Upon entering.
And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.
The Lesson
It occurs to me now
that all these years
I have been
the idiot pupil
of a practical joker.
Diligently
and with foolish reverence
I wrote down
what I took to be
his wise pronouncements
concerning
my life on earth.
Like a parrot
I rattled off the dates
of wars and revolutions.
I rejoiced
at the death of my tormentors.
I even became convinced
that their number
was diminishing.
It seemed to me
that gradually
my teacher was revealing to me
a pattern,
that what I was being told
was an intricate plot
of a picaresque novel
in installments,
the last pages of which
would be given over
entirely
to lyrical evocations
of nature.
Unfortunately,
with time,
I began to detect in myself
an inability
to forget even
the most trivial detail.
I lingered more and more
over the beginnings:
The haircut of a soldier
who was urinating
against our fence;
shadows of trees on the ceiling,
the day
my mother and I
had nothing to eat . . .
Somehow,
I couldn’t get past
that prison train
that kept waking me up
every night.
I couldn’t get that whistle
that rumble
out of my head . . .
In this classroom
austerely furnished
by my insomnia,
at the desk consisting
of my two knees,
for the first time
in this long and terrifying
apprenticeship,
I burst out laughing.
Forgive me, all of you!
At the memory of my uncle
charging a barricade
with a homemade bomb,
I burst out laughing.
A Landscape with Crutches
So many crutches. Now even the daylight
Needs one, even the smoke
As it goes up. And the shacks—
One per customer—they move off
In a single file with difficulty,
I said, with a hell of an effort . . .
And the trees behind them about to stumble,
And the ants on their toy crutches,
And the wind on its ghost crutch.
I can’t get any peace around here:
The bread on its artificial legs,
A headless doll in a wheelchair,
And my mother, mind you, using
Two knives for crutches as she squats to pee.
Help Wanted
They ask for a knife
I come running
They need a lamb
I introduce myself as the lamb
A thousand sincere apologies
It seems they require some rat poison
They require a shepherd
For their flock of black widows
Luckily I’ve brought my bloody
Letters of recommendation
I’ve brought my death certificate
Signed and notarized
But they’ve changed their minds again
Now they want a songbird, a bit of springtime
They want a woman
To soap and kiss their balls
It’s one of my many talents
(I assure them)
Chirping and whistling like an aviary
Spreading the cheeks of my ass
Animal Acts
A bear who eats with a silver spoon.
Two apes adept at grave-digging.
Rats who do calculus.
A police dog who copulates with a woman,
Who takes undertaker’s measurements.
A bedbug who suffers, who has doubts
About his existence. The miraculous
Laughing dove. A thousand-year-old turtle
Playing billiards. A chicken who
Cuts his own throat, who bleeds.
The trainer with his sugar cubes,
With his chair and whip. The evenings
When they all huddle in a cage,
Smoking cheap cigars, lazily
Marking the cards in the new deck.
Charon’s Cosmology
With only his dim lantern
To tell him where he is
And every time a mountain
Of fresh corpses to load up
Take them to the other side
Where there are plenty more
I’d say by now he must be confused
As to which side is which
I’d say it doesn’t matter
No one complains he’s got
Their pockets to go through
In one a crust of bread in another a sausage
Once in a long while a mirror
Or a book which he throws
Overboard into the dark river
Swift and cold and deep
The Ballad of the Wheel
so that’s what it’s like to be a wheel
so that’s what it’s like to be tied to one of its spokes
while the rim screeches while the axle grinds
so that’s what it’s like to have the earth and heaven confused
to speak of the stars on the road
of stones churning in the icy sky
to suffer as the wheel suffers
to bear its unimaginable weight
if only it were a honing wheel
I would have its sparks to see by
if only it were a millstone
I would have bread to keep my mouth busy
if only it were a roulette wheel
my left eye would watch its right dance in it
so that’s what it’s like
to be chained to the wounded rib of a wheel
to move as the hearse moves
to move as the lumber truck moves
down the mountains at night
•
what do you think my love
while the wheel turns
I think of the horse out in front
how the snowflakes are caught in his mane
how he shakes his beautiful blindfolded head
I think how in the springtime
two birds are pulling us along as they fly
how one bird is a crow
and the other a swallow
I think how in the summertime
there’s no one out there
except the clouds in the blue sky
except the dusk in the blue sky
I think how in autumn
there’s a man harnessed out there
a bearded man with the bit stuck in his mouth
a hunchback with a blanket over his shoulders
hauling the wheel
heavy as the earth
•
don’t you hear I say don’t you hear
the wheel talks as it turns
I have the impression that it’s hugging me closer
that it has maternal instincts
that it’s telling me a bedtime story
that it knows the way home
that I grit my teeth just like my father
I have the impression
that it whispers to me
how a
ll I have to do
to stop its turning
is to hold my breath
A Wall
That’s the only image
That turns up.
A wall all by itself,
Poorly lit, beckoning,
But no sense of the room,
Not even a hint
Of why it is I remember
So little and so clearly:
The fly I was watching,
The details of its wings
Glowing like turquoise.
Its feet, to my amusement
Following a minute crack—
An eternity
Around that simple event.
And nothing else; and nowhere
To go back to;
And no one else
As far as I know to verify.
The Terms
A child crying in the night
Across the street
In one of the many dark windows.
That, too, to get used to,
Make part of your life.
Like this book of astronomy
Which you open with equal apprehension
By the light of table lamp,
And your birdlike shadow on the wall.
A sleepless witness at the base
Of this expanding immensity,
Simultaneous in this moment
With all of its empty spaces,
Listening to a child crying in the night
With a hope,
It will go on crying a little longer.
Eyes Fastened with Pins
How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death’s laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death’s supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address is somehow wrong,
Even death can’t figure it out
Among all the locked doors . . .
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.
The Prisoner
He is thinking of us.
These leaves, their lazy rustle
That made us sleepy after lunch
So we had to lie down.
He considers my hand on her breast,
Her closed eyelids, her moist lips
Against my forehead, and the shadows of trees
Hovering on the ceiling.
It’s been so long. He has trouble
Deciding what else is there.
And all along the suspicion
That we do not exist.
Empire of Dreams
On the first page of my dreambook
It’s always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The storefronts gutted.
I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn’t be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of Halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.
Prodigy
I grew up bent over
a chessboard.
I loved the word endgame.
All my cousins looked worried.
It was a small house
near a Roman graveyard.
Planes and tanks
shook its windowpanes.
A retired professor of astronomy
taught me how to play.
That must have been in 1944 .
In the set we were using,
the paint had almost chipped off
the black pieces.
The white King was missing
and had to be substituted for.
I’m told but do not believe
that that summer I witnessed
men hung from telephone poles.
I remember my mother
blindfolding me a lot.
She had a way of tucking my head
suddenly under her overcoat.
In chess, too, the professor told me,
the masters play blindfolded,
the great ones on several boards
at the same time.
Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators
The epoch of a streetcar drawn by horses,
The organ-grinder and his monkey.
Women with parasols. Little kids in rowboats
Photographed against a cardboard backdrop depicting an idyllic sunset
At the fairgrounds where they all went to see
The two-headed calf, the bearded
Fat lady who dances the dance of seven veils.
And the great famine raging through India . . .
Fortunetelling white rat pulling a card out of a shoebox
While Edison worries over the lightbulb,
And the first model of the sewing machine
Is delivered in a pushcart
To a modest white-fenced home in the suburbs,
Where there are always a couple of infants
Posing for the camera in their sailors’ suits,
Out there in the garden overgrown with shrubs.
Lovable little mugs smiling faintly toward
The new century. Innocent. Why not?
All of them like ragdolls of the period
With those chubby porcelain heads
That shut their long eyelashes as you lay them down.
In a kind of perpetual summer twilight . . .
One can even make out the shadow of the tripod and the black hood
That must have been quivering in the breeze.
One assumes that they all stayed up late squinting at the stars,
And were carried off to bed by their mothers and big sisters.
While the dogs remained behind:
Pedigreed bitches pregnant with bloodhounds.
Shirt
To get into it
As it lies
Crumpled on the floor
Without disturbing a single crease
Respectful
Of the way I threw it down
Last night
The way it happened to land
Almost managing
The impossible contortions
Doubling back now
Through a knotted sleeve
Begotten of the Spleen
The Virgin Mother walked barefoot
Among the land mines.
She carried an old man in her arms
Like a howling babe.
The earth was an old people’s home.
Judas was the night nurse,
Emptying bedpans into the river Jordan,
Tying people on a dog chain.
The old man had two stumps for legs.
St. Peter came pushing a cart
Loaded with flying carpets.
They were not flying carpets.
They were piles of bloody diapers.
The Magi stood around
Cleaning their nails with bayonets.
The old man gave little Mary Magdalene
A broken piece of a mirror.
She hid in the church outhouse.
When she got thirsty she licked
The steam off the glass.
That leaves Joseph. Poor Joseph,
Standing naked in the snow.
He only
had a rat
To load his suitcases on.
The rat wouldn’t run into its hole.
Even when the searchlights came on
Up in the guard towers
And caught them standing there.
Toy Factory
My mother works here,
And so does my father.
It’s the night shift.
At the assembly line,
They wind toys up
To inspect their springs.
The seven toy members
Of the firing squad
Point their rifles,
And lower them quickly.
The one being shot at
Falls and gets up,
Falls and gets up.
His blindfold is just painted on.
The toy gravediggers
Don’t work so well.
Their spades are heavy,
Their spades are much too heavy.
Perhaps that’s how
New and Selected Poems Page 4
