in their skulls; the time he stopped to photograph
a buffalo near where the Little Big Horn
joined the Big Horn; his new graphite rod
with the Limited Lifetime Warranty;
the polyps the doctor’d found on his bowel;
the Bukowski line that flew
through his mind from time to time:
We’d all like to pass by in a 1995 Cadillac.
His head a hive of arcane activity.
Even during the time it took his car
to slide around on the highway and point him
back in the direction he’d come from.
The direction of home, and relative security.
The engine was dead. The immense stillness
descended once more. He took off his woolen cap
and wiped his forehead. But after a moment’s
consideration, started his car, turned around
and continued on into town.
More carefully, yes. But thinking all the while
along the same lines as before. Old ice, new snow.
Cats. A monkey. Fishing. Wild buffalo.
The sheer poetry in musing on Cadillacs
that haven’t been built yet. The chastening effect
of the doctor’s fingers.
Simple
A break in the clouds. The blue
outline of the mountains.
Dark yellow of the fields.
Black river. What am I doing here,
lonely and filled with remorse?
I go on casually eating from the bowl
of raspberries. If I were dead,
I remind myself, I wouldn’t
be eating them. It’s not so simple.
It is that simple.
The Scratch
I woke up with a spot of blood
over my eye. A scratch
halfway across my forehead. But
I’m sleeping alone these days.
Why on earth would a man raise his hand
against himself, even in sleep?
It’s this and similar questions
I’m trying to answer this morning.
As I study my face in the window.
Mother
My mother calls to wish me a Merry Christmas.
And to tell me if this snow keeps on
she intends to kill herself. I want to say
I’m not myself this morning, please
give me a break. I may have to borrow a psychiatrist
again. The one who always asks me the most fertile
of questions, “But what are you really feeling?”
Instead, I tell her one of our skylights
has a leak. While I’m talking, the snow is
melting onto the couch. I say I’ve switched to All-Bran
so there’s no need to worry any longer
about me getting cancer, and her money coming to an end.
She hears me out. Then informs me
she’s leaving this goddamn place. Somehow. The only time
she wants to see it, or me again, is from her coffin.
Suddenly, I ask if she remembers the time Dad
was dead drunk and bobbed the tail of the Labrador pup.
I go on like this for a while, talking about
those days. She listens, waiting her turn.
It continues to snow. It snows and snows
as I hang on the phone. The trees and rooftops
are covered with it. How can I talk about this?
How can I possibly explain what I’m feeling?
The Child
Seeing the child again.
Not having seen him
for six months. His face
seems broader than last time.
Heavier. Almost coarse.
More like his father’s now.
Devoid of mirth. The eyes
narrowed and without
expression. Don’t expect
gentleness or pity
from this child, now or ever.
There’s something rough,
even cruel, in the grasp
of his small hand.
I turn him loose.
His shoes scuff against
each other as he makes for the door.
As it opens. As he gives his cry.
The Fields
The worms crawl in,
the worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle
in your snout.
— CHILDHOOD DITTY
I was nearsighted and had to get up close
so I could see it in the first place: the earth
that’d been torn with a disk or plow.
But I could smell it, and I didn’t like it.
To me it was gruesome, suggesting death
and the grave. I was running once and fell
and came up with a mouthful. That
was enough to make me want to keep my distance
from fields just after they’d been sliced open
to expose whatever lay teeming underneath.
And I never cared anything for gardens, either.
Those over-ripe flowers in summer bloom.
Or spuds lying just under the surface
with only part of their faces showing.
Those places I shied away from, too. Even today
I can do without a garden. But something’s changed.
There’s nothing I like better now than to walk into
a freshly turned field and kneel and let the soft dirt
slide through my fingers. I’m lucky to live
close to the fields I’m talking about.
I’ve even made friends with some of the farmers.
The same men who used to strike me
as unfriendly and sinister.
So what if the worms come sooner or later?
And what’s it matter if the winter snow piles up
higher than fences, then melts and drains away
deep into the earth to water what’s left of us?
It’s okay. Quite a lot was accomplished here, after all.
I gambled and lost, sure. Then gambled some more,
and won. My eyesight is failing. But if I move
up close and look carefully, I can see all kinds of life
in the earth. Not just worms, but beetles, ants, ladybugs.
Things like that. I’m gladdened, not concerned with the sight.
It’s nice to walk out into a field any day
that I want and not feel afraid. I love to reach
down and bring a handful of dirt right up under my nose.
And I can push with my feet and feel the earth give
under my shoes. I can stand there quietly
under the great balanced sky, motionless.
With this impulse to take off my shoes.
But just an impulse. More important,
this not moving. And then
Amazing! to walk that opened field —
and keep walking.
After Reading Two Towns in Provence
FOR M. F. K. FISHER
I went out for a minute and
left your book on the table.
Something came up. Next morning,
at a quarter to six,
dawn began. Men had already
gone into the fields to work.
Windrows of leaves lay
alongside the track.
Reminding me of fall.
I turned to the first page
and began to read.
I spent the entire morning
in your company, in Aix,
in the South of France.
When I looked up,
it was twelve o’clock.
And they all said I’d never find a place
for myself in this life!
Said I’d never be happy,
not in this world, or the next.
That’s how much they knew.
Those dopes.
&nb
sp; Evening
I fished alone that languid autumn evening.
Fished as darkness kept coming on.
Experiencing exceptional loss and then
exceptional joy when I brought a silver salmon
to the boat, and dipped a net under the fish.
Secret heart! When I looked into the moving water
and up at the dark outline of the mountains
behind the town, nothing hinted then
I would suffer so this longing
to be back once more, before I die.
Far from everything, and far from myself.
The Rest
Clouds hang loosely over this mountain range
behind my house. In a while, the light
will go and the wind come up
to scatter these clouds, or some others,
across the sky.
I drop to my knees,
roll the big salmon onto its side
on the wet grass, and begin to use
the knife I was born with. Soon
I’ll be at the table in the living room,
trying to raise the dead. The moon
and the dark water my companions.
My hands are silvery with scales.
Fingers mingling with the dark blood.
Finally, I cut loose the massive head.
I bury what needs burying
and keep the rest. Take one last look
at the high blue light. Turn
toward my house. My night.
Slippers
The four of us sitting around that afternoon.
Caroline telling her dream. How she woke up
barking this one night. And found her little dog,
Teddy, beside the bed, watching.
The man who was her husband at the time
watched too as she told of the dream.
Listened carefully. Even smiled. But
there was something in his eyes. A way
of looking, and a look. We’ve all had it…
Already he was in love with a woman
named Jane, though this is no judgment
on him, or Jane, or anyone else. Everyone went on
to tell a dream. I didn’t have any.
I looked at your feet, tucked up on the sofa,
in slippers. All I could think to say,
but didn’t, was how those slippers were still warm
one night when I picked them up
where you’d left them. I put them beside the bed.
But a quilt fell and covered them
during the night. Next morning, you looked
everywhere for them. Then called downstairs,
“I found my slippers!” This is a small thing,
I know, and between us. Nevertheless,
it has moment. Those lost slippers. And
that cry of delight.
It’s okay that this happened
a year or more ago. It could’ve been
yesterday, or the day before. What difference?
Delight, and a cry.
Asia
It’s good to live near the water.
Ships pass so close to land
a man could reach out
and break a branch from one of the willow trees
that grow here. Horses run wild
down by the water, along the beach.
If the men on board wanted, they could
fashion a lariat and throw it
and bring one of the horses on deck.
Something to keep them company
for the long journey East.
From my balcony I can read the faces
of the men as they stare at the horses,
the trees, and two-story houses.
I know what they’re thinking
when they see a man waving from a balcony,
his red car in the drive below.
They look at him and consider themselves
lucky. What a mysterious piece
of good fortune, they think, that’s brought
them all this way to the deck of a ship
bound for Asia. Those years of doing odd jobs,
or working in warehouses, or longshoring,
or simply hanging out on the docks,
are forgotten about. Those things happened
to other, younger men,
if they happened at all.
The men on board
raise their arms and wave back.
Then stand still, gripping the rail,
as the ship glides past. The horses
move from under the trees and into the sun.
They stand like statues of horses.
Watching the ship as it passes.
Waves breaking against the ship.
Against the beach. And in the mind
of the horses, where
it is always Asia.
The Gift
FOR TESS
Snow began falling late last night. Wet flakes
dropping past windows, snow covering
the skylights. We watched for a time, surprised
and happy. Glad to be here, and nowhere else.
I loaded up the wood stove. Adjusted the flue.
We went to bed, where I closed my eyes at once.
But for some reason, before falling asleep,
I recalled the scene at the airport
in Buenos Aires the evening we left.
How still and deserted the place seemed!
Dead quiet except the sound of our engines
as we backed away from the gate and
The windows in the terminal building dark.
No one in evidence, not even a ground crew. “It’s as if
the whole place is in mourning,” you said.
I opened my eyes. Your breathing said
you were fast asleep. I covered you with an arm
and went on from Argentina to recall a place
I lived in once in Palo Alto. No snow in Palo Alto.
But I had a room and two windows looking onto the
Bayshore Freeway.
The refrigerator stood next to the bed.
When I became dehydrated in the middle of the night,
all I had to do to slake that thirst was reach out
and open the door. The light inside showed the way
to a bottle of cold water. A hot plate
sat in the bathroom close to the sink.
When I shaved, the pan of water bubbled
on the coil next to the jar of coffee granules.
I sat on the bed one morning, dressed, clean-shaven,
drinking coffee, putting off what I’d decided to do. Finally
dialed Jim Houston’s number in Santa Cruz.
And asked for 75 dollars. He said he didn’t have it.
His wife had gone to Mexico for a week.
He simply didn’t have it. He was coming up short
this month. “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”
And I did. We talked a little
more, then hung up. He didn’t have it.
I finished the coffee, more or less, just as the plane
lifted off the runway into the sunset.
I turned in the seat for one last look
at the lights of Buenos Aires. Then closed my eyes
for the long trip back.
This morning there’s snow everywhere. We remark on it.
You tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say
I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.”
We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other
as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind.
As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t,
of course. We never do. No matter.
It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift
this morning that moves and holds me.
Same as every morning.
A New Path to the Waterfall
GIFT
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
— CZESLAW MILOSZ
I
Wet Picture
Those beautiful days
when the city resembles a die, a fan and a bird song
or a scallop shell on the seashore
— goodbye, goodbye, pretty girls,
we met today
and will not ever meet again.
The beautiful Sundays
when the city resembles a football, a card and an ocarina
or a swinging bell
— in the sunny street
the shadows of passers-by were kissing
and people walked away, total strangers.
Those beautiful evenings
when the city resembles a rose, a chessboard, a violin
or a crying girl
— we played dominoes,
black-dotted dominoes with the thin girls in the bar,
watching their knees
which were emaciated
like two skulls with the silk crowns of their garters
in the desperate kingdom of love.
— JAROSLAV SEIFERT
(translated by Ewald Osers)
Thermopylae
Back at the hotel, watching her loosen, then comb out
her russet hair in front of the window, she deep in private
thought,
her eyes somewhere else, I am reminded for some reason of
those
Lacedaemonians Herodotus wrote about, whose duty
it was to hold the Gates against the Persian army. And who
did. For four days. First, though, under the disbelieving
eyes of Xerxes himself, the Greek soldiers sprawled as if
uncaring, outside their timber-hewn walls, arms stacked,
combing and combing their long hair, as if it were