GERALD COSTANZO
and digging, of carving out
the central trench,
they had come down
through layers of soil and cement,
through sand rife with shells—
ample debris of a Cenozoic sea-bed—
to arrive at the entrance
of a narrow hollow. A phalanx
entering the darkness,
they were astonished, as they lowered
themselves beneath the rotted
ceiling timbers, at the reflections
their lights gave back
of objects fastened to the walls.
Ancient pictographs—
all the artifacts one could covet
in a findspot. The names
had been affixed
in an archaic plastic script,
decipherable in shallow
embossing: Big Daddy and Dr. Erwin
Stillman; Big Daddy and Patty Duke.
This in the midst of something
in the fallen United States. Big
Daddy and Shecky Greene.
Here was the patriarch
in a thousand proofs, his Little
Mama with her buxom personality.
They began to dust and wash
the relics of this fossil beach,
to preserve something
of their own history. Big Daddy
and Norm Crosby. Big Daddy
and Totie Fields and Jerry Vale.
And since this was all they knew—
all this much—
they assumed they knew it all.