There's a Wallace Stevens poem that freaked the shit out of me when I read it as a kid. It's called "The Emperor of Ice Cream", which sounds nice, right? Everybody loves ice cream! And there's an Ice Cream Emperor! He must be a jolly fellow indeed. I read it as a kid - I was 12, I think - because I was reading "Salem's Lot", Stephen King's vampire novel, and he quotes the poem in the book. It's not really about the benevolent ruler of frozen confections. Here's the whole thing:
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
"Let be be finale of seem / The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream". The double "be" isn't a typo. Freaky. Even at twelve I knew the poem wasn't about the Good Humour Man. It's about prepping a body for a funeral. It's about Death, how it comes for us, how we are all just meat in the end.
I was thinking about this poem while scrolling through Social Media today. Zuckerberg in Washington, desperately trying to retain his human form while speaking to the sub-creatures who imagine that they rule their fellow skin-puppets. Trump getting ready to bomb Syria and fire Mueller. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
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| All of us, looking at social media. |
But!
Yesterday Clayton Richard did this:
It's mandatory that we use #PitchersWhoRake here.— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 10, 2018
But this mammoth dinger by @CRThrees shows a pitcher who can KA-RUSH 💣 pic.twitter.com/I4xw9NBmx2
Yes, THAT Clayton Richard. His three-run homer was enough to keep the Padres on top, and they ended up beating the Rockies 7-6. Will they lose to the Rockies today? Probably. For this is the world that Wallace Stevens was trying to tell us about. The one that never, ever ends well, and when it does the best we can hope for is that there's some big mustachioed dude whipping up some tasty and comforting concupiscent curds for the rest of us, even if it's for all of the wrong reasons. Still, what's the point of baseball if not to provide us with fleeting moments of joy, even hope?
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