The labor to breathe that younger, rawer air:
St. Mark’s last football game with Groton lost on the ice-crust,
the sunlight gilding the golden polo coats
of boys with country seats on the Upper Hudson.
Why does that stale light stay? First Form hazing,
first day being sent on errands by an oldboy,
Bobby Delano, cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt –
deported soused off the Presidential yacht
baritoning You’re the cream in my coffee…
his football, hockey, baseball letter at 15;
at 15, expelled. He dug my ass with a compass,
forced me to say “My mother is a whore.
My freshman year, he shot himself in Rio,
odious, unknowable, inspired as Ajax.
Robert Lowell, 1917-1977 – “Bobby Delano” from Collected Poems
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