Balancing Act

John Ciardi

Somewhere between Miss Porter (seventh grade)
And streetcars of a hookey into town,
I keep the picture of a vaudeville down
And a trained seal that blew a horn and played
A nickelodeon's worth of afternoon.
Then for an encore came the balancing acts
That ended on a ball the clown-and-master
Had painted like a globe. In cataracts
Of balcony applause, faster and faster,
The globe spun and a spinning spotlight whirled
For the last act: the bright enameled world
Blurring beneath a dancing animal
'Whose one intent was not to fall.

All moralizing is a tour de force.
What I remember is how all of us
Have seen our globes spin under, faster, faster,
While guns that offered noises like applause
Wished us a facsimile disaster:
The world spun out from under, the trained seal

Sprawled on its back, the clown amid the laughter
Changing the subject to somersault and cartwheel.

Well then, there is no moral. I arrive
By luck and animal-balance like the seal's
Past sea and continent to stay alive,
While overhead the chipped proscenium peels
Through all the dust of audiences gone
To leave my animal and my whirling stone
Exhibited in the trained counter-motion
That keeps the animal from disaster.
The question is: who is the clown and master?

Well, I invented him out of memory,
The image of the pathetic fallacy,
To say chance wears a ruff and polka dots,
And guns have eyes, and dice, have spots,
And boys I loved are lying in the sea
That closes on them perfectly.

And we are back to do our dance
Under the auspices of chance,
The seal performing for a fish
Snapped from the air amid applause,
And I to earn the food of wish
Against the famine of remorse.