Scott Fitzgerald, in memoriam

He grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota
Out at the edge of the prairie's yearning
Where everything was flat and honest
And a boy could grow tall and test his creativity
Because the land held no boundaries

Then the train clattered east
To where the beautiful and the wealthy
Congregated together at garden parties and fraternity mixers,
Those who turned their educated noses up
And away from those who were raised up
In flat little provincial towns
Two whistle stops from the end of the line,
Who shook off the coaldust and the miles of travel
And put on the oxford-cloth, worsted wool, straw boaters and celluloid collars
And wandered through Brooks Brothers
Searching for a look from anyone.

But there was always that genealogical distance
So what could you expect?
So the curse of his heritage was handy
Such a sad, maudlin cliche
And despite his great talents,
A strong mid-western American face
And a sweet confection, a girl from South Alabama
To take his tuxedoed arm, through the endless parties
And share the dreary mornings after all the drinking
And offer a last chance for forgiveness and belonging
At the end of one last good year
Just to lead him on and on and on

Until he found a type of peace, perhaps,
In the Byzantine boudoirs of Hollywood,
The last stop and final deposit of a blunted American dream,
That libretto concieved for an operatic aria of promise and hope
First keened through the scream of a mid-western blizzard
Peering through the frosty glass
Of a front room window
At Winter's darkening gloom
In a brown little brick house
On a grey little street
In a provincial little city
Covered with the ashes and coaldust from its chimneys,
Under the gaze of T. J. Eckelburg,
Two stops from the end of the line.