Bela

Some night ask him the story

how he escaped Hungary in a womb of straw,

became a sailor and quit sailing forever

in New Orleans, where he declared himself

to the bored authorities Bela Blasko,

thirty-nine, five-ten, hair and eyes black.

Stagehands were his closest friends, he said,

and his favorite dish was “Cabbage, stuffed.”

What sort of thing makes you angry? “Talk.”

When I need to retreat from myself he appears,

figure from the moon’s side of the mind.

The overturned tarantula of his hands.

Bat-eyebrow. The open casket effect.

“It is the women who love horror,” he said.

“They write me letters of a horrible type.

Was I into that sort of thing.” In 1955

he sold his stamp collection for morphine.

Only Ed Wood in angora would hire him

for free. “Horror,” he told a reporter,

“Is not what it used to be.” But that Easter

in 1916 he played Jesus in Bucharest.

He kept the passion-play still on his mantle,

diffused light, cheeks sucked in and hollow,

staring uncertainly up at his crown.