But your story isn’t getting boring,
On the contrary, the slowing-down speeds up the
Afterthought. We are perverse spelling and punctuation.
It could not be confirmed
That the recent violent storms were a part of the pattern
Of civil calamity that had overtaken the outpost.
Perhaps they were fatal but parallel,
Wounds inflicted on a corpse, footnotes
To the desert, the explosion
That a quiet, mediocre career is. We read
Through some Haydn quartet movements last night
But this morning my hand and heart are heavy, heavy alack.
The day before yesterday it seemed to me
That my cherished sorrow was about to depart,
And yesterday morning too. And now, fatality
Has overtaken it. The end
Has been quiet, and no one has told the rabbits
And dying bees. Finally some warmth
From the death floated downstream to us,
Saving a few moments of mildness
Among the by-now unmanageably thick grease-crayon
Outline that coagulates like a ball of soot in the air
Watched by hemophiliac princes, like an orange.
And as mushrooms spring up
After great rains have purged the heavens
Of their terrible delight, so the weight of event
And counterevent conspired to shift the focus
Of the scenery away from the action:
It was always wartime Britain, or some other place
Dictated by the circumstances, never
The road leading over the hill
To yet another home. Rudeness, shabbiness—
We could have put up with more than a little
Of these in the hope of getting some bed-rest,
But a measured calm, maddening in
Its insularity, always prevailed at the window,
Priming the hour with anguish, and yet
It was never any later, there was never anything
More to do, everybody kept telling you
To relax until you were ready to scream,
And now this patient night has infused,
In whose folds only one soul is awake, in the whole wide world.
Feeling no need to look at the world through rose-colored glasses,
To get by on “cuteness,”
To create large new forms and people them with space,
You thwart any directions, right or wrong.
The séduction de l’âme will not take place.
The long rains in November, November
Of long rains, silent woods,
Open like a compass to receive the anomaly,
Press it back into the damp earth,
The shadow of a whisper on someone’s lips.
You can neither define
Nor erase it, and, seen by torchlight,
Being cloaked with the shrill
Savage drapery of non-being, it
Stands out in the firelight.
It is more than anything was meant to be.
Yet somehow mournful, as though
The three-dimensional effect had been achieved
At the cost of a crisp vagueness
That raised one twig slightly higher than the
Morass of leafless branches that supported it,
And now, eager, fatigued, it had sunk back
Below the generally satisfying
Contours of the rest. It had eaten
The food you gave it, and kept to itself
Mainly, in a corner of the pen.
You never spoke to it except in the kindest
Tones, and it replied sadly,
If somewhat politely, and how much, now
You wish you had kept a record of those exchanges!
One thing is sure: nothing
Can replace it; as fatally
As it was given to you, so now
It has been removed from you, for your comfort,
And nothing stands in its place.
It is not a question of emptiness, only
Of a place the others never seem to venture,
A sunken Parnassus.
There is a slight change, a chance rather
Of its coming to life at the reunion,
Amid the automatic greetings, summonses
From a brazen tongue:
“And so you thought this
Was where he brought you, the
Updated silhouette, late sunlight
Developed on the tallest slope, to the assignation
Rumored so often, to a corral
Shaped like a snowflake, and love
Blurring each of the points. Yet you
Stand fast and cannot see
Where it is leading. And the seducer remains at home.”
Yet whereto, with damaged wing
Assay th’empyrean? Scalloped horizon
Of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land? O land
Of recently boiling water, witches’
Misgivings, ships
Pulling away from piers,
Already slipping deep into the norm
Of blue worsted seas? Yet that is just what I did.
There are always those who think you ought to
Turn back from dull autumn sunsets like whey in the breeze that escorts
Us up inclined planes whose appearance, dull too
At first, is experienced
As if bathed in magic, when its density,
“A flash of lightning, seen in passing and very faintly,”
Stuns the apprehending faculties
With the perfection of its desire
Like the scream of the rising moon.
It is best to abide with minstrels, then,
To play at least one game
Seriously. The old-timers will
Let you take over the old lease.
One of them will be in you.
If there were concerts on the water there
We could turn back. Tar floated upriver
In the teeth of the gulls’ outlandish manifestations;
The banks pocked with flowers whose names
I used to know,
Before poetic license took over and abolished everything.
People shade their eyes and wave
From the strand: to us or someone behind us?
Just as everything seemed about to go wrong
The music began; later on, the missing
Refreshments would be found and served,
The road turn caramel just as the first stars
Were putting in a timid appearance, like snowdrops.
And somehow you found the strength
To be carried irresistibly away from all this.
But in the scrapbooks and postcard albums
Of the land, you are remembered,
Although you do not figure there,
And because a train once passed near where
You spent a night, a tall, translucent
Monument like a spike has been erected to your memory,
Only do not go there. One can live
In the land like a spy without ever
Trespassing on the mortal, forgotten frontier.
In the psalms of the invisible chorus
There is a germ of you that lives like a coal
Amid the hostile indifference of the land
That merely forgets you. Your hand
Is at the heart of its weavings and nestlings.
You are its guarantee.
At that moment, fatality
Or some woman resembling her, angel,
Goddess, whatever: “the Beautiful Lady”
Arrives to announce the Brass Age—
“You are being asked to believe
No more in the subtle possibilities of silver,
Which, like the tintinnabulation of an ethereal
Silver chime, marking an unknown ho
ur
From a remote, dismal room, no longer
Promises harvests, only the translucent melancholy
Of the skies which follow in their wake,
Pale, greenish blue, with magnificent
Clouds like overloaded schooners, that dip
To rise again, higher, and seem
Endlessly on the move, until they round—
What? Is there some cape, some destination,
Some port of debarkation in all this?
There is only the slow but febrile motion
Of sky and cloud, a toast, a promise,
A new diary, until one gets too close
And becomes oneself part of the meaningless
Rolling and lurching, so hard to read
Or hear, and never closer
To the end or to the beginning: the mimesis
Of death, without the finality—is
There anything in this for you?
Sad, browning flowers, tokens
Of the wind’s remembering you, damp, rotting
Nostalgia under a head of twigs or at the end
Of some log spangled with brand-new, ice-green lichens,
Dead pine-needles, worthy
Objects of contemplation if you wish, but there is
Less comfort but more interest in the drab
Clear moment that enshrines us
Now, in this place. No one
Could mistake this for morning, or afternoon,
Or the specious perfection of twilight, yet
It is within us, and the substance
Of your latest interventions. Therefore, begone!”
The voice
Straddled the stone canyon like vapors.
In the distance one could see oneself, drawn
On the air like one of Millet’s “Gleaners,” extracting
This or that from the vulgar stubble, with the roistering
Of harvesters long extinct, dead for the ear, and in the middle
Distance, one’s new approximation of oneself:
A seated figure, neither imperious nor querulous,
No longer invoking the riddle of the skies, of distance,
Nor yet content with the propinquity
Of strangers and admirers, all rapt,
In attitudes of fascination at your feet, waiting
For the story to begin.
All right. Let’s see—How about “The outlook wasn’t brilliant
For the Mudville nine that day”? No,
That kind of stuff is too old-hat. Today
More than ever readers are looking for
Something upbeat, to sweep them off their feet.
Something candid but also sophisticated
With an unusual slant. A class act
That doesn’t look like a class act
Is more like ...
It goes without saying
That I enjoy
You as you are,
The pleasant taste of you.
You are with me as the seasons
Circle with us around the sun
That dates back to the seventeenth century,
We circling with them,
United with ourselves and directly linked
To them, changing as they change,
Only their changes are always the same, and we,
We are always a little different with each change.
But in the end our changes make us into something,
Bend us into some shape maybe
No one we would recognize,
And it is ours, anyway, beyond understanding
Or even beyond our perception:
We may never perceive the thing we have become.
But that’s all right—we have to be it
Even as we are ourselves. Anyway,
That’s the way I like you and the way
Things are going to be increasingly,
With the seasons a mirror of our indeterminate
Activities, so that they do end
In burgeoning leaves and buds and then
In bare twigs against a Pater-painted
Sky of gray, expecting snow ...
How can we know ourselves through
These excrescences of time that take
Their cues elsewhere? Whom
Should I refer you to, if I am not
To be of you? But you
Will continue in your own way, will finish
Your novel, and have a life
Full of happy, active surprises, curious
Twists and developments of character:
A charm is fixed above you
And everything you do, but you
Must never make too much of it, nor
Take it for granted, either. Anyway, as
I said, I like you this way, understood
If under-appreciated, and finally
My features come to rest, locked
In the gold-filled chain of your expressions,
The one I was always setting out to be—
Remember? And now it is so.
Yet—whether it wasn’t all just a little,
Well, silly, or whether on the other hand this
Wasn’t a welcome sign of something
Human at last, like a bird
After you’ve been sailing on and on for days:
How could we tell
The serene and majestic side of nature
From the other one, the mocking and swearing
And smoke billowing out of the ground?
Because they are so closely and explicitly
Intertwined that good
Oftentimes seems merely the necessary
Attractive side of evil, which in turn
Can be viewed as the less appealing but more
Human side of good, something at least
Which can be appreciated?
But poetry is making things in the past;
The past tense transcends and excuses these
Grimy arguments which fog over as soon as
You begin to contemplate them. Poetry
Has already happened. And the agony
Of looking steadily at something isn’t
Really there at all, it’s something you
Once read about; its narrative thrust
Carries it far beyond what it thought it was
All het up about; its charm, no longer
A diversionary tactic, is something like
Grace, in the long run, which is what poetry is.
Great high street which is like a too-busy
Harbor full of boats knocking against each
Other, a blatantly cacophonous if stirring
Symphony, with all its most
Staggeringly beautiful aspects jammed against
The lowest motives and inspirations that ever
Infected the human spirit, into a
Small courtyard continued by an alley as
Though a sudden hush or drop in the temperature
Suddenly fell across him, like steep
Building-shadows, and he wondered
What it had all been leading up to. Up there
Wisps of smoke raced away from grimy
Chimney pots as though pursued by demons;
Down here all was yellowing silence and
Melancholy though not without a secret
Feeling of satisfaction at having escaped
The rat race, if only for a time, to plunge
Into profitless meditations, as threadbare
As the old mohair coat he had worn from
Earliest times, and which no one
Had ever seen him doff, no matter
What the prevailing meteorological conditions were.
These were now the fabric
Of his existence, and fabric was precisely
What he felt that existence to be: something old
And useful, useful and useless at the same time.
&n
bsp; I was waiting for a taxi.
It seemed there were fewer
Of us now, and suddenly a
Whole lot fewer. I was afraid
I might be the only one.
Then I spotted a young man
With a guitar over his leg
And next to him, a young girl
Seated on the pavement, sitting
Merely. Not even
Lost in thought she seemed, but
Accepting the waiting for it
Or whatever else might be in the channel
Of time we were being ferried across.
Her face was totally devoid of expression
Yet wore a somehow kind look, so I was glad
Of it in the deepening fever of the day.
No sign
Did she make of interest to her companion
Who ever and anon did searchingly
Regard her face, as though to ascertain
That the signs he wished to read there
Were indeed not there, that there was nothing
In her aspect to cause him to change
And from time to time
Would stare at his guitar, as though
Rapt in concentration of what it would be like
To play something on it, yet
No stealthy movement of his hand
Was e’er discerned, no fandango or urgent
Serenade compelled his trusting back
To arch in expectation of an air
Which might have refreshed us all, given
The gloom of that moment, made us think
Of past scenes of cheerfulness, and remember
That they could easily happen again, unless
The mechanism had jammed, and we
Were to be tenants forever of a time
With little to hold the interest, and no
Promise of relief in movement.
And afterwards it was as though decay
Or senility of time had set in.
The scene changed, of course, and nothing
Was, again, as once it had been.
And therefore I do not see how I
Shall ever be able to acquire again
My old love of study, for it seems to me
That even when this infirmity of time
Has passed, the knowledge
Will always remain with me that there is one
Thing more delightful than study, and that once
I experienced it. And though it was not joy
But rather something more like the concept of joy,
I was able to experience it like a fruit
One peels, then eats. It’s no secret
That I have learned the things that are
Truly impossible, and left alone much
That might have been of profit, and use.
One destroys so much merely by pausing
To get one’s bearings, and afterwards
The scent is lost. To use it
I must forget the clouds and turn to my book,
Whose shifting characters, like desert sand