Frank Stanford
From The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I love You
I got a zero on the test a big F with a red circle around it the question was
what do you know about current events I put down I know Elvis Presley lives up the street ten houses I know my sister's godmother is Louise Fazenda
I know mother stayed in Hollywood with her and Hal Wallis a long time ago
I know she is secretly an actress
I know she went to the Rose Bowl with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard
I know they played oh johnny oh johnny how you can run tennessee got beat
I know captains courageous
I know Gary Cooper's name is Frank
I know morocco mata hari lives of a bengal lancer sgt york the mark of zorro the gaucho we saw it in a tent
I know streetcars of desire and all the Tarzan
moby dick gunga din midsummer's night dream was like me
I know I have read all those men's books that we had
I am a fugitive from a chain gang the crazy piano player red slippers
I know the girl feeling the kiss in the mirror I know the bracelet on the wrist in the tomb
I know the horse head nebula in Orion
I know the elders
I know Wallace Beery is not Pancho Villa
I know the melody of the song sung in the boat
I know mother has an opera Don Juan the lover
the sleep in the tree daddy makes us live like the crew in a shack or a tent I know about the history and culture of Europe and America
I know how the carpetbaggers and the scaliwags brought the colored people to town
head down over a horse
I know the rich are the only ones that had any good old days
I know the black swan
I know the pas de deux
I know drunk women shooting their husbands on Saturday night
I know what is under the cloak
I know the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi
I know the iai the daito the shoto the yoroi doshi the tanto I know forty-seven wave men came from the left to the right
I know the disgrace and death of Lord Asano
I know the rings of saturn and the moons of jupiter
I know the black steed
I know the peg leg keeps a watch in the buzzard's nest
I know the captain of the ghost ship
I know the cockeye with the bucket under his stump
I know I had to stay after school every day for a month on account of somebody's lie
I know if you ask them a question they'll tell you a lie
I know all about that shit I know what some men can't know they gnaw
I know the scoundrels and cowards prey on one another I pray for all
I know the discounted stories
I know for those I love I'll swim to hell and back
I know some by signs others by whispers
I know I'd rather take it on the chin than get it in the back
I know Unferth was a pack rat
I know I will never swear on a pact of lies
I know Banquo says fly
I know there is such a thing as the St. Francis River
I know Gulliver's horses
I know daddy is a mathematician I know mother was a communist
I know the wisest men in the world are a Chinaman and Harpo Marx they never say a word
I know the crowds sometimes like maggots
I know the rusty knife buried in the tree
I know Beowulf probably looked in the mirror at himself every morning just like all the other so-called heroes
I know the bumps on the humpback's face
I know about the bloodstained flour sack
I know the sunken zeroes and the bones the photographs in the cockpit
I know wherever I go I will return
I know Robert Burns
I know life is already giving me its no count gifts it is always slipping that wooden horse into my gate at night
I know the bushwacked animals the hoodwinked girls
I know the exiled lover
I know there was one Inazo Nitobe who wrote about swords
I know the men dragging twelve foot of cottonsack
I know Hammurabi's code was broken by lawyers by bunkum buy it
I know the teachers in the side show the paddles out of my way
I know the houses with the furniture like ghosts
I know the octopus in my dreams the messages of light I receive from the stars the pioneer's mirror
in the evening the supper truck leaves the last bell the tea is in the jars
I can smell it go by the hands are knocking off on the levee I am walking
up and down talking to myself like a bossman like bible talk yea I say
I dream let those that won't believe me believe me the virgin is sighted
on the mount I've laid down Durendal for the virgin I ride with her on the steed
we mosey on over to Elaine and go to the ice house I throw to the line
and win a little enough to buy her a eskimo pie
the lavender garment on the palfrey a sword fight right there I win
the chamber of weeping courtiers
the peckerwood boys picking their nose they lost
the virgins are dismounted the torn dress
some of my buddies around the Round Table everybody has their boots off drinking wine and telling jokes a pretty good time
the boys all passed out the virgin and I are eating a watermelon
we are rubbing our faces in it like it was a soft towel and we was wet
but I am always sad I can't forget
the pyres of the innocent all lined up like a fleet a formation of dead children
the virgins perishing in the ships
the virgins on the prows holding their breasts in their hands leading the battle the widow's bed the horn on the ground
the silver pistols the flute the stolen boots bless all adrift
let the handmaidens be blessed let the dead not go unremembered
the buskins the cestus the shrouds the deadeyes
ship after ship the virgins spreading their legs in the moonlight
the banished youth throwing his discus into the sea
the long swim into exile
I know if you have an ear listen and behold
the holy one has anointed me in the last hour
seven angels seven lanterns seven stars seven letters the unseen bird
holy holy holy I ate the scroll the moon was full of the blood of virgins
the white horse the black stallion the red steed the pea green pony
on my forehead in the days of the seventh trumpet the seventh angel
the mystery of God shall be finished the thunder
the fragment of the sword addresses the river holding the brother's wound
the reunion of the natural ferocity of the drowned bullcalf and the thirteen
pieces of flesh the broken foot of the virgin all her children were dead
I know the archangels and their death strokes
I know the eluded attacks the beloved wild pig hunter the larkspur
balmung and the white warriors the wolf on the mountain the enchanted necklace
the animal gnawing the man's hand the smoking altars the lamentations underfoot
the snow the blind tiger I pour a libation to the sleeping magician
the floating corpse the moon the harpsichord of the shipwrecked maidens
I know the staircase that leads into the forest
I know the ball is still going on
I know the troubadour is making a fool out of himself
I know the smells in the corners of old hotels that make the old porters sick
I know the blood of the two lovers the poison the knife
I know I was so thirsty I primed the pump with piss
the dirt dobbers bringing mud to the schoolteacher's house
the man and the girl screwing under the fisty boled cotton
both of them been sniffing goof dust through a five dollar bill
I was on my knees shooting dice the jump band quit they kissed Lincoln too
well shut my mouth the woman said washing me this child got wings like a hawk boys this is going to be a long song so you better take off your boots and spit
I walk around in a white suit with whiskey on my shirt
holding my arms behind me just like Jimmy just like Mose Jackson I'm just
like them I ain't worth the powder to blow me to hell I knock me a pigeon wing
in the middle of the river the fever broke I yelled
pig nuts she had eyes like fish they shine for twenty dollar shoes
the principal that old crawdad asked me my name I told her I am
the Marquis de Lafayette Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier I got it down pretty good don't I
better known around these parts as Francois Gilbert the gambler and duelist sometimes I am Jean Lafitte the pirate I am the Japanese bowman
if I go into all my past lives it will take all day
but I was the rascal and rogue after I read the Lodging for the Night
I was Francis Villon
one night the moon that molting chicken was scattered all over the woods
just like possum brains on the good road mostly I dream
I was hoping some of my friends in the other galaxies would speak to me that night I hadn't heard from them in a long time
it is like I was a minnow in a pool and the moonlight was soaking me up
I was in a trance Ray Baby poked me in the belly he said come read a story
I didn't have to read the one I was thinking about I knew it by heart I said
OK come on down to where the swamp haunt stays
we went down there
I walked around like a captain by himself telling the story on the bayou
it was the Beach of Falesa
Melvin and Baby Gauge got so scared it was spooking me so O.Z. had to go get the book and finish it
we saw the dead man's light
and my dreams thin as light years shot from Martuccio's bowstrings
my dreams the notched arrows the moon going down the sun coming up
the inseparable companions of death
my dreams unnoticed except by me and the frogs me and the wolves me and the sea decked out in black on the same bier
I know the enemy archers I know the ambush
I know farewell my friend
I know my telescope has a four inch mirror and the lens is capable
to the 600X power my dream
the meteor shower my great grandmother saw during the civil war she thought
the world was coming to an end
I know the chinese marbles in the grotto
I know the astronomer
he comes to the house and talks to daddy about physics and floods
I know the constellations the books by Stevenson and Mark Twain the El Cid
the Dickens the algebra the atoms the southern cross the island
of sorrowful countenance
the man is Egyptian he looks queer
he went turkey hunting with us he brought his books he left them with me
he aimed to blow the gobbler's head off he missed
I know Charlie B. said he was a loony tick
he was only an egghead
I know I saw Zorro in the hotel
I know the counterfeit music the phoney talk
I know somebody is going to get the shit knocked out of them if they don't
watch out
I know the bagpipes and the approaching footsteps
I know he told me about the stars and infinity in the boat
I know when I get a eerie feeling in the woods alone
I know the woman walking down the hall with the candelabra
I know the old legends mother told me
I know they said the dance hall was on fire
I know the libretto of tortured virgins
I know the quick and the dead
I know the ballerinas throwing their kisses in the midst of fatal blows
I know the procession and the deadly thrusts
I know all about the harassment of bad conduct reports from the fleas
I wish they'd get off my back
I know Bowie with the rosary wrapped around his knife
I know I've seen the show MacBeth thirteen times
I know the nightdress in the field
I know mother reads on the porch mother reads in the boat to me I read
I know daddy rides a horse with his snake boots on
I know the pistol in his belt
I know I don't mess with hoodoo
I know I've seen a man on fire high tailing it down the road his son knocked
on the screen he told mother his paw was burning up
I know Odysseus drenched the tunics with blood
I know my great grandfather was Francis Gildart
I know the echo the horse and rider
I know I just as soon stick a broom straw down a hole and sing to a doodle bug than go to school
I know shit from shinola
I know you will never know what is true or not it is through a glass darkly
Frank Stanford (1948-1978) was, as he put it, “Born in Mississippi, Raised up in Tennessee—I would add, Come Into My Own in Arkansas.” A profoundly singular voice—Lorenzo Thomas called him a “swamprat Rimbaud”—Stanford died in Fayetteville at the age of 29 and has posthumously emerged as an important figure in American poetry. Much of his work is gathered in What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon, 2015). A new edition of his monumental 1977 epic The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, edited by James McWilliams and A.P. Walton, is being published by University of Arkansas Press in 2026.