when they passed through town.
He invented that music with them.
Things mattered.”
(The doctor does not say anything.
Calm yourself, something whispers
inside him. We can go home now.)
MENISCUS: OR HOW THE HEART MUST
NOT BE TOO MUCH QUESTIONED
There is a film on water
which permits a glass to hold
more than it can hold.
If probed, the water breaks.
Before and after,
both are truly water. But
only one will support swans.
THE COMPANION
There is someone. Always the same
half block behind. Not a doppelgänger
or anything like that. Not dangerous
or angelic. Just a middle-aged man
with a thick face wearing an old coat.
But always furtively just out of sight.
He is often on ridges very high up
when I walk along the empty beach.
When I am in the bedrooms, he is
discreet. He waits in a doorway
to see her face in the streetlight
as we go by. There is neither sex
nor love between us, but he will
follow the girl home. He stays far back
and never speaks to them. Once
he even helped me when I got trampled.
Very efficient, but ambiguous.
Except for that, we have never met.
One day, when he had lost me, I saw him
following an old damaged woman.
But he returns to me. Without kindness
or threat. My life is beginning to list.
He occupies more and more importance.
Meaninglessly. Nothing to do with God
or fate. Actually a man. Rather stout.
And I can’t make out his intentions.
I am terrified by his not wanting anything.
THE RING
They have Mary’s wedding ring in the Cathedral.
I was eager to see it, but learned it is
kept fastened in a box which requires keys
carried by the district’s three main officials.
The box is locked seven times in a chest
and the keys held by their chief guilds.
The chest is sealed in the wall of the nave,
thirty feet in the air. Stairs are built to it
just once a year. It is a very holy relic,
and I assumed they feared thieves. Today,
when I asked of it, I learned it is magic.
The color changes according to the soul before it.
Then I understood about the locks. The ring
is not being protected. It is locked in.
LUST
I have drifted into the habit
of going to Matins. Today
I found they are repairing
the church. The side windows
have been taken out. I was shocked
by the sound of swallows. By sun
and the smell of morning.
I realized there has been a mistake.
THE SIXTH MEDITATION: FACES OF GOD
It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve.
To insist we are damned because a country girl
talked to the snake one afternoon long ago.
Children must starve in Somalia for that,
and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities.
It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes
of molten lead. Because she was confused
by happiness that first time anyone said
she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be
the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks
and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also
created in His image.
The forest must
not show the other face: slugs and grubs,
nematodes, and greenhead flies laying eggs
so their white larvae squirm in the filth.
Tent caterpillars, high in the trees, swarm out
from their offensive shrouds to eat the green
luxury bare. Spiders cast their nets in the dark.
Aphids gorge on lice. The braconid wasps lay eggs
under the skin of sphinx caterpillars so the larvae
will bore their way out through the host.
The other faces of God are not mediated by our
heart’s need. We are not stone, nor even jungle.
We are animals haunted by love. Not spirits
buried in flesh, but the flesh itself.
And the spirit we are is not separated from it.
There is a god who prepares the locust in the blind
earth for seventeen years, to have it born without
a mouth. I believe in the spirit that would have
Agamemnon sail home with Iphigenia alive in his arms,
leaving Helen with her young man.
If human love and God’s love meet
There is where we’ll find defeat.
When spirit and the flesh are twin
There is where we can begin.
Where the heart is not at rest
There will I build my only nest.
CONVALESCING
I spend the days deciding
on a commemorative poem.
Not, luckily, an epitaph.
A quiet poem
to establish the fact of me.
As one of the incidental faces
in those stone processions.
Carefully done.
Not claiming that I was
at any of the great victories.
But that I volunteered.
NOTES
Some of these poems have been revised since their initial appearance in book form. Most of the changes are minor, involving spelling or punctuation.
In Views of Jeopardy, the first letter of each line was originally capitalized, a tradition abandoned when poems from this collection were reprinted in Monolithos.
The epigraph to “Portolano” is Sanskrit, meaning “In some place is a city.”
The first section of Monolithos originally included sixteen poems previously published in Views of Jeopardy. These were “In Dispraise of Poetry,” “Perspective He Would Mutter Going to Bed,” “And She Waiting,” “It May Be No One Should Be Opened,” “Rain,” “County Musician,” “Orpheus in Greenwich Village,” “Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell (II),” “Before Morning in Perugia,” “The Night Comes Every Day to My Window,” “The Abnormal Is Not Courage,” “Susanna and the Elders,” “I’ll Try to Explain About the Fear,” “New York, Summer” (originally titled “Portrait Number Five: Against a New York Summer”), “On Growing Old in San Francisco,” and “The Whiteness, the Sound, and Alcibiades.”
“Spring,” “Meniscus: Or How the Heart Must Not Be Too Much Questioned,” “The Companion,” “The Ring,” “Lust,” and “Convalescing” are drawn from a manuscript titled Torches at Noon, written in the early 1960s under a pseudonym.
INDEX OF TITLES
Abandoned Valley, The
Abnormal Is Not Courage, The
Abundant Little, The
Adulterated
Adults
After Love
Alba
All the Way from There to Here
Almost Happy
Alone
Alone on Christmas Eve in Japan
Aloneness
Alternatives
Alyosha
Ambition
And She Waiting
Angelus
Another Grandfather
Answer, The
Ars poetica
Ball of Something, A
Bartleby at the Wall
Bay Bridge from Potrero Hill, The
Becoming Regardless
Before Morning in Perugia
Being Young Back Then
&n
bsp; Betrothed
Between Aging and Old
Between Poems
Beyond Beginnings
Beyond Pleasure
Bird Sings to Establish Frontiers, A
Blinded by Seeing
Breakfast
Brief for the Defense, A
Bring in the Gods
Burma
Burning (Andante non troppo)
Burning and Fathering: Accounts of My Country
Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper, The
By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.
Byzantium Burning
Cargo and the Equity, The
Carrying Torches at Noon
Chastity
Cherishing What Isn’t
Close Call, A
Companion, The
Conceiving Himself
Container for the Thing Contained, The
Convalescing
County Musician
Crossing the Border, Searching for the City
Crusoe on the Mountain Gathering Faggots
Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon, The
Danger of Wisdom, The
Dante Dancing
December Ninth, 1960
Description of Happiness in København, A
Difficult Beauty, The
Divorce
Doing Poetry
Don Giovanni in Trouble
Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell
Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell (II)
Dreaming at the Ballet
Duende
Eating with the Emperor
Edge of the World, The
Elegy
Elegy for Bob (Jean McLean)
Elephant Hunt in Guadalajara
Elephants
End of Paradise, The
Everywhere and Forever
Exceeding
Exceeding the Spirit
Explicating the Twilight
Fact, A
Factoring
Failing and Flying
Farming in Secret
Fashionable Heart, The
Feathers or Lead
Feeling History
Finding Eurydice
Finding Something
First Morning of the World on Long Island, The
First Times
Flat Hedgehogs
For Example
Foraging for Wood on the Mountain
Forgotten Dialect of the Heart, The
Four Perfectly Tangerines, The
Friendship Inside Us, The
From These Nettles, Alms
Games
Garden, The
Getting Away with It
Getting Closer
Getting It All
Getting It Right
Getting Old
Getting Ready
Ghost Sings, a Door Opens, A
Ghosts
Gift Horses
Going Home
Going There
Going Wrong
Good Life, The
Great Fires, The
Greek Gods Don’t Come in Winter, The
Gros Ventre, The
Growing Up in Pittsburgh
Guilty
Half the Truth
Halloween
Happening Apart from What’s Happening Around It
Happily Planting the Beans Too Early
Hard Wired
Harm and Boon in the Meetings
Haunted Importantly
Having the Having
Heart Skidding
Highlights and Interstices
History of Men, The
Holding On to My Friend
Homage to Wang Wei
Homesteading
Honor
Horses at Midnight Without a Moon
Hot Nights in Florida
House on the California Mountain
How Much of That Is Left in Me?
How to Love the Dead
Hunger
I Imagine the Gods
I’ll Try to Explain About the Fear
Il mio tesoro
Immaculate
In Dispraise of Poetry
In Perugino We Have Sometimes Seen Our Country
In the Beginning
In Umbria
Infectious
Infidelity
Infidelity
Islands and Figs
It Is Clear Why the Angels Come No More
It May Be No One Should Be Opened
Kind of Courage, A
Kind of Decorum, A
Kind of World, A
Kunstkammer
Leaving Monolithos
Leporello on Don Giovanni
Less Being More
Letter to Mr. John Keats
Lions
Lives of Famous Men, The
Living Hungry After
Looking at Pittsburgh from Paris
Looking Away from Longing
Lord Sits with Me Out in Front, The
Losing
Lost Hotels of Paris, The
Lost World, The
Love Poem
Lovers
Loyalty
Lust
Mail, The
Malvolio in San Francisco
Man at a Window
Man in Black and White, A
Manger of Incidentals, The
Married
May I, May I
Maybe She Is Here
Maybe Very Happy
Me and Capablanca
Meaning Well
Meanwhile
Measuring the Tyger
Meditation Eleven: Reading Blake Again
Meelee’s Away
Meniscus
Meniscus: Or How the Heart Must Not Be Too Much Questioned
Métier
Mexico
Michiko Dead
Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)
Midnight Is Made of Bricks
Milk of Paradise, The
Mistake, The
Mistrust of Bronze
Moment of Grace
More Than Friends
More than Sixty
Moreover
Movies, The
Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played
Music Is the Memory of What Never Happened
“My Eyes Adored You,”
My Graveyard in Tokyo
My Marriage with Mrs. Johnson
Myself Considered as the Monster in the Foreground
Naked Except for the Jewelry
Neglecting the Kids
Negligible, The
New Bride Almost Visible in Latin, The
New Hampshire Marble
New York, Summer
Night After Night
Night Comes Every Day to My Window, The
Night Songs and Day Songs
1953
Not Easily
Not Getting Closer
Not Part of Literature
Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness
Older Women
On Growing Old in San Francisco
On Stone
Once upon a Time
Orpheus in Greenwich Village
Ostinato rigore
Other Perfection, The
Ovid in Tears
Painting on Plato’s Wall
Pavane
Peaches
Perfected
Perspective He Would Mutter Going to Bed
Pewter
Piecing of the Life
Playing House
Plundering of Circe, The
Poem for Laura
Poem for the Fin Du Monde Man, A
Poetry Is a Kind of Lying
Portolano
Prospero Dreams of Arnaut Daniel Inventing Love in the Twelfth Century
Prospero Goes Home
Prospero Listening to the Night
Prospero Without His Magic
Put Her in the Fields for Kindness
Rain
Rainy Forests
of Northern California, The
Recovering amid the Farms
Refusing Heaven
Registration
Reinvention of Happiness, The
Relative Pitch
Remembering My Wife
Respect
Résumé
Revolution, The
Ring, The
Rooster, The
Ruins and Wabi
Say You Love Me
Scheming in the Snow
Searching for It in a Guadalajara Dance Hall
Searching for Pittsburgh
Secret, The
Secrets of Poetry
Sects
Seen from Above
Siege
Singing in My Difficult Mountains
Sirens Again, The
Sixth Meditation: Faces of God, The
Sonatina
Song
South
Spell Cast Over, The
Spirit and the Soul, The
Spring
Steel Guitars
Stockton Tunnel, The
Stubborn Ode, A
Suddenly Adult
Sul ponticello
Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina
Susanna and the Elders
Sweet Taste of the Night, The
Taste for Grit and Whatever, A
Tasters for the Lord
Tear It Down
Template
Textures
Thanksgiving Dance, A
That Tenor of Which the Night Birds Are a Vehicle
Theoretical Lives
They Call It Attempted Suicide
They Will Put My Body into the Ground
Thinking About Ecstasy
Thirty Favorite Lives: Amager, The
Thirty Favorite Times
This Times That
Threshing the Fire
’Tis Here! ’Tis Here! ’Tis Gone! (The Nature of Presence)
To Know the Invisible
To See If Something Comes Next
Transgressions
Translation into the Original
Triangulating
Trouble
Truth
Trying
Trying to Be Married
Trying to Have Something Left Over
Trying to Write Poetry
Valley of the Owls
Valley of the Spirits
Voices Inside and Out