by John Updike
young, zebuesque are my
passengers fellow.
Little Poems
OVERCOME, Kim flees in bitter frustration to her TV studio dressing room where she angrily flings a vase of flowers to the floor and sobs in abandon to a rose she destroys: “I’m tearing this flower apart like I’m destroying my life.” As she often does, she later turned the episode into a little poem.
—photograph caption in Life
I woke up tousled, one strap falling
Off the shoulder, casually.
In came ten Time-Life lensmen, calling,
“Novak, hold that deshabille!”
I went to breakfast, asked for java,
Prunes, and toast. “Too dark,” they said.
“The film we use is slow, so have a
Spread of peaches, tea, and bread.”
I wrote a memo, “To my agent—”
“Write instead,” they said, “ ’Dear Mum.’ ”
In conference, when I made a cogent
Point, they cried, “No, no! Act dumb.”
I told a rose, “I tear you as I
Tear my life,” and heard them say,
“Afraid that ‘as’ of yours is quasi-
Classy. We like ‘like.’ O.K.?”
I dined with friends. The Time-Life crewmen
Interrupted: “Bare your knees,
Project your bosom, and, for human
Interest, look ill-at-ease.”
I, weary, fled to bed. They hounded
Me with meters, tripods, eyes
That winked and winked—I was surrounded!
The caption read, “ALONE, Kim cries.”
Popular Revivals 1956
The thylacine, long thought to be extinct,
Is not. The ancient doglike creature, linked
To kangaroos and platypi, still pounces
On his Tasmanian prey, the Times announces.
The tarpan (stumpy, prehistoric horse)
Has been rebred—in Germany, of course.
Herr Heinz Heck, by striking genetic chords,
Has out of plowmares beat his tiny wards.
The California fur seal, a refined
And gullible amphibian consigned
By profit-seeking sealers to perdition,
Barked at the recent Gilmore expedition.
The bison, butchered on our Western prairie,
Took refuge in our coinage. Now, contrary
To what was feared, the herds are out of danger
And in the films, co-starred with Stewart Granger.
Tune, in American Type
Set and printed in Great Britain by Tonbridge Printers, Ltd., Peach Hall Works, Tonbridge, in Times nine on ten point, on paper made by John Dickenson at Croxley, and bound by James Burn at Esher.
—colophon in a book published by Michael Joseph (London)
Ah, to be set and printed in
Great Britain now that Tonbridge Prin-
ters, Limited, employ old John
Dickenson, at Croxley. On
his pages is Times nine-on-ten-
point type impressed, and, lastly, when
at Peach Hall Works the job is done,
James Burn at Esher’s job’s begun.
Hey nonny nonny nonny,
Hey nonny nonny nay!
Tonbridge! Croxley! Esher! Ah,
is there, in America,
a tome contrived in such sweet towns?
No. English, English are the downs
where Jim Burn, honest craftsman, winds
beneath his load of reams; he binds
the sheets that once John Dickenson
squeezed flat from British pulp. Hey non‐
ny nonny, etc.
Due Respect
They [members of teen-age gangs] are respectful of their parents and particularly of their mothers—known as “moo” in their jargon.
—The New York Times Magazine
Come moo, dear moo, let’s you and me
Sit down awhile and talk togee;
My broo’s at school, and faa’s away
A-gaaing rosebuds while he may.
Of whence we come and whii we go
Most moos nee know nor care to know,
But you are not like any oo:
You’re always getting in a poo
Or working up a dreadful laa
Over nothing—nothing. Bah!
Relax. You love me, I love you,
And that’s the way it shapes up, moo.
A Rack of Paperbacks
Gateway, Grove,
and Dover say,
“Unamuno
any day.”
Beacon Press
and Torchlight chorus,
“Kierkegaard
does nicely for us.”
“Willey, Waley,”
Anchor bleats,
“Auden, Barzun,
Kazin, Keats.”
“Tovey, Glover,
Cohen, Fry”
is Meridi-
an’s reply.
“Bentley’s best,”
brags Dramabooks.
Harvest brings in
Cleanth Brooks.
All, including
Sentinel,
Jaico, Maco,
Arco, Dell,
Noonday, Vintage,
Living Age,
Mentor, Wisdom—
page on page
of classics much
too little known
when books were big
and bindings sewn—
agree: “Lord Raglan,
Margaret Mead,
Moses Hadas,
Herbert Read,
the Panchatantra,
Hamsun’s Pan,
Tillich, Ilg,
Kahlil Gibran,
and Henry James
sell better if
their spines are not
austerely stiff.”
Even Egrets Err
Egregious was the egret’s error, very.
Egressing from a swamp, the bird eschewed
No egriot (a sour kind of cherry)*
It saw, and reaped extremest egritude.†
* * *
*Obs.
†Rare form of obs. Aegritude, meaning sickness.
Glasses
I wear them. They help me. But I
Don’t care for them. Two birds, steel hinges
Haunt each an edge of the small sky
My green eyes make. Rim-horn impinges
Upon my vision’s furry fringes;
Faint dust collects upon the dry,
Unblinking shield behind which cringes
My naked, deprecated eye.
My gaze feels aimed. It is as if
Two manufactured beams have been
Lodged in my sockets—hollow, stiff,
And gray, like mailing tubes—and when
I pivot, vases topple down
From tabletops, and women frown.
The Sensualist
Each Disc contains not more than ½ minim of Chloroform together with Capsicum, Peppermint, Anise, Cubeb, Licorice, and Linseed.
—from a box of Parke-Davis throat discs
Come, Capsicum, cast off thy membranous pods;
Thy Guinea girlhood’s blossoms have been dried.
Come, Peppermint, belovèd of the gods
(That is, of Hades; Ceres, in her pride,
So Strabo says, transmogrified
Delicious Mintha, making her a plant).
Come, Anise, sweet stomachic stimulant,
Most umbelliferous of condiments,
Depart thy native haunt, the hot Levant.
Swart Licorice, or Liquorice, come hence,
And Linseed, too, of these ingredients
Most colorless, most odorless, most nil.
And Javan Cubeb, come—thy smokable
Gray pericarps and pungent seeds shall be
Our feast’s incense. Come, Chloroform, née Phyll,
In demiminims dance unto the spree.
Compounded spices, come: dissolve in me.
In Memoriam
In the novel he marries Victoria but in the movie he dies.
—caption in Life
Fate lifts us up so she can hurl
Us down from heights of pride,
Viz.: in the book he got the girl
But in the movie, died.
The author, seeing he was brave
And good, rewarded him,
Then, greedy, sold him as a slave
To mean old M-G-M.
He perished on the screen, but thrives
In print, where serifs keep
Watch o’er the happier of his lives:
Say, Does he wake, or sleep?
Planting a Mailbox
Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst
And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin
His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.
This moment come, begin.
The site should be within an easy walk,
Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength
Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk
Should show three feet of length.
Don’t harrow, weed, or water; just apply
A little gravel. Sun and motor fumes
Perform the miracle: in late July,
A branch post office blooms.
ZULUS LIVE IN LAND WITHOUT A SQUARE
A Zulu lives in a round world. If he does not leave his reserve, he can live his whole life through and never see a straight line.
—headline and text from The New York Times
In Zululand the huts are round,
The windows oval, and the rooves
Thatched parabolically. The ground
Is tilled in curvilinear grooves.
When Zulus cannot smile, they frown,
To keep an arc before the eye.
Describing distances to town,
They say, “As flies the butterfly.”
Anfractuosity is king.
Melodic line itself is banned,
Though all are hip enough to sing—
There are no squares in Zululand.
Caligula’s Dream
Insomnia was his worst torment. Three hours a night of fitful sleep was all that he ever got, and even then terrifying visions would haunt him—once, for instance, he dreamed that he had a conversation with the Mediterranean Sea.
—Suetonius
Of gold the bread on which he banqueted,
Where pimps in silk and pearls dissolved in wine
Were standard fare. The monster’s marble head
Had many antic veins, being divine.
At war, he massed his men upon the beach
And bawled the coward’s order, “Gather shells!”
And stooped, in need of prisoners, to teach
The German tongue to prostituted Gauls.
Bald young, broad-browed, and, for his era, tall,
In peace he proved incestuous and queer,
And spent long hours in the Capitol
Exchanging compliments with Jupiter;
He stalled his horse in ivory, and displayed
His wife undressed to friends, and liked to view
Eviscerations and the dance, and made
Poor whores supply imperial revenue.
· · ·
Perhaps—to plead—the boy had heard how, when
They took his noble father from the pyre
And found a section unconsumed, the men
Suspicioned: “Poisoned hearts resist the fire.”
It was as water that his vision came,
At any rate—more murderous than he,
More wanton, uglier, of wider fame,
Unsleeping also, multi-sexed, the Sea.
It told him, “Little Boots, you cannot sin
Enough; you speak a language, though you rave.
The actual things at home beneath my skin
Out-horrify the vilest hopes you have.
Ten-tentacled invertebrates embrace
And swap through thirsty ani livid seed
While craggy worms without a brain or face
Upon their own soft children blindly feed.
As huge as Persian palaces, blue whales
Grin fathoms down, and through their teeth are strained
A million lives a minute; each entails,
In death, a microscopic bit of pain.
Atrocity is truly emperor;
All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.”
Caligula, his mouth a mass of fur,
Awoke, and toppled toward assassination.
Bendix
This porthole overlooks a sea
Forever falling from the sky,
The water inextricably
Involved with buttons, suds, and dye.
Like bits of shrapnel, shards of foam
Fly heavenward; a bedsheet heaves,
A stocking wrestles with a comb,
And cotton angels wave their sleeves.
The boiling purgatorial tide
Revolves our dreary shorts and slips,
While Mother coolly bakes beside
Her little jugged apocalypse.
The Menagerie at Versailles in 1775
(Taken Verbatim from a Notebook Kept by Dr. Samuel Johnson)
Cygnets dark; their black feet;
on the ground; tame.
Halcyons, or gulls.
Stag and hind, small.
Aviary, very large: the net, wire.
Black stag of China, small.
Rhinoceros, the horn broken
and pared away, which, I suppose,
will grow; the basis, I think,
four inches ’cross; the skin
folds like loose cloth doubled over his body
and ’cross his hips: a vast animal,
though young; as big, perhaps,
as four oxen.
The young elephant,
with his tusks just appearing.
The brown bear put out his paws.
All very tame. The lion.
The tigers I did not well view.
The camel, or dromedary with two bunches
called the Huguin, taller than any horse.
Two camels with one bunch.
Among the birds was a pelican,
who being let out, went
to a fountain, and swam
about to catch fish. His feet
well webbed: he dipped his head,
and turned his long bill sidewise.
Reel
whorl (hwûrl; hwôrl), n.… 2. Something that whirls or seems to whirl as a whorl, or wharve…
—Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Whirl, whorl or wharve! The world
Whirls within solar rings
Which once were hotly hurled
Away by whirling things!
We whirl, or seem to whirl,
Or seem to seem to; whorls
Within more whorls unfurl
In manners, habits, morals.
Wind whirls; hair curls; the worm
Can turn, and wheels can wheel,
And even stars affirm:
Whatever whirls is real.
Kenneths
Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers
Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others,
But I am unable. My inner eye pictures
A three-bodied sun-lover issuing strictures,
Berating “Tom” Eliot, translating tanka,
Imbibing espresso and sneering at Sanka—
Six arms, thirty fingers, all writing abundantly
What pops into heads each named Kenneth, redundantly.
Upon Learning That a Bird Exists Called the Turnstone
A turnstone turned rover
And went through ten turnstiles,
Admiring the clover
And turnsole and fern styles.
She took to the turnpike
And travelled to Dover,
Where turnips enjoy
A rapid turnover.
The Turneresque landscape
She scanned for a lover;
She’d heard one good turnstone
Deserves another.
In vain did she hover
And earnestly burn
With yearning; above her
The terns cried, “Return!”
In Extremis
I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn’t looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet they were my best friends once.
