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Robert Hayden - Witch Doctor
Work rating: Low

I 
He dines alone surrounded by reflections 
of himself. Then after sleep and benzedrine 
descends the Cinquecento stair his magic 
wrought from hypochondria of the well- 
to-do and nagging deathwish of the poor; 
swirls on smiling genuflections of 
his liveried chauffeur into a crested 
lilac limousine, the cynosure 
of mousey neighbors tittering behind 
Venetian blinds and half afraid of him 
and half admiring his outrageous flair. 


       II 
Meanwhile his mother, priestess in gold lamé, 
precedes him to the quondam theater 
now Israel Temple of the Highest Alpha, 
where the bored, the sick, the alien, the tired 
await euphoria. With deadly vigor 
she prepares the way for mystery 
and lucre. Shouts in blues-contralto, ”He’s 
God’s dictaphone of all-redeeming truth. 
Oh he’s the holyweight champeen who’s come 
to give the knockout lick to your bad luck; 
say he’s the holyweight champeen who’s here 
to deal a knockout punch to your hard luck.“ 


       III 
Reposing on cushions of black leopard skin, 
he telephones instructions for a long 
slow drive across the park that burgeons now 
with spring and sailors. Peers questingly 
into the green fountainous twilight, sighs 
and turns the gold-plate dial to Music For 
Your Dining-Dancing Pleasure. Smoking Egyptian 
cigarettes rehearses in his mind 
a new device that he must use tonight. 


       IV 
Approaching Israel Temple, mask in place, 
he hears ragtime allegros of a ”Song 
of Zion“ that becomes when he appears 
a hallelujah wave for him to walk. 
His mother and a rainbow-surpliced cordon 
conduct him choiring to the altar-stage, 
and there he kneels and seems to pray before 
a lighted Jesus painted sealskin-brown. 
Then with a glittering flourish he arises, 
turns, gracefully extends his draperied arms: 
”Israelites, true Jews, O found lost tribe 
of Israel, receive my blessing now. 
Selah, selah.“ He feels them yearn toward him 
as toward a lover, exults before the image 
of himself their trust gives back. Stands as though 
in meditation, letting their eyes caress 
his garments jewelled and chatoyant, cut 
to fall, to flow from his tall figure 
dramatically just so. Then all at once 
he sways, quivers, gesticulates as if 
to ward off blows or kisses, and when he speaks 
again he utters wildering vocables, 
hypnotic no-words planned (and never failing) 
to enmesh his flock in theopathic tension. 
Cries of eudaemonic pain attest 
his artistry. Behind the mask he smiles. 
And now in subtly altering light he chants 
and sinuously trembles, chants and trembles 
while convulsive energies of eager faith 
surcharge the theater with power of 
their own, a power he has counted on 
and for a space allows to carry him. 
Dishevelled antiphons proclaim the moment 
his followers all day have hungered for, 
but which is his alone. 
He signals: tambourines begin, frenetic 
drumbeat and glissando. He dances from the altar, 
robes hissing, flaring, shimmering; down aisles 
where mantled guardsmen intercept wild hands 
that arduously strain to clutch his vestments, 
he dances, dances, ensorcelled and aloof, 
the fervid juba of God as lover, healer, 
conjurer. And of himself as God.
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