Barbara Louise Balfour, Dean of Men's daughter
her dad was cock of the university walk
professor of cellular biology
ombudsman, civic minded activist,
a duck hunter hidden in his blind.
a duck hunter hidden in his blind.
He twice won the Hope Award
"but I never had any," Barbara would say,
"not from him and not from my mother."
As faculty wives do Mrs. Balfour sought self-betterment
auditing graduate courses in the English Department
including one on the 20th century American novel
the prof kept talking about alienation
till one day Mrs. Balfour raised her hand and spoke,
"I don't understand why all these characters have to be lonely.
with all the many clubs and societies they could join."
I thought then of Barbara Louise,
alone with the alone, unjoined, unappeased.
Schizophrenia has never been explained
the Greek simply means broken-heartedness.
Explain that to me, explain it to her father and mother--
a teen breaks in two, and the parts start yacking at each other.
Split-brained Barbara went back into asylum.
"I don't have to live like this," she said.
"Crafty Barbara acted sane," she’d tell me,
“they let her out of her cell, a few days later she was dead."
A decade later her prophesy came true.
Daddy and Mama were Barb’s two faces—
the gifted girl who wrestled with The Faerie Queene
and the unclubbable one who couldn’t understand people.
Where are you tonight, sweet Louise
as I visit the white ashes they made of you
“I’m a woman made of paper,” you used to say—
the ones you wrote, the ones you read
the one they’d stamp when you were dead.
Did you ignite like paper at Fahrenheit 451
in the roar of that crematorium
when you became Daddy’s duck and shot yourself in the head?
