The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech
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the phone ring and feel suddenly happy,
only to grasp it was basically nobody,
and each burst of knowing would be one
little death, and they will happen all day.
Casserole
The day I learned my wife was dying
friends called to see if we needed anything
and if they could help out. Just what
do you have in mind? I wanted to ask.
Even if I got hard drugs, I’d eventually
wake up. And there it would be again:
the awful knowing. Compared to that
could I ask for a casserole? The richest
of the world’s gifts wouldn’t mean squat.
To know friends’ feelings helped a little,
but afterward the pain was just as great.
What could they do to fill a vacancy?
At most we had a shared helplessness;
naïve victims of how the world works.
Inexplicably
The day I learned my wife was dying
I began to study alternative universes.
In my house, life might be fucked up,
but somewhere existed a place where
she wouldn’t be tired or need morphine.
We wouldn’t be figuring out how many
days she had left. Sure, we couldn’t fly
to such a world, but just to know it existed
might help. I’d think of her reading a book
or pruning the roses. When the phone rang,
I’d say it was she and be right. How good
you look, people would say, and I would too.
Then we might kiss and visit those crannies
that, inexplicably, we had left untouched.
Prague
The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?
Maybe a hundred years, which would
give us nearly forty more to visit Oslo
and take the train to Vladivostok,
learn German to read Thomas Mann
in the original. Even more baseball games,
more days at the beach and the baking
of more walnut cakes for family birthdays.
How much time is enough time? How much
is needed for all those unspent kisses,
those slow walks along cobbled streets?
Gardens
The day I learned my wife was dying
I thought of how knowledge is finite
while imagination has no end. It’s like
the earth versus the universe; and once
out there, why come home? But I’ve no choice;
the imagination abruptly sags, and plop,
I’m here again, and everything’s worse.
This happens dozens of times each day.
I expect those who are mad are stuck
on imagination’s side and can’t get back.
I’ve come to envy them: to flee the Awful
for what the mind constructs: impossible
gardens with books and good things to eat.
And she’ll be there, healthy and laughing.
Part Three
The Miracle of Birth
For Sylvia Lee
Hacking and coughing, slapping at scorch marks
on their otherwise white robes, the souls
of the dead stagger toward the Pearly Gates
as St. Peter tugs his beard to hide a guilty look.
Oh, how they loved them; how could they ever
exist without them? So do the souls clamor over
their absent anatomy. Only a cynic would claim
the souls of the dead ascend with the last gasp
of breath. Instead, like a faithful hound curled
in the grass by its master’s tomb, the souls
try to hang on, sneaking into coffins, hitching
rides to crematoriums, anything to win a last
embrace from a dear one. But then the smell
begins: fetor of decay, miasma of putrefaction.
Press an ear to the bare earth of a fresh grave
and soon you’ll hear a familiar choking sound.
A day later a nighttime jogger might spot a geyser
of marsh gas or will-o’-the-wisp, as the gagging
guardian of the recently defunct blasts off toward
the balmy air of heaven. Even faster is their escape
from crematoriums as eruptions of greasy smoke
racing skyward readily attest. But just as the folks
at refineries mix methyl mercaptan with odorless
propane to create the stink of rotten eggs, skunk
smell, robust farts, so the powers of heaven splash
a suitable stench on the moldering flesh. Otherwise
a soul might linger until only the chromium balls
and polyethylene sockets of phony hips remained.
Thus the nasty smell. Those kids practicing kisses
or couples fucking in the backseats of VW bugs
are amorous triflers compared to the ardor of the soul
for its partner. As they sullenly wait for reassignment,
they dangle their feet into the blue abyss at the brink
of heaven like boys on a wall bumping their sneakers
on the bricks below. Isn’t it the soul’s initial distaste
for its next host and its loyalty to the past that leads
to the mix-up of childhood and tumult of adolescence?
Such is the miracle of birth as the soul is first thrust
into a minuscule egg, then cast squawking into the world
as potential rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
Fly
What’s that noise? a man asks his wife.
She walks to the window. The sound of feet,
thousands of boots marching in unison.
I can see nothing, the woman tells him.
The man joins her. Nothing, he repeats.
And the smell—think of the smell of one
unwashed body, one unwashed uniform,
and increase it a hundred thousand fold.
The man shuts the window, but still the smell
sticks to their skin, clings to every part
of their home. What is it? the man repeats.
Their voices are no more than a whisper.
They can hide. What’s the point of hiding?
They can run. Why bother running?
They feel defeated by the world’s terrors.
They can turn up their radio and dance.
They can play cards; they can drink gin.
They can fight one another or make love.
It will be there even still. A fly crawls
across the window. The man squashes it
with his thumb. Like them, like them.
The Inquisitor
Arriving home, he rubs his hands
to warm them up or work out the kinks,
I don’t know which. Next he greets
the wife with a smack on the cheek
and gets one back in the give and take
of domestic bliss. After that he checks
the mirror to inspect his smile. Which
looks best, when he shows off his teeth
or not? He scrubs his hands with a stiff
brush, good soap. If hands could shine
this would be the time, but they’re as pale
as parchment or a worm beneath a rock.
A nice roast for dinner, not too rare,
sliced beets, chopped cabbage, asparagus
spears, then a fat cigar before the fire.
He would never think of kicking his dog;
the cat is safe on his lap. As for plucking
the wings off flies, he’s not that sort.
His children without exceptio
n get
the best Christmas and birthday gifts,
toy cop cars with flashing lights, dolls
that shed real tears. Quick to loan
a friend a hammer or cordless drill.
Quick to join the blood drive or pledge
a sawbuck to the policemen’s ball.
On Sundays it’s yard work, cutting the grass,
chopping a hedge. He’s good with tools
and might sharpen a neighbor’s ax.
At night he and the wife relax in front
of the TV with popcorn and beer—
tragedies and butchery, the usual fare.
What’s this nonsense? The screen is dark.
All the stories float in the air in between.
The Poet’s Disregard
Once more Old Anonymous picks up his pen.
What shall he write about this time?
The eternal verities have turned out
less than eternal. Once again endless love
has ended. He ponders composing an ode
to his long time sidekick Death, but as his
own departure draws near their friendship
has grown problematic. The pen of the poet
hangs in mid-air like an arrested rocket.
The world in a grain of sand, the worm
in the heart of the rose—the old subjects
in slinky gowns execute their turns along
the runway of his imagination. At times,
Anonymous thinks, it’s necessary to wait,
and then wait some more. Clocks gobble
minutes like salted nuts as today’s struggle
between the brutal and pragmatic flails away
a stone’s throw from the poet’s disregard,
by the glare of the burning library,
beneath the shadow of the deserted school.
Parable: Gratitude
At times virtue is a torture, kindness a crime.
Think of the pig whose right rear leg was made
of solid wood; straps on his belly kept it in place.
But isn’t this the pig that saved the farmer’s kids
from the river? Hadn’t he fixed the timing belt
on the farmer’s Ford? The farmer patted the pig
on the head, gave him a smooch on the snout.
But to a friend he said: A pig like that you don’t
eat him all at once. Soon a second leg was gone.
The pig shingled the roof, painted the house,
dug a new well. The farmer gave him cookies
and let him sleep in a featherbed, but the farmer
began grinding his teeth. He had headaches
and peculiar fits of temper. He asked himself:
Have I gone nuts seeing all the pig has done?
The pig milked the cows, made cider, pickled
cucumbers and beets, canned the kumquats.
Soon the farmer had trouble sleeping at night;
he quarreled with his wife, yelled at the kids.
What’s the farmer’s problem anyway? Such
is the burden of emotional debt. Each step
he took felt like a spike through his foot. His life
became a minus sign, a spot well below zero.
When the friend came back, the pig’s front legs
had been turned to hams and he was strapped
to a kid’s skateboard. I’m saving the best for last,
the farmer joked. The pig sang to the hens so they
laid more eggs. He taught the kids to yodel Bach.
The storm cloud above the farmer’s head grew
to the size of Texas. He felt worse than sludge
at the bottom of a well. Soon the pig was gone.
Good to the last drop, the farmer told his friend.
Right away, his house began to fall apart;
the barn roof collapsed; a fox ate the chickens.
The farmer welcomed each crisis with a smile.
He slept like a baby. His sex-life grew robust.
On a tombstone by the barn were the words:
This was one smart pig! Freed from the curse
of obligation, the farmer polished his vulgarity;
he drank straight from a bottle and shot craps
with his friends. His spouse played sex games
with the gas man; the kids gulped down mind-
confounding drugs. Each felt reborn. Is this
what we call normal? They splashed about
in the great, warm bath of milk called happiness.
They lounged about in the jubilation of disregard.
Virtue became a nasty word like dog-shit or fart.
The kids tossed rocks at every truck that passed.
Sincerity
Today I’ll write a poem about myself—
not like the other poems I’ve written
about myself. No, this one will be more
truthful, or at least more sincere. It’s my
sincere self that’s writing today, the self
that longs for intimacy, or some intimacy,
at least. My sincere self says: I work hard;
I try the best I can; I’m often a good person.
But today the self I’m writing about is also
more likable than the self I wrote about
yesterday, not silly-likable or I’ll-give-you-
money likable, but trustworthy likable;
that is, more trustworthy than not, trust-
worthy enough to be trusted. I want to be
completely honest about this. I want you
to see me ripping off my clothes and rising
before you shy and vulnerable, prepared
to tell my deepest secrets, or deep enough
for you to think they’re hugely deep, which
they will be, most of them, more than half.
I want you to see me on the brink of tears,
my whole body on the brink of tears,
elbows on the brink of tears, my feet,
my thumbs, my earlobes, my hair follicles,
even my genitals on the brink of tears,
each testicle on the brink of tears, big
ball, little ball, and each totally sincere.
I don’t want any confusion about this.
I know at times I’ve stretched the truth.
For example, my dysfunctional childhood,
that spanking I once told you about had,
indeed, no sexual component. That time
I fell down stairs? I shouldn’t have said
I was pushed. And my sexual conquests?
My last girlfriend said I should have been
a monk; she said it would have saved me
years of embarrassment. In fact, she was
more a girl-acquaintance, than a girlfriend,
someone I sat next to on a crosstown bus.
So she’s not the one who matters here. I’m
the one who matters. I want you to see me
with my arms outstretched to reveal truth
stripped of hyperbole and sexual overkill,
as sincerity throbs like an exposed artery. Soon
I’ll recount my trials and beating the odds,
but as we wait for the big subjects to roll out
grant me a microscopic sweetness squeezed
from the golden cornucopia orbiting above us.
May I lay my head on your shoulder? Then,
of course, you too will have the chance to share.
Hero
This is what happened: a man needed a job.
He hadn’t worked for a month so he took
the civil service exam and got a job
at the Detroit zoo, way down the totem pole,
right at the bottom. He wore blue overalls
and a blue cap. He looked like a cop without
the badges and Glock. His job was to feed
the zebras, feed the giraffe, feed the bears.
&
nbsp; The bears’ cage resembled a stone cave
without a roof. But it had a ledge about
six feet off the ground. His boss said:
Sometimes a bear likes to get on the ledge
and jump on whoever is giving him food.
It hasn’t happened much, but it’s happened.
So keep alert. The next morning the man fed
the zebras, he fed the antelopes and giraffes.
When he got to the bears’ cage, he paused.
No bears in sight. The man entered the cage
and took a step toward the feeding trough,
then he took one more. Only ten steps to go.
Still no bear. It must be waiting nearby. Soon
he heard a noise—maybe a bear, maybe a bus
on Woodward Avenue. What was his chance
of being eaten? The man’s legs were as heavy
as tombstones. He thought of home; he thought
of his wife and six kids. He wasn’t very big.
He knew what bears could do to a little guy
like him. They would gobble even his buttons.
Time passed. People looked into the cage, but