Collected Earlier Poems

by Anthony Hecht

  Can fathom her intent? Loving the Greeks,

  He whispered to a nun who strove to woo

  His spirit unto God by prayer and fast,

  “Pray that I go to Limbo, if it please

  Heaven to let my soul regard at last

  Democritus, Plato and Socrates.”

  And so it was. The river, as foretold,

  Ran darkly by; under his tongue he found

  Coin for the passage; the ferry tossed and rolled;

  The sages stood on their appointed ground,

  Sighing, all as foretold. The mind was tasked;

  He had not dreamed that so many had died.

  “But where is Alcibiades,” he asked,

  “The golden roisterer, the animal pride?”

  Those sages who had spoken of the love

  And enmity of things, how all things flow,

  Stood in a light no life is witness of,

  And Socrates, whose wisdom was to know

  He did not know, spoke with a solemn mien,

  And all his wonderful ugliness was lit,

  “He whom I loved for what he might have been

  Freezes with traitors in the ultimate pit.”

  BIRDWATCHERS OF AMERICA

  I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I received a singular warning: I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.

  BAUDELAIRE, Journals

  It’s all very well to dream of a dove that saves,

  Picasso’s or the Pope’s,

  The one that annually coos in Our Lady’s ear

  Half the world’s hopes,

  And the other one that shall cunningly engineer

  The retirement of all businessmen to their graves,

  And when this is brought about

  Make us the loving brothers of every lout—

  But in our part of the country a false dusk

  Lingers for hours; it steams

  From the soaked hay, wades in the cloudy woods,

  Engendering other dreams.

  Formless and soft beyond the fence it broods

  Or rises as a faint and rotten musk

  Out of a broken stalk.

  There are some things of which we seldom talk;

  For instance, the woman next door, whom we hear at night,

  Claims that when she was small

  She found a man stone dead near the cedar trees

  After the first snowfall.

  The air was clear. He seemed in ultimate peace

  Except that he had no eyes. Rigid and bright

  Upon the forehead, furred

  With a light frost, crouched an outrageous bird.

  THE SONG OF THE FLEA

  Beware of those that flatter;

  Likewise beware of those

  That would redress the matter

  By publishing their woes.

  They would corrupt your nature

  For their own purposes

  And taint God’s every creature

  With pestilent disease.

  Now look you in the mirror

  And swear to your own face

  It never dealt in error

  With pity or with praise.

  Swear that there is no Circe,

  And swear me, if you can,

  That without aid or mercy

  You are but your own man.

  If you can swear thus nimbly

  Then we can end our wars

  And join in the assembly

  Of jungle predators,

  For honestly to thieve

  Bespeaks a brotherhood:

  Without a “by your leave”

  I live upon your blood.

  THE MAN WHO MARRIED MAGDALENE

  Variation on a Theme by Louis Simpson

  Then said the Lord, dost thou well to be angry?

  I have been in this bar

  For close to seven days.

  The dark girl over there,

  For a modest dollar, lays.

  And you can get a blow-job

  Where other men have pissed

  In the little room that’s sacred

  To the Evangelist—

  If you’re inclined that way.

  For myself, I drink and sleep.

  The floor is knotty cedar

  But the beer is flat and cheap.

  And you can bet your life

  I’ll be here another seven.

  Stranger, here’s to my wife,

  Who died and went to heaven.

  She was a famous beauty,

  But our very breath is loaned.

  The rabbi’s voice was fruity,

  And since then I’ve been stoned—

  A royal, nonstop bender.

  But your money’s no good here;

  Put it away. Bartender,

  Give my friend a beer.

  I dreamed the other night

  When the sky was full of stars

  That I stood outside a gate

  And looked in through the bars.

  Two angels stood together.

  A purple light was shed

  From their every metal feather.

  And then one of them said,

  “It was pretty much the same

  For years and years and years,

  But since the Christians came

  The place is full of queers.

  Still, let them have their due.

  Things here are far less solemn.

  Instead of each beardy Jew

  Muttering, ‘Shalom, Shalom,’

  There’s a down-to-earth, informal

  Fleshiness to the scene;

  It’s healthier, more normal,

  If you know what I mean.

  Such as once went to Gehenna

  Now dance among the blessed.

  But Mary Magdalena,

  She had it the best.”

  And he nudged his feathered friend

  And gave him a wicked leer,

  And I woke up and fought back

  The nausea with a beer.

  What man shall understand

  The Lord’s mysterious way?

  My tongue is thick with worship

  And whiskey, and some day

  I will come to in Bellevue

  And make psalms unto the Lord.

  But verily I tell you,

  She hath her reward.

  IMPROVISATIONS ON AESOP

  1

  It was a tortoise aspiring to fly

  That murdered Aeschylus. All men must die.

  2

  The crocodile rends man and beast to death

  And has St. Francis’ birds to pick his teeth.

  3

  Lorenzo sponsored artists, and the ant

  Must save to give the grasshopper a grant.

  4

  The blind man bears the lame, who gives him eyes;

  Only the weak make common enterprise.

  5

  Frogs into bulls, sows’ ears into silk purses,

  These are our hopes in youth, in age our curses.

  6

  Spare not the rod, lest thy child be undone,

  And at the gallows cry, “Behold thy son.”

  7

  The Fox and Buddha put away their lust:

  “Sour grapes!” they cry, “All but the soul is dust!”

  8

  An ass may look at an angel, Balaam was shown;

  Cudgel thy wits, and leave thine ass alone.

  9

  Is not that pastoral instruction sweet

  Which says who shall be eaten, who shall eat?

  THE THOUGHTFUL ROISTERER DECLINES THE GAMBIT

  I’m not going to get myself shot full of holes

  For comparative strangers, like Richelieu or the King;

  I prefer to investigate how a coward may cling

  To the modest ways of simple civilian souls.

  If I couldn’t put down a little bit of the hair

  Of the dog each day, I’d be as good
as dead;

  And it’s nothing to me that a man will die in bed

  Or under the table without the Croix de Guerre.

  So as far as I’m concerned, you can drop the act

  About the Immortal Fame and Illustrious End.

  I shall die unsung, but with all of me intact,

  Toasting His Noble Majesty and His Grace.

  And if I die by the mouth, believe me, friend,

  It won’t be the cannon’s mouth, in any case.

  (AFTER CHARLES VION DE DALIBRAY)

  GIANT TORTOISE

  I am related to stones

  The slow accretion of moss where dirt is wedged

  Long waxy hair that can split boulders.

  Events are not important.

  I live in my bone

  Recalling the hour of my death.

  It takes more toughness than most have got.

  Or a saintliness.

  Strength of a certain kind, anyway.

  Bald toothless clumsy perhaps

  With all the indignity of old age

  But age is not important.

  There is nothing worth remembering

  But the silver glint in the muck

  The thickening of great trees

  The hard crust getting harder.

  “MORE LIGHT! MORE LIGHT!”

  for Heinrich Blücher and Hannah Arendt

  Composed in the Tower before his execution

  These moving verses, and being brought at that time

  Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:

  “I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime.”

  Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,

  The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.

  His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap

  Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.

  And that was but one, and by no means one of the worst;

  Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;

  And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ,

  That shall judge all men, for his soul’s tranquillity.

  We move now to outside a German wood.

  Three men are there commanded to dig a hole

  In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down

  And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

  Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill

  Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.

  A Lüger settled back deeply in its glove.

  He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

  Much casual death had drained away their souls.

  The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.

  When only the head was exposed the order came

  To dig him out again and to get back in.

  No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.

  When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.

  The Lüger hovered lightly in its glove.

  He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

  No prayers or incense rose up in those hours

  Which grew to be years, and every day came mute

  Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,

  And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

  “AND CAN YE SING BALULOO WHEN THE BAIRN GREETS?”

  All these years I have known of her despair.

  “I was about to be happy when the abyss

  Opened its mouth. It was empty, except for this

  Yellowish sperm of horror that glistened there.

  I tried so hard not to look as the thing grew fat

  And pulsed in its bed of hair. I tried to think

  Of Sister Marie Gerald, of our swaddled link

  To the Lord of Hosts, the manger, and all of that.

  None of it worked. And even the whip-lash wind,

  To which I clung and begged to be blown away,

  Didn’t work. These eyes, that many have praised as gay,

  Are the stale jellies of lust in which Adam sinned.

  And nothing works. Sickened since God knows when,

  Since early childhood when I first saw the horror,

  I have spent hours alone before my mirror.

  There is no cure for me in the world of men.”

  “IT OUT-HERODS HEROD. PRAY YOU, AVOID IT.”

  Tonight my children hunch

  Toward their Western, and are glad

  As, with a Sunday punch,

  The Good casts out the Bad.

  And in their fairy tales

  The warty giant and witch

  Get sealed in doorless jails

  And the match-girl strikes it rich.

  I’ve made myself a drink.

  The giant and witch are set

  To bust out of the clink

  When my children have gone to bed.

  All frequencies are loud

  With signals of despair;

  In flash and morse they crowd

  The rondure of the air.

  For the wicked have grown strong,

  Their numbers mock at death,

  Their cow brings forth its young,

  Their bull engendereth.

  Their very fund of strength,

  Satan, bestrides the globe;

  He stalks its breadth and length

  And finds out even Job.

  Yet by quite other laws

  My children make their case;

  Half God, half Santa Claus,

  But with my voice and face,

  A hero comes to save

  The poorman, beggarman, thief,

  And make the world behave

  And put an end to grief.

  And that their sleep be sound

  I say this childermas

  Who could not, at one time,

  Have saved them from the gas.

  FROM

  A SUMMONING OF STONES

  (1954)

  DOUBLE SONNET

  I recall everything, but more than all,

  Words being nothing now, an ease that ever

  Remembers her to my unfailing fever,

  How she came forward to me, letting fall

  Lamplight upon her dress till every small

  Motion made visible seemed no mere endeavor

  Of body to articulate its offer,

  But more a grace won by the way from all

  Striving in what is difficult, from all

  Losses, so that she moved but to discover

  A practice of the blood, as the gulls hover,

  Winged with their life, above the harbor wall,

  Tracing inflected silence in the tall

  Air with a tilt of mastery and quiver

  Against the light, as the light fell to favor

  Her coming forth; this chiefly I recall.

  It is a part of pride, guiding the hand

  At the piano in the splash and passage

  Of sacred dolphins, making numbers human

  By sheer extravagance that can command

  Pythagorean heavens to spell their message

  Of some unlooked-for peace, out of the common;

  Taking no thought at all that man and woman,

  Lost in the trance of lamplight, felt the presage

  Of the unbidden terror and bone hand

  Of gracelessness, and the unspoken omen

  That yet shall render all, by its first usage,

  Speechless, inept, and totally unmanned.

  LA CONDITION BOTANIQUE

  Romans, rheumatic, gouty, came

  To bathe in Ischian springs where water steamed,

  Puffed and enlarged their bold imperial thoughts, and which

  Later Madame Curie declared to be so rich

  In radioactive content as she deemed

  Should win them everlasting fame.

  Scattered throughout their ice and snow

  The Finns have built airtight cabins of log

  Where t
hey may lie, limp and entranced by the sedative purr

  Of steam pipes, or torment themselves with flails of fir

  To stimulate the blood, and swill down grog,

  Setting the particles aglow.

  Similarly the Turks, but know

  Nothing of the more delicate thin sweat

  Of plants, breathing their scented oxygen upon

  Brooklyn’s botanical gardens, roofed with glass and run

  So to the pleasure of each leafy pet,

  Manured, addressed in Latin, so

  To its thermostatic happiness—

  Spreading its green and innocence to the ground

  Where pipes, like Satan masquerading as the snake,

  Coil and uncoil their frightful liquid length, and make

  Gurglings of love mixed with a rumbling sound

  Of sharp intestinal distress—

  So to its pleasure, as I said,

  That each particular vegetable may thrive,

  Early and late, as in the lot first given Man,

  Sans interruption, as when Universal Pan

  Led on the Eternal Spring. The spears of chive,

  The sensitive plant, showing its dread,

  The Mexican flytrap, that can knit

  Its quilled jaws pitilessly, and would hurt

  A fly with pleasure, leading Riley’s life in bed

  Of peat moss and of chemicals, and is thoughtfully fed

  Flies for the entrée, flies for the dessert,

  Fruit flies for fruit, and all of it

  Administered as by a wife—

  Lilith our lady, patroness of plants,

  Who sings, Lullay myn lykyng, myn owyn dere derlyng,

  Madrigals nightly to the spiny stalk in sterling

  Whole notes of admiration and romance—