For Charles Blondin
 |
| From "Blondin: His Life and Performances" (courtesy of Smithsonian Institute) |
Charles
Blondin
I
sing to you on your birthday
a
song of praise
knowing
full well that no one else
has
even heard of you
Blondin?
Blondin?
Isn’t
he a pop star, a footballer?
Wasn’t
he that fascist who?
No,
just a moment, I saw him in that film.
Then
he must have been a friend of Byron’s?
A
Symbolist poet? A politician?
The
truth is
he
was none
but
he was also all of these
for
all of these walk tightropes
one
way or the other
His
real name was Jean-Francois Gravelet
though
he styled himself Charles Blondin
and
he was first presented to the public
aged
five in Saint-Omer
as
“The Little Wonder”
And
what a wonder!
Circus
tightropes anyone can do
with
a little bit of training
a
harness and a safety net
even
the unharnessed headstands and the somersaults
that
were his speciality
But
Niagara Falls
on
a rope stretched 160 feet above the surging water!
Blindfolded!
With
a sack over his head!
Trundling
a wheelbarrow!
With
a man on his back!
On
stilts!
by the need to entertain the thousands
who turned out to watch him crossing
that he stopped half-way
set up a portable grill
cooked and ate an omelette
then had a marksman with a shotgun
in a tugboat down below
fire a bull’s-eye through the hat
that he was wearing
Where
are you now heirs and followers of Blondin
little wonders of the high tightrope?
Where are the artist Blondins
the politician Blondins
the scientist Blondins?
Where are you when we need you?
Have you all retired as he did
to that park in Ealing
where the streams are forded
by neat bridges made of planks
precisely wide enough for wheelchairs
where the nearest thing to a tightrope
is on pulleys in the kiddies’ playground
supervised by trained child-minders
dug in with cement to health and safety guidelines,
and three-foot pile rugs to catch a fall
from what is anyway just six feet?
"In Praise Of Tightrope Walkers" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
You can find David Prashker at:
Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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