He pointed across the river
& the men grew silent
The builders
busy themselves with great rafts
at the water’s edge
on the morrow
we again set our faces
to the East
Tonight
wind birds
fill the air
the clacking of their bills
like iron on iron
The wind
is steady is fragrant
with jasmine
trail of the country behind us
The wind moves
through the camp
stirs the tents of
the Hetaeri
touches each
of the sleeping soldiers
Euoi! Euoi!
men cry out
in their sleep & the horses
prick their ears & stand
shivering
In a few hours
they all shall wake
with the sun
shall follow the wind
even further
The Mosque in Jaffa
I lean over the balcony of the minaret.
My head swims.
A few steps away the man who intends
to betray me begins by pointing out
key sights —
market church prison whorehouse.
Killed, he says.
Words lost in the wind but
drawing a finger across his throat
so I will get it.
He grins.
The key words fly out —
Turks Greeks Arabs Jews
trade worship love murder
a beautiful woman.
He grins again at such foolishness.
He knows I am watching him.
Still he whistles confidently
as we start down the steps
bumping against each other going down
commingling breath and bodies in the narrow spiralling dark.
Downstairs, his friends are waiting
with a car. We all of us light cigarettes
and think what to do next.
Time, like the light in his dark eyes,
is running out as we climb in.
Not Far from Here
Not far from here someone
is calling my name.
I jump to the floor.
Still, this could be a trap.
Careful, careful.
I look under the covers for my knife.
But even as I curse God
for the delay, the door is thrown open
and a long-haired brat enters
carrying a dog.
What is it, child? (We are both
trembling.) What do you want?
But the tongue only hops and flutters
in her open mouth
as a single sound rises in her throat.
I move closer, kneel
and place my ear against the tiny lips.
When I stand up—the dog grins.
Listen, I don’t have time for games.
Here, I say, here—and I send her away
with a plum.
Sudden Rain
•
Rain hisses onto stones as old men and women
drive donkeys to cover.
We stand in rain, more foolish than donkeys,
and shout, walk up and down in rain and accuse.
•
When rain stops the old men and women
who have waited quietly in doorways, smoking,
lead their donkeys out once more and up the hill.
•
Behind, always behind, I climb through the narrow streets.
I roll my eyes. I clatter against stones.
Balzac
I think of Balzac in his nightcap after
thirty hours at his writing desk,
mist rising from his face,
the gown clinging
to his hairy thighs as
he scratches himself, lingers
at the open window.
Outside, on the boulevards,
the plump white hands of the creditors
stroke moustaches and cravats,
young ladies dream of Chateaubriand
and promenade with the young men, while
empty carriages rattle by, smelling
of axle-grease and leather.
Like a huge draught horse, Balzac
yawns, snorts, lumbers
to the watercloset
and, flinging open his gown,
trains a great stream of piss into the
early nineteenth century
chamberpot. The lace curtain catches
the breeze. Wait! One last scene
before sleep. His brain sizzles as
he goes back to his desk—the pen,
the pot of ink, the strewn pages.
Country Matters
A girl pushes a bicycle through tall grass,
through overturned garden furniture, water
rising to her ankles. Cups without handles
sail upon the murky water, saucers
with fine cracks in the porcelain.
At the upstairs window, behind damask curtains,
the steward’s pale blue eyes follow.
He tries to call.
Shreds of yellow note paper
float out onto the wintry air, but the girl
does not turn her head.
Cook is away, no one hears.
Then two fists appear on the window sill.
He leans closer to hear the small
whisperings, the broken story, the excuses.
This Room
This room for instance:
is that an empty coach
that waits below?
Promises, promises,
tell them nothing
for my sake.
I remember parasols,
an esplanade beside the sea,
yet these flowers…
Must I ever remain behind —
listening, smoking,
scribbling down the next far thing?
I light a cigarette
and adjust the window shade.
There is a noise in the street
growing fainter, fainter.
Rhodes
•
I don’t know the names of flowers
or one tree from another,
nevertheless I sit in the square
under a cloud of Papisostros smoke
and sip Hellas beer.
Somewhere nearby there is a Colossus
waiting for another artist,
another earthquake.
But I’m not ambitious.
I’d like to stay, it’s true,
though I’d want to hang out
with the civic deer that surround
the Hospitaler castle on the hill.
They are beautiful deer
and their lean haunches flicker
under an assault of white butterflies.
•
High on the battlement a tall, stiff
figure of a man keeps watch on Turkey.
A warm rain begins to fall.
A peacock shakes drops of water
from its tail and heads for cover.
In the Moslem graveyard a cat sleeps
in a niche between two stones.
Just time for a look
into the casino, except
I’m not dressed.
•
Back on board, ready for bed,
I lie down and remember
I’ve been to Rhodes.
But there’s something else —
I hear again the voice
of the croupier calling
thirty-two, thirty-two
as my body flies over water,
as my soul, poised like a cat, hovers —
then leaps into sleep.
Spring, 480 BC
Enraged by wha
t he called
the impertinence of the Hellespont
in blowing up a storm
which brought to a halt
his army of 2 million,
Herodotus relates
that Xerxes ordered 300
lashes be given
that unruly body of water besides
throwing in a pair of fetters, followed
by a branding with hot irons.
You can imagine
how this news was received
at Athens; I mean
that the Persians were on the march.
IV
Near Klamath
We stand around the burning oil drum
and we warm ourselves, our hands
and faces, in its pure lapping heat.
We raise steaming cups of coffee
to our lips and we drink it
with both hands. But we are salmon
fishermen. And now we stamp our feet
on the snow and rocks and move upstream,
slowly, full of love, toward the still pools.
Autumn
This yardful of the landlord’s used cars
does not intrude. The landlord
himself, does not intrude. He hunches
all day over a swage,
or else is enveloped in the blue flame
of the arc-welding device.
He takes note of me though,
often stopping work to grin
and nod at me through the window. He even
apologizes for parking his logging gear
in my living room.
But we remain friends.
Slowly the days thin, and we
move together towards spring,
towards high water, the jack-salmon,
the sea-run cutthroat.
Winter Insomnia
The mind can’t sleep, can only lie awake and
gorge, listening to the snow gather as
for some final assault.
It wishes Chekhov were here to minister
something—three drops of valerian, a glass
of rose water—anything, it wouldn’t matter.
The mind would like to get out of here
onto the snow. It would like to run
with a pack of shaggy animals, all teeth,
under the moon, across the snow, leaving
no prints or spoor, nothing behind.
The mind is sick tonight.
Prosser
In winter two kinds of fields on the hills
outside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slips
rising overnight out of the plowed ground,
and waiting,
and then rising again, and budding.
Geese love this green wheat.
I ate some of it once too, to see.
And wheat stubble-fields that reach to the river.
These are the fields that have lost everything.
At night they try to recall their youth,
but their breathing is slow and irregular as
their life sinks into dark furrows.
Geese love this shattered wheat also.
They will die for it.
But everything is forgotten, nearly everything,
and sooner rather than later, please God —
fathers, friends, they pass
into your life and out again, a few women stay
a while, then go, and the fields
turn their backs, disappear in rain.
Everything goes, but Prosser.
Those nights driving back through miles of wheat fields —
headlamps raking the fields on the curves —
Prosser, that town, shining as we break over hills,
heater rattling, tired through to bone,
the smell of gunpowder on our fingers still:
I can barely see him, my father, squinting
through the windshield of that cab, saying, Prosser.
At Night the Salmon Move
At night the salmon move
out from the river and into town.
They avoid places with names
like Foster’s Freeze, A & W, Smiley’s,
but swim close to the tract
homes on Wright Avenue where sometimes
in the early morning hours
you can hear them trying doorknobs
or bumping against Cable TV lines.
We wait up for them.
We leave our back windows open
and call out when we hear a splash.
Mornings are a disappointment.
With a Telescope Rod on Cowiche Creek
Here my assurance drops away. I lose
all direction. Gray Lady
onto moving waters. My thoughts
stir like ruffed grouse
in the clearing across the creek.
Suddenly, as at a signal, the birds
pass silently back into pine trees.
Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist
•
Last night I dreamt a priest came to me
holding in his hands white bones,
white bones in his white hands.
He was gentle,
not like Father McCormick with his webbed fingers.
I was not frightened.
•
This afternoon the maids come with their mops
and disinfectant. They pretend I’m not
push my bed this way and that. Before leaving,
they embrace. Gradually, the room
fills with leaves. I am afraid.
•
The window is open. Sunlight.
Across the room a bed creaks, creaks
under the weight of lovemaking.
The man clears his throat. Outside,
I hear sprinklers. I begin to void.
A green desk floats by the window.
•
My heart lies on the table, a parody
of affection, while her fingers rummage
the endless string of entrails.
These considerations aside,
after all those years of adventure in the Far East,
I am in love with these hands, but
I’m cold beyond imagining.
Wes Hardin: From a Photograph
Turning through a collection
of old photographs
I come to a picture of the outlaw,
Wes Hardin, dead.
He is a big, moustached man
in a black suitcoat
on his back over a boardfloor
in Amarillo, Texas.
His head is turned at the camera
and his face
seems bruised, the hair
jarred loose.
A bullet has entered his skull
from behind
coming out a little hole
over his right eye.
Nothing so funny about that
but three shabby men
in overalls stand grinning
a few feet away.
They are all holding rifles
and that one
at the end has on what must be
the outlaw’s hat.
Several other bullets are dotted
here and there
under the fancy white shirt
the deceased is wearing
— in a manner of speaking —
but what makes me stare
is this large dark bullethole
through the slender, delicate-looking
right hand.
Marriage
In our cabin we eat breaded oysters and fries
with lemon cookies for dessert, as the marriage
of Kitty and Levin unfolds on Public TV.
The man in the trailer up the hill, our neighbor,
has just gotten out of jail again.
This morning he drove into the yard with his wife
in a big yellow c
ar, radio blaring.
His wife turned off the radio while he parked,
and together they walked slowly
to their trailer without saying anything.
It was early morning, birds were out.
Later, he propped open the door
with a chair to let in spring air and light.
It’s Easter Sunday night,
and Kitty and Levin are married at last.
It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes, that marriage
and all the lives it touched. We go on
eating oysters, watching television,
remarking on the fine clothes and amazing grace
of the people caught up in this story, some of them
straining under the pressures of adultery,
separation from loved ones, and the destruction
they must know lies in store just after
the next cruel turn of circumstance, and then the next.
A dog barks. I get up to check the door.
Behind the curtains are trailers and a muddy
parking area with cars. The moon sails west
as I watch, armed to the teeth, hunting
for my children. My neighbor,
liquored up now, starts his big car, races
the engine, and heads out again, filled
with confidence. The radio wails,
beats something out. When he has gone
there are only the little ponds of silver water
that shiver and can’t understand their being here.
The Other Life
Now for the other life. The one
without mistakes.
— LOU LIPSITZ
My wife is in the other half of this mobile home
making a case against me.
I can hear her pen scratch, scratch.
Now and then she stops to weep,
then—scratch, scratch.
The frost is going out of the ground.
The man who owns this unit tells me,
Don’t leave your car here.
My wife goes on writing and weeping,
weeping and writing in our new kitchen.