Witch Doctor

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.“

II 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.