in Rhode Island,
as crows rest in cowslips
and cows slip in crowshit.
I may have been called upon to write
a poem different from this one.
OK, let’s go. I want to please everybody
and this is my song:
In Beethoven Street I handed you a melon.
Round and pronged it was, and full of secret juice.
You, in turn, handed me over to the police
who thought (correctly) that I was the spy
they had been looking for these past seven months.
They led me down to their station, you need to know,
where they questioned me for days on end.
But my answers were always questions, and so they let me go,
exasperated by their inability to answer.
I was a free man!
I walked up Rilke Street
chattering a little hymn to myself.
It went something like this:
“Beware the monsters, but take care
that you are not yourself one.
Time is kind to them
and will take care of you,
asleep on your grandmother’s couch, sipping cherry juice.”
How did the pigs get through the window screens at night?
By morning it was all over.
I had never sung to you, you never coaxed me to
from your balcony, and all trains run into night
that collects them like paper streamers, and lays them in a drawer.
Unable to leave the sight of you
I draw little crow’s feet in my notebook, in the sunlight
that comes at the end of a sudden day of tears
waiting to be reconciled to the fascinating madness of the dark.
My mistress’ hands are nothing like these,
collecting silken cords for a day when the wet wind plunges
through colossal apertures.
Suddenly I was out of hope. I crawled out on the ledge.
The air there was frank and pure,
not like the frayed December night.
PAPERWORK
Waste time on these riddles?
Because what would I lecture on then?
The master that comes after, after all,
brushes them aside or burns them.
Am I therefore not very strong?
Will my arch be built, strung along the sand
within sight of olive trees? No,
I am cut of plainer cloth, but it dazzles me
in the evening by the moonlight.
L’heureuse, they called her.
Day after day she gazed at the blue gazing globe
in her sunlit garden, saying nothing.
Noticing this, the old stump said nothing too.
Finally it couldn’t stand it any longer:
“Can’t you be something? You have the required manners
and your dress is a shifting of pea-green shot with sea-foam.”
I know I shall one day come to the reason
for manners and intercourse with persons.
Therefore I launch my hat on this peg.
Here, there are two of us. Take two.
Turning and turning in the demented sky,
the sugar-mill gushes forth poems and plainer twists.
It can’t account for the roses in our furnace.
A motherly chimp leads us away
to a table overflowing with silverware and crystal,
crystal smudgepots so the old man could see through tears:
He is the one you ought to have invited.
THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE
Once upon a time there were two brothers.
Then there was only one: myself.
I grew up fast, before learning to drive,
even. There was I: a stinking adult.
I thought of developing interests
someone might take an interest in. No soap.
I became very weepy for what had seemed
increasingly, I also grew more charitable
with regard to my thoughts and ideas,
thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.
Then a great devouring cloud
came and loitered on the horizon, drinking
it up, for what seemed like months or years.
TOY SYMPHONY
Palms and fiery plants populate the glorious levels of the unrecognizable mountains.
—Valéry, Alphabet
Out on the terrace the projector had begun
making a shuttling sound like that of land crabs.
On Thursdays, Miss Marple burped, picking up her knitting
again, it’s always Boston Blackie or the Saint—
the one who was a detective
who came from far across the sea
to rescue the likes of you and me
from a horde of ill-favored seducers.
Well, let’s get on with it
since we must. Work, it’s true
suctions off the joy. Autumn’s density moves down
though no one in his right mind would wish for spring—
winter’s match is enough. The widening spaces
between the days.
I sip the sap of fools.
Another time I found some pretty rags
in the downtown district. They’d make nice slipcovers,
my wife thought, if they could be cleaned up.
I don’t hold with that.
Why not leave everything exposed, out in the cold
till the next great drought of this century?
I say it mills me down,
and everything is hand selected here: the cheeses,
oranges wrapped in pale blue tissue paper
with the oak-leaf pattern, letting their tint through
as it was meant to be, not according to the calculations
of some wounded genius, before he limped off
to the woods.
The stair of autumn is to climb
backward perhaps, into a cab.
MEMORIES OF IMPERIALISM
Dewey took Manila
and soon after invented the decimal system
that keeps libraries from collapsing even unto this day.
A lot of mothers immediately started naming their male offspring “Dewey,”
which made him queasy. He was already having second thoughts about imperialism.
In his dreams he saw library books with milky numbers
on their spines floating in Manila Bay
Soon even words like “vanilla” or “mantilla” would cause him to vomit.
The sight of a manila envelope precipitated him
into his study, where all day, with the blinds drawn,
he would press fingers against temples, muttering “What have I done?”
all the while. Then, gradually, he began feeling a bit better.
The world hadn’t ended. He’d go for walks in his old neighborhood,
marveling at the changes there, or at the lack of them. “If one is
to go down in history, it is better to do so for two things
rather than one,” he would stammer, none too meaningfully.
One day his wife took him aside
in her boudoir, pulling the black lace mantilla from her head
and across her bare breasts until his head was entangled in it.
“Honey, what am I supposed to say?” “Say nothing, you big boob.
Just be glad you got away with it and are famous.” “Speaking of
boobs ...” “Now you’re getting the idea. Go file those books
on those shelves over there. Come back only when you’re finished.”
To this day schoolchildren wonder about his latter career
as a happy pedant, always nice with children, thoughtful
toward their parents. He wore a gray ceramic suit
walking his dog, a “bouledogue,” he would point out.
People would peer at him from behind shutters, watchfully,
hoping no new calamities would break out, or indeed
that nothing more would happen, ever, that history had ended.
Yet it hadn’t, as the admiral himself
would have been the first to acknowledge.
STRANGE OCCUPATIONS
Once after school, hobbling from place to place,
I remember you liked the dry kind of cookies
with only a little sugar to flavor them.
I remember that you liked Wheatena.
You were the only person I knew who did.
Don’t you remember how we used to fish for kelp?
Got to the town with the relaxed, suburban name,
remembering how trees were green there,
greener than a sudden embarrassed lawn in April.
How we would like to live there,
and not in a different life, either. We sweltered
along in our union suits, past signs marked “Answer”
and “Repent,” and tried both, and other things.
Then—surprise! Velvet daylight
came along to back us up, providing the courage
that was always ours, had we but
known how to access it downstairs.
We used to crawl to so many events together: a symphony
of hogs in a lilac tree, and other, possibly more splendid,
things until the eyelid withdrew.
Now I can sample your shorts.
So much more is there for us now—
runnels that threaten to drown the indifferent one
who slicks his toe in them.
Much, much more light.
To whose office shall we go tomorrow?
I’d like to hear the new recording of clavier
variations. Oh, help us someone!
Put out the night and the fire, whose backdraft
is even now humming her old song of antipathies.
FULL TILT
Disturbing news emanates from the wind tunnel:
He’s gone, who never lacked for champions,
killed by daylight saving time, or a terrible syllabus accident.
The dead leaves, maple or aspen, are a sign of life.
Let’s leave things as they are,
drying in the sun, soaking up the sweetness
that’s in everything.
This is what taking chances was all about, and look where it’s led us!
To the root, it seems of human misery.
Misery, get up, get down. Your hair is a mess
and your dress a fright. Yet your curdled armpits
speak to us. Sometimes it’s better to have nothing to say
when you are telling about what happened today.
It was so much, after all, that morbid agenda.
Now, why not investigate the way
all this can end up being pretty? Not just the whore
who waits on the corner till the last sliver of taxi is gone,
to be repackaged next night in a department store window
so you can pretend you bought it? I’m up here, Louise,
we’re all up here, waiting for you to step up to home plate
and bat us a cool one. Oh, but
I was supposed to be in the station an hour ago.
That’s the way it gets illustrated:
the four of you in Cincinnati, waving across the plain
to us, the lemon in hot pursuit, leading to student unrest.
We don’t have to worry about that now—
tomorrow or the day after will be just as good.
The fraternity has already waited an eternity. Only coaxing the stars
out could produce the fruit you need to have in your stocking or shorts.
Then this scene too faded away like a fable.
THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN
Coldly, we put away the cabin flatware.
Tomorrow, a transport strike. Damaged vacations will result.
What the fuck, we’re already in one and have somehow
got to make it what with the living, you know,
the sport and recreation around. Pious reflexes too.
So now about the apple? You know, what about it?
Vague chintzes all around, her hair caught in the door.
It seemed time when the bus came for Jacques in Vienna
that the other Boston terriers would be having their day too,
but no such luck—the sapphire eyes of one, confused,
were just about it. You could go away, too.
A poseur held up a scroll which, predictably, cascaded to the floor.
Something about an annual charity bazaar. We’d forgotten
it again, in the garden, this year. Why must things emerge
before you’ve finished wisecracking about them. What
does it all mean? In what rut were you born? I’ve got to
fix the baby’s things. I’m on my way to the garret. Don’t come.
I assure you everything is under control. It’s of no importance.
Stop it. I said it’s not that important. What’s not important?
What couldn’t be under the blue sails dripping
as they develop, develop their theories about us,
haunting the ether with memories of clay? We haven’t a stitch
to wear. Rumson’s is having a sale. I thought I’d
got out of that one. Oh no? A car is having its way with her,
carrying us down to the beach, against our will, as if by magic.
The chorus of foresters raises their muskets in a silent
gesture of solidarity with the departed. There, I thought
I’d finish this story before making another mistake and now it’s
happening. Oh, dear! Grace, fetch some ketchup, will you?
Now, there it’s all better. As I was saying ...
Strangers salute you in the street,
brave marquis of many years. What are thy wishes?
A shore dinner would be nice, perhaps on the boat launch
where we could feel for mussels afterwards. I like that,
reminds me of an encyclopedia I once read in an afternoon.
Oh yes, well, there were always a lot of stories
about how you played and who won. Nobody set much
store by any of them, but now you two men are like bricks
in a chimney, nobody is going to separate you or carry you off
or stand by you much longer, once the office closes.
Did it? It’s five o’clock and there are no roses ...
I thought I’d followed that street to the end
but it was only the end of the beginning, the rest was transparent
and needle-pure. “Best have a look at it.” The sun goes down
with a plop in these parts, like an egg falling on a counter,
and who is there to count the endless waterfowl, water ouzels,
beavers with otters on their backs? I’ll take that chessboard.
I mean I want it back now. But the tanks
rolling in the city hinted at another scenario,
another worst-case one. Listen to the pretty snowflakes.
Oh, I love you so much in such a little time.
It seems a shame we have to go on living. I mean,
we could get more loving into it. I’m not quitting.
I mean, I am but I’m not a quitter.
Whoever said you were? Climb up that cello and try to get some rest.
In the morning I’ve got to see the accountant.
So it goes, in the old country as well as in the new.
Pelicans startle us, then some reason for living gapes
in the wall of a building that once housed a bookstore
and is now for sale. The unlikeliest bidders come and go,
pandering to the lower orders
shall I say
and the unguents who made all this possible. Let’s give them a hand ...
Hey, you don’t think there’s any more
over the horizon? I’m not sure I could stand it if there was,
I mean their faces. Oh, they’ll all be home for Christmas
sometime, I’m sure. Why don’t you take a little trip
to an aching village? You look tired. Are you OK?
It was just my brother calling from Wichita. He says the downtown’s on fire.
Well if I was you I wouldn’t go there.
No, I have no intention of doing so.
Now, about those missing “fish” cards, did your nanny
take it into her head to “hide” them in her workbasket
or did Sheila abscond with them?
I’m not saying the boys isn’t responsible.
It was two of them to one of us in one box.
After the team finished cheering the fridge opened by itself, violently,
as one thinks of spring tempests tearing into trees,
mindless of viaducts below. People are wearing hound’s-tooth more.
That’s one way you can sense the change
in the average person’s deportment. I’m trying to unpack
these worthless drachmas so as to get the twins off to school,
Hey, some of those could turn out to be valuable.
Says who, and besides it’s raining in the next street and all around town.
Finny creatures lurch by. We must try frying the endive
next time. In the meantime my noggin will sport a red golfing cap
in case there’s anyone around to see, which at this hour is unlikely,
I admit, but I intend to have the old niblicks at the ready
just in case, and it’s sure foul out. Don’t jolt that.
It pertains to me. It’s a stuffed raven given to my great-grandfather by
Edgar Allan Poe himself. Said he was finished with it. It had cost him a poem,