New and Selected Poems
Page 5
It’s supposed to be?
The Little Tear Gland That Says
Then there was Johann,
the carousel horse—
except he wasn’t really a carousel horse.
He grew up in “the naive realism of the Wolffian school
which without close scrutiny regards
logical necessity and reality as identical.”
On Sundays, his parents took him
to the undertaker’s for cookies.
“All these people flying in their dreams,”
he thought.
Standing before the Great Dark Night of History,
a picture of innocence
held together by his mother’s safety pins,
short and bowlegged.
Cool reflection soon showed
there were openings among the signatories of
death sentences . . .
plus free high leather boots that squeak.
On his entrance exam he wrote:
“The act of torture consists of various strategies
meant to increase the imagination
of the Homo sapiens.”
And then . . . the Viennese waltz.
The Stream
for Russ Banks
The ear threading
the eye
all night long
the ear
on a long errand
for the eye
through the thickening
pine
white birch
over no-man’s-land
pebbles
is it
compact in their anonymity
their gravity
accidents of location
abstract necessity
water
which takes such pains
to convince me
it is flowing
•
Summoning me
to be
two places at once
to drift
the length
of its chill
its ache
hand white
at the knuckles
live bait
the old hide-and-seek
in and out
of the swirl
luminous verb
carnivorous verb
innocent as sand
under its blows
•
An insomnia as big
as the stars’
always
on the brink—
as it were
of some deeper utterance
some harsher
reckoning
at daybreak
lightly
oh so lightly
when she brushes
against me
and the hems of her long skirt
go trailing
a bit longer
•
Nothing
that comes to nothing
for company
comes the way a hurt
the way a thought
comes
comes and keeps coming
all night meditating
on what she asks of me
when she doesn’t
when I hear myself say
she doesn’t
Furniture Mover
Ah the great
the venerable
whoever he is
ahead of me
huge load
terrific backache
wherever
a chair’s waiting
meadow
sky
beckoning
he is the one
that’s been
there
without instructions
and for no wages
a huge load
on his back
and under his arm
thus
always
all in place
perfect
just as it was
sweet home
at the address
I never even dreamed of
the address
I’m already changing
in a hurry
to overtake him
to arrive
not ahead
but just as
he sets down
the table
the thousand-year-old
bread crumbs
I used to
claim
I was part
of his load
high up there
roped safely
with the junk
the eviction notices
I used to
prophesy
he’ll stumble
by and by
No luck—
oh
Mr. Furniture Mover
on my knees
let me come
for once
early
to where it’s vacant
you still
on the stairs
wheezing
between floors
and me behind the door
in the gloom
I think I would
let you do
what you must
Elegy
Note
as it gets darker
that little
can be ascertained
of the particulars
and of their true
magnitudes
note
the increasing
unreliability
of vision
though one thing may appear
more or less
familiar
than another
disengaged
from reference
as they are
in the deepening
gloom
nothing to do
but sit
and abide
depending on memory
to provide
the vague outline
the theory
of where we are
tonight
and why
we can see
so little
of each other
and soon
will be
even less
able
in this starless
summer night
windy and cold
at the table
brought out
hours ago
under a huge ash tree
two chairs
two ambiguous figures
each one relying
on the other
to remain faithful
now
that one can leave
without the other one
knowing
this late
in what only recently was
a garden
a festive occasion
elaborately planned
for two lovers
in the open air
at the end
of a dead-end
road
rarely traveled
o love
Note Slipped Under a Door
I saw a high window struck blind
By the late afternoon sunlight.
I saw a towel
With many dark fingerprints
Hanging in the kitchen.
I saw an old apple tree,
A shawl of wind over its shoulders,
Inch its lonely way
Toward the barren hills.
I saw an unmade bed
And felt the cold of its sheets.
I saw a fly soaked in pitch
Of the coming night
Watching me because it couldn’t get out.
I saw stones that had come
From a great purple distance
Huddle around the front door.
Grocery
Figure or figures unknown
Keep a store
Keep it open
Nights and all day Sunday
Half of what th
ey sell
Will kill you
The other half
Makes you go back for more
Too cheap to turn on the lights
Hard to tell what it is
They’ve got on the counter
What it is you’re paying for
All the rigors
All the solemnities
Of a brass scale imperceptibly quivering
In the early winter dusk
One of its pans
For their innards
The other one for yours—
And yours heavier
Classic Ballroom Dances
Grandmothers who wring the necks
Of chickens; old nuns
With names like Theresa, Marianne,
Who pull schoolboys by the ear;
The intricate steps of pickpockets
Working the crowd of the curious
At the scene of an accident; the slow shuffle
Of the evangelist with a sandwich board;
The hesitation of the early-morning customer
Peeking through the window grille
Of a pawnshop; the weave of a little kid
Who is walking to school with eyes closed;
And the ancient lovers, cheek to cheek,
On the dance floor of the Union Hall,
Where they also hold charity raffles
On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November.
Progress Report
And how are the rats doing in the maze?
The gray one in a baggy fur coat
Appears dazed, the rest squeeze past him
Biting and squealing.
A pretty young attendant has him by the tail.
She is going to slit him open.
The blade glints and so do the beads
Of perspiration on her forehead.
His cousins are still running in circles.
The damp, foul-smelling sewer
Where they nuzzled their mother’s teat
Is what they hope to see at the next turn.
Already she’s yanked his heart out,
And he doesn’t know what for?
Neither does she at this moment
Watching his eyes glaze, his whiskers twitch.
Winter Night
The church is an iceberg.
It’s the wind. It must be blowing tonight
Out of those galactic orchards,
Their Copernican pits and stones.
The monster created by the mad Dr. Frankenstein
Sailed for the New World,
And ended up some place like New Hampshire.
Actually, it’s just a local drunk,
Knocking with a snow shovel,
Wanting to go in and warm himself.
An iceberg, the book says, is a large drifting
Piece of ice, broken off a glacier.
The Cold
As if in a presence of an intelligence
Concentrating. I thought myself
Scrutinized and measured closely
By the sky and the earth,
And then algebraized and entered
In a notebook page blank and white,
Except for the faint blue lines
Which might have been bars,
For I kept walking and walking,
And it got darker and then there was
A flicker of a light or two
Far above and beyond my cage.
Devotions
for Michael Anania
The hundred-year-old servants
Are polishing the family silver,
And recalling the little master dressed as a girl
Peeing in a chamber pot.
Now he is away hunting with Madame.
The reverend dropped by this afternoon
And inquired amiably after them.
His pink fingers were like squirming piglets.
Even the Siamese cats like to sit and gaze,
On days when it rains and the fire is lit,
At the grandfather with waxed mustache-tips
Scowling out of the heavy picture frame.
They were quick to learn respect
And what is expected of them, these former
Farm boys and girls stealing glances
At themselves in spoons large and small.
Cold Blue Tinge
The pink-cheeked Jesus
Thumbtacked above
The cold gas stove,
And the boy sitting on the piss pot
Blowing soap bubbles
For the black kitten to catch.
Very peaceful, except
There’s a faint moan
From the next room.
His mother’s asking
For some more pills,
But there’s no reply.
The bubbles are quiet,
And kitten is sleepy.
All his brothers and sisters
Have been drowned.
He’ll have a long life, though,
Catching mice for the baker,
And the undertaker.
The Writings of the Mystics
On the counter among many
Much-used books,
The rare one you must own
Immediately, the one
That makes your heart race
As you wait for small change
With a silly grin
You’ll take to the street,
And later, past the landlady
Watching you wipe your shoes,
Then, up to the rented room
Which neighbors the one
Of a nightclub waitress
Who’s shaving her legs
With a door partly open,
While you turn to the first page
Which speaks of a presentiment
Of a higher existence
In things familiar and drab . . .
In a house soon to be torn down,
Suddenly hushed, and otherworldly . . .
You have to whisper your own name,
And the words of the hermit,
Since it must be long past dinner,
The one they ate quickly,
Happy that your small portion
Went to the three-legged dog.
Window Washer
And again the screech of the scaffold
High up there where all our thoughts converge:
Lightheaded, hung
By a leather strap,
Twenty stories up
In the chill of late November
Wiping the grime
Off the pane, the many windows
Which have no way of opening,
Tinted windows mirroring the clouds
That are like equestrian statues,
Phantom liberators with sabers raised
Before these dark offices,
And their anonymous multitudes
Bent over this day’s
Wondrously useless labor.
Gallows Etiquette
Our sainted great-great-
Grandmothers
Used to sit and knit
Under the gallows.
No one remembers what it was
They were knitting
And what happened when the ball of yarn
Rolled out of their laps
And had to be retrieved.
One pictures the hooded executioner
And his pasty-faced victim
Interrupting their grim business
To come quickly to their aid.
Confirmed pessimists
And other party poopers
Categorically reject
Such far-fetched notions
Of gallows etiquette.
In Midsummer Quiet
Ariadne’s bird,
That lone
Whippoorwill.
Ball of twilight thread
Unraveling furtively.
Tawny thread,
Raw, pink the thread end.
A claw or two also
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