Who knows if you or anyone I remember is the same, if I am the same
(sorry a question we do not have time for), and what we thought of as our moment
may have already passed into a cosmic morning-after, like that party my parents gave—
what, fifty years ago?—nebulae of wrapping, off-color joke gifts redshifted far beyond me,
full ashtrays, drinks weak with icemelt, the shrill flat smell of faded excitement,
since everything has happened somewhere and everyone has happened once
(oh, let’s not be sentimental, it has all happened over and over,
and if we find them they’ll be gone, and when they find us we’ll be gone),
and yes, at the moment, the world in which I began this sentence
is impossibly distant, and the world in which I have finished
and am condemned to what I have said, which is why it is called a sentence,
is impossibly distant but approaching, if that is not a metaphor, faster than light,
and here it is right now. Think of the mind as a device where universes—this one,
the one to the left, or a little later, or not quite—converge, which saves a lot of space,
zillions in superposition, fading in halos of regret, or collapsing un-imagined,
in a kind of reverse Big Bang, to just what Is, which saves really a lot of space.
Yes, even now I feel the expansion of space counteracted by dark unmattering,
and now, yes, the snow-blue is the blueshift of things moving closer and closer together,
and since anyway the most common compulsion, really the only one, is to begin again,
I need to ask, though it has been asked in a zillion ages and places, I will need to ask
in the universe rushing towards us (metaphorically) faster than the speed of light, the one
where we are together again: Well, is that coffee you’ve got there, steaming, or the hell of fusion
in the star-tight grip, in the tokamak of your cupped hands?
Prokaryotes
Say we found it on Europa,
dna, an alien line,
could we wait a billion years to ask
How was it for you—
blue, that whiff of ammonia, Time?
The Stars in Order Of
The stars in order of
magnitude, of age,
of Pisces/Taurus/Gemini,
of stature, tilt, and price—
I mean
hot Sirius and gaudy Mars,
historic stars, and not
those pinpoint whites
we hurry under, no, not those
pixels. I mean stars
like dimes some kid threw
in the mall fountain,
or large
and soft as dandelions
or right here that
scatter of heat
on your face—yes, feeling,
what harm, spreading out?
*
Such stars it was
that soldiers and poor
of old and on stone pillows
lay beneath, naming
Scorpions and Hot Bods,
and I also once in
not quite love,
lying in a field and losing
and losing (and with what
pleasure-pain)
something into the sky—
I mean,
so young, I felt
in how many photons
per hour on the retina
amounts to Visible
an almost touch,
an almost face, their grass scent,
the sweep of a hem, or even,
I could think, the tiny strokes
of Fate they so long managed:
changing our hearts
with a little charge of light,
an arrow blinked awry
by a ray, a crucial messenger,
oh, like me,
lying down to dream
a little too long in the meadow
or, as here, please,
just long enough…
*
To stars on high
cloud-breathing
birds are crawling things,
their faces almost in the grass.
Almost we earthlings should,
stars think, smell the warm
leading-edge
of wings, smell
Moon, too,
where it has brushed
almost the grass, bending
to see itself in one
blade’s tip’s
dew.
Once even stars
were (again might be?)
once, yes, within the range
of vespers, church-bells
beyond the stars heard,
but they are shy
now of skyglow, clatter,
also our distraction
dims and deafens
them, us,
though maybe that
in-small-hours-faint roar
I think is turnpike, heartwash,
imagination
is them,
maybe in the lilac-ozone-rust
of complex air, their scent’s
a faint strange animal,
its freeze with fear, or some
ellipsis of its trail…
*
That little clique
of six, or was it seven
Pleiades before
my haste, gray air and
softening eyes
took one? That some lands call
Chums of Artemis, some
Tortoise or Hen-and-Chicks,
some Summer-
Moves-to-Winter, and that now
sidelong I look for since
(stargazers know)
peripheral vision picks up
fainter things, though not
(for that: head-on)
not color.
But now, so tenuous
and unfelt of men are star-roots,
scythed by every
wings-flat glide
and umpire’s arms-wide Safe,
they flee from us, and even
stars that linger,
with obvious color and what seemed
an interest in our fate,
yellow Saturn, angry Mars,
we know are cold, unbreathable,
even Venus, which
we’d still like to be Love—
well, it’s 900 degrees
there and you can’t get a drink
and that watery green the comics
thought was jungle,
if you keep looking,
is desert desert white.
*
Late as we are, most things
we know are burnt
like that, part spent. Most
of our elements—carbon,
oxygen—were fused from hydrogen
and helium in screwed-tight
wingnut starhearts,
and heavier traces
in our cells of copper, iodine,
selenium (not
what the word says, “moonmetal”)
are atoms slammed tight
together in a star’s collapse
and self-rebounding supernova,
yet nothing we remember
of their height, sublimity,
no aftertremor of their
sans peur raining down.
*
Harder and more far
they seem
now we more need them…
Maybe in compensation,
astronomers lately
and sillily have named
southern constellations for
friendly mechanisms: Telescope,
Microscope and Cell Phone,
and on Valentine’s
for 40 bucks you can call one
Seth or Jennifer, and apparently
no one will tell you not to—
what the heck,
/>
100 billion in the galaxy,
about as many, so they say,
as neurons in the brain, also
as I predict (stars
on the brain) as many humans
as will ever
ever live and die: so each
name one, and let it go…
*
But Star (if it
were ours)
would share a root with
Steer. Doesn’t.
Stare. Nope.
Stir. Not.
Sterile. Nunh unh.
Or else
only in the long
before-words when nothing
was but stars in order of
no order… otherwise,
Star comes
from an older word
meaning Star
which comes from an older word
meaning Star,
which comes from an older word
meaning Star.
*
Stars after all
(not flat the sky)
scatter at depths, and only
accidents of perspective
make strangers (as
also here on Earth)
seem to constellate.
They do not know
what story they are part of (same
with us), maiden
or monster (same)
floating in the
absolute cold
(we know),
in joy too cold
(their joy seems cold)
pure joy too cold for us.
*
Oddly no Constellations
are called Vast or Black
or Nearly Empty, none
Scattershot or Bunch of Dots,
nor were our ancestors
into abstraction, none called
Efficiency or Good Tidings
or Up Late Can’t Stop,
not Slow Curve or
Eat Here, no writing
of any kind
(though we look for it), not
What Is Left, or
Day Too Quick to Open,
not Glance Unmet,
not What I Missed,
also there oddly
or not oddly is
no constellation Star…
Origin of Language
The Lord hummed quietly and hated Adam
singing out stupid names for the animals.
Songs for Senility
Names go first
(and you are?)
Sadly I confuse
bordering words:
awful, awesome,
property, happenstance,
lowered, lord.
What’s the deference?
Silly is soul,
all Nancys blur,
all the King Henrys.
Who was it, Wordsworth
or Groucho, that said it:
All Men become Whosit.
All Things become Thingies.
All jets are black,
all crime violet.
Lemons are yellow
running over cliffs.
There’s ice in service,
from is form,
and trite is tried is tired.
Once I could declare
that have and heave,
that lift and left
and gift… I had a point
here that I forget.
(I had a pint
and I forgot.)
Once I was sure
what was decay
and what was metaphor.
And you are?
*
I have lost
(oh what’s the word?)
my keys?
To the Kingdom?
All Mythologies? The car?—
its color, greeny-gray
or purple-brown?
its parking space?
the city of whatsit it was in?
Which is just like love,
like a draining tub
or loosening belt
or brie en croûte
(this list was?—I forget).
*
Now that I’m not so smart…
others are smarter!
Now that I’m not so… whatever,
others are… yeah…
Now that I’m not so… uh…
I see everywhere—
in airports or stuffed chairs—
my exact double,
shortish, brown-gray, quiet,
my exact double,
though younger (everyone’s younger),
my exact double.
My exact double except
his cap is a Mets cap,
except it’s reversed,
except
he’s Guatemalan,
he’s a woman,
a cell-phone addict,
no, a psychotic
talking to himself,
my exact double
saying to air
his beautiful fears.
I wonder does he see
(my exact double)
that he’s undoubtedly
my exact double.
I look into his eyes
that are looking different ways,
that are asking, as I ask,
And you are?
*
Now that I’m not so good
at things I was great at,
great to do not so badly
things I’m not bad at.
That finely cut sandwich,
exceptional hiya,
much improved
taking letters out of the box
or shading my eyes, pretty good
getting into the car
with knees, perfectly timed
cutoff of a sales call
or catching of your drift
that ends up on all
the highlight shows,
he goes back he goes back
and against the wall…
…leaps.
I’m too old to leap
Fosbury-style,
do a respectable backbend,
pitch for the Yankees,
run a four-minute mile
(always have been),
but maybe, who knows,
I can eat as fast as ever,
or play cards—
or maybe just try
unprecedented things
to hide my decline.
Hell, set some records:
most consecutive letters typed incorrectly,
most graceful stair-stumble recovery,
best gaze at this
not particularly interesting rock
while singing,
most efficient clearing
of cobwebs in this particular corner
on a Tuesday evening using one hand only
and singing, best imagining
I am singing beautifully
while not so beautifully singing.
*
Now that my memory’s weak,
I spread things out on the desk.
Anything under
anything else: forget it.
Now that my memory’s empty
I disbelieve in depth.
I close my eyes
to look deep in myself:
and you are?
Now that my memory leaks
and my real memory
is my hard disk:
what a relief!
Bad poems, delete.
Bad friends, bad letters,
bad days, blunders,
dumb things said drunk,
delete delete.
My most embarrassing
delete my half-assed
delete my pompous
delete delete
arrogance delete.
Yeats said he’d live it all again
but I delete
the ignominy of
delete the distress delete
the finished man among
delete delete.
Sorry, first wife I forget:
thanks for whatever.
Kind supporters,
great poets
I leaned on, awful poets:
I forget, sorry.
Neighbor who thoughtfully called
delete,
employer helpless
to fire me,
students I galled
delete delete.
Sorry parents, sorry early lovers,
I declare, sorry,
I am pastless and uncaused!
Nothing was my fault, sorry!
*
Delete delete
till I’m just my own
Greatest Hits.
But as for that,
why save the Heavens
I declined from?
Nine times the space that measures day and night
delete I land with a thud
wherever:
but O how fall’n! how chang’d
from… Huh?
*
It’s best to travel light
(I don’t remember why),
and less is more
(again, not sure).
Why hundreds of restrooms,
a billion spams, a thousand
heartbreaking faces
or cereal labels
when one delete delete
will do, or just a couple?
Since time is short
delete delete
and backpacks small,
let’s simplify a little:
when such as I cast out
delete delete
it’s all fine,
all fucking the same!
I’ve missed delete!
And lost delete!
By the Numbers Page 5
