Collected Poems

by Jack Gilbert

  when they passed through town.

  He invented that music with them.

  Things mattered.”

  (The doctor does not say anything.

  Calm yourself, something whispers

  inside him. We can go home now.)

  MENISCUS: OR HOW THE HEART MUST

  NOT BE TOO MUCH QUESTIONED

  There is a film on water

  which permits a glass to hold

  more than it can hold.

  If probed, the water breaks.

  Before and after,

  both are truly water. But

  only one will support swans.

  THE COMPANION

  There is someone. Always the same

  half block behind. Not a doppelgänger

  or anything like that. Not dangerous

  or angelic. Just a middle-aged man

  with a thick face wearing an old coat.

  But always furtively just out of sight.

  He is often on ridges very high up

  when I walk along the empty beach.

  When I am in the bedrooms, he is

  discreet. He waits in a doorway

  to see her face in the streetlight

  as we go by. There is neither sex

  nor love between us, but he will

  follow the girl home. He stays far back

  and never speaks to them. Once

  he even helped me when I got trampled.

  Very efficient, but ambiguous.

  Except for that, we have never met.

  One day, when he had lost me, I saw him

  following an old damaged woman.

  But he returns to me. Without kindness

  or threat. My life is beginning to list.

  He occupies more and more importance.

  Meaninglessly. Nothing to do with God

  or fate. Actually a man. Rather stout.

  And I can’t make out his intentions.

  I am terrified by his not wanting anything.

  THE RING

  They have Mary’s wedding ring in the Cathedral.

  I was eager to see it, but learned it is

  kept fastened in a box which requires keys

  carried by the district’s three main officials.

  The box is locked seven times in a chest

  and the keys held by their chief guilds.

  The chest is sealed in the wall of the nave,

  thirty feet in the air. Stairs are built to it

  just once a year. It is a very holy relic,

  and I assumed they feared thieves. Today,

  when I asked of it, I learned it is magic.

  The color changes according to the soul before it.

  Then I understood about the locks. The ring

  is not being protected. It is locked in.

  LUST

  I have drifted into the habit

  of going to Matins. Today

  I found they are repairing

  the church. The side windows

  have been taken out. I was shocked

  by the sound of swallows. By sun

  and the smell of morning.

  I realized there has been a mistake.

  THE SIXTH MEDITATION: FACES OF GOD

  It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve.

  To insist we are damned because a country girl

  talked to the snake one afternoon long ago.

  Children must starve in Somalia for that,

  and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities.

  It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes

  of molten lead. Because she was confused

  by happiness that first time anyone said

  she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be

  the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks

  and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also

  created in His image.

  The forest must

  not show the other face: slugs and grubs,

  nematodes, and greenhead flies laying eggs

  so their white larvae squirm in the filth.

  Tent caterpillars, high in the trees, swarm out

  from their offensive shrouds to eat the green

  luxury bare. Spiders cast their nets in the dark.

  Aphids gorge on lice. The braconid wasps lay eggs

  under the skin of sphinx caterpillars so the larvae

  will bore their way out through the host.

  The other faces of God are not mediated by our

  heart’s need. We are not stone, nor even jungle.

  We are animals haunted by love. Not spirits

  buried in flesh, but the flesh itself.

  And the spirit we are is not separated from it.

  There is a god who prepares the locust in the blind

  earth for seventeen years, to have it born without

  a mouth. I believe in the spirit that would have

  Agamemnon sail home with Iphigenia alive in his arms,

  leaving Helen with her young man.

  If human love and God’s love meet

  There is where we’ll find defeat.

  When spirit and the flesh are twin

  There is where we can begin.

  Where the heart is not at rest

  There will I build my only nest.

  CONVALESCING

  I spend the days deciding

  on a commemorative poem.

  Not, luckily, an epitaph.

  A quiet poem

  to establish the fact of me.

  As one of the incidental faces

  in those stone processions.

  Carefully done.

  Not claiming that I was

  at any of the great victories.

  But that I volunteered.

  NOTES

  Some of these poems have been revised since their initial appearance in book form. Most of the changes are minor, involving spelling or punctuation.

  In Views of Jeopardy, the first letter of each line was originally capitalized, a tradition abandoned when poems from this collection were reprinted in Monolithos.

  The epigraph to “Portolano” is Sanskrit, meaning “In some place is a city.”

  The first section of Monolithos originally included sixteen poems previously published in Views of Jeopardy. These were “In Dispraise of Poetry,” “Perspective He Would Mutter Going to Bed,” “And She Waiting,” “It May Be No One Should Be Opened,” “Rain,” “County Musician,” “Orpheus in Greenwich Village,” “Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell (II),” “Before Morning in Perugia,” “The Night Comes Every Day to My Window,” “The Abnormal Is Not Courage,” “Susanna and the Elders,” “I’ll Try to Explain About the Fear,” “New York, Summer” (originally titled “Portrait Number Five: Against a New York Summer”), “On Growing Old in San Francisco,” and “The Whiteness, the Sound, and Alcibiades.”

  “Spring,” “Meniscus: Or How the Heart Must Not Be Too Much Questioned,” “The Companion,” “The Ring,” “Lust,” and “Convalescing” are drawn from a manuscript titled Torches at Noon, written in the early 1960s under a pseudonym.

  INDEX OF TITLES

  Abandoned Valley, The

  Abnormal Is Not Courage, The

  Abundant Little, The

  Adulterated

  Adults

  After Love

  Alba

  All the Way from There to Here

  Almost Happy

  Alone

  Alone on Christmas Eve in Japan

  Aloneness

  Alternatives

  Alyosha

  Ambition

  And She Waiting

  Angelus

  Another Grandfather

  Answer, The

  Ars poetica

  Ball of Something, A

  Bartleby at the Wall

  Bay Bridge from Potrero Hill, The

  Becoming Regardless

  Before Morning in Perugia

  Being Young Back Then

&n
bsp; Betrothed

  Between Aging and Old

  Between Poems

  Beyond Beginnings

  Beyond Pleasure

  Bird Sings to Establish Frontiers, A

  Blinded by Seeing

  Breakfast

  Brief for the Defense, A

  Bring in the Gods

  Burma

  Burning (Andante non troppo)

  Burning and Fathering: Accounts of My Country

  Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper, The

  By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.

  Byzantium Burning

  Cargo and the Equity, The

  Carrying Torches at Noon

  Chastity

  Cherishing What Isn’t

  Close Call, A

  Companion, The

  Conceiving Himself

  Container for the Thing Contained, The

  Convalescing

  County Musician

  Crossing the Border, Searching for the City

  Crusoe on the Mountain Gathering Faggots

  Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon, The

  Danger of Wisdom, The

  Dante Dancing

  December Ninth, 1960

  Description of Happiness in København, A

  Difficult Beauty, The

  Divorce

  Doing Poetry

  Don Giovanni in Trouble

  Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell

  Don Giovanni on His Way to Hell (II)

  Dreaming at the Ballet

  Duende

  Eating with the Emperor

  Edge of the World, The

  Elegy

  Elegy for Bob (Jean McLean)

  Elephant Hunt in Guadalajara

  Elephants

  End of Paradise, The

  Everywhere and Forever

  Exceeding

  Exceeding the Spirit

  Explicating the Twilight

  Fact, A

  Factoring

  Failing and Flying

  Farming in Secret

  Fashionable Heart, The

  Feathers or Lead

  Feeling History

  Finding Eurydice

  Finding Something

  First Morning of the World on Long Island, The

  First Times

  Flat Hedgehogs

  For Example

  Foraging for Wood on the Mountain

  Forgotten Dialect of the Heart, The

  Four Perfectly Tangerines, The

  Friendship Inside Us, The

  From These Nettles, Alms

  Games

  Garden, The

  Getting Away with It

  Getting Closer

  Getting It All

  Getting It Right

  Getting Old

  Getting Ready

  Ghost Sings, a Door Opens, A

  Ghosts

  Gift Horses

  Going Home

  Going There

  Going Wrong

  Good Life, The

  Great Fires, The

  Greek Gods Don’t Come in Winter, The

  Gros Ventre, The

  Growing Up in Pittsburgh

  Guilty

  Half the Truth

  Halloween

  Happening Apart from What’s Happening Around It

  Happily Planting the Beans Too Early

  Hard Wired

  Harm and Boon in the Meetings

  Haunted Importantly

  Having the Having

  Heart Skidding

  Highlights and Interstices

  History of Men, The

  Holding On to My Friend

  Homage to Wang Wei

  Homesteading

  Honor

  Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

  Hot Nights in Florida

  House on the California Mountain

  How Much of That Is Left in Me?

  How to Love the Dead

  Hunger

  I Imagine the Gods

  I’ll Try to Explain About the Fear

  Il mio tesoro

  Immaculate

  In Dispraise of Poetry

  In Perugino We Have Sometimes Seen Our Country

  In the Beginning

  In Umbria

  Infectious

  Infidelity

  Infidelity

  Islands and Figs

  It Is Clear Why the Angels Come No More

  It May Be No One Should Be Opened

  Kind of Courage, A

  Kind of Decorum, A

  Kind of World, A

  Kunstkammer

  Leaving Monolithos

  Leporello on Don Giovanni

  Less Being More

  Letter to Mr. John Keats

  Lions

  Lives of Famous Men, The

  Living Hungry After

  Looking at Pittsburgh from Paris

  Looking Away from Longing

  Lord Sits with Me Out in Front, The

  Losing

  Lost Hotels of Paris, The

  Lost World, The

  Love Poem

  Lovers

  Loyalty

  Lust

  Mail, The

  Malvolio in San Francisco

  Man at a Window

  Man in Black and White, A

  Manger of Incidentals, The

  Married

  May I, May I

  Maybe She Is Here

  Maybe Very Happy

  Me and Capablanca

  Meaning Well

  Meanwhile

  Measuring the Tyger

  Meditation Eleven: Reading Blake Again

  Meelee’s Away

  Meniscus

  Meniscus: Or How the Heart Must Not Be Too Much Questioned

  Métier

  Mexico

  Michiko Dead

  Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)

  Midnight Is Made of Bricks

  Milk of Paradise, The

  Mistake, The

  Mistrust of Bronze

  Moment of Grace

  More Than Friends

  More than Sixty

  Moreover

  Movies, The

  Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played

  Music Is the Memory of What Never Happened

  “My Eyes Adored You,”

  My Graveyard in Tokyo

  My Marriage with Mrs. Johnson

  Myself Considered as the Monster in the Foreground

  Naked Except for the Jewelry

  Naked Without Intent

  Neglecting the Kids

  Negligible, The

  New Bride Almost Visible in Latin, The

  New Hampshire Marble

  New York, Summer

  Night After Night

  Night Comes Every Day to My Window, The

  Night Songs and Day Songs

  1953

  Not Easily

  Not Getting Closer

  Not Part of Literature

  Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness

  Older Women

  On Growing Old in San Francisco

  On Stone

  Once upon a Time

  Orpheus in Greenwich Village

  Ostinato rigore

  Other Perfection, The

  Ovid in Tears

  Painting on Plato’s Wall

  Pavane

  Peaches

  Perfected

  Perspective He Would Mutter Going to Bed

  Pewter

  Piecing of the Life

  Playing House

  Plundering of Circe, The

  Poem for Laura

  Poem for the Fin Du Monde Man, A

  Poetry Is a Kind of Lying

  Portolano

  Prospero Dreams of Arnaut Daniel Inventing Love in the Twelfth Century

  Prospero Goes Home

  Prospero Listening to the Night

  Prospero Without His Magic

  Put Her in the Fields for Kindness

  Rain

  Rainy Forests
of Northern California, The

  Recovering amid the Farms

  Refusing Heaven

  Registration

  Reinvention of Happiness, The

  Relative Pitch

  Remembering My Wife

  Respect

  Résumé

  Revolution, The

  Ring, The

  Rooster, The

  Ruins and Wabi

  Say You Love Me

  Scheming in the Snow

  Searching for It in a Guadalajara Dance Hall

  Searching for Pittsburgh

  Secret, The

  Secrets of Poetry

  Sects

  Seen from Above

  Siege

  Singing in My Difficult Mountains

  Sirens Again, The

  Sixth Meditation: Faces of God, The

  Sonatina

  Song

  South

  Spell Cast Over, The

  Spirit and the Soul, The

  Spring

  Steel Guitars

  Stockton Tunnel, The

  Stubborn Ode, A

  Suddenly Adult

  Sul ponticello

  Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

  Susanna and the Elders

  Sweet Taste of the Night, The

  Taste for Grit and Whatever, A

  Tasters for the Lord

  Tear It Down

  Template

  Textures

  Thanksgiving Dance, A

  That Tenor of Which the Night Birds Are a Vehicle

  Theoretical Lives

  They Call It Attempted Suicide

  They Will Put My Body into the Ground

  Thinking About Ecstasy

  Thirty Favorite Lives: Amager, The

  Thirty Favorite Times

  This Times That

  Threshing the Fire

  ’Tis Here! ’Tis Here! ’Tis Gone! (The Nature of Presence)

  To Know the Invisible

  To See If Something Comes Next

  Transgressions

  Translation into the Original

  Triangulating

  Trouble

  Truth

  Trying

  Trying to Be Married

  Trying to Have Something Left Over

  Trying to Write Poetry

  Valley of the Owls

  Valley of the Spirits

  Voices Inside and Out