The Introduction
I don’t think this next poem
needs any introduction—
it’s best to let the work speak for itself.
Maybe I should just mention
that whenever I use the word five,
I’m referring to that group of Russian composers
who came to be known as “The Five,”
Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin—that crowd.
Oh—and Hypsicles was a Greek astronomer.
He did something with the circle.
That’s about it, but for the record,
“Grimké” is Angelina Emily Grimké, the abolitionist.
“Imroz” is that little island near the Dardanelles.
“Monad”—well, you all know what a monad is.
There could be a little problem
with mastaba, which is one of those Egyptian
above-ground sepulchers, sort of brick and limestone.
And you’re all familiar with helminthology?
It’s the science of worms.
Oh, and you will recall that Phoebe Mozee
is the real name of Annie Oakley.
Other than that, everything should be obvious.
Wagga Wagga is in New South Wales.
Rhyolite is that soft volcanic rock.
What else?
Yes, meranti is a type of timber, in tropical Asia I think,
and Rahway is just Rahway, New Jersey.
The rest of the poem should be clear.
I’ll just read it and let it speak for itself.
It’s about the time I went picking wild strawberries.
It’s called “Picking Wild Strawberries.”
FOUR
The Revenant
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you—not one bit.
When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.
I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and—greatest of insults—shake hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner—
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.
See No Evil
No one expected all three of them
to sit there on their tree stumps forever,
their senses covered with their sinuous paws
so as to shut out the vile, nefarious world.
As it happened,
it was the one on the left
who was the first to desert his post,
uncupping his ears,
then loping off into the orbit of rumors and lies,
but also into the realm of symphonies,
the sound of water tumbling over rocks
and wind stirring the leafy domes of trees.
Then the monkey on the right lowered his hands
from his wide mouth and slipped away
in search of someone to talk to,
some news he could spread,
maybe something to curse or shout about.
And that left the monkey in the middle
alone with his silent vigil,
shielding his eyes from depravity’s spectacle,
blind to the man whipping his horse,
the woman shaking her baby in the air,
but also unable to see
the russet sun on a rough shelf of rock
and apples in the grass at the base of a tree.
Sometimes, he wonders about the other two,
listens for the faint sounds of their breathing
up there on the mantel
alongside the clock and the candlesticks.
And some nights in the quiet house
he wishes he could break the silence with a question,
but he knows the one on his right
would not be able to hear,
and the one to his left,
according to their sacred oath—
the one they all took with one paw raised—
is forbidden forever to speak, even in reply.
Freud
I think I know what he would say
about the dream I had last night
in which my nose was lopped off in a sword fight,
leaving me to wander the streets of 18th-century Paris
with a kind of hideous blowhole in the middle of my face.
But what would be his thoughts
about the small brown leather cone
attached to my face with goose grease
which I purchased from a gnome-like sales clerk
at a little shop called House of a Thousand Noses?
And how would he interpret
my stopping before every gilded mirror
to admire the fine grain and the tiny brass studs,
always turning to show my best profile,
my clean-shaven chin slightly raised?
Surely, narcissism fails to capture
my love of posing in those many rooms,
sometimes with an open window behind me
showing the blue sky which would be eclipsed
by the Eiffel Tower in roughly a hundred years.
Height
Viewed from the roof of a tall building,
people on the street
are said to take on the appearance of ants,
but I have been up here for so long,
gazing down over this parapet,
that the ants below have begun to resemble people.
Look at that one lingering
near a breadcrumb on the curb,
does he not share the appearance of my brother-in-law?
And the beautiful young ant
in the light summer dress
with the smooth, ovoid head,
the one heading up the lamppost—
could she not double for my favorite cousin
with her glad eyes and her pulled-back hair?
Surely, one with the face
of my mother and another with the posture
of my father will soon go hobbling by.
The Lodger
After I had beaten my sword into a ploughshare,
I beat my ploughshare into a hoe,
then beat the hoe into a fork,
which I used to eat my dinner alone.
And when I had finished dinner,
I beat my fork into a toothpick,
which I twirled on my lips
then fl
icked over a low stone wall
as I walked along the city river
under the clouds and stars,
quite happy but for the thought
that I should have beaten that toothpick into a shilling
so I could buy a newspaper to read
after climbing the stairs to my room.
Class Picture, 1954
I am the third one
from the left in the third row.
The girl I have been in love with
since the 5th grade is just behind me
to the right, the one with the bangs.
The boy who pushes me down
in the playground
is the last one on the left in the top row.
And my friend Paul is the second one
in the second row, the one
with his collar sticking out, next to the teacher.
But that’s not all—
if you look carefully you can see
our house in the background
with its porch and its brick chimney
and up in the clouds
you can see the faces of my parents,
and over there, off to the side,
Superman is balancing
a green car over his head with one hand.
Care and Feeding
Because tomorrow
I will turn 420 in dog years,
I have decided to take myself
for a long walk on the path around the lake,
and when I get back to the house,
I will jump up on my chest
and lick my nose, my ears and eyelids
while I tell myself again and again to get down.
Then I will replenish my bowl
with cold water from the tap
and hand myself a biscuit from the jar
which I will hold gingerly in my teeth.
Then I will make three circles
and lie down on the wood floor at my feet
and close my eyes
as I type all morning and into the afternoon,
checking every once in a while
to make sure I am still there,
reaching down with one hand
to stroke my furry, esteemed, venerable head.
Carry
I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.
Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.
They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.
Drawing Class
If you ever asked me
how my drawing classes are going,
I would tell you that I enjoy
adhering to the outline of a thing,
to follow the slope of an individual pear
or the curve of a glossy piano.
And I love trailing my hand
over the smooth membrane of bond,
the intelligent little trinity
of my fingers gripping the neck of the pencil
while the other two dangle below
like the fleshy legs of a tiny swimmer.
I would add that I can get lost
crosshatching the shadow of a chair
or tracing and retracing
the slight undercarriage of a breast.
Even the preparations call out to me—
taping the paper to a wooden board,
brushing its surface clean,
and sharpening a few pencils to a fine point.
The thin hexagonal pencil
is mightier than the pen,
for it can modulate from firm to faint
and shift from thin to broad
whenever it leans more acutely over the page—
the bright yellow pencil,
which is also mightier than the sword
for there is no erasing what the sword can do.
We all started with the box and the ball
then moved on to the cup and the lamp,
the serrated leaf, the acorn with its cap.
But I want to graduate to the glass decanter
and learn how to immobilize in lead
translucent curtains lifted in the air.
I want to draw
four straight lines that will connect me
to the four points of the compass,
to the bright spires of cities,
the overlapping trellises,
the turning spokes of the world.
One day I want to draw freehand
a continuous figure
that will begin with me
when the black tip touches the paper
and end with you when it is lifted
and set down beside a luminous morning window.
The Flying Notebook
With its spiraling metal body
and white pages for wings,
my notebook flies over my bed while I sleep—
a bird full of quotations and tiny images
who loves the night’s dark rooms,
glad now to be free of my scrutiny and my pen point.
Tomorrow, it will go with me
into the streets where I may stop to look
at my reflection in a store window,
and later I may break a piece of bread
at a corner table in a restaurant
then scribble something down.
But tonight it flies around me in circles
sailing through a column of moonlight,
then beating its paper wings even more,
once swooping so low
as to ripple the surface of a lake
in a dream in which I happen to be drowning.
Fool Me Good
I am under the covers
waiting for the heat to come up
with a gurgle and hiss
and the banging of the water hammer
that will frighten the cold out of the room.
And I am listening to a blues singer
named Precious Bryant
singing a song called “Fool Me Good.”
If you don’t love me, baby, she sings,
would you please try to fool me good?
I am also stroking the dog’s head
and writing down these words,
which means that I am calmly flying
in the face of the Buddhist advice
to do only one thing at a time.
Just pour the tea,
just look into the eye of the flower,
just sing the song—
one thing at a time
and you will achieve serenity,
which is what I would love to do
as the fan-blades of the morning begin to turn.
If you don’t love me, baby,
she sings
as a day-moon fades in the window
and the hands circle the clock,
would you please try to fool me good?
Yes, Precious, I reply,
I will fool you as good as I can,
but first I have to learn to listen to you
with my whole heart,
and not until you have finished
will I put on my slippers,
squeeze out some toothpaste,
and make a big foamy face in the mirror,
freshly dedicated to doing one thing at a time—
one note at a time for you, darling,
one tooth at a time for me.
Evening Alone
Last of the strong sun
on white tiles, stack of white towels,
faint piano melody from downstairs,
and the downpour of hot water on my shoulders.
I lift my face to the nozzle, close my eyes
and see mountains folded
over mountains,
smoke rising from a woodcutter
’s hut,
and in the distance, billowing pastel clouds.
It must be China I am beholding
on this early summer evening—
the great sway of rivers,
thousands of birds rising on the wing,
the jade and mulberries of China,
plum blossoms—now the cry of a pheasant.
It is a vision that drains me of desire,
and leaves me wanting nothing
but to be here
in this hot steamy room
The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems Page 4
