who held hands with Miles Standish, or Priscilla—
a tectonic unrest made less awkward
by the distribution of the braille mail and disposing
of table scraps. Sometimes one gets caught in a pail,
“in pailed.” And the doily scissors scallop your tootsies
as though primitive man had lived this way all along,
just waiting for you to show up and be astonished.
In truth sir you are a jaybird.
But just come with us and everything will work out fine,
I’m sure. Oh no you don’t, that’s the way you got me the last time,
you bastard and I let them punish me for it. Gentlemen,
we’ve a problem here. On the one hand I don’t want to appear too harsh,
but his lackadaisicalness is truly unconscionable—I—I
just don’t have a word for it.
Now I want the flower girls to appear stage left.
The peacocks and our mother will take care of everything else.
I am unperched, dispossessed, and this is the helpful truth of it,
the holy harp I keep harping on.
If they had wanted it another way they would have arranged it
that way. It would be cruel to dwell much longer in their collective memory
and I’m ready for a shower. Oh, just one thing—
did that guy ever tell you where my tricycle is, or the light switch?
It was all a drawing on canvas, you see. This way no one gets hurt,
and a few of us learn something.
AVENUE MOZART
Some of these houses are startlingly old.
Other, newer ones seem old too.
Only when a line of trees ends in something
Does it resemble the model of progress glimpsed once
in a bottle as a boy. Our references have all aged a little
as we were looking at them, not noticing.
Now there’s something perverse in every yellow leaf,
every cat loafing, even the stick leaning against the door.
I’d like to get out of these clothes ...“Later.”
And a full moon of oxymorons swings up over the ridgepoles
with their chimneys. It’s light enough to read by.
But nobody feels like reading now.
LIFE IS A DREAM
A talent for self-realization
will get you only as far as the vacant lot
next to the lumber yard, where they have rollcall.
My name begins with an A,
so is one of the first to be read off.
I am wondering where to stand—could that group of three
or four others be the beginning of the line?
Before I have the chance to find out, a rodent-like
man pushes at my shoulders. “It’s that way,” he hisses.
“Didn’t they teach you anything at school? That a photograph
of anything can be real, or maybe not? The corner of the stove,
a cloud of midges at dusk-time.”
I know I’ll have a chance to learn more
later on. Waiting is what’s called for, meanwhile.
It’s true that life can be anything, but certain things
definitely aren’t it. This gloved hand,
for instance, that glides
so securely into mine, as though it intends to stay.
VOWELS
Instant insufficiency edged eerily over our oasis.
Under us, awed angry Airedales adjusted.
The octet closes with a signing-on in shipyards.
Through naked fingers of the rain
Easter week, and during the winter the valleys
are like yeast. This much I divined, walking,
then turned my back on the mighty fragment of yesterday.
Everything was at peace with everybody. A dark stone glistened.
BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK
It’s wind, it’s sleeting.
It’s real adventure. It hasn’t happened yet.
It’s time to break for lunch—
half a bean sandwich. Yours isn’t here yet,
you asked for black bread on bacon.
The perp is becoming abusive,
and I would like a chiller, wind
in my pants, my long taffeta gown,
to take me anywhere from any place
before this insane excursion is finished. Please—
the seamstress is inside down below.
The president of Slavonia is on the wire:
We’ll have to go ahead with the order for flatbed trucks
now stretching far into the offended distance.
Stop! Some other way may be found—
That’s what you think, sister.
The day extracts, in a loosely confining way,
what these pills signified,
and what they were supposed to absorb before your seconds arrived
and now it’s too late to include the meeting.
It would only baffle the establishment.
Yes but what I am hearing is from plazas of wailing
tilting back into the bland exposure of it,
the idle secret. It was again a lunch of sandwiches,
but truth will perforate. As sadly as I’m
in your line of vision, Venice is closed,
another browser sidles in
through a snow of ecstatic fleas,
what my alma mater is all about I think I once said.
Photographs of members enjoin us through the back seat
on a spring day once; green grass and toilets
spooled on a little anticipation.
“Nelly”—that’s all I needed and we’re off again, down foul alleys
ending in meticulous squares, and none of us knew the outcome yet.
We could see the blue ice-slick clear through the Turkish uniform,
and the bowling alleys ended out in the garden as is right
and proper.
Poor Beverly—they never gave her (him?) a chance
to prove herself in the journals of the East End
before being summoned to that rocky principality
from which no bulletins ever issue—only brickbats
and the occasional red herring press release: “Collapsed
felt underdrawers are invading the season, counsels
Léopoldine from Phalsbourg, but don’t
dare disguise those shoulder pads yet. Instead, why not
think rotting horseflesh this year? Some beaux even prefer it
to the spritzed violets so common underfoot
these days of walking back to the starting gate
where everything began, inconceivably it seems, in light—”
a fiery bazaar no one needs to talk too much about anymore
till the next in the round of visits happens.
It’s incredible though how few latent oblivions have been canceled—
we’re back on track at least as far as
late returns are concerned. Most of them are in.
A few hotel ghosts wander stiffly, wondering if catarrh
can ever be cathartic, and if there’s any afterlife, and if so,
whether it’s near as the next room, or the closet even,
which might just be preferable to daytime’s sloping agendas,
the roof at night, the rent, and the violet pallor flooding us now always.
THE PEARL FISHERS
And he would say, “You ought to write him and thank him for it,” and I’d
say, “Yes, I’m going to when I have the time.” Of course I had intended
to, but the project aged. It was slightly too dry. I’ll begin again, I’ll
thank him. And so I did, in my own way. I forgot him and his seven journeys
to success. We became as one—a stilt. A single stilt isn’t of much use,
and that’s how I thanked him—by remindin
g him from time to time,
as the salt ball rolled toward the glacier.
It melted and did not. Wait, you can’t get up. There’s A.1. sauce
on her slipcover. Informality be damned, he said. Whenever I come here I
like to take two lumps instead of three. Unfortunately you can’t have either,
we’re out of everything I said. The sun smiled wanly on the Cimmerian landscape,
which stirred. It seemed as if it was at last about to take an interest
in rubber goods,
piles of filth,
gossamer undies,
potted hyacinths,
stumps no tree would own up to,
casinos rattling till three in the morning.
I’m sorry, Mrs. Swan-toe,
we meant not to disturb and then this waterfall
rushed over the island, as I’m sure you noticed. By the time it had passed
fully, except for the occasional unavoidable runnel,
no one could remember how to count.
It was a Royal Accident.
You can’t rely on those,
they always win.
THEY DON’T JUST GO AWAY, EITHER
In Scandinavia, where snow falls frequently
in winter, then lies around for quite some time,
lucky cousins were living in a time-vault of sorts.
No purchase on the ground floor, but through a funnel-shaped drain
one could catch glimpses, every so often, of the peach-colored
firmament. It’s so terrific! It’s purer than you think,
too, not that that need unduly concern us.
Father sat in his living room
off the main parlor, working at his table. We never knew
exactly what he did. We kids would amuse ourselves
with games like Authors and Old Maid, until Mamma abruptly
withdrew the lamp, and we all sat shivering in the dark for a while.
Soon it was time to go to bed. We groped our way up
non-existent flights of stairs to the attic funnel.
Everything is so peaceful in here I can dream of more kinds
of things at once. But what if the dreams were prophetic?
Stumbling down an alley, screaming, forehead bathed in blood
or ossified like an old tree root that can barely speak, and when it can,
says things like: “Do you know your horse is on fire?”
Many winters were passed in this way.
I cannot say I feel any wiser for it.
Instead my brain feels like a face freshly shaved
by the barber. I rub it with satisfaction,
giving him a good tip on the way out.
More fanciful patterns await us further along
in our destiny, I tell him, and he agrees; anything
to be rid of me and on to the next customer.
Outside, in the street, a length of silk unspools beautifully,
rejoicing in its doom.
Father, I can go no farther, the lamp blinds me
and the man behind me keeps whispering things in my ear
I’d prefer not to be able to understand ...
Yet you must, my child, for the sake of the cousins
and the rabbit who await us in the dooryard.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Although I have known you for a long time
it seems as though we hardly know each other at all.
It was as a rehearsal for coming to be in time
that leaves are aslant. Take another look
for the cookie hoarded in armpits up till now,
the pointed stare.
When the satchel came undone I was running around
the corner please, sure as a clock’s breath
in the allées, digging. Heaven sent this pinprick.
It was another time to be riding around in.
Alright I said I can take care of myself.
Then depth spun its wheels. I was sliding on gravel somewhere.
Take a look around you for your personal belongings
before getting on this bus. Not one but three old ladies came along.
The flustered caddy spoke for the local cesspool contractor when he said
man the trailer I thought I belonged here but what
the hey, said in wartime the beets were too much spinach.
Now I can unclog you be patient.
A girl in the apse wondered why the cymbals
were drained of vowels in these perplexing times.
Have you ever read Rimbaud’s Les Voyelles No I haven’t I said.
It’s too much like the class room in here. Now if we replaced the air
with cobwebs wouldn’t they all march in correctly
to the triangle’s tune? Sure, the major is bound to be pissed off
but all that counts is our air conditioner. In a jiffy
the dock was rehabbed. The colonel grabbed Mavis and Iris.
It’s dumb overhead. I know this but please,
let’s resolve our differences in gentlemanly fashion. What’ll it
be, swords or soldier beetles. My is there a difference?
Mayhap only in dreams where you bottle it and sell it.
And the can fell off the radiator.
Althea’s glazed look came true. It was deep blue in the palaces
of revolt. Something extraordinary was happening
all the time. The due date kept flashing past
the diamond slot in fishnet pumps and a shadow,
the shadow of the lunge on the bridge,
of monsters congealing above the town,
and of a lost slip with my name on it in the cradle of the ages.
AND AGAIN, MARCH IS ALMOST HERE
If I were a tree you’d say
I was lost by a highway.
Death overflows the ditches
in which life confined it
and will be that way for some time.
in his turquoise at seven
and elsewhere saw the less spiritual side.
God, how it gets me down.
Then furtively a bailiff came
as though to take my measurements
for a new suit. “Here, I don’t need this ...
brine.” I was cluttered for the day.
A Mrs. came out of her house
being as I was on the road to say
look for the heather that is father
to the salt hay down the road.
I guess I only confused
my eager willingness to understand
just about anything that was offered.
Alas, it wasn’t much.
There were few requests for employment
and those seemed old and pallid
as though faxed by a squid one day last March.
Now, a year has gone by. Not quite
a year though, as I
was going to say.
They offered me Bluebeard.
So much that was unacceptable
that day and all the forests to come.
Though bathed in sleep and aromatic
persons, other stimuli come to the aid
of the hairs of one’s neck:
a lad on a bicycle, once,
beautiful as the crescent moon;
enjoyable as a book in a long set of books
who asks you this secret again.
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM
Hell no, the creators weren’t anguished,
just determined to keep you dangling
above the maelstrom a few more seconds.
Then it was as if everything that was going to happen
had. Here, walk into my living room,
put on these sandals, you must be tired.
You’ve come a long way since the evening news
put a half-nelson on both of us. Here,
drink this sugared tea.
It w
as as though my childhood were beginning again,
with bills to pay, defective homework to be done,
and the rain getting in, wanting to play, it seemed,
like a cat. A great big cat loves me, I guess.
I was down in the swamp tuning my viola,
and naturally everybody comes by then to ask you for a favor,
or, more rarely, to offer to do one for you.
I guess they think nobody ever goes outdoors.
Me, I can’t understand it. It’s the dicey ones
can’t, the car waxers, the dictators. Then say hello to him
by all means, though I guarantee he won’t know what you’re saying.
SONATINE MÉLANCOLIQUE
Then I walked on a ways.
It became apparent that the journey (for
such it was) was far from unavoidable.
A twig skewered my sock
and I looked up at the oak tree’s strapless trunk,
hoping to escape from what seemed a parable,
from which escape is never possible.
I know that. But there is still time for surprises
like the time you looked at me and smiled
just as the sledge was dragging us past a bunker
scented with antique urine. In short
it is here that I shall found a colony
and call it God.
The wasps that night had never been loonier,
making reading impossible. I put down my volume
of Little Dorrit, and gnats flung themselves even closer
with propositions. “Hey, how’d you like to be rid of that guy
and us too? All you need do is push a button
and a mandarin somewhere on the other side of the world
will stagger for a moment, seeing his life transpire
before him: that first bowl of gruel, graduation day
at mandarin school, and later on doubts and remorse,