The Penguin Book of American Verse

by Geoffrey Moore

  A lead soldier guards my windowsill:

  Khaki rifle, uniform, and face.

  Something in me grows heavy, silvery, pliable.

  How intensely people used to feel!

  Like metal poured at the close of a proletarian novel,

  Refined and glowing from the crucible,

  I see those two hearts, I’m afraid,

  Still. Cool here in the graveyard of good and evil,

  They are even so to be honored and obeyed.

  … Obeyed, at least, inversely. Thus

  I rarely buy a newspaper, or vote.

  To do so, I have learned, is to invite

  The tread of a stone guest within my house.

  Shooting this rusted bolt, though, against him,

  I trust I am no less time’s child than some

  Who on the heath impersonate Poor Tom

  Or on the barricades risk life and limb.

  Nor do I try to keep a garden, only

  An avocado in a glass of water –

  Roots pallid, gemmed with air. And later,

  When the small gilt leaves have grown

  Fleshy and green, I let them die, yes, yes,

  And start another. I am earth’s no less.

  A child, a red dog roam the corridors,

  Still, of the broken home. No sound. The brilliant

  Rag runners halt before wide-open doors.

  My old room! Its wallpaper – cream, medallioned

  With pink and brown – brings back the first nightmares,

  Long summer colds, and Emma, sepia-faced,

  Perspiring over broth carried upstairs

  Aswim with golden fats I could not taste.

  The real house became a boarding-school.

  Under the ballroom ceiling’s allegory

  Someone at last may actually be allowed

  To learn something; or, from my window, cool

  With the unstiflement of the entire story,

  Watch a red setter stretch and sink in cloud.

  W. D. Snodgrass 1926–2009

  From Heart’s Needle

  8

  I thumped on you the best I could

  which was no use;

  you would not tolerate your food

  until the sweet, fresh milk was soured

  with lemon juice.

  That puffed you up like a fine yeast.

  The first June in your yard

  like some squat Nero at a feast

  you sat and chewed on white, sweet clover.

  That is over.

  When you were old enough to walk

  we went to feed

  the rabbits in the park milkweed;

  saw the paired monkeys, under lock,

  consume each other’s salt.

  Going home we watched the slow

  stars follow us down Heaven’s vault.

  You said, let’s catch one that comes low,

  pull off its skin

  and cook it for our dinner.

  As absentee bread-winner,

  I seldom got you such cuisine;

  we ate in local restaurants

  or bought what lunches we could pack

  in a brown sack

  with stale, dry bread to toss for ducks

  on the green-scummed lagoons,

  crackers for porcupine and fox,

  life-savers for the footpad coons

  to scour and rinse,

  snatch after in their muddy pail

  and stare into their paws.

  When I moved next door to the jail

  I learned to fry

  omelettes and griddlecakes so I

  could set you supper at my table.

  As I built back from helplessness,

  when I grew able,

  the only possible answer was

  you had to come here less.

  This Hallowe’en you come one week.

  You masquerade

  as a vermilion, sleek,

  fat, crosseyed fox in the parade

  or, where grim jackolanterns leer,

  go with your bag from door to door

  foraging for treats. How queer:

  when you take off your mask

  my neighbors must forget and ask

  whose child you are.

  Of course you lose your appetite,

  whine and won’t touch your plate;

  as local law

  I set your place on an orange crate

  in your own room for days. At night

  you lie asleep there on the bed

  and grate your jaw.

  Assuredly your father’s crimes

  are visited

  on you. You visit me sometimes.

  The time’s up. Now our pumpkin sees

  me bringing your suitcase.

  He holds his grin;

  the forehead shrivels, sinking in.

  You break this year’s first crust of snow

  off the runningboard to eat.

  We manage, though for days

  I crave sweets when you leave and know

  they rot my teeth. Indeed our sweet

  foods leave us cavities.

  John Ashbery 1927–

  ‘How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher …’

  How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher

  Of life, my great love? Do dolphins plunge bottomward

  To find the light? Or is it rock

  That is searched? Unrelentingly? Huh. And if some day

  Men with orange shovels come to break open the rock

  Which encases me, what about the light that comes in then?

  What about the smell of the light?

  What about the moss?

  In pilgrim times he wounded me

  Since then I only lie

  My bed of light is a furnace choking me

  With hell (and sometimes I hear salt water dripping).

  I mean it – because I’m one of the few

  To have held my breath under the house. I’ll trade

  One red sucker for two blue ones. I’m

  Named Tom. The

  Light bounces off mossy rocks down to me

  In this glen (the neat villa! Which

  When he’d had he would not had he of

  And jests under the smarting of privet

  Which on hot spring nights perfumes the empty rooms

  With the smell of sperm flushed down toilets

  On hot summer afternoons within sight of the sea.

  If you knew why then professor) reads

  To his friends: Drink to me only with

  And the reader is carried away

  By a great shadow under the sea.

  Behind the steering wheel

  The boy took out his own forehead.

  His girlfriend’s head was a green bag

  Of narcissus stems. ‘OK you win

  But meet me anyway at Cohen’s Drug Store

  In 22 minutes.’ What a marvel is ancient man!

  Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious animal

  And would be a mathematician. But where in unsuitable heaven

  Can he get the heat that will make him grow?

  For he needs something or will forever remain a dwarf,

  Though a perfect one, and possessing a normal-sized brain

  But he has got to be released by giants from things.

  And as the plant grows older it realizes it will never be a tree,

  Will probably always be haunted by a bee

  And cultivates stupid impressions

  So as not to become part of the dirt. The dirt

  Is mounting like a sea. And we say goodbye

  Shaking hands in front of the crashing of the waves

  That give our words lonesomeness, and make these flabby hands seem ours –

  Hands that are always writing things

  On mirrors for people to see later –

  Do you want them to water

/>   Plant, tear listlessly among the exchangeable ivy –

  Carrying food to mouth, touching genitals –

  But no doubt you have understood

  It all now and I am a fool. It remains

  For me to get better, and to understand you so

  like a chair-sized man. Boots

  Were heard on the floor above. In the garden the sunlight was still purple

  But what buzzed in it had changed slightly

  But not forever … but casting its shadow

  On sticks, and looking around for an opening in the air, was quite as if it had never refused to exist differently. Guys

  In the yard handled the belt he had made

  Stars

  Painted the garage roof crimson and black

  He is not a man

  Who can read these signs … his bones were stays …

  And even refused to live

  In a world and refunded the hiss

  Of all that exists terribly near us

  Like you, my love, and light.

  For what is obedience but the air around us

  To the house? For which the federal men came

  In a minute after the sidewalk

  Had taken you home? (‘Latin … blossom …’)

  After which you led me to water

  And bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness.

  You would not let me out for two days and three nights,

  Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grasses

  As if reading had any interest for me, you …

  Now you are laughing.

  Darkness interrupts my story.

  Turn on the light.

  Meanwhile what am I going to do?

  I am growing up again, in school, the crisis will be very soon.

  And you twist the darkness in your fingers, you

  Who are slightly older …

  Who are you, anyway?

  And it is the color of sand,

  The darkness, as it sifts through your hand

  Because what does anything mean,

  The ivy and the sand? That boat

  Pulled up on the shore? Am I wonder,

  Strategically, and in the light

  Of the long sepulcher that hid death and hides me?

  Bird’s-Eye View of the Tool and Die Co.

  For a long time I used to get up early.

  20–30 vision, hemorrhoids intact, he checks into the

  Enclosure of time familiarizing dreams

  For better or worse. The edges rub off,

  The slant gets lost. Whatever the villagers

  Are celebrating with less conviction is

  The less you. Index of own organ-music playing,

  Machinations over the architecture (too

  Light to make much of a dent) against meditated

  Gang-wars, ice cream, loss, palm terrain.

  Under and around the quick background

  Surface is improvisation. The force of

  Living hopelessly backward into a past of striped

  Conversations. As long as none of them ends this side

  Of the mirrored desert in terrorist chorales.

  The finest car is as the simplest home off the coast

  Of all small cliffs too short to be haze. You turn

  To speak to someone beside the dock and the lighthouse

  Shines like garnets. It has become a stricture.

  Here Everything is Still Floating

  But, it’s because the liquor of summer nights

  Accumulates in the bottom of the bottle.

  Suspenders brought it to its, this, level, not

  The tempest in a teapot of a private asylum, laughter on the back steps,

  Not mine, in fine; I must concentrate on how disappointing

  It all has to be while rejoicing in my singular

  Un-wholeness that keeps it an event to me. These, these young guys

  Taking a shower with the truth, living off the interest of their

  Sublime receptivity to anything, can disentangle the whole

  Lining of fabricating living from the instantaneous

  Pocket it explodes in, enters the limelight of history from,

  To be gilded and regilded, waning as its legend waxes,

  Disproportionate and triumphant. Still I enjoy

  The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine,

  The mosquitoey summer night light. Now about your poem

  Called this poem: it stays and must outshine its welcome.

  Joe Leviathan

  Just because I wear a voluminous cap

  With a wool-covered wooden button at its peak, the cries of children

  Are upon me, passing through me. The season at this time

  Offers no other spectacle for the curious part-time executioner.

  In his house they speak of rope. They skate past the window.

  I have seen and know

  Bad endings lumped with the good. They are in the future

  And therefore cannot be far off.

  The bank here is quite steep

  And casts its shadow over the river floor.

  An exploration, a field trip, might be worth making.

  We could have made some nice excursions together.

  Then he took a bat and the clams and

  Where hope is the door it is stained with the strong stench of brine.

  Inside too. The window frames have been removed. I mean

  He can pass with me in the meaning and we still not see ourselves.

  W. S. Merwin 1927–

  The Child

  Sometimes it is inconceivable that I should be the age I am

  Almost always it is at a dry point in the afternoon

  I cannot remember what

  I am waiting for and in my astonishment I

  Can hear the blood crawling over the plains

  Hurrying on to arrive before dark

  I try to remember my faults to make sure

  One after the other but it is never

  Satisfactory the list is never complete

  At times night occurs to me so that I think I have been

  Struck from behind I remain perfectly

  Still feigning death listening for the

  Assailant perhaps at last

  I even sleep a little for later I have moved

  I open my eyes the lanternfish have gone home in darkness

  On all sides the silence is unharmed

  I remember but I feel no bruise

  Then there are the stories and after a while I think something

  Else must connect them besides just this me

  I regard myself starting the search turning

  Corners in remembered metropoli

  I pass skins withering in gardens that I see now

  Are not familiar

  And I have lost even the thread I thought I had

  If I could be consistent even in destitution

  The world would be revealed

  While I can try to repeat what I believe

  Creatures spirits not this posture

  I do not believe in knowledge as we know it

  But I forget

  This silence coming at intervals out of the shell of names

  It must be all one person really coming at

  Different hours for the same thing

  If I could learn the word for yes it could teach me questions

  I would see that it was itself every time and I would

  Remember to say take it up like a hand

  And go with it this is at last

  Yourself

  The child that will lead you

  James Wright 1927–80

  A Blessing

  Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

  Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

  And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

  Darken with kindness.

  They have come gladly out of the willows


  To welcome my friend and me.

  We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

  Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

  They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

  That we have come.

  They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

  There is no loneliness like theirs.

  At home once more,

  They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

  I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

  For she has walked over to me

  And nuzzled my left hand.

  She is black and white,

  Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

  And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

  That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

  Suddenly I realize

  That if I stepped out of my body I would break

  Into blossom.

  Anne Sexton 1928–74

  Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward

  Child, the current of your breath is six days long.

  You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;

  lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong

  at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed

  with love. At first hunger is not wrong.

  The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded

  down starch halls with the other unnested throng

  in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head

  moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong

  But this is an institution bed.

  You will not know me very long.

  The doctors are enamel. They want to know

  the facts. They guess about the man who left me,

  some pendulum soul, going the way men go

  and leave you full of child. But our case history

  stays blank. All I did was let you grow.

  Now we are here for all the ward to see.

  They thought I was strange, although

  I never spoke a word. I burst empty

  of you, letting you learn how the air is so.

  The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me

  and I turn my head away. I do not know.

  Yours is the only face I recognize.

  Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.

  Six times a day I prize

  your need, the animals of your lips, your skin

  growing warm and plump. I see your eyes

  lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin

  to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise

  and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,