University of Northern Iowa

Gargantua WalkingAuthor(s): Dave KellySource: The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), p. 26Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117971 .

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and responses," the article was subtitled, "Misun

derstandings, pitfalls and imperfections should not deter us from devising better ways to advise policy makers."

Because of the attempts to initiate a Science Court to

hold hearings in west-central Minnesota, the court idea

has received considerable attention in the state. Perhaps

the court will be given its first trial in Minnesota. Op timists who insist on finding something good in every situation can look to Science Court publicity as one good thing to come out of the farmers' and the power

cooperatives' disagreement. There is little else of good in

that dispute. D

DAVE KELLY

GARGANTUA WALKING

How long do I have to march in this patriot rain, this gift from the moron cloud, how long shoulder to shoulder

with the widow who hears her son scratching all night in the walls of the house she no longer lives in?

On Tuesday the Apostle Paul went over his letters: a comma

here, a new paragraph there, respelling the poor word, fish.

All day Wednesday we waited for the mail to go out in the rain, for the tall, lonely man in the waterproof coat to avoid

the dogs on his way here, for the ground to become its measure.

Maybe it's because of my fist, maybe because of the man

in my fist, sorry from alcohol, sorry because I've broken his jaw;

maybe I've become the boy again who could knock down an uncle

at the age of eight and whose tooth became a tomb at fifteen.

Walking along then, in the idiot downpour, on the bleak road;

walking along in bad shoes, the fish sour, the loaves wet

and wasted to a fine mould, beans for this, beads for that,

always a boy too soon to mean it when he sings apologies, always

a man too late for the song to return with the rain and its song,

and this is why I became in a day that kind of monster

whose steps shake a whole house, whose anger defies thunder,

whose children shudder even in their sleep at his laughter, at his, ?Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of kingdom come!"

This is why I broke the book open to find its worm, laughed at the nuns with their carts, their x-ray machines, drank ink

and refused to come back, despised sorrow and handshakes

until it was too late, spit at my priest, refused him his apple

and, when the rain sang like snakes, I went out to it.

26 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/Spring 1978

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