokes

"I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU SAY GOODBY, I SAY HELLO"?THE BEATLES

After rinsing the gray matter,

oh, fourteen times or so,

"she's still a mystery to me." & I'm all wet,

& not clean.

Look into the grass, do you see the stars? Or is the wall filled with still bland flowers?

My wrists still hold the scars

of love, yes, love lost to a stocky marine

who knew more than

feel-up in the movies.

& I thought, if I wear the T-shirt backward, it will be higher on the neck,

& that will do it.

Ha ha she laughed, ha ha she skipped: you can rub my legs, & you can milk my thighs, but that fella in that uniform,

he fucks out

my eyes.

Buttered popcorn dribbled from our teeth.

Fast tongues slid across the screen.

& I saw how screwed-up it was, & pushed the blade to the flesh,

shooting pool one calm day. It is a thousand dirty years later,

& there should be no war or

guilt implied.

Terry Stokes

November-December, 1968 17

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