And briefly, but the memory
Of its signification does not go away.
Instead of forgetting, we become nicer.
After which it is time to play.
The Yellow River (the river,
Not the novel by I. P. Daly) has suffered a
Decline in popularity, though it
Passes through one of the world’s most
Populous regions. Think about it.
On the heights, jammed with pagodas
And temples, the light
Is starting to recede, the popularity
That no one wants. But in the flat
Depths of the gorges, the river is waning
On. Now no one comes
To disturb the murk, and the profoundest
Tributaries are silent with the smell
Of being alone. How it
Dances alone, in winter shine
Or autumn filth. It is become
Ingrown, and with this
Passes out of our existence, as we enter
A new chapter, confused and possibly excited,
Yet a new one, all the same.
III
But I want him here.
Something is changed without him,
Something we will go on understanding
Until he returns to us.
The sunset is no reflection
Of its not knowing—even its knowing
Can be known but is not
A reflection.
Sometimes when we see another person
Walking down a street or
Standing to one side, we feel
We ought to go up and speak to that person
Because they expected to die.
But we do not, or seldom, speak to strangers.
It is forbidden
To have much to do with strangers.
We can lie, and get along in short periods
That way, we can go out of our house
To see what is there, but we can
Turn around and go back and not speak
To the others who were there
No matter who they were.
We could feel ashamed, on some days
That it was all brought before
And we in it,
That we have not known an edict, and that
Person knows it too. We are seldom
Invited by friends, and even less by strangers.
That is the problem of having too many friends:
We forget most of them, and just
When we need them most, they are gone.
We have no friends at any given
Moment, or they are gone away.
However, we do have friends when we need them.
They are almost always around, the shore
Has them. The lake recedes
Toward the close, pale horizon like a bench.
We were not asked any more
And now we feel we have given up on them.
They will never rely on us
Even if we were to go down, all the way down,
To them. They might not like us any more.
But the sunset sees its reflection, and
In the curve
Is cured. People, not all, come back
To us in pairs or threes. And so
Are festive, the light in the face
And all people shoo
You, they are back on the place
Of the temple, and nothing seems rustic any more.
They have their own perfume though
And it keeps growing through the mist.
The trees—excuse me—keep smiling—are grown
In the comprehensive materials
That swim alternately over and under
Never appreciating any more
Never stopping to think
Or ask why things are this way
And not the way you thought they
Were going to be
which would have been nicer.
The light of some forgotten hell
Leaves them in a new state of mind, begging
The question of growth,
Of additional dampers.
The prettiness urges
Far into the body, deep
Into the coffin of reactions, splitting light
Into two unequal portions. One
For me, the other for my things
Want to introduce each time I’d come to a
Particular one but would turn over instead,
Disappointed with the other way it’d
Turn out shoveling no matter what
Into the boiler to keep that engine going
And it would all reduce to this or that other
Blackened memory, always the same, always
Healthy in spite of it. O who
Can judge their memories lest they have
Already been sized up by them?
But it is April now,
An air of commerce in things, and I should
Forget the past and think about
The flutes and premises of the future, and whether
A satisfactory sex life was one of the things
Included in the agenda or somebody forgot it
Again—just like them—
And the life of art
Matters a lot now too, is seen
To be perhaps the most important of all, slightly
Overtopping that other, and joy
Is after all predestined. Isn’t it? I mean,
Otherwise, what the fuck are we doing
Here, worrying about it, having it all collapse
On our heads trying to dig our way out
Of this sand pit? No,
It’s got to be preordained, in some way, by
Someone, otherwise we wouldn’t like it,
Recognize it as it flies, and sit down casually
Again, knowing that, as the truth knows
A true story when it hears one, so we, wandering
Along the lake again shall hear blossoms
And imagine radiant blue flamingoes against the sacred sky.
As for those others, citizens
Of the great night, freaks, weirdos,
Commies and pimps: once it was all hers,
The Queen of Diamonds,
As they called her. Her real name
Was Rosine Esterhazy. That’s what she thought.
Then the war was postponed.
The boyfriends flooded the fields.
She thought it was some protection
Nor was the great night considered especially
Dangerous.
The flower fields thriving
On craft items which can be made
At night. And for a few years, there is peace.
We can use this time for changing, shifting
Back to be a better way
Into ourselves. These years have become
A masquerade. Fine! We’ll use that too,
Drinking toasts to perfect strangers.
When the winter is over, and the sodden spring
That goes on even longer, a pitcher of water
Drawn deep from the well is to be
The reward and the end of just about everything,
And joy invades all this. Makes it
Hard to write about.
Just a few letters lately, in fact,
Choruses of praise from outsiders, and I keep
Dropping my diary different places, forgetting
What I was talking about, letting it combine
With the loam and humus, and maybe a quick
Star-shape of a flower is produced. If not,
Each of us still has all our work to be done
In the joy of working so that the even greater joy
Of the hammock may be tasted later on, and so much
Of the padding may be appreciated then for what it is,
Just stuffing, of the kind that is needed
Everywhere, that keeps the Mozart symphonies
Apart and gradually leads us, each of us,
Back to the fragment of sense which is the place
We started out from. Isn’t it strange
That this was home all along, and none of us
Knew it? What could our voyages
Have been like, that we forgot them so soon?
What galleons, what freighters were made to appear
And as sullenly to vanish in the thick foam bearing
Down from the horizon? What kind of a school
Is this, that they teach you these things,
And neglect whatever was important, that we were made to feel
Around for and so lost our names
And our dogs and were coming back, back
Into the commotion under the waterwheels
So that everything is spinning now, bears
Very little resemblance to what was supposed to be the entrance to the port, but is now
Whittled away to almost nothing?
But I wouldn’t want you to think I
Cared for anything rather than go home
In the rain to the crafty islet
With the gasoline under the cellar
Roof. Yet betimes
In the morning stuck with the
Insane amid chimes he breathes and preaches,
Envy of all but himself Silent,
The parishioners file out, leaving the last man
On the quasi-tropical islet; he is left
As if alone again. No one cares
For its train—what greasy pebbles and rocks
It slithered over occupy
No one’s attention any more and much
More is in store for the hyenas coupling
In the wallpaper and much less will have been
Noted down about this once he returns,
If ever. We clarify everything,
Throw it away and then the ranch comes
To devour our after-need, and what
Is left is of the kind no one uses.
Some certified nut
Will try to tell you it’s poetry,
(It’s extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense)
But watch out or he’ll start with some
New notion or other and switch to both
Leaving you wiser and not emptier though
Standing on the edge of a hill.
We have to worry
About systems and devices, there is no
Energy here no spleen either.
We have to take over the sewer plans—
Otherwise the coursing clear water, planes
Upon planes of it, will have its day
And disappear. Same goes for business:
Holed up in some office skyscraper it’s
Often busy to predict the future for business plans
But try doing it from down
In the street and see how far it gets you! You
Really have to sequester yourself to see
How far you have come but I’m
Not going to talk about that.
I’m fairly well pleased
With the way you and I have come around the hill
Ignoring and then anointing its edge even if
We felt it keenly in the backwind.
You were a secretary at first until it
Came time to believe you and then the black man
Replaced your headlights with fuel
You seemed to grow from no place. And now,
Calmed down, like a Corinthian column
You grow and grow, scaling the high plinths
Of the sky.
Others, the tenor, the doctor,
Want us to walk about on it to see how we feel
About it before they attempt anything, yet
In whose house are we? Must we not sit
Quietly, for we would not do this at home?
A splattering of trumpets against the very high
Pockmarked wall and a forgetting of spiny
Palm trees and it is over for us all,
Not just us, and yet on the inside it was
Doomed to happen again, over and over, like a
Wave on a beach, that thinks it’s had this
Tremendous idea, coming to crash on the beach
Like that, and it’s true, it has, yet
Others have gone before, and still others will
Follow, and far from undermining the spiciness
Of this individual act, this knowledge plants
A seed of eternal endeavor for fear of
Happening just once, and goes on this way,
And yet the originality should not deter
Our vision from the drain
That absorbs, night and day, all our equations,
Makes us brittle, emancipated, not men in a word.
Dying of fright
In the violet night you come to understand how it
Looked to the ancestors and what there was about it
That moved them and are come no closer
To the divine riddle which is aging,
So beautiful in the eternal honey of the sun
And spurs us on to a higher pitch
Of elocution that the company
Will not buy, and so back to our grandstand
Seat with the feeling of having mended
The contrary principles with the catgut
Of abstract sleek ideas that come only once in
The night to be born and are gone forever after
Leaving their trace after the stitches have
Been removed but who is to say they are
Traces of what really went on and not
Today’s palimpsest? For what
Is remarkable about our chronic reverie (a watch
That is always too slow or too fast)
Is the lively sense of accomplishment that haloes it
From afar. There is no need
To approach closely, it will be done from here
And work out better, you’ll see.
So the giant slabs of material
Came to be, and precious little else, and
No information about them but that was all right
For the present century. Later on
We’d see how it might be in some other
Epoch, but for the time being it was neither
Your nor the population’s concern, and may
Have glittered as it declined but for now
It would have to do, as any magic
Is the right kind at the right time.
There is no soothsaying
Yet it happens in rows, windrows
You call them in your far country.
But you are leaving:
Some months ago I got an offer
From Columbia Tape Club, Terre
Haute, Ind., where I could buy one
Tape and get another free. I accept-
Ed the deal, paid for one tape and
Chose a free one. But since I’ve been
Repeatedly billed for my free tape.
I’ve written them several times but
Can’t straighten it out—would you
Try?
Sleeping in the Corners of Our Lives
So the days went by and the nickname caught on.
It became a curiosity, but it wasn’t curious.
Afternoon leaves blew against the stale brick
Surface. Just an old castle. Enjoy it
While you’re here. And in looking for a more convenient way
To save one’s soul, one is led up to it like a season,
And in looking all around, and about, its tome
Becomes legible in the interstices. A great biography
That is also a good autobiography, at the station;
A honeycomb of pages with listings
Of the tried and true, that radiates
Out into what is there, that averages up as wind,
And settles back into a tepid, modest
Chamber with its mouse-gray furniture, its redundant pictures.
This is tall sleeping
To prepare you for the soup and the ruins
In giving the very special songs of the first meaning,
The ones incorporating the changes.
Silhouette
Of how that current ran in, and turned
In the climate of the indecent moment
And became an act,
I may not tell. The road
Ran down there and was afterwards there
So that no further borrowing
Of criticism or the desire to add pleasure
Was ever seen that way again.
In the blank mouths
Of your oppressors, however, much
Was seen to provoke. And the way
Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes
Not heard of for years at a time, did,
Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise
It was inside the house,
And always getting narrower.
There is no telling to what lengths,
What mannerisms and fictitious subterranean
Flowerings next to the cement he might have
Been driven. But it all turned out another way.
So cozy, so ornery, tempted always,
Yet not thinking in his 1964 Ford
Of the price of anything, the grapes, and her tantalizing touch
So near that the fish in the aquarium
Hung close to the glass, suspended, yet he never knew her
Except behind the curtain. The catastrophe
Buried in the stair carpet stayed there
And never corrupted anybody.
And one day he grew up, and the horizon
Stammered politely. The sky was like muslin.
And still in the old house no one ever answered the bell.
Many Wagons Ago
At first it was as though you had passed,
But then no, I said, he is still here,
Forehead refreshed. A light is kindled. And
Another. But no I said
Nothing in this wide berth of lights like weeds
Stays to listen. Doubled up, fun is inside,
The lair a surface compact with the night.
It needs only one intervention,
A stitch, two, three, and then you see
How it is all false equation planted with
Enchanting blue shrubbery on each terrace
That night produces, and they are backing up.
How easily we could spell if we could follow,
Like thread looped through the eye of a needle,
The grooves of light. It resists. But we stay behind, among them,
The injured, the adored.
As We Know
All that we see is penetrated by it—