some old fire, thought extinguished, that now
blazes in the stove, and in an instant we realize we are free
to go and return indefinitely. Is that
what you meant by lasting? Oh, sure,
hedgerows are in it too, and the doves there and insects
and treed raccoons that eye one with frank disapproval:
“You unmitigated disaster, you!” I was pleased to discover
one could flatten or otherwise compress it, its Tom
Tiddler’s ground having induced only a subcoma, a place
where grown men drink screwdrivers and giggle at the melee
that would certainly have resulted if someone, some prince regent or sheriff,
hadn’t been in charge, while the long day moped
and opened the fan of its grievances, harassment
being the only one that stands out in the blur now, after such distance.
The steed returned home alone, requiting all previous loves.
II
To have been robbed of a downturn
today, I have drunk some water,
rollicked in the texture of a late,
unfinished sonata,
sinking into snow,
falling forward in the oratory,
violent as the wolf’s cue and anything
you take from that side of the ledger
only beware of boredom, boredom-as-spell.
Then, slipping into the gentle jacket of
my having to know why everybody passes me,
how I cursed that heir, braided that subway
of signals seen only from behind,
the old rug and its mug—all were madness for me,
yet only dust. And as I undid its much-stitched
frogs, a near melancholy approached
from across the lake—little slivers
of sense unbent, that were right about it all
in their way, though I unlatched these tears,
bleached for the occasion.
The stairs knew
it was under them, but by the same token couldn’t acknowledge
the enormous debt lifted from the mountain’s brow.
And the same foreman, the same teacups jingle still,
following a localized pattern,
uncovering what till now has been everyone’s pill.
III
The nude thing was taken around
to various ambassadorial residences.
And on the day he had come home
to see her, her in the maze of
sandwiches some artisan proposed,
he was like a bee in summer.
Remember the reflexive mode, the soul
can live with that, or live behind
it he said, to no avail. The last
breasts caught up.
And in morning like sugar she gave her head
to the toll-places the mind suggests.
IV
“words like so many tiny wheels”
—JOUBERT
divide the answer among them
on the façade of the spinning jenny as it
approaches improbably,
a toxic avenger …
Later amid the hay of reasons
we sort out a sparse claim.
Was it to be thirty he dressed her
in black-and-white checkers of gingham,
or,
perforce, did the lad go athirst
thinking no doubt too late of the spines,
pelage of mingled hairs and spines,
when all would have meant protection
for him from the main highway, the chief.
A porch
rattles in the near, clear distance.
There was never any insistence on a name,
though we all have one. Funny, isn’t it?
Yours is Guy. I like “Guy,” “Fanny” too,
and they grow up and have problems same as us—
kind of puts us out into the middle of the golf course
of the universe, where not too much ever happens,
except growing up, hook by hook,
year after tethered year.
And in the basement, that book,
just another thing to fear.
V
The problem
would have to have had so many other things wrong with it
to remain remonstrably a problem that we would have had to float,
it to its bottle of capers, I to my mound of gin,
for the others to see us and pretend not to notice.
That would have been the bonanza, the great volcano,
but as they say in Cheyenne, “Ain’t some weekends no
more than sister days of the week when it comes to volleyball
and dimity shrouds,” and aquarelles are for the masses
to live off of, when food and conversation run out.
I know because I was a kid with a banana,
but that’s for eternity only. All other gaps open out
in the mind of the possessed. I’ll be glad to
repeat what I said in court, but send
no lawyers after me, no papier bleu, if you please …
And the spider shinnied down the thread it was making as it did so,
curious about what other alarming event could be occupying this same moment,
and when he got there, well, it was too late. Death
makes no excuses and, by the same token, exacts none.
The race
is to the fit, and it’s a great day for the race,
the human race, yes, but also the tent race,
and my husband is as a cored apple to me:
beautiful, sometimes, and in and out of the dark.
We cared less for each other
than any two people on earth, but the point is we cared.
Don’t tell the scotties we didn’t.
They wouldn’t believe you anyway—it’s just
that my mind is full of eyes, days like this.
VI
A silly place to have landed,
I think, but we are here.
The door to the dressing room is ajar.
A tremendous fight is going on in there.
Later, they’ll ask and you’ll say you heard nothing
out of the ordinary, now, not that day.
Madame had gone out …
So bring the scenery with you.
Midwife to gargoyles, as if all or something
were appropriate, you circle the time inside you,
plant an asterisk next to a kiss,
and it was going to be okay again, and the love
of which much was made settles closer, is a paw
against a wrist. Hasn’t finished yet,
though the bread-and-butter machine continues to churn out
faxes, each grisette has something different
about her forehead, is as a poinsettia
in the breeze of Rockefeller Center. I don’t like
a glacier telling me to hurry up, the ride down is precipitous.
Then a smile broke out on the ocean face:
We had arrived in time for the late lunch.
The dogs were instructed not to devour us.
And so much that in the past
was kept in flavors of ice-cream sodas now jumps
into one’s path. We’ll have to
take note of that for tonight’s return trip,
though silver sleighbells pamper us,
hint that we’ll get to see the Snow Queen
after all, at long last, obscuring the fact
that somebody was running along the courtyard.
Then the janitor wasn’t screwy, the mickey
he was to have been slipped was stuck in heavy traffic,
and all those conversations about carbon dioxide
were a smokescreen too. How brittle it all was,
in the way abstractions have, and
yet how
much it mattered for those children: It was their
funeral, and they should have had a say in its undoing
by the lighthouse’s repeated lunges.
He claimed it was to read Sir Walter Scott by.
No one ever questions him. That asparagus-like mien
wasn’t made to encourage dolts and stutterers.
Yet I think a clue is back here
behind the sofa, where lost bunnies whimper
and press together. He had been a seafarer,
who knew where his last hamburger
had come from, and whose cursive signature adorned
the polished bullet. In a little while peace
would establish itself, welcome foreigners and venture capital,
and tides rush in to destroy
what little progress in unleashing the sense of things
I and my classmates had made. We were still
at the beginning of the alphabet, chanting things like “Tomes
will open to disgorge intuiting of our altered dates,
we stepchildren, who had no place to go, and nowhere
to be late, and brash breezes
play with our buoys. Still, a little consideration
might have helped, at that point.” And time will be as precise
as a small table with a cordless telephone on it, next to a television.
VII
Rummaging through some old poems
for ideas—surely I must have had some
once? Some people have an idea a day,
others millions, still others are condemned
to spend their life inside an idea, like a
bubble chamber. And these are probably
the suspicious ones. Anyway, in poems
are no ideas. No ideas in things, either—
her name is Wichita.
Later with candles coming to the
celebration, it occurred to me how
all this helps—if it wasn’t here
we’d be like lifeguards looking for prey.
Look, one of them stops me. “Your
candle, sir?” Dammit, I know there was something
I was supposed to remember, and now I’m lost.
“Oh no you’re not, the smile on that big
bird’s beak should be enough to let you in
on the secret, and more.” He’s here to help,
the whole darn nation is, even as
tidal waves suck at its precipices and high-speed
dust storms dement its populace. One
will say he’s seen an anchor in the sky—
why am I telling you this? It’s just that the light,
violet, impacted, made a difference
for a moment
back there.
The bug-black German
heels and back areas, the long tilted
cloaks for sale, the others—yes,
they’re still here?
Something must be done about it
before it does it itself. You know
what that will be like. The white tables with their
roses are so beautiful. It doesn’t matter if the corn is faded.
VIII
I’ve never really done this before.
See, I couldn’t do it. Does this
make a difference to you, my soul’s
windshield wiper? See, I can try again.
Now, try to expose it.
We’ll look back and it won’t seem
so long ago. This late in Dec.
you go from day to night in 32 minutes,
the peonies ajar—
That which I polished
as a child stands up to me.
A peashooter blows away
the soldiers.
I have seldom encountered more libidinousness
on the road to the tracks. My shanty
looks okay to me now, I can live with it
if not in it,
who had the prescience—the prescience of mind
to buy a part of New York
while it was still a logo on someone’s umbrella,
a rococo convict from the Laocoön tableau.
Those snakes get worse each season
the deaf man said
and he had reason
on his side, they were strangling his kid
and goat even as we talked in the parched
weather that was obscurely damp and white.
Next swamp we’ll do better,
tidy up things, the davenport
that got thrown out, the kerosene lamp
you wanted for your henhouse. The stoves,
so many of them. The refrigerator:
Eskimos really do need them
to keep their food from freezing
you said to the teacher, and my eye
is dry, all the riddles come undone.
Hot, swift choices
over the lake in May.
The old gray mare.
Violets blossomed loudly
like a swear word in an empty tank.
The fish mostly had gone home
the admiral repeated falling into
his habitual stammer—whenever he came
to the words “iron blow” it happened for him,
poor rich man, who despised the stall tickets
once he recovered from the rage
of being within us again.
And whether it was smoke on a balcony
or idle laurels that seem to creep
out of his books in the library
we were chastened—“by the experience”
and so went to bed and never read again.
It was glorious standing up in the various rain
to keep clear of the teeth but that changed nothing
fast like a fast game of checkers.
The kind of cry that can’t be heard
yet others outside might know of
soon as the mist was sucked
up through a tube and the platonic curve
returned for various dignitaries to perch on
Androgynous truths never shattered anyone’s
complacency on Broadway even though they use thermal down
now (I thought it had been outlawed)—
beckoning though maybe not at you
as you come to evaluate
all the leaning together.
And the store models are free
for the asking—aye, that’s just it,
“for the asking.” What isn’t? And who
can make that chirp
sound round in the eye of the traveling salesman—
taller than might have been expected, than Mont Blanc—
who sees the talisman perishing amid lichees
while others gape and walk back toward
Washington Square.
If I had night I would feed it to you
but I have something much better—the desire to run
away for president, with you
in my back seat. And whether butter
brings a smell of gas with it or the Beefeaters
look bloated, all is of some concern to us—
we didn’t need to be separated before you knit that
sweater as a plenary indulgence: shimmering
with only pastel colors like a life lived
near sunlight exclusively, like a page turner’s
romance with the page and the soloist.
It breaks into thunder:
thought that comes to you,
a safe haven from the shipping.
Lo, a low hill welcomes those who wish
to climb its flanks, to its summit
just over the near horizon, blue and cream,
the colors of my navy she said, I’ll bet yours
are similar too. That was why I had to play
my gray cape, the lost card
no one is ever conscious of having.
And if we had something for the stew,
some salt or something, why that could go in too
as long as land could still be sighted
to the left, a silver crow’s nest in which all
lost objects, blue Christmas tree ornaments, arise
and sing the national anthem of Hungary
and the river garments come together with a clap
to shield those who never previously wore them
and the gold tooth extracted from a brooch
join in the general clamor
of do-gooders—the common sort of folk
all over us like a coat of burrs.
Once the bear knew he headed back to his cave.
Winter wasn’t clear yet
but all the days of the year were tumbling out of its crevices,
the chic ones and the special-interest ones,
and those with no name upon them.
Everything looked slight
which was all right.
Then the magician entered his chamber.
Too bad there are no more willows
but we’ll satisfy his bent commands anyway,
have a party in the dark,
throw love away, go neck in the park,
fill out each form in sextuplicate—then let the storm
be not far behind, the old graves and swords
of winter erupt out of turn. It won’t be bad
for us. You see, the penguins have stayed away too long,
ditto the flamingos. I think I can make it all
come together, but for that
there must be a modicum of silence.
Your ear’s just the place for it.
IX
New technology approaches the bridge.
The weir, ah the weir, combing the falls,
like the beautiful white hair of a princess.
In the oxidation tank he thinks
of fish, how strange they can get the oxygen
they need from the water, and then when it goes blank—
why, pouf! And you realized the past suffered
from housemaid’s knee, and that when the present
came along, why no one would speak up,
and it just moved in, with pets …
For the medium future I had thought striped stockings
and a kind of beard like a haze, seen only
on certain ancient sun deities who walked
absorbed in fields, as children groused
and crocuses sputtered the unbelievable word.
Right, it’s definitely our situation.
We can come out of it but not simply leave it.
It will die of having so many things in it,