Selected Poems (1968-2014)

by Paul Muldoon

  Above This Line, carrying another relative, Arnold Rothstein, the brain

  behind the running, during Prohibition, of grain

  alcohol into the States, his shirt the very same Day-Glo green of chlorophyll

  on the surface of a cattle bath

  or the canal itself, the canal that ordinarily reflects berm bank and towpath

  as calm as calm. Jean had been fixing Asher a little gruel

  from leftover cereal

  and crumbled Zwieback

  when Uncle Arnie came floating by the ‘nursery’.

  This was the Arnold Rothstein who had himself fixed the 1919 World Series

  by bribing eight Chicago White Sox players, Keep Back

  Fifty Feet, to throw the game. So awestruck were we by his Day-Glo

  shirt we barely noticed how low

  in the water his Studebaker lay, the distribution of its cargo of grain alcohol

  (filtered through a makeshift charcoal-

  packed, double downspout

  by an accomplice, Waxey Gordon) somewhat less than even.

  ‘The peccary’s hind foot,’ the peaked cap would enquire, ‘you call that cloven?’

  Asher slept on, his little pout

  set off beautifully by the pillow case

  into which we might yet bundle the foul madams, the couscous,

  the tabouleh carry-out

  full of grit

  from the Sahara, while Uncle Arnie had taken his lawyer’s advice,

  maintaining that he paid none of the eight White Sox

  who stood in the witness box

  as much as a nickel. Racketeering, maybe. Extortion, maybe. Maybe vice.

  But not throwing games. It wasn’t an area in which he had expertise. Not an expert.

  Isaac Wolf of New Haven, meanwhile, had unzippered

  a freezer bag and made a dent

  in the defrosted dough in which we’d meant

  to wrap the loin of peccary, Please Use Tongs,

  in an Aussie version of the secret

  recipe the Duke of Wellington had secured

  from the Killadar of Perinda, one which substituted quantongs

  for apricots. While Asher slept on, half hid

  under the cradle hood,

  his great-grandfather Jim Zabin, an ad-man who held, of all things, the Biltrite account,

  Please Examine Your Change As Mistakes Cannot,

  nodded from his death-bed to the red

  stain on the muslin cloth

  that covered the peccary in its autoclave

  as if that cloth were an obstacle whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind, bred

  on the Atlantic, might at last

  be stayed. ‘By which authority,’ another great-grandfather, Sam Korelitz, would blast

  from his hardware store in Lawrence, Mass., ‘did you deny Asher a bris?’

  A chainsaw had let rip. Our next-door neighbour, Bruce,

  was making quite a hand

  of amputating a sycamore limb that had given its all

  to the wind and rain. Asher slept on, his shawl

  of Carrickmacross lace, his bonnet tied with silk reputed to come from Samarkhand,

  while Dorothy stood where the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Millstone

  River combined to carry tonne upon tonne

  of clay, hay, hair, shoes, spectacles, Please Use The Hammer To Break

  The Glass, playing ducks and drakes

  with the child-kin shortly to be riven

  from her family and I, the so-called Goy from the Moy,

  scrubbed the trap made in Marengo, Illinois,

  by which we took that white-lipped peccary, as if scrubbing might leave me shriven.

  A flicker from behind Asher’s sleeping lids, all covered with little wheals and whelks,

  as Jean’s distant cousin, Helene Hanff, began to rub a mix of cumin and baby talc

  (cornstarch more than talc) into another loin

  of peccary, this being a trick Helene

  had picked up from the individual who started a trend

  by keeping a rabbit warren-

  cum-dovecote in a mews off Charing Cross Road, Hard Hats Must Be Worn,

  an individual who picked it up from whichever Waugh deemed a pram in the hallway the end

  of art, a Waugh who could no doubt trace it back to Wellington and the Killadar

  of Perinda. I looked up in dismay as the helter-skelter

  I’d raised in lieu of a lonely tower (part float, part floating derrick)

  was nudged by the millrace. The increasingly eccentric

  Helene, meanwhile, continued to rub

  cornstarch into the remains

  of whatever curled in the autoclave. Almost inaudible now, the sycamore moans

  as, almost inaudibly, I myself continued to scrub

  the latest in traps with a wire brush

  from Sam’s hardware store in Lawrence, Mass. ‘You ignore the Midrash

  by which authority?’ I could hear small incendiary

  devices going off in the midst of the pleasantries

  exchanged at this, as every, family gathering, Please Do Not Leave Window Ajar,

  where the stricken

  face of Uncle Arnie’s friend Fanny Brice peeked from her astrakhan.

  ‘According to Horace,’ Arnie maintained, ‘every water pitcher started out as a wine jar.

  You may take Fanny for a nincompoop,

  but I fear she may well be the only one here who’s actually read King Poppy.

  I fear, moreover, the way the smoke flings

  and flails itself from your barbecue brings back that terrible morning, in Sing Sing,

  they fried Charlie Becker.’ Helene looked up from her cumin

  splitting while Bruce began to pulverize

  a stand of young sassafras

  with all the zeal of a chainsaw catechumen

  and the groundbreaking Irish navvies continued to keen and kvetch

  through the hole cut for a dimmer switch

  in a wall of deh-dah stiffened with deh-dah. Next to moor

  his little punt at our dock was Joe Hanff, the banker who helped Louis B. Mayer

  and Thomas Edison develop a ‘cool’ projection lamp. Where he’d come by the Coke and bucket

  of popcorn God only knows.

  He handed them to Dorothy for safekeeping while he concentrated on the minutiae

  of the peccary trap and the great trebucket

  with which we’ve been known to take even larger critters,

  setting and upsetting the trebucket as would an obsessive compulsive, Out Of Order,

  until he was himself ousted by Sam,

  Sam who repeated the opening phrase (‘’asherey ha’ish ’asher’) of the Book of Psalms

  as he handed Asher a Berbecker and Rowland

  upholstery nail which Asher held as grim as grim

  while sleeping on. Tonne upon tonne of clay, hay, hair, shoes and spectacle frames

  made it less and less likely that we would land

  on our feet on the Griggstown Causeway any time soon, Ramp Divides,

  Please Examine Your Change As Mistakes Cannot Be Rectified,

  the almost inaudible roar

  of the millrace drowning out a great-grandfather’s prayer.

  By which authority did we deny Asher a mohel?

  By which authority did we deny Asher a rebe?

  Asher, meanwhile, slept on, his most crape-creepered of cribs

  riding out the torrent, riding out the turmoil

  of those thousands of Irish navvies piling clay, hay, hair into their creels

  and bearing them at shoulder height, or above, with all the zeal

  of creel catechumens. A tattoo on the left forearm

  of some child-kin of my children, a very faint tattoo. Once more the storm

  was howling and something, deh-dah, deh-dah,

  something about that clay and hair going down the
sluice

  brought back an afternoon in St Louis.

  Something about raking the ashes of the barbecue at the end of the verandah

  and turning over the loin and flank

  of a young peccary, its loin so lean and lank,

  its little rib-cage, Road Narrows.

  Something about turning over that runt of the peccary farrow,

  with a dink and a dink

  and a dinky-dick, brought back that afternoon. Something about Sam lighting a menorah

  and reading a commentary on the Torah,

  something about Arnie distancing himself from the ‘night-and-fog’ of Murder Inc.

  to a disbelieving Duke of Wellington and Killadar of Perinda,

  brought back the day

  of our own Nacht-und-Nebel Erlass

  on which I’d steadied myself under the Gateway Arch and pondered the loss

  of our child. It was Arnie who’d been the brain behind running rum

  to those thousands of Irish schlemiels

  who dug the canal. A flicker from Asher’s lids. The little whelks and wheals.

  As if he might be dreaming of a Pina Colostrum

  on Boscobel Beach, some young beauty dipping his foot in Johnson’s baby oil.

  Fanny peeked from her astrakhan, its poile

  the poile of a stillborn lamb. Again a chainsaw letting rip.

  Again I scrubbed the very latest in traps

  while Helene rubbed cornstarch into whatever was curled, rawer and rawer,

  in the autoclave. ‘That peccary with the hind foot,’

  the peaked cap would enquire, ‘it’s a bad case of spina bifida?’

  I heard a bottom drawer

  open somewhere. The red stain on the lint

  that covered whatever it was in the autoclave brought back an afternoon in Poland

  when the smoke would flail and fling itself, Maximum Headroom,

  from a crematorium

  at Auschwitz. It was not without some

  trepidation, so, that I trained my camcorder

  on this group of creel carters

  bearing clay, hay, hair (at shoulder height, or above) through the awesome

  morning after Hurricane Floyd as yet another 1921 Benz or 1924 Bugatti

  came down Canal Road and yet another peaked

  cap was enquiring of my child-kin the meaning of ‘Ashkenaz’,

  Place Mask Over Mouth and Nose,

  my trepidation becoming more and more

  pronounced as that smoke would flail and fling itself over Auschwitz.

  I looked up from our make-believe version of Boscobel Beach

  to a cauterized stump of sassafras or sycamore

  as the creel carters piled more and more clay, hay, hair, spectacle frames, Willkommen,

  onto the line of carrioles and camions

  by the edge of the flooded stream, those creel carters imagining in excited reverie

  the arches of the bridge wrought with the motto Albeit Macht Frei,

  while I looked up through the swing

  and swale of smoke, Please Leave A Message After The Beep,

  and watched the kebab-babby we had lost a year or two back put on its best bib

  and tucker, watched it put out its little bit of a wing

  all tinged with char

  as if to set off for the real Boscobel Beach (on which we had met Sandra Hughes and Anton Hajjar),

  oblivious to the piles of hair, spectacle frames, bootees and brogans

  borne along from wherever. ‘The full name is Auschwitz-Birkenau,’

  Sam was explaining to Anton and Sandra,

  who had somehow summoned themselves. Asher slept on, of course, despite his thrush,

  despite his diaper rash,

  the flood water having receded from the point on the driveway at which the pachysandra

  had earlier been swamped, the point at which Arnie had fixed some class of a tow rope

  to the chassis of the Studebaker. ‘I simply don’t have it in me to bribe

  a ballplayer,’ he would main-

  tain, steadying himself with a handful of mane

  as he hooked the rope to the hames of a draft mule, This Truck

  Makes Wide Right Turns. The fact that the slew of interlocutors

  in Asher’s glabrous face now included, of all things, the peccary runt, Do Not Litter,

  left me no less awestruck

  than if the Studebaker were to be suddenly yanked back to the factory in South Bend

  from which it had been packed off, Open This End,

  than if the soul of one of the dozen stillborn

  lambs sewn into Fanny’s astrakhan were to recover radical innocence and learn,

  than if scouring the trap by which I had taken that peccary, so lank and lean,

  by its dinky hind leg,

  Don’t Walk, than if, Don’t Walk, than if, Don’t Walk,

  than if scouring might make it clean.

  An overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The creel caravan

  swaying along the salt route into Timbuktu. Fanny taking up a hand-held microphone

  and embarking on ‘Secondhand Rose’. The convoy

  of salt merchants setting down their loys

  at one and the same moment. Our piliated woodpecker tapping at the bark

  of three successive sycamores in the hope of finding one in tune.

  The piles of clay, hay, hair, spectacle frames, hand-me-down

  bootees and brogans now loaded onto the ark

  causing it to lie so much lower in the water that Uncle Arnie gives a heavy hint

  to Fanny that she should cut the chorus of ‘Secondhand

  Rose’ and jump ship. ‘The whitewall

  tyre’, Helene concurs, ‘is the beginning of the pram in the hall.’

  Asher sleeps on, attended by two teddy bears,

  his soul less likely than ever to recover radical innocence and learn at last

  that it is self-delighting. Ada Korelitz, Sam’s widow, is drawing up A-, B-, and C-lists

  of the Korelitz forebears

  whom she’ll invite to a reception thrown by herself and Arnie, Unapproved Road,

  for the 1919 World Series-winning Cincinnati Reds.

  ‘If there’s no hatred in a mind,’ Isaac Wolf

  pounds and expounds, ‘assault and battery of the wind can never tear the deh-dah from the leaf.’

  ‘As for the killdeer,’ Helene peeks from an astrakhan almost as natty

  as Fanny’s, ‘you’re thinking, in all likelihood,

  of the killdeer of Perinda.’ The ark now lies so much lower in the water, Stop Ahead,

  that Uncle Arnie gives another heavy hint to the Cincinnati

  Reds that they should also jump ship, Achtung.

  The 1920 Studebaker’s just one step ahead of a Panther tank

  nodding approvingly through the ghetto after the Germans have massacred

  the Jews of Bialystok. The wind bred on the Atlantic has broken Belmar and Seagirt.

  Boundbrook is broken. The roof-levelling wind, profane and irreverent,

  the wind which was at the spearhead

  of the attack on the ark, almost inaudible. The memory of a three-month growth spurt

  no more than a flicker, For Rent,

  behind Asher’s sleeping lids. The A-, B-, and C-lists of forebears in his glabrous face.

  Hanff. Wolf. Reinhart. Abrams. A Reinhart beginning to fuss

  as a peaked cap enquires about the Orthodox

  position on the eating of white-lipped peccary. The train stopped in Bialystok’s

  running neither to Warsaw nor Leningrad.

  Helene uttering a little cuss

  as the yellow of that star brings back the out-and-out yellowness of a cylinder of gas

  she once saw on Charing Cross Road. Now Isaac Wolf, a Yale grad,

  looks on helplessly at the millrace on which sign-post, sign-board, Birdseed, Keep Out,

  Bri
dge Freezes Before Road, Do Not Drive In Breakdown Lane, Live Bait,

  my lonely helter-skelter, $500 Fine,

  the makeshift oven

  in which we meant, Keep Clear, All Directions, the Vermont decal

  on that Bugatti-load of grain alcohol, Slow,

  the out-and-out yellow

  of the sign-post that points toward the place where the soul might recover radical

  innocence, No Stopping Except For Repairs, the makeshift oven in which we meant to bake

  the peccary en croute, Contents Under Pressure, the freezer bag

  into which we’ve bundled the carry-out from the Sahara,

  the sign-post that points to where the Missouri

  had not as yet been swollen, Hump, No Shoulder, No Rail,

  are all borne along, Toll Booth,

  to where Uncle Arnie’s father, Abraham Rothstein, one of the founders of Beth

  Israel (yes, Beth Israel),

  joins Fanny Brice in the version of ‘My Man’ she first sang in the Ziegfeld Follies.

  A flicker from behind the lids. As if those children-kin might flee

  as they fled the Cossacks in the Ukraine,

  Please Remember To Take Your Belongings When You Leave The Train,

  woken as they now are by a piliated Rowland and Berbecker

  tapping into a sycamore. Asher’s face a fox’s mask

  nailed to a long-gone door-post by an Irish schlemiel as likely as not to mosk

  his brogans for a ladle of rum. ‘What’s with these police captains, like Charlie Becker,’

  Arnie puts his arm around Helene, who, being chosen, finds life flat,

  Contents May Have Shifted During Flight,

  ‘who think they’re above the law, who think they’re born without belly buttons?’

  The police launch manoeuvring by brings back riot shields and batons,

  some child-kin of my children picking at his kohlrabi.

  Now Helene leaves off rubbing cornstarch

  into the arch

  of whatever lies in the autoclave, sets the little beak of her Colibri

  wobblingly to a cigarette, Pull To Open,

  and reaches into a drawer for the poultry shears. The hacking through a babby bone.

  No obstacle but Gregory’s wood

  and one bare hill, Slippery When Wet,

  bringing back the morning Dr Patel had systematically drawn

  the child from Jean’s womb, For Hire,

  Uncle Arnie all the while hanging a whitewall tyre

  about the draft mule’s neck, the draft mule no less thraward-thrawn

  than whichever Waugh deemed the pram in the hallway the end of art.

  The peaked cap sweet-talking that young Abrams or Reinhart