She has forgotten her pearls. The orchestra riffs around,
they come back. “Well, I never! Of all things!”
Oh, it plays
to the breach. You see it. Her lover and best friend came
along the hall. “I’m sorry, Dan.
But I just couldn’t.” So it’s all alright,
he thinks. He thinks it’s a secret.
MOON, MOON
The winter voice adjusts: “As I was saying
(before I was so rudely interrupted),
we don’t have to go downstairs and get the plants.
Some of them, at least, are already here.”
More innocent people, gnawed by pests.
Death agreed to lie low for a while.
Nobody was very grateful. “After all,
if it hadn’t been for him the anteaters
might have noticed us. Now potstickers take up
the cry: ‘It was great to have you in that glen!’”
Out on the ice children are being sick
as grown men whirl round and round
the devil in coattails. “He had a passion for straw marquetry.
Other than that, little is known
of him or of his descendants.”
In the valley of the school all is well anew.
“I told you all would be well
on a certain day.” That rivulets
would course past their snowy banks, singing the song of
a sudden thaw in January.
“Each of us checked out the others,
got down to work.” His disguise worked,
he made it through the breadline with blue
Etruscan flowers in his galvanized wrists:
“It is time for the debit to begin,
the rush of evening.” “No one likes being abandoned
on a rapidly disintegrating floe, and dawn coming.”
He stood just outside.
We were the undeserving ones now, though his warmth
cradles us,
as the road becomes a kiss.
SYLLABUS
Look,
the savage glitter of downtown,
those walls of glycerin
inspissated by tears—
yes, and why does the smell not go away?
Honey, it’s been ages, take off your hat and coat,
rest your feet awhile? Now, where were we?
Wave upon wave of new construction
(some of it shoddy), then that too plowed under
as new waves bare their teeth—
where’s it gotten us? I say, you
look a little disheveled—want to freshen up?
Play doctor? Uh, I’ll be with you
in a moment. Yes, the doctor is in,
yuk yuk. Now, what was it we were learning to say?
“Change the value systems. All incandescence and fear
have their origin there. In not nice night
one must strip down silently, and quickly.
See, a little headway has been made.”
The snow shovel’s disclaimer
defused the situation. Soon the host was ruddy
with his own reflected good cheer.
And it was again time to creep back a ways,
to rest, sheltered by soffits,
and pronounce one’s own alphabet, nasally and distinctly, backwards
like it was supposed to be all along. We’d arrived
again, it seemed, though we only came along for the ride.
ON HIS RELUCTANCE TO TAKE DOWN THE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS
A nice, normal morning:
feet setting out as though in a trance,
doubling the yesterdays, a doubled man
under the stairs, and strange surrealist fish
from so much disappearance, damaged in the mail.
Or the spry cutting edge of another day.
Here, we have these in
sizes and colors—
day goes fluttering by.
Like ivy behind a chimney
it grows and grows in ropes.
Mouse teams unslay it,
yeomen can’t hear yet.
A shadow purling,
up into the sky.
Silence in the vandalized vomitorium.
It’s great that you can be here too.
Passivity rests its case.
THE BUSINESS OF FALLING ASLEEP
That one who was cognizant
(belief in one to three things)
turned at last to the roulette table
and gasped her last—or else, why not let the building sleep
while it collapses, spineless. In a second
the faith that was as large as my life was split,
edge to edge—
And tell them this:
If it was for nothing that I aged in a dawdle
beside a slow-knocking stream
out from under the reader,
why am I being criticized?
Do you react to fine breath of the anvil
in a cold room?
More, then, another time—but we will have to
fit note to note,
unclenchingly
going over more territory until it all rises
smooth from the gulf,
a pure provocation,
arc of seamless energy.
The wall-bearing fragments move on over
the main chancel.
All the tesserae fly apart.
Bracts are fresh and new.
In the main parlor the governor
seated around his table, smilingly assented
to whatever assignment was raised.
Pawky, canny—not one of your average sterns
fitted against the exodus
out of old harbors and disks in chains—
Say they came to see you,
now is calm, and whatever remaining communicants leased your
indoor policy.
Amazing, to amaze,
falling light over and in on its own imperfect
sense of the appropriate,
the main argument emerges:
how to be understand please, not with
a harpsichord at one’s traces—
the dreams only pool off again, that way.
Other firm magnets enticed
girls out in summer night
where a pale loggia echoed. The neighbors fell silent,
or it was not a day in which to have elicited model policy demeanors.
HINTS AND FRAGMENTS
The arty set adheres
to the stolen pavement. Inside
are sherbets and “Barbara.”
Strange, how one day
you’ll come over “all queer,”
then next day we’re scrambling to stamp it out.
Such are our inspirations:
of unequal value, one chasing the better
ones until he stops, forgetting. That’s
the time I like best, cold color of cistern.
Values show up in the neighborhood house;
next day it’s moved on.
In the Pennsylvania of my youth, tungsten filaments
daubed hoardings ludicrous shades, one after another.
The crowds have bicycled far out to see you fail.
Don’t disappoint them.
Three on a match he said
is how it all began. Seven years’ bad luck
and after that, roseate perspectives garlanded
with octaves of blooms. Keeping next to her
and the door closes, kindly.
All that’s behind us, or
so we used to say.
Kettle’s on the hob, ghost dancers
are fierce tonight. Yet it collects
in the hollow of my palm, somehow,
tears in an appetizing equation.
Door is shut,
but hasn’t been locked yet.
We owe this to our childhood dogs,
sprig of hope. Where clarity once ruled
dreams are still active,
a clarinet floats ashore,
a good time was had by all.
IF YOU ASK ME
The whole is stasis between ends. Probability’s dark inching, sundered, disclaimer. Time for the space hut to close. Petal on a chain.
Thus it was the laborious leopard pirated more than one freedom hymn. Kettle boils, not urgent.
Privately there were interviews the sun of the sea drowned. In that chair. Over there.
When I last got a message from him I was too ill to see, into the hole, an enchantment. Privately, then a scale. Turnips aboard, the sport tank is partially invaded by flying fish. One youth seriously injured, two more in critical but stable condition.
I see. It flies down to that. Why couldn’t you have asked, then advised me? Now wherever I go it’ll always be a tiny tricycle behind me, stifled prunes, prurience of a moment seen through the loupe. Best to cash everything in, a train approaches on the narrowing rails, veering sideways. An untidy philosopher tosses it aside like bones. Then the water rose slightly,
underground. Dare I say the water table? There will be no élan, as in a peach, miles away, stiffening. You can say it how you like it. Screws up in no time. The Dixie Adder is programmed livid. It likes to stop. You too. You too in canvas bearing supple testimony away, do the lanterns recognize terror in our faces, condition of gone, perhaps further, more than you know. I gave him what there was to give. At the end it was invisible. It was a lot.
THE HAVES
Many there were that.
There were many who that.
Many did that to what.
Many undid that to what.
Many there were worse than that.
To undo that many did that.
More of an obstacle to this than that
where the upcoming is done to that.
The undone is done is that.
They are speaking to what is done
not left on the stove.
The done is that to that done.
There were many who did this and that,
meanwhile were many who undid that.
The undone undid the that.
The crisis under the batter’s hat.
Do you manage a common if?
If so why is the crisis that?
Who did the crisis there?
Why is the crisis after my time that.
Ordinarily men go around
seeking wedgies the corner is out.
They this and why and in this bat
an eyelash to be better than that
on the day that.
And that was all a better than that day had that
unto the jousting which was unto a way down that.
They mortared the way under the man hat
that wanted to under a bill be that that.
In London just now is cold.
In London just now a gull spring
in London on the back of the bat
in London on the back of that.
When they and London remove the bat back
the bat backer became the bat back.
The butt packer begat the back pack
under lest the noise disturb those that bat back.
In the backing the true bat resides
under a cleft the cliff nose
gannets nosed underside.
The cliff-size size briar sizes up size,
decides size is lies under briar thighs.
That was a lot of that and lack
come down the stair decorum
and lack of reasonable store bin
under the store the straw was been.
Me like methink it all past being
and beyond into the been that he sinned,
the being that has seen
under the hedgerow greens as feline
is opposed to oppressed being been
and never two of us no no more we’ll have been.
The barn exploded.
The big store ripped apart.
Gravel on the lawn made its mark
yes that and festoon of grit in the sky
while the riders came riding by
and nobody was appointed to fill the exam
no others why no other have ever been
why the irritated sky
and we’ll never be the fly
not two slates ever to fly by
and no more store no more in store by the fly
they fly by and take just as your daddy did
and stand by the chest
just make sure to be to the thigh
came crawling across clock’s tempest.
LIKE AIR, ALMOST
It comes down to
so little:
the gauzy syntax
of one thing and another;
a pleasant dinner
and a frozen train ride into the exhaustible
resources.
We’d had almost enough,
tossing the cap to first one
and then the other one,
but still weren’t determined
to give up the drive.
It had so much we wanted!
But besides that, was
fickle, overdetermined.
So I passed on that.
It was worth it.
Angelic eventide came along after afternoon,
a colibri fluttered questioning wings,
all so we might be taken out,
aired.
And when the post-climax happened
in soft shards, falling
this way and that,
signing the night’s emeralds away,
we took it to be a sign of something.
“Must be a sign of something.”
Then the wind came on, and winter with it.
“Why, weren’t we just here,
five minutes ago?”
I thought I’d have another look,
but that way is all changed, and besides,
no one goes there anymore,
it’s too popular.
Just one fragment
is all I ever wanted,
but I can have it, it’s too much,
but its touch is for another time,
when I’m ready.
Crowd ebbs peacefully.
Hey it’s all right.
THE BLESSED WAY OUT
Those who came closest did not come close.
The unknown leaned out to them,
then it was post-afternoon. Yes, Jerry built it.
There are many of them in Old Town.
What with one thing and another
you gave me all sorts of fur presents, you know.
It was good to come back. Gumball machines furnish
the library’s stark living style.
You can’t compete with what the
car tells its owner. One by one you are mortal
if the watershed idea catches on
and if we are credited for our utterance.
They thought serendipity was the most beautiful thing in the world.
They were right. As the wheel takes hold,
other inspirations spike it.
There was no year like it for taxation.
FDR decreed a large public works program
that had to be supported with funds from somewhere.
Inevitably, these took the form of taxation.
As when a redbreast calls, there is someone to hear it.
Calico got pasted over the mouse hole.
What are we doing in a theater more than one
wondered. Leaves fled like falling stocks.
SIGHT TO BEHOLD
The album sinks through fog, its unclasped pages
oozing afterthoughts: “If he weren’t such a sacrificial lamb
we’d have been delivered sooner. As it is, he grasps at straws
or fluff to kee
p his conscience afloat, which, in any case, seethes
in the authorial chant of bees.”
Don’t make him jump through hoops, I heard another one say
of me. Hey, I was just getting down to business.
A cab appeared at the door, as though summoned.
That it gave me quite a turn I don’t have to tell you.
You know you’ve arrived at bedlam when the arc lights
expire. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking has been suspended,
as has parking. Other than dishpan hands
I have naught to fondle you with. The memory eddies,
sinks, bobs up again, is carried away for good. Now,
what was I telling you? You’re telling me. And beyond that point
of darkness, good citizens don’t go. It’s implanted
in their genes, to flower along the way. And a good job
it’s not, old sod.
Like Knights Templar, we took our time, making sure
we were getting there. Sooner or later the proof dissolves
in the pudding. Made to look inconvenient, we had our say
again, and it was all profit and loss; the streets
had nowhere to go. We lived like nabobs, piling excess
on excess, till one fine day there was nothing left to wake up to.
I suppose it’s for that we’re being punished,
only this punishment is more like a thrill,
the slow beginning of a roller-coaster ride.
Be admonished then, but don’t take
it too much to heart either. Their records need you and your kind.
PRISONER’S BASE
It might have made
Cindy’s testimony
less credible,
and now seems at low ebb.
It may be just cold enough now.
Stars may have become polluted.