The poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill was trouble enough for Ronald Albamonti. It poked fun at a clerk whose left eye wanders and suggested that Albamonti's grocery store was littered with dead mice.
But when Albamonti, owner of Roland's Market, heard that residents were passing out copies of the poem at parties, he closed down.The poem "stirred up a hornet's nest," said Dorothea H. Gould, 82, a 71-year resident. "I think it was very poor taste. We can live without that sort of thing here."