Once, aged ten, I was an imaginative and adventurous
Closet archaeologist: my golden mask in Tut’s tomb
Was a pair of earphones once used with a radio set
About 1930; my mind’s ear worked beautifully
In those days, and I picked up messages from
My fellow heroes slogging through Normandy,
Shrinking the Kursk pocket, battering Tarawa,
And, fading to reality, if you touched the jacks
To almost any metal, you could hear static
Bravely trying to break through to meaning
Especially if a storm was building, a surge
In the level of white noise meaning lightning
Far away, but there were no other signals
That a ten year-old could decipher, just
“Snap, crackle, pop” like the ads for cereal,
Meaning nothing, but a mild sort of fun.
My wife says I should footnote Kursk pocket
Or substitute Belgian bulge because nobody
Recalls the Russians crushed the main force
Of Hitler’s army there, and she reckons
Others cannot bring back that name if she
Cannot and it is still risky to recall such things.
She is seventy-four and does not hear
High notes clearly of late; I turn up
The television and car radio volume
For her and translate mumbled speech because
I love her, and, frankly, I love footnoting, too.
In my eighth decade I must footnote a lot
Because those to whom I talk get a year younger
Every year and never ever study history.
Recently I whispered “snap, crackle, pop” to her
While we were hearing a talk on Goya’s etchings;
Those horrifying images came not only from seeing
Things as they are more clearly than most of us
Can take but also from inside his head where
His inner ear made constant noise without meaning,
Creating monsters in his dreams and forcing him
Into isolation from those who can silence
Reality in a way that real truth-hearers cannot.
My wife recalls my saying “snap, crackle, pop” then
Loves the fearful Goya etchings dearly and will thrill
To the “Anvil Chorus” at the opera tonight, although
Some softer high notes will blur for her, and I am
Aware of the tinnitus that is always with me now
Although I shall be able to ignore it at the opera.
Our hearing is good enough, and we shall likely
Avoid the torture that afflicted Goya or even
The silence that keeps us from full communion
From some of our snappiest and most crackling friends.
But while the senses last my ramblings continue,
Thinking “snap, crackle, pop” as it honed Goya’s dreams
And recalling the first time I heard of that horrid noise
In a biography of a man once universally known
But now fading because the fame of a merchant prince
Does not last as long as that of an artist who makes us see.
Frank W. Woolworth had a century of fame, made
Hundreds of millions, was a byword for cheapness,
Left a tall building, spectacularly unhappy heirs,
And a now obsolescent revolution in retailing.
He also suffered from “snap, crackle, pop deafness
Made worse by ambient noise and decreed a mansion
Soundproofed as perfectly as eighty years ago knew how,
But the steady thump of a drainage pump made his
Millions in investment worthless for his use:
One more footnote from a footnote-loving writer
Whose memories of “snap, crackle, pop” reverberate still.
