My old man was dead when they brought him in and while a doctor was listening to his heart with a thing plugged in his ears I heard a shot up the track that meant they’d killed Gillford. I lay down beside my old man when they carried the stretcher into the hospital room and hung onto the stretcher and cried and cried and he looked so white and gone and so awfully dead and I couldn’t help feeling that if my old man was dead maybe they didn’t need to have shot Gillford. His hoof might have got well. I don’t know. I loved my old man so much. Then a couple of guys came in and one of them patted me on the back and then went over and looked at my old man and then pulled a sheet off the cot and and spread it over him; and the other was telephoning in French for them to send the ambulance to take him out to Maisons. And I couldn’t stop crying, crying and choking, sort of, and George Gardner came in and sat down beside me on the floor and put his arm around me and says, “Come on Joe old boy. Get up and we’ll go out and wait for the ambulance.” George and I went out to the gate and I was trying to stop bawling and George wiped off my face with his handkerchief and we were standing back a little ways while the crowd was going out of the gate and a couple of guys stopped near us while we were waiting for the crowd to get through the gate and one of them was counting a bunch of mutuel tickets and he said, “Well Butler got his all right.” The other guy said, “I don’t give a good goddam if he did, the crook. He had it coming to him on the stuff he’s pulled.” “I’ll say he had,” said the other guy and tore the bunch of tickets in two. And George Gardner looked at me to see if I’d heard and I had all right and he said, “Don’t you listen to what those bums said Joe. Your old man was one swell guy.” But I don’t know. Seems like when they get started they dont leave a guy nothing. TEN POEMS MITRAIGLIATRICE The mills of the gods grind slowly; But this mill Chatters in mechanical staccato. Ugly short infantry of the mind, Advancing over difficult terrain, Make this Corona Their mitrailleuse. OKLAHOMA All of the Indians are dead (a good Indian is a dead Indian) Or riding in motor cars— (the oil lands, you know, they’re all rich) Smoke smarts my eyes, Cottonwood twigs and buffalo dung Smoke grey in the teepee— (or is it myopic trachoma) The prairies are long, The moon rises, Ponies Drag at their pickets. The grass has gone brown in the summer— (or is it the hay crop failing) Pull an arrow out: If you break it The wound closes. Salt is good too And wood ashes. Pounding it throbs in the night— (or is it the gonorrhea) OILY WEATHER The sea desires deep hulls— It swells and rolls. The screw churns a throb— Driving, throbbing, progressing. The sea rolls with love Surging, caressing, Undulating its great loving belly. The sea is big and old— Throbbing ships scorn it.