on the tray in front of him.
She keeps on until his nose begins to bleed
and it’s then he asks her to stop. Please, baby,
for Christ’s sake, stop. It may be his plea
reaches her as a faint signal from another
galaxy, a dying star, for this is what it is,
a coded sign from some other time and place
needling her brain, reminding her of something
so lost it’s gone forever. In any event, she stops
hitting him, goes back to her drink. Why
does she stop? Because she remembers
the fat years preceding the lean? All that history
they’d shared, sticking it out together, the two
of them against the world? No way. If she’d truly
remembered everything and those years had dropped
smack into her lap all at once,
she would’ve killed him on the spot.
Maybe her arms are tired, that’s why she stops.
Say she’s tired then. So she stops. He picks up
his drink almost as if nothing’s happened
though it has, of course, and his head aches
and reels with it. She goes back to her whiskey
without a word, not even so much as the usual
“bastard” or “son of a bitch.” Dead quiet.
He’s silent as lice. Holds the drink
napkin under his nose to catch the blood,
turns his head slowly to look out.
Far below, the small steady lights in houses
up and down some coastal valley. It’s
the dinner hour down there. People pushing
up to a full table, grace being said,
hands joined together under roofs so solid
they will never blow off those houses—houses where,
he imagines, decent people live and eat, pray
and pull together. People who, if they left
their tables and looked up from the dining
room windows, could see a harvest moon and,
just below, like a lighted insect, the dim glow
of a jetliner. He strains to see over
the wing and beyond, to the myriad lights
of the city they are rapidly approaching,
the place where they live with others of their kind,
the place they call home.
He looks around the cabin. Other people,
that’s all. People like themselves
in a way, male or female, one sex
or the other, people not entirely unlike
themselves—hair, ears, eyes, nose, shoulders,
genitals—my God, even the clothes they wear
are similar, and there’s that identifying strap
around the middle. But he knows he and she
are not like those others though he’d like it,
and she too, if they were.
Blood soaks his napkin. His head rings and rings
but he can’t answer it. And what would he say
if he could? I’m sorry they’re not in. They left
here, and there too, years ago. They tear
through the thin night air, belted in, bloody husband
and wife, both so still and pale they could be
dead. But they’re not, and that’s part of
the miracle. All this is one more giant step
into the mysterious experience of their lives.
Who could have foretold any of it years back when,
their hands guiding the knife, they made
that first cut deep into the wedding cake?
Then the next. Who would have listened?
Anyone bringing such tidings of the future
would have been scourged from the gate.
The plane lifts, then banks sharply. He touches
her arm. She lets him. She even takes his hand.
They were made for each other, right? It’s fate.
They’ll survive. They’ll land and pull themselves
together, walk away from this awful fix —
they simply have to, they must.
There’s lots in store for them yet, so many fierce
surprises, such exquisite turnings. It’s now
they have to account for, the blood
on his collar, the dark smudge of it
staining her cuff.
My Wife
My wife has disappeared along with her clothes.
She left behind two nylon stockings, and
I should like to call your attention
to these shapely nylons, and to the strong
dark hair caught in the bristles of the brush.
I drop the nylons into the garbage sack; the brush
I’ll keep and use. It is only the bed
that seems strange and impossible to account for.
Wine
Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander
whose rough father, Philip, hired Aristotle to tutor
the young scion and warrior, to put some polish
on his smooth shoulders. Alexander who, later
on the campaign trail into Persia, carried a copy of
The Iliad in a velvet-lined box, he loved that book so
much. He loved to fight and drink, too.
I came to that place in the life where Alexander, after
a long night of carousing, a wine-drunk (the worst kind of drunk —
hangovers you don’t forget), threw the first brand
to start a fire that burned Persepolis, capital of the Persian Empire
(ancient even in Alexander’s day).
Razed it right to the ground. Later, of course,
next morning—maybe even while the fire roared—he was
remorseful. But nothing like the remorse felt
the next evening when, during a disagreement that turned ugly
and, on Alexander’s part, overbearing, his face flushed
from too many bowls of uncut wine, Alexander rose drunkenly to
his feet,
grabbed a spear and drove it through the breast
of his friend, Cletus, who’d saved his life at Granicus.
For three days Alexander mourned. Wept. Refused food. “Refused
to see to his bodily needs.” He even promised
to give up wine forever.
(I’ve heard such promises and the lamentations that go with them.)
Needless to say, life for the army came to a full stop
as Alexander gave himself over to his grief.
But at the end of those three days, the fearsome heat
beginning to take its toll on the body of his dead friend,
Alexander was persuaded to take action. Pulling himself together
and leaving his tent, he took out his copy of Homer, untied it,
began to turn the pages. Finally he gave orders that the funeral
rites described for Patroklos be followed to the letter:
he wanted Cletus to have the biggest possible send-off.
And when the pyre was burning and the bowls of wine were
passed his way during the ceremony? Of course, what do you
think? Alexander drank his fill and passed
out. He had to be carried to his tent. He had to be lifted, to be put
into his bed.
After the Fire
The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one
whose cap had been burnt, walked in. He sat down and
listened. Then he, too, began to reminisce and tell stories.
Nikolay, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down,
listened and asked questions about the dishes
that were prepared for the gentry in the old days.
They talked about chops, cutlets, various soups and sauces, and
the cook, who remembered everything ve
ry well, mentioned dishes
that were no longer prepared; there was one, for instance—a dish
made of bulls’ eyes, that was called “waking up
in the morning.”
— ANTON CHEKHOV
“Peasants”
III
What lasts is what you start with.
— CHARLES WRIGHT
from A Journal of Southern Rivers
The Kitchen
At Sportsmen’s Park, near Yakima, I crammed a hook
with worms, then cast it toward the middle
of the pond, hoping for bass. Bullfrogs scraped the air
invisibly. A turtle, flapjack-sized, slid
from a lily pad while another pulled itself onto
the same pad, a little staging area. Blue sky, warm
afternoon. I pushed a forked branch
into the sandy bank, rested the pole in the fork,
watched the bobber for a while, then beat off.
Grew sleepy then and let my eyes close.
Maybe I dreamed. I did that back then. When
suddenly, in my sleep, I heard a plop, and my eyes
flew open. My pole was gone!
I saw it tearing a furrow through
the scummy water. The bobber appeared, then
disappeared, then showed itself once more
skimming the surface, then gone under again.
What could I do? I bellowed, and bellowed some more.
Began to run along the bank, swearing to God
I would not touch myself again if He’d let me
retrieve that pole, that fish. Of course
there was no answer, not a sign.
I hung around the pond a long time
(the same pond that’d take my friend a year later),
once in a while catching a glimpse of my bobber,
now here, now there. Shadows grew fat
and dropped from trees into the pond. Finally
it was dark, and I biked home.
My dad was drunk
and in the kitchen with a woman not his wife, nor
my mother either. This woman was, I swear, sitting
on his lap, drinking a beer. A woman
with part of a front tooth
missing. She tried to grin as she rose
to her feet. My dad stayed where he was, staring at me
as if he didn’t recognize his own get. Here,
what is it, boy? he said. What happened,
son? Swaying against the sink, the woman wet her lips
and waited for whatever was to happen next.
My dad waited too, there in his old place
at the kitchen table, the bulge in his pants
subsiding. We all waited and wondered
at the stuttered syllables, the words made to cling
as anguish that poured from my raw young mouth.
Songs in the Distance
Because it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern
and made a soup of the herring head. At midday
they sat down to have tea and went on drinking it until
they were all perspiring: they looked actually swollen with
tea; and then they attacked the soup, all helping themselves
out of one pot. The herring itself Granny hid away.
In the evening a potter was firing pots on the slope. Down
below in the meadow the girls got up a round dance
and sang songs … and in the distance the singing sounded soft
and melodious. In and about the tavern the peasants were
making a racket. They sang with drunken voices, discordantly,
and swore at one another.… And the girls and children listened
to the swearing without turning a hair; it was evident
that they had been used to it from their cradles.
— ANTON CHEKHOV
“Peasants”
Suspenders
Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and
I was going to have to wear suspenders to school
next day. Nobody wore suspenders to second grade,
or any other grade for that matter. She said,
You’ll wear them or else I’ll use them on you. I don’t
want any more trouble. My dad said something then. He
was in the bed that took up most of the room in the cabin
where we lived. He asked if we could be quiet and settle this
in the morning. Didn’t he have to go in early to work in
the morning? He asked if I’d bring him
a glass of water. It’s all that whiskey he drank, Mom said. He’s
dehydrated.
I went to the sink and, I don’t know why, brought him
a glass of soapy dishwater. He drank it and said, That sure
tasted funny, son. Where’d this water come from?
Out of the sink, I said.
I thought you loved your dad, Mom said.
I do, I do, I said, and went over to the sink and dipped a glass
into the soapy water and drank off two glasses just
to show them. I love Dad, I said.
Still, I thought I was going to be sick then and there. Mom said,
I’d be ashamed of myself if I was you. I can’t believe you’d
do your dad that way. And, by God, you’re going to wear those
suspenders tomorrow, or else. I’ll snatch you bald-headed if you
give me any trouble in the morning. I don’t want to wear
suspenders,
I said. You’re going to wear suspenders, she said. And with that
she took the suspenders and began to whip me around the bare legs
while I danced in the room and cried. My dad
yelled at us to stop, for God’s sake, stop. His head was killing him,
and he was sick at his stomach from soapy dishwater
besides. That’s thanks to this one, Mom said. It was then somebody
began to pound on the wall of the cabin next to ours. At first it
sounded like it was a fist—boom-boom-boom—and then
whoever it was switched to a mop or a broom
handle. For Christ’s sake, go to bed over there! somebody yelled.
Knock it off! And we did. We turned out the lights and
got into our beds and became quiet. The quiet that comes to a house
where nobody can sleep.
What You Need to Know for Fishing
The angler’s coat and trowsers should be of cloth,
not too thick and heavy, for if they be the sooner wet
they will be the sooner dry. Water-proof velveteens,
fustians, and mole-skins—rat catcher’s costume —
ought never to be worn by the angler for if
he should have to swim a mile or two on any occasion
he would find them a serious weight once thoroughly
saturated with water. And should he have a stone
of fish in his creel, it would be safest not to make
the attempt. An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance
suggests the propriety of anglers wearing cork jackets
which, if strapped under the shoulders, would enable
the wearer to visit any part of a lake where,
in warm weather, with an umbrella over his head,
he might enjoy his sport, cool and comfortable, as if
“in a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.”
This same gentleman thinks that a bottle of Reading sauce,
a box of “peptic pills,” and a portable frying-pan
ought to form part of every angler’s travelling equipage.
— STEPHEN OLIVER
from Scenes and Recollections of Fly Fishing in Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland (1834)
Oyntment to Alure Fish to the Bait
Take Mans Fat and Cats Fat, of each half an Ounce;
Mummy finely poud
red, three Drams; Cummin-seed
finely poudred, one Dram; distilled Oyl of Annise
and Spike, of each six Drops; Civet two Grains,
and Camphir four Grains. Make an Oyntment.
When you Angle, annoint eight Inches of the Line
next the Hook therewith, and keep it in
a pewter Box. When you use this Oyntment
never Angle with less than three hairs next Hook
because if you Angle with but one hair
it will not stick on. Take the Bones or Scull
of a Dead-man, at the opening of a Grave,
and beat the same into pouder, and put this pouder
in the Moss wherein you keep your worms. But
others like Grave-earth as well. Now
go find your water.
— JAMES CHETHAM
from The Angler’s Vade Mecum (1681)
The Sturgeon
Narrow-bodied, iron head like the flat side
of a lance,
mouth underneath,
the sturgeon is a bottom-feeder
and can’t see well.
Mosslike feelers hang down over
the slumbrous lips,
and its dorsal fins and plated backbone
mark it out
something left over from another world.
The sturgeon
lives alone, confines itself
to large, freshwater rivers, and takes
100 years getting around to its first mating.
Once with my father
at the Central Washington State Fair
I saw a sturgeon that weighed 900 pounds
winched up in a corner
of the Agricultural Exhibit Building.
I will not forget that.
A card gave the name in italics,
also a sketch, as they say,
of its biography —
which my father read
and then read aloud.
The largest are netted
in the Don River
somewhere in Russia.
These are called White Sturgeon
and no one can be sure
just how large they are.
The next biggest ones recorded
are trapped at the mouth
of the Yukon River in Alaska