Collected Earlier Poems

by Anthony Hecht

  And I hoped she would show some pleasure in them

  But got that mechanical enthusiastic show

  She used on the telephone once in praising some friend

  For thoughtfulness or good taste or whatever it was,

  And when she hung up, turned to us all and said,

  “God, what a bore she is!”

  I think she was trying to show us how honest she was,

  At least with us. But the effect

  Was just the opposite, and now I don’t think

  She knows what honesty is. “Your mother’s a whore,”

  Someone said, not meaning she slept around,

  Though perhaps this was part of it, but

  Meaning she had lost all sense of honor,

  And I think this is true.

  But that’s not what I wanted to say.

  What was it I wanted to say?

  When he said that about Mother, I had to laugh,

  I really did, it was so amazingly true.

  Where was I?

  Lie back. Relax.

  Oh yes. I remember now what it was.

  It was what I saw them do to the emperor.

  They captured him, you know. Eagles and all.

  They stripped him, and made an iron collar for his neck,

  And they made a cage out of our captured spears,

  And they put him inside, naked and collared,

  And exposed to the view of the whole enemy camp.

  And I was tied to a post and made to watch

  When he was taken out and flogged by one of their generals

  And then forced to offer his ripped back

  As a mounting block for the barbarian king

  To get on his horse;

  And one time to get down on all fours to be the royal throne

  When the king received our ambassadors

  To discuss the question of ransom.

  Of course, he didn’t want ransom.

  And I was tied to a post and made to watch.

  That’s enough for now. Lie back. Try to relax.

  No, that’s not all.

  They kept it up for two months.

  We were taken to their outmost provinces.

  It was always the same, and we were always made to watch,

  The others and I. How he stood it, I don’t know.

  And then suddenly

  There were no more floggings or humiliations,

  The king’s personal doctor saw to his back,

  He was given decent clothing, and the collar was taken off,

  And they treated us all with a special courtesy.

  By the time we reached their capital city

  His back was completely healed.

  They had taken the cage apart—

  But of course they didn’t give us back our spears.

  Then later that month, it was a warm afternoon in May,

  The rest of us were marched out to the central square.

  The crowds were there already, and the posts were set up,

  To which we were tied in the old watching positions.

  And he was brought out in the old way, and stripped,

  And then tied flat on a big rectangular table

  So that only his head could move.

  Then the king made a short speech to the crowds,

  To which they responded with gasps of wild excitement,

  And which was then translated for the rest of us.

  It was the sentence. He was to be flayed alive,

  As slowly as possible, to drag out the pain.

  And we were made to watch. The king’s personal doctor,

  The one who had tended his back,

  Came forward with a tray of surgical knives.

  They began at the feet.

  And we were not allowed to close our eyes

  Or to look away. When they were done, hours later,

  The skin was turned over to one of their saddle-makers

  To be tanned and stuffed and sewn. And for what?

  A hideous life-sized doll, filled out with straw,

  In the skin of the Roman Emperor, Valerian,

  With blanks of mother-of-pearl under the eyelids,

  And painted shells that had been prepared beforehand

  For the fingernails and toenails,

  Roughly cross-stitched on the inseam of the legs

  And up the back to the center of the head,

  Swung in the wind on a rope from the palace flag-pole;

  And young girls were brought there by their mothers

  To be told about the male anatomy.

  His death had taken hours.

  They were very patient.

  And with him passed away the honor of Rome.

  In the end, I was ransomed. Mother paid for me.

  You must rest now. You must. Lean back.

  Look at the flowers.

  Yes. I am looking. I wish I could be like them.

  PIG

  In the manger of course were cows and the Child Himself

  Was like unto a lamb

  Who should come in the fulness of time on an ass’s back

  Into Jerusalem

  And all things be redeemed—the suckling babe

  Lie safe in the serpent’s home

  And the lion eat straw like the ox and roar its love

  to Mark and to Jerome

  And God’s Peaceable Kingdom return among them all

  Save one full of offense

  Into which the thousand fiends of a human soul

  Were cast and driven hence

  And the one thus cured gone up into the hills

  To worship and to pray:

  O Swine that takest away our sins

  That takest away

  OSTIA ANTICA

  for William and Dale MacDonald

  Given this light,

  The departing thunderhead in its anger

  Off to one side, and given

  These ancient stones in their setting, themselves refreshed

  And rendered strangely younger

  By wetness alive with the wriggling brass of heaven,

  Where is the spirit’s part unwashed

  Of all poor spite?

  The cypress thrust,

  Greened in the glass of air as never

  Since the first greenness offered,

  Not to desire our prayer: “To ghostly creatures,

  Peace, and an end of fever

  Till all this dust assemble,” but delivered

  To their resistless lives and natures,

  Rise as they must.

  And the broken wall

  Is only itself, deeply accepting

  The sun’s warmth to its bricks.

  The puddles blink; a snail marches the Roman

  Road of its own adopting.

  The marble nymph is stripped to the flush of sex

  As if in truth this timeless, human

  Instant were all.

  Is it the bird’s

  Voice, the delicious voice of water,

  Addresses us on the splendid

  Topic of love? And promises to youth

  Still livelier forms and whiter?

  Here are quick freshes, here is the body suspended

  In its firm blessing, here the mouth

  Finds out its words.

  See, they arise

  In the sign of ivy, the young males

  To their strength, the meadows restored;

  Concupiscence of eye, and the world’s pride;

  Of love, the naked skills.

  At the pool’s edge, the rippled image cleared,

  That face set among leaves is glad,

  Noble and wise.

  What was begun,

  The mastered force, breeds and is healing.

  Pebbles and clover speak.

  Each hanging waterdrop burns with a fierce

  Bead of the sun’s instilling.

  But softly, beneath the flutesong and volatile shriek

  Of
birds, are to be heard discourse

  Mother and son.

  “If there were hushed

  To us the images of earth, its poles

  Hushed, and the waters of it,

  And hushed the tumult of the flesh, even

  The voice intrinsic of our souls,

  Each tongue and token hushed and the long habit

  Of thought, if that first light, the given

  To us were hushed,

  So that the washed

  Object, fixed in the sun, were dumb,

  And to the mind its brilliance

  Were from beyond itself, and the mind were clear

  As the unclouded dome

  Wherein all things diminish, in that silence

  Might we not confidently hear

  God as he wished?”

  Then from the grove

  Suddenly falls a flight of bells.

  A figure moves from the wood,

  Darkly approaching at the hour of vespers

  Along the ruined walls.

  And bearing heavy articles of blood

  And symbols of endurance, whispers,

  “This is love.”

  THE DOVER BITCH A Criticism of Life

  for Andrews Wanning

  So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl

  With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,

  And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,

  And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad

  All over, etc., etc.”

  Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read

  Sophocles in a fairly good translation

  And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,

  But all the time he was talking she had in mind

  The notion of what his whiskers would feel like

  On the back of her neck. She told me later on

  That after a while she got to looking out

  At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,

  Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds

  And blandishments in French and the perfumes.

  And then she got really angry. To have been brought

  All the way down from London, and then be addressed

  As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort

  Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.

  Anyway, she watched him pace the room

  And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,

  And then she said one or two unprintable things.

  But you mustn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,

  She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while

  And she always treats me right. We have a drink

  And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year

  Before I see her again, but there she is,

  Running to fat, but dependable as they come.

  And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’Amour.

  TO A MADONNA Ex-Voto in the Spanish Style

  for Allen Tate

  Madonna, mistress, I shall build for you

  An altar of my misery, and hew

  Out of my heart’s remote and midnight pitch,

  Far from all worldly lusts and sneers, a niche

  Enamelled totally in gold and blue

  Where I shall set you up and worship you.

  And of my verse, like hammered silver lace

  Studded with amethysts of rhyme, I’ll place

  A hand-wrought crown upon your head, and I’ll

  Make you a coat in the barbaric style,

  Picked out in seedling tears instead of pearl,

  That you shall wear like mail, my mortal girl,

  Lined with suspicion, made of jealousy,

  Encasing all your charms, that none may see.

  As for the intimate part of your attire,

  Your dress shall be composed of my desire,

  Rising and falling, swirling from your knees

  To your round hills and deep declivities.

  Of the respect I owe you I shall make

  A pair of satin shoes that they may take—

  Though most unworthily prepared to do it—

  The authentic shape and imprint of your foot.

  And if I fail, for all my proffered boon,

  To make a silver footstool of the moon,

  Victorious queen, I place beneath your heel

  The head of this black serpent that I feel

  Gnawing at my intestines all the time,

  Swollen with hate and venomous with crime.

  You shall behold my thoughts like tapers lit

  Before your flowered shrine, and brightening it,

  Reflected in the semi-dome’s clear skies

  Like so many fierce stars or fiery eyes.

  And I shall be as myrrh and frankincense,

  Rising forever in a smoky trance,

  And the dark cloud of my tormented hopes

  Shall lift in yearning toward your snowy slopes.

  And finally, to render you more real,

  I shall make seven blades of Spanish steel

  Out of the Seven Deadly Sins, and I

  Shall mix my love with murderous savagery,

  And like a circus knife-thrower, I’ll aim

  At the pure center of your gentle frame,

  And plunge those blades into your beating heart,

  Your bleeding, suffering, palpitating heart.

  (AFTER BAUDELAIRE)

  CLAIR DE LUNE

  Powder and scent and silence. The young dwarf

  Shoulders his lute. The moon is Levantine.

  It settles its pearl in every glass of wine.

  Harlequin is already at the wharf.

  The gallant is masked. A pressure of his thumb

  Communicates cutaneous interest.

  On the smooth upward swelling of a breast

  A small black heart is fixed with spirit gum.

  The thieving moment is now. Deftly, Pierrot

  Exits, bearing a tray of fruits and coins.

  A monkey, chained by his tiny loins,

  Is taken aboard. They let their moorings go.

  Silence. Even the god shall soon be gone.

  Shadows, in their cool, tidal enterprise,

  Have eaten away his muscular stone thighs.

  Moonlight edges across the empty lawn.

  Taffeta whispers. Someone is staring through

  The white ribs of the pergola. She stares

  At a small garnet pulse that disappears

  Steadily seaward. Ah, my dear, it is you.

  But you are not alone. A gardener goes

  Through the bone light about the dark estate.

  He bows, and, cheerfully inebriate,

  Admires the lunar ashes of a rose,

  And sings to his imaginary loves.

  Wait. You can hear him. The familiar notes

  Drift toward the old moss-bottomed fishing boats:

  “Happy the heart that thinks of no removes.”

  This is your nightmare. Those cold hands are yours.

  The pain in the drunken singing is your pain.

  Morning will taste of bitterness again.

  The heart turns to a stone, but it endures.

  THREE PROMPTERS FROM THE WINGS

  for George and Mary Dimock

  ATROPOS: OR, THE FUTURE

  He rushed out of the temple

  And for all his young good looks,

  Excellence at wrestling,

  High and manly pride,

  The giddy world’s own darling,

  He thought of suicide.

  (The facts are clear and simple

  But are not found in books.)

  Think how the young suppose

  That any minute now

  Some darkly beautiful

  Stranger’s leg or throat

  Will speak out in the taut

  Inflections of desire,

  Will choose them, will allow

 
Each finger its own thought

  And whatever it reaches for.

  A vision without clothes

  Tickles the genitalia

  And makes blithe the heart.

  But in this most of all

  He was cut out for failure.

  That morning smelled of hay.

  But all that he found tempting

  Was a high, weathered cliff.

  Now at a subtle prompting

  He hesitated. If

  He ended down below

  He had overcome the Fates;

  The oracle was false;

  The gods themselves were blind.

  A fate he could contravene

  Was certainly not Fate.

  All lay in his power.

  (How this came to his mind

  No child of man can say.

  The clear, rational light

  Touches on less than half,

  And “he who hesitates …”

  For who could presume to know

  The decisive, inward pulse

  Of things?)

  After an hour

  He rose to his full height,

  The master of himself.

  That morning smelled of hay,

  The day was clear. A moisture

  Cooled at the tips of leaves.

  The fields were overlaid

  With light. It was harvest time.

  Three swallows appraised the day,

  And bearing aloft their lives,

  Sailed into a wild climb,

  Then spilled across the pasture

  Like water over tiles.

  One could have seen for miles

  The sun on a knife-blade.

  And there he stood, the hero,

  With a lascivious wind

  Sliding across his chest,

  (The sort of thing that women,

  Who are fools the whole world over,

  Would fondle and adore

  And stand before undressed.)

  But deep within his loins

  A bitterness is set.

  He is already blind.

  The faceless powers summon

  To their eternal sorrow

  The handsome, bold, and vain,

  And those dark things are met

  At a place where three roads join.

  They touch with an open sore

  The lips that he shall kiss.

  And some day men may call me,