of Eden left behind but in the fierce
desire to live my own days, light as air?
IV
LIGHTWEIGHTS
T. S. LIGHTWEIGHT AND EZRA PROFOUND
A meditation upon “The Waste Land”
Give Ezra his due credit
for that amazing edit.
Still, T.S. is the one who said it.
OUT OF THE WOODS
What is it about the forest?
Why can’t we give it a rest?
All those writers taking
soulful walks in the woods:
good heavens, it’s been done.
Step out and get some sun!
Dante did, after getting the goods
in the darkest glades from Virgil;
but what about Longfellow
sadly tagging along—
or ten steps back, at the distance
of a translated insistence?
Sure, I admire the flight paths
of the hawkmoths of Nabokov,
who pinned them down in a knockoff
of the hawthorn path in Proust—
but if I must lose my way,
I’ll take the route of song:
give me Sondheim any day.
I’ve had my fill of Frost,
proud again to be lost,
coming upon his fork
in the road for the millionth time,
or stumbling upon woodpiles
of somebody else’s work.
EDNA ST. VINCENT, M.F.A.
Chic and petite, blind to her destiny
of being hailed upon her death the worst
sometimes-excellent poet in history,
she ran the reading series, and ranked first
in her year despite some issues, namely those
pretentious, creaky sonnets e‑mailed late
for workshop, densely wrought with “thee”s and “thou”s,
Apollo’s “dewy cart,” man’s “frosty fate”…
Her classmates listened, bored, without a clue.
Still, they liked her, partly because she friended
everybody who asked, and fucked them too,
lending them each some notoriety
by blogging through the night how things had ended.
Plus, she knew people at A.W.P.
URBAN HAIKU
Leash dog; strap iPod
to bicep; jog, shower, dress—
it’s not worth the time.
*
Thought at the checkout:
stupid to put five seltzers
in one plastic bag.
*
New leather jackets:
hand in hand, the married rich
strolling to MoMA.
*
Like an Olympic
torch held aloft: a steaming
latte with no lid.
*
What makes them do it—
jaywalkers in dark clothing
at night, in the rain?
*
Hailing a taxi—
finally one pulls over.
Proof I must exist.
DR. SYNTAX AND PROSODY
Ms. Martin at Princeton knows firsthand how electronic searches can unearth both obscure texts and dead ends.… She recalled finding a sudden explosion of the words “syntax” and “prosody” in 1832, suggesting a spirited debate about poetic structure. But it turned out that Dr. Syntax and Prosody were the names of two racehorses.
“You find 200 titles with ‘Syntax,’ and you think there must be a big grammar debate that year,” Ms. Martin said, “but it was just that Syntax was winning.”
—THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 3, 2010
The sentence, diagrammed,
is a boring one-track course:
Dr. Syntax was a horse.
Prosody enjambed
himself near the finish line.
It happens. Hey, that’s fine.
KITTI’S HOG-NOSED BAT
For some learned people
this creature, whose torso
(a bumblebee’s size)
makes it smallest of all
the thousand-plus species
of bat on the planet,
and the most petite extant
species of mammal—
though some experts cite
the Etruscan shrew—
is worth a life’s study.
Carry on, please do.
But others will care
only who Kitti was
and if he was teased
(as his name meant cat)
when he christened the hog-
nosed horrible bat.
I am numbered with these.
I’m not speaking for you.
FRENCH HAIKU
1. Proust, Book One
The elaborate
word ballet whereby Odette
turns into a Swann.
2. Mont Sainte-Victoire
Still-life tablecloth
heaped and crumpled: yet Cézanne
lets no stone roll off.
3. Concierge
Old and sort of fat,
she thinks she’s sexy: yes, I
want to be like that.
OUR PING-PONG TABLE
Literary, lazy,
unsporty, unoutdoorsy,
and seriously unlikely
to reform our habits much,
we bought it feeling flush
one summer, and resolving
to have more family fun
than whatever we’d been having.
We read the warning: Some
assembly is required.
The very thought of that
made us cross and tired
but we put our heads together,
tore hunks of Styrofoam,
and built the big, “all-weather,”
eight-legged, hope-green wreck
while watching unmarked, tiny,
essential pieces sent
all the way from China
as placidly they went
irretrievably rolling
through slats in our old deck.
Nothing to do about it.
In a way, that was consoling.
How many years ago
was that? ten?—and how few
games did we play each year?
One day we stopped. But when?
I think I was the first
to notice poison oak
where the balls were prone to land.
After the net frame broke
we knew it was the end,
though there were nights we’d throw
a tablecloth or two
on top for a barbecue.
All-weather? So far it’s stood
as a tottering monument
to the bumblers we remain;
it’s stood there in the rain
and, through the kitchen window
in winter, as an efficient
means to measure snow.
I’ve liked that. That’s been good.
INSTRUMENTAL RIDDLES
Nothing to shake a stick at,
hollow inside, I’m anything but shallow.
The deeper I am, the louder
silence is struck a blow.
drum
Love often looks like me—
two lovers, and then three—
although, in love, the third stays out of view.
I play upstage. I can be quiet, too.
triangle
I live on a limited scale.
Homeless, I collapse and wheeze
on the subway. As if you care!
Sorry to be so sentimental,
but buddy, please,
can you spare a dime?
Otherwise you may have to bear
the polka, one more time.
accordion
Shaped much like an angel’s wing,
like angel hair my lengths of string,
I’m strummed
by angels as they sing.
harp
In nursery school, before you learned to read,
you played like Pan upon a simple reed.
My name says what I do—
I bring your earliest memories back to you.
recorder
NO SECOND TRY
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery…
—W. B. YEATS, “No Second Troy”
Why should I blame him that he filled his days
With mistresses, or that he came home late
To meet most ignorant trust with smiling ways,
Such thoughtful gifts, and claims that I looked great—
Whatever that meant, though clearly not desire?
What help if I’d been wiser, with a mind
Simply to hurl his laundry in the fire
Rather than buy his tall tales with a kind
Solicitude and a deluded kiss,
Having cleaned his house from stem to stern?
Why, who else could he use, a guy like this?
Was there another wife for him to spurn?
V
BED OF LETTERS
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
—WILLIAM BLAKE,
“A Poison Tree”
STRING OF PEARLS
The pearls my mother gave me as a bride
rotted inside.
Well, not the pearls, but the string.
One day I was putting
them on, about thirty years on,
and they rattled onto the floor, one by one…
I’m still not sure I found them all.
As it happened, I kept a white seashell
on my vanity table. It could serve as a cup
where, after I’d scooped the lost pearls up,
I’d save them, a many-sister
haven in one oyster.
A female’s born with all her eggs,
unfolds her legs,
then does her dance, is lovely, is the past—
is old news as the last
crinkle-foil-wrapped sweet
in the grass of the Easter basket.
True? Who was I? Had I unfairly classed
myself as a has-been? In the cloister
of the ovary, when
released by an extra dose of estrogen,
my chances for love dwindled, one by one.
But am I done?
THE GAZEBO
It’s my last day at the house.
My last time wandering the backyard.
I’m not aware I want to crush anything.
My boots crunch through the desiccated,
frosted grass, a sound like stubbing out
cigarette after cigarette.
I climb to the top of the hill
and unlatch the creaky gate in the fence
that frames the swimming pool.
I don’t see it, but there’s a crust
of ice beneath the canvas cover.
Plus algae, a few dead frogs and bugs,
however things stood last August.
Eons ago. Before I knew.
Another creaky door now, to the gazebo.
An icicle crashes from the roof
as I lower myself
into a plastic Adirondack chair.
Our view: three mountains, shy and local,
that spoke a little of yearning; of gratitude.
Mosquitoes got in through these screens.
And wasps would hover
near nests stuck to the beams and rafters
like harmless mischief; like wads of chewing gum.
There was laughter up here, iced tea, beer.
Paper-plate family meals, tête-à-têtes,
and silent reading alone, and sunsets
one shouldn’t see alone. And a husband
who’d walk up and knock, a little joke,
before he’d let himself in.
I see him smiling. He asks how I am.
He’s wrapped in a towel; he’s been in the pool,
he’s dripping on the floor, we chat,
we’re the luckiest couple you’ve ever met.
But it’s December. And the dripping now
is the sound of melting icicles
sharpening into knives.
DRINKING SONG
He lay with me upon a time,
sweet it was and lemon-lime.
Wedding ring and ringing bell,
Champagne was it never hell.
Coffee tea and morning toast,
none loved more and love was most.
Up we dressed for dinner out,
Prozac and Prosecco, doubt.
Peace in time and time to seethe.
Open wine and let it breathe.
Mix up our imperfect match:
dry martini, olive branch.
Jesus, who agreed the whore
he shall have with him always more?
Econo Lodge and Scottish Inn,
vodka, orange, scotch, and gin.
Years and years they met by day,
nights and nights forgot away
till the thing had not occurred.
Whiskey, whisper not a word.
What knows who was laced with truth,
shaken cocktail? Twist of ruth?
Panic and alarm creep back,
Ativan and Armagnac.
In my mind the slipping gears.
In our come-cries down the years
sometimes was love not sublime?
Another round, and hold the crime.
COMPLAINT FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE
A little something to endorse:
Download attachment, print and sign
Complaint for Absolute Divorce,
the lawyer wrote with casual force.
Yet why complain? The suit was mine.
A little something to endorse
“Complaint”: sheer poetry, of course,
more lofty than Lament or Whine.
Complaint for Absolute Divorce:
so well-phrased, who could feel remorse?
That “Absolute” was rather fine.
A little something to endorse
the universe as is: for worse,
for better. Nothing by design.
Complaint for Absolute Divorce,
let me salute you, sole recourse!
I put my birth name on the line—
a little something—and endorse
the final word, then, in “Divorce.”
BED OF LETTERS
Propped like a capital
letter at the head
of what was once our bed,
or like a letterhead—
as if your old address
were printed on my face—
I’m writing you this note
folded in sheets you lay
on then, but sleeplessly
night after night, a man
whose life became about
the fear of being found out.
Rarely a cross word
between us, although today
I see the printer’s tray
of your brain, the dormant type
sorted in little rooms
to furnish anagrams,
fresh headlines, infinite
new stories in nice fonts.
Give her what she wants,
you must have thought, and brought
home seedlings to transplant
in flower beds, unmeant
to bloom into such tall
tales—which even you
can’t unsay or undo.
And yet it’s true that long
ago, two lovers dozed
naked and enclosed
one history between covers.
We woke and, shy and proud,
read our new poems aloud.
VI
&n
bsp; THE SEAFARER
a version from the Anglo-Saxon
THE SEAFARER
I can sing my own true story
of journeys through this world,
how often I was tried
by troubles. Bitterly scared,
I would be sick with sorrow
on my night watch as I saw
so many times from the prow
terrible, tall waves
pitching close to cliffs.
My feet were frozen stiff,
seized and locked by frost,
although my heart was hot
from a host of worries.
A hunger from within
tore at my mind, sea-weary.
But men on solid ground
know nothing of how a wretch
like me, in so much pain,
could live a winter alone,
exiled, on the ice-cold sea
where hail came down in sheets,
and icicles hung from me
while friendly hall companions
feasted far away.
The crashing sea was all
I heard, the ice-cold wave.
I made the wild swan’s song
my game; sometimes the gannet
and curlew would cry out
though elsewhere men were laughing;
and the sea mew would sing
though elsewhere men drank mead.
Storms beat against the stone
cliffs, and the ice-feathered
tern called back, and often
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