patty-cake thirty braids ended in red —
Where are they now, the blackbirds gone?
The hot day bores,
boring its heat through the awninged bars,
wilting the yards,
the bleached, white sands.
Each lovely face was the same as each:
love eye love bird love sparrow on the roof.
God’s spies
who live on garbage.
Now.
Where are they now?
*
An empty space.
You put the human in
and then it’s his. He makes it what it is.
I thought it was our town —
that was before —
when it was hearts and flowers, picnic yard.
I didn’t know when I began what I was building yet.
It was a different time ago.
Remember Claire,
her skinny legs like licorice sticks —
runs through the lot, swings on the bars
like a water bug, giggles, runs back again —
“You’ll cut your hand!”
bright blood on the pale blue tile,
stained the cement.
And over the city the angels glide,
their grey civilian backs crossbarred
with soot, cooroo, cooroo;
they clamber the rungs of the garden but
the sandwich hut next corner’s warm,
has scraps, fresh garbage.
They move on.
They make a toy of the dream of heroes
because they live in it. This is their nest,
in and out of the rigging, loops and flowers —
a carousel of fortunes saying, “Man
answers to his fortunes, makes his own,
wheels round his own round numbers, his delights,
makes his America.”
They make a toy out of it, sticky with candy,
our city, our city of trash.
Ring round the rose-fire ash-dump,
ding dong bell, the sirens —
Coke caps, shapes like flowers —
eyes like the eyes of the wild birds —
the beady eyed children, they run in flocks —
“nyaah! nyaah!”
Who taught them that?
Out of the well of solitude,
the garden of the city,
wild
out of the mob of numbers run,
hardly a name to call them by.
Where are their manners?
Where are their words?
What do they teach these kids these days?
Beautiful, terrible, dangerous,
stupid —
children like birds.
*
The old man heaped out on the deck
the flapping pile of soft fish:
silvery bellies —
as under the grey sea
her belly shone,
like the moon shone white.
And I swam alone,
remembering her,
the arching back that tautened on the wave
and yearned for the loose of the bow line —
till I shored
and staggered, dripping,
hairy,
looking for woman.
Bought, she leaned back,
her heavy breasts
rolled either side and bobbed like boats,
as if she was swimming.
An iron spring
that in her bow back like a pain
winced, and she gasped — She gaped —
slashed fish —
pretending to lean
on the wave that drowns.
Was she afraid?
I was.
As if she’d die upon me, spill her guts,
the shaking bag of silver fall,
spread out on water like red foam,
the grey gulls squalling,
swooping down. . . .
The water ran from the white planks
to the sea again,
speckled with sea coin, scales,
feathers of angels, their scissored breasts
hopeless, staring
at the white rose star of dawn.
*
A crane fly dried like the marsh reeds
clings to the wall.
A green fly rubs its hands.
One busy with nothing; one idle with all.
The point is no point, the point of all
of this is nothing, is bricks, cement,
the steel rods bent
as I know how to bend them,
packed in firm.
What does it stand for?
One busy with nothing;
one idle with all.
*
“Oh sure we used to bring him things,
we weren’t afraid of him.
Was just a toy, a hobby.
Now he works all night at the things.
They got too big. He takes it all too serious.
He’s crazy, man!”
*
What then? An occupation of my own:
“playing at art”
involved in ivory eggs:
eggs within eggs:
the cod egg case —
dry clover pods —
bay windward —
broken things —
You have to believe this fiddle.
You cannot despise it.
*
I should lay it all out in asphalt,
in black tar for sitting in.
Outside the wall, inside the wall,
the noise is different.
And I don’t hear it when I work
for when I know what my hands make
I don’t hear nothing — but what I know I make.
If there was God
I’d pray Him to bring back my work.
It’s like He takes and sends and I can’t bring
anything out of me at all except He waits
but He’s not so.
And all of this is only me
and I’m not anything some days.
Nothing.
Old man.
Old lonely man.
Old crazy man.
This memory too:
the dancer,
the brawling horns, an athlete’s trim —
bronzed, sinewy body — a female thing —
her legs too strong —
like the wood nutcracker they sent me, joke
nasty to think of,
eyes rolled like a pony’s, loco, drugged —
in a cage of her choosing.
But how could you let the stunned thing out?
The roaring sound continues, bar,
then road. The brown dog bounced
from car to car
and fell in the ditch.
No stopping. Too fast.
Who let it loose?
Another death on the highway, that loud nerve
that drums the city so no bolt
can rest, no nail but jiggle
day night day
unceasing cars,
smoke,
sirens
sound of driving
cage
*
“I don’t think he’s crazy if he do that thing.”
Fair enough. I don’t need her defense.
I used to work on it at night, every night,
when I came home.
Look at my arms. My hide’s half glass.
I’m like my towers, glazed
in my own making.
They used to come and look at it,
to marvel, peeking in the gate.
Angela first, and Winnie Mae, then Claire —
oh and her momma wants the priest
to come and see it! That’s when
I had the cross up just to see
how it looked, not bad, but not right either.
I left it there.
They broug
ht
pink roses for the christening,
a wash-tub of ice, and wine. My sister brought
the accordion player, retired fireman
eighty years old.
“Well you’ve got some place here,
it’s sure some place. That’s a lot of work!”
and the children ran round
like butterflies
dancing among the glass flowers.
“Look at me!”
“Don’t let her climb that thing!”
It’s safe enough. I built it strong.
Dead now, the old men.
And Angela?
I don’t know what happened to Angela.
Carlos and Dee Ray left the towers,
cut from them
by the adult eye that says
it’s crazy if it don’t make cents,
that money talks.
Spent lives.
The kids were different in those days,
all were polite.
They liked to play and run around these things.
They’d bring me stuff for prettiness.
I got those shells from Angela.
Claire, Dee Ray —
the dark eyes at the gate:
“Hey Mr. can we come inside?”
Then it was them.
They were the eyes, hearts, flowers of the yard.
The christening, they had one by the basin,
bright in flowers, those roses they brought in—
and the priest, he’s dead now, the old priest:
“The thorns are turned to flowers,” he said,
“a garden in the wilderness that’s Watts.”
He loved it here.
Except he tried to talk to me of God.
I can’t stand that.
Dear lady, that was long ago.
It’s different now.
You don’t know how it’s different.
*
“He used to clean the bird shit off each morning,
early in the day you’d see him climbing up the spires
and shining with a chamois cloth.
He kept it nice.”
*
My old fat sister she grows old, sick, foolish —
rocking in her chair she weeps all day
for death and for religion.
My brother-in-law with his necktie on all day —
there’s something in him cheap that chips away
at her at me — I break that bastard’s neck for him —
and all she does is weep weep weep.
Why should I go to church? My towers are church.
They’re taller than the church.
I shouted at him in the streets.
He says he’ll get the cops.
“Wino. Anarchist. Commie.”
That’s me.
Weep, weep.
*
“Sometimes at dawn, fixing the breakfast for the kids,
I see them things. They’re a little crazy,
but not so much you would think it crazy
if they said Buy Hot Dogs would you? There’s a thing!
You make a drive-in restaurant. They’d get a kick
out of it, no questions what’s it for.
But all alone, no signs — it’s like we must find out.
‘Nuestro Pueblo’ it used to say.
I like them just to look at now and then.
My old man says they’re junk. OK. They’re junk.”
*
He brings me glass, white quartz, broke tile.
He doesn’t like it. I can tell.
Why bring me stuff if he doesn’t like it?
I’m at the zoo maybe!
He feeds me through the bars.
Should hand it to me on a stick.
But what’s it for? What’s it all for?
How can you say you are my friend
but you don’t see it?
Crazy.
Yes, I guess.
Or one of us.
I don’t bring nothing to no crazy man.
So one by one they go away.
Some die. Some move.
Some just
stop coming.
What’s to see?
An old man mooning in the sun,
watching the concrete harden
on his trowel.
The seasons go.
IV
Now that nobody comes here any more,
now that I don’t know what to do,
the wall unfinished,
the long path
unfinished —
Now that nobody comes here now
I see a crazy old woman come.
She seems to stare.
I can’t do nothing,
speak to her.
Or work myself.
She’s drawing pictures all the time.
A ghost.
She comes down every day and stares at them,
her bulging eyes hard like a squirrel’s,
an Indian, maybe, with that full nose.
A fat old woman, smells like a swamp,
knees thick like logged tree stumps,
she shuffles, limps. String bag, a mitten hat
pulled tight over greasy curls, her scratched
wrists scarred with the whelp teeth —
draws. Bear goddess, she-god of the rocks,
stares at the towers, grunts.
She draws the towers,
puts animal faces, Indian things
all over the page.
That’s not my towers!
I drove that darkness from them.
She leers, and puts the pad away.
*
Savages, savages, not like us.
The women dressed like bears
and staggered through the rocky pass
grunting, panting, labouring —
stanching their senses with darkness —
squeezed
through the black-haired gate. . . .
*
That old maimed goose
that, draggled in the surf,
could not escape —
me too.
Old age grounds me.
It follows me
like a shadow,
gnarled, grotesque —
like an old woman.
I thought this was the country,
hero’s land.
I stood proud in this land I thought it was,
I was the Man, Columbus, Caesar, Jefferson.
I made the garden for the children,
city flowers, the towers for the man,
glass giant that I was. But now,
as if my mother died,
I don’t know what to do.
“Crazy man! Crazy man!”
Stones in the street.
“Shit on you old man, shit!”
They watch for me at night.
If I go out to the movies they come in,
break windows, bust things.
I don’t know why.
When I went up north they took things from the walls,
pried up the paving blocks, looking for treasure,
crazy man’s treasure.
They think a crazy man is rich.
All that I wanted of them was to look.
All I required.
If I go away they’ll get tired of that.
There are the towers.
I give them away.
*
A suitcase of clothes.
Nothing to work with.
No books.
I am going away to die.
This is the end.
There is nothing there.
Dear young lady, I am too old.
I broke my heart there.
Where nobody knows me,
a new place,
a different house.
The top floor’s mine.
Empty, empty.
I keep it so.
I look out at the stony sea
and
see that lame
and terrible old woman still,
hunched in her blankets with her dogs
and the monkey in clothes that grins at me
like a demon:
“Shit on you old man, shit!”
“Crazy man! Crazy man!”
*
When I was a child a bear got caught,
tangled along our wire fence by a pack of dogs.
She kept them off and we shot her —
small, she was small, with a piggy smell,
and her fur flea-eaten like an old rug,
no good to keep. They hauled her to the dump
and the birds fell on her,
the seabirds,
with their hooked beaks tearing like docker’s claws
at a hemp-wrapped bundle.
*
Osprey
or raven —
a beaked thing in the sky —
lonely,
inaudible,
not to be looked at,
not to be heard —
“I only require of you to look”
it flies
invisible,
free.
“I only require.”
A dream:
I saw the towers,
the ravens settled on the wires.
Then huge machines slung out their claws,
tied cables round the highest spire,
pulled, leaned —
they could not tug it down!
and then the ravens raised their heads,
cried out, and gathered up themselves,
huge, black, awkward —
the fat, black women
gathering skirts, coats, bags —
and they flapped off
grunting and cackling.
Here
I hear them beating in the wind,
scratching the house sides, the loose roof tiles.
Trees rattle, branches and twigs.
Their beaked boughs seem to tear at me.
I felt the apartment like a cave
or like some wings that held the roof
from falling on me. Half alive
the ceiling seemed to be,
as if it were breathing.
When I went out
among the shadows of the trees
something was trying, within me,
a great discomfort within me —
it wants to get out.
The seashore suffers in its stones,
bullied and hunched,
pregnant with grief.
They seem to live
in pain, as if
something
forever unspoken
grieved.
The unborn.
Shapes.
*
Looked back at the city from this north room
and from its lights
the darkest of all angels grew:
she drenched the pavement with her black.
Black sister, hungry, the great bear totem,
filled up the sky. She hatched a swarm
of darknesses; she shook her dress,
the stars, moth holes
in her black cloth
fell down,
bleak angels, scorned —
scorned as rabble,
beloved of the sky —
The Witch of the Inner Wood Page 6
