run out of steam.
And the last car has left.
Let those who never denatured another’s remark
swim in wit now. Let the curtains fall
where they may. They are only in distress today.
We have further inversions, like father
and his children sewed up for a day.
Like the feathers you enjoy, the mail
you enjoy receiving.
You have successfully undermined the mountain that threatens us.
Now, panthers prowl the streets.
I took a streetcar that turned into a bus toward the end.
God rewarded me with chirping yellow fuzzballs.
I intended a sonnet that turned out a letter
when Rose crossed the road with her nose
and her father is doing better.
I always like it when somebody explodes out of a bush
to congratulate me on my recent success
for which I’m only partly responsible:
The siblings helped, they prevented it from melting
so high among the Alps you’d have thought it stayed frozen
always. Apparently not. Now we might have a riot
if everybody would calm down for a second.
A shadow-person conducted me along a road
to a little house where I was fed and absconded
with the clock on the wall. I told them I was mortal
and they seemed to let me go. Yet no one heard me.
I was as dust one takes a glove to,
a white one, then tosses in disgust, leaving it lie
in all the trickling creases you absorbed
in childhood, loving it. Two doors went away.
We were alone at last, as they say.
These winters can button you up.
They say Canada geese mate for life, or
till one of them dies, whichever is shorter.
AMNESIA GOES TO THE BALL
In the avuncular waiting rooms they begin handing out the handouts. For some reason my name isn’t on the list. But I receive my handout anyway—somebody obviously recognized me and knew I should get one. I open it without much enthusiasm. When was it I last received a manual for regular sex? There isn’t much distinction in it, nor does it totally lack distinction. I rearrange my orange suit. Modular sex was what it actually says. This starts me off on a new train of ideas, complete with gambling and smoking lounges. I am not to capitalize on this moment. It is already particularized.
So always going down into new things. It’s as though the clouds somehow don’t matter—yet look at them! Was anything so enormously real ever explained away before? And who is history anyway? Does it have a bum?
I have to finish this or pretend it isn’t written. The Sheriff of Heck is coming over and you know what that means. Ocarina blasts building up the fake festive restiveness, yet you and I know what a gardenia is. You even owned one once. After the boring compliments there will be time enough to say what is to be said. Then I’ll go home, feeling better if not exactly okay, and probably lie at your side. We’ll phone the neighbors and have them in.
RAILROADED
Job on the hills ...
Is that wrong too?
To tell the truth I hardly heard her
what with the wind whistling through the pinecone.
Tell us more about your experience.
That’s what really interests our readers.
You know, times when you were down and out
and depressed, like everybody.
When you got up from the table hungry
and didn’t eat for a week after that.
Or places with names to which you’ve fastened a special resonance:
Florence, Florida. Women (and I’m sure there were many)
with whom you spent the night in silken sheets,
or guys (the ones with dicks), I’ll wager
there were a few of those too.
Now add salt to the cauldron
of lies and wishes—oversalt,
in fact, or the end result will be downright bland.
I can picture this happening in a kitchen
below some stairs ...
Darn, I can’t help it if there was no room
for my girlfriend’s shoes, her vast collection
of pocketbooks with scotties on them.
There never were enough closets,
you see, to go around. We kept things spread out
all over the house. If someone wanted something
he knew where to look for it
and it would probably be there
just as in our time the moon is probably there
where you last looked for it, in one of its phases.
The sun was glorious too
and the marigolds.
Hand me my pickaxe. I think I just overstayed my welcome.
An alarm just went off, some place deep inside.
The wallpaper of my bedroom has been destroyed.
No more angelfish for a while, at least. Too bad.
HONORED GUEST
Accept these nice things we have no use for:
polished twilight, mix of clouds and sun,
minnows in a stream. There may come a time
we’ll need them. They’re yours forever,
or another dream leaves you thirsty,
waking. You can’t see the table
or the bread. How about a clean, unopened letter
and the smell of toast?
School is closed today—it’s thundering.
The calendar has backed up or been reversed
so the days have no least common denominator.
Anyway, it was fun, trying to figure out
who you were, what it was that led you to us.
Was it the smell of camphor? Or an ad
in an out-of-state newspaper, seeking news
of someone who disappeared long ago?
He was in uniform, and leaned against a car,
smiling at a girl who seemed to shade her eyes from him.
Can it be? Candace, was it you? There’s no way
she’ll look our way again.
What can I tell you? Everything’s been locked up
for the night, I couldn’t get it for you
if I wanted to. But there must be some way—
it’s drizzling, the lamps along the path are weeping,
wanting to show you this tremendous thing,
boxed in forever, always getting closer.
OUR LEADER IS DREAMING
Up there our leader is dreaming again.
Down here, timid streets unfold their agendas;
propose, gingerly, a walk out into the night
to view the night sky. What else
is there, you might say, and you’d be right.
Still, someone must be calling the shots. I can hear them
from afar, tapping out some name
in Morse code, making pigeons blink.
Today is still open. I think I’ll take some time off,
try to smash this losing streak, until—
It’s our founder. He wants to know why you didn’t disconnect
his spelling. I said you were off shooting mugwumps
as each emerged, tentatively, from the booby hatch
and hustled back in. Right, but he says you’ve
let your tennis game go to hell, and he still can’t spell
the words the sky proposes to him. Your shelter
isn’t taking calls, he says. Instead a curious epiphany
pilots us back to the shoals where a lone telephone booth was last sighted
amid shark-infested eddies. Sparrows are OK,
though, no one wants to kill or eat them. Same goes for carrot tops.
Tell him we’ve a few gross of those left, too. As for ammunition,
you can’t have fuel and ammunition. You can have soup, or shoes.
So it was that I departed the caldera, leaving
my oboe behind
as security. Its sweet voice haunts me still.
I think I brought you the bloom this time,
will let you know after the last guests have gone. The clouds vanished,
and my headache miraculously thinned,
as on the milk train to Thuringia Falls. To think we could have
once trusted each other, but it’s all the same to me. I love me,
and you anyhow.
So the great brazen hump saw us, gazed out over the landscape.
LAST LEGS
My nephew—you remember him—
tongue along a dusty fence.
And I the day’s coordinates.
That’s what an impression I am.
He was slow to back into the sea,
which ran to meet him, pushing him
on to dry land. Dry land was his place,
after all. He lives there to this day,
double old-fashioned glasses, macaques
and expired magazine subscriptions that constitute
a life for some. His framed diploma
from some Methodist medical school,
from which his name is mysteriously absent.
The gold seals are impressive.
By land or sea or foam
I’ll get there someday, though—
a particular slice of the past
whose perfume intoxicates, imbibes me
and nobody notices. The sled I was going to take
only it wouldn’t fit in my footlocker.
Besides, the tramp steamer was heading for Bahia
or some such.
LEMURS AND PHARISEES
And of course one does run on too long,
but whose fault is it? At five dollars
a blip, who’s counting? One could, I suppose,
relax one’s discourse, not enough
to frighten it, but to have something cold
in the hand, to cool the palm; the words might
then unspool in a different mode, shadow
of an intention behind the screen
before the lights go up and the generals
sidle on for another confab. “It was you
who got us involved in this Dreyfus business.” “Liar!”
Let’s take a commercial break here,
my head is cobwebby from all the facts
that got stuffed into it this afternoon.
In no way am I the island I was yesterday.
Children and small pets rejoice around my ankles;
yellow ribbons come down from the tree trunks.
This is my day! Anybody doesn’t realize it
is a goddam chameleon or a yes man! Yes, sir,
we’d noticed your singular pallor, singular
even for you. Ambulances have been summoned,
are rumbling across the delta at this moment,
I’d wager. Meanwhile, if there’s anything we can do
to make you comfortable for two or three minutes ...
The heath is ablaze again. Our longest hose
won’t come to within four miles of it.
Don’t you realize what this means for us,
for our families, our ancestors? The page,
summoned, duly arrived with the wilted asters
someone had mistakenly ordered. It’s a variation
on our habitual not-being-able-lo-keep-a-straight-face withdrawal,
turning our back on the smoke and blood-red fumes
we already knew were there, plunging out of hedgerows
so dense not even a titmouse could get through.
Never were we to be invited back again, I mean
no one asked me back again. The others sinned too, each
in her different way, and I have the photographs to prove it,
faded to the ultima thule of legibility.
Next time, you write this.
THE UNDERWRITERS
Sir Joshua Lipton drank this tea
and liked it well enough to start selling it
to a few buddies, from the deck of his yacht.
It spread around the world, became a global
kind of thing. Today everybody knows its story,
and we must be careful not to offend our sponsors,
to humor their slightest whims, no matter how insane
they may seem to us at the time. Like the time one of them
wanted all the infants in the burg aged five or under
to be brought before him, wearing rose-colored sashes,
in order that he might read the Book of Job to them all day.
There were, as you may imagine, many tears shed,
flowing and flopping about, but in the end the old geezer
(the sponsor, not Job) was satisfied, and sank into a sleep more delicate
than any the world had ever known. You see what it’s like here—
it’s a madhouse, Sir, and I am planning to flee the first time
or the cargo of a muffin truck. Meanwhile, the “sands”
of time, as they call them, are slipping by with scarcely a whisper
except for the most lynx-eyed among us. We’ll make do,
another day, shopping and such, bringing the meat home at night
all roseate and gleaming, ready for the frying pan.
Our names will be read off a rollcall we won’t hear—
how could we? We’re not even born yet—the stars will perform their dance
privately, for us, and the pictures in the great black book
that opens at night will enchant us with their yellow harmonies.
We’ll manage to get back, someday, to the tie siding where the idea
of all this began, frustrated and a little hungry, but eager
to hear each others’ tales of what went on in the interim
of our long lives, what the tea leaves said
and whether it turned out that way. I’ll brush your bangs
a little, you’ll lean against my hip for comfort.
PALE SIBLINGS
Cheerio. Nothing on the shore
today. Far out to sea, some eczema
mimicking sunlight and shadow, with but temporary success.
Was it for wandering that I have been punished?
Or was it another plot of the siblings,
always anxious to torment, to twist my hair
into witches’ brooms, with no inherent power?
Remember they love you like powder
in the air, and it wouldn’t take them long at all.
Twenty-five years ago it was different. Please
be patient. Your term too will arrive.
See, he’s a very good friend for you, you know that.
You just don’t want to sit in a pile of ashes all day long,
licking the milk from your chin. Do you? Then get up
off your ass, stride into the melting twilight,
see the sights of the city. More grass
there than you’d expected, you can bet.
So I wandered fleecy as a cloud and one day an old shepherd crossed my path, looking very wise with his crook. How much use do you get out of that thing, I asked him. Depends, he replied. Sometimes one of ’em doesn’t go astray for months on end. Other times I’ve got my hands full with them running around in all directions, laughing at me. At me! Well, I never would have taken on this job, this added responsibility, rather, if being thanked was all I’d had on my mind. Yes, I said, but how do you avoid it when someone’s really grateful, and graceful, and you’re fading away like you’re doing now, your rainbow cap a cigar-store Indian’s wooden feather headdress, and all your daughters frantic with glee or misapprehension as you slide by, close to them though they can’t see you? Oh, I’ve learned to cope shall we say, and leave it at that. Yes, I said, by all means, let’s.
NOBODY IS GOING ANY
WHERE
I don’t really understand why you object
to any of this. Personally I am above suspicion.
I live in a crawlup where the mice are rotted,
where midnight tunes absolve the bricklayers
and the ceiling abounds in God’s sense.
Something more three-dimensional must be breathed
into action. But go slow, the falling threads
speak to life only as through a haze of difficulty.
The porch is loaded, a question-mark
swings like an earring at the base of your cheek:
stubborn, anxious plain. Air and ice,
those unrelenting fatheads, seem always to be saying,
“This is where we will be living from now on.”
In the courtyard a plane tree glistens.
The ship is already far from here, like a ghost ship.
The core of the sermon is always distance, landscape
waiting to be considered, maybe loved a little
eventually. And I do, I do.
POEM ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS
In truth there is room for disquiet
in the wake of the admonitory hiss that accompanies
me wherever I go, to the dentist and back
or sometimes a squeak of approval
will eavesdrop on what I just said,
or even a tiny quiver of applause
will blur in the middle distance, causing
even more distant dogs to bark.
I like to watch the stars giggle and nibble
my hand as I hold it out in a trusting gesture,
like Goethe indicating some Italian hills his companions
might otherwise have overlooked. “I tell you,
it’s all in the seasons, or the seasoning, Wolfgang—
otherwise all your inventions might as well have
washed up on a distant strand.” That’s right,