Impromptu for Ron Silliman [ballade]

Much of life is happenstance
while destiny & ambitoun joust
some are Proust & some are Faust
comedy might look askance
certidude could bear the cost?
still it was a fine romance

happy gleams the second chance
(much is gained   if little lost)
by the whelm when blithely tossed
oceanic lethal dance?
neither lackey'd nor yet bossed
yes it was a fine romance

many moved away to France
others hovered like a ghost
were the words correctly glossed?
youth & its impertinence!
rocks are lovely when they're mossed
and it was a fine romance

like a skateboard   choosing chance
down the hillside   by the coast
often guest   & sometimes host
vernal   lost in dalliance
diurnally   undone (no boast)
though it be a fine romance

hurried   (more a jog than dance)
worried   (always almost toast)
later   fodder for the roast
(everything is circumstance)
not yet giving up the ghost
this you dub a fine romance?

chill a spell   the wide expanse
opens often   mellows most
some are sober   some are sauced
(distinctions leached of difference)
here's the doorbell   have you flossed?
oh   it was a fine romance!

---

[Inspired or occasioned by Silliman's bit of reminiscence and musing here; (though content of the ballade perhaps draws more from my own imagination than from detailed consideration of Silliman's (or others') career per se). I dub this a ballade, as it's close in feeling (for me) to Villon's; I've not yet bothered to check to what degree the form is on or off from that hoary & exquisite model.]

choosing chance : I borrow this phrase from the late composer/poet Lou Harrison (an utterance, not something he wrote, far as I'm aware). When I chatted with him in the aisle at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (early 1990s I guess, at premiere of his "final symphony,"), I made some passing mention of John Cage. Harrison quipped (alluding to Cage's well-known focus on chance operations):

I'd rather chance a choice than choose a chance.

Now both of those venerables have exited the stage.