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Page 11
We watch the pawns on their chessboards in silence,
even though we see them three squares later.
Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
Or a little bit different—which is to say, completely different.
The most fervent of them gaze confidingly into our eyes:
their calculations tell them that they’ll find perfection there.
Old Folks’ Home
Here comes Her Highness—well, you know who I mean,
our Helen the snooty—now who made her queen!
With her lipstick and wig on, as if we could care,
like her three sons in heaven can see her from there!
“I wouldn’t be here if they’d lived through the war.
I’d spend winter with one son, summer with another.”
What makes her so sure?
I’d be dead too now, with her for a mother.
And she keeps on asking (“I don’t mean to pry”)
why from your sons and daughters there’s never a word
even though they weren’t killed. “If my boys were alive,
I’d spend all my holidays home with the third.”
Right, and in his gold carriage he’d come and get her,
drawn by a swan or a lily-white dove,
to show all of us that he’ll never forget her
and how much he owes to her motherly love.
Even Jane herself, the nurse, can’t help but grin
when our Helen starts singing this old song again—
even though Jane’s job is commiseration
Monday through Friday, with two weeks’ vacation.
Advertisement
I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
or the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.
I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God’s absence,
or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for—
have faith in my chemical compassion.
You’re still a young man/woman.
It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?
Let me have your abyss.
I’ll cushion it with sleep.
You’ll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.
Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.
There is no other devil anymore.
Lazarus Takes a Walk
The professor has died three times now.
After the first death, he was taught to move his head.
After the second, he learned how to sit up.
After the third, they even got him on his feet,
propped up by a sturdy, chubby nanny:
Let’s take a little walk, shall we, professor?
Severe brain damage following the accident
and yet—will wonders never cease—he’s come so far:
left right, light dark, tree grass, hurt eat.
Two plus two, professor?
Two, says the professor.
At least he’s getting warm.
Hurt, grass, sit, bench.
But at the garden’s edge, that old bird,
neither pink nor cheery,
chased away three times now,
his real nanny. Or so she says—who knows?
He wants to go to her. Another tantrum.
What a shame. This time he came so close.
Snapshot of a Crowd
In the snapshot of a crowd,
my head’s seventh from the edge,
or maybe fourth from the left,
or twenty-eighth from the bottom;
my head is I don’t know which,
no longer on its own shoulders,
just like the rest (and vice versa),
neither clearly male nor female;
whatever it signifies
is of no significance,
and the Spirit of the Age
may just glance its way, at best;
my head is statistical,
it consumes its steel per capita
globally and with composure;
shamelessly predictable,
complacently replaceable;
as if I didn’t even own it
in my own and separate way;
as if it were one skull of many
found unnamed in strip-mined graveyards
and preserved so well that one
forgets that its owner’s gone;
as if it were already there,
my head, any-, everyone’s—
where its memories, if any,
must reach deep into the future.
Going Home
He came home. Said nothing.
It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.
He lay down fully dressed.
Pulled the blanket over his head.
Tucked up his knees.
He’s nearly forty, but not at the moment.
He exists just as he did inside his mother’s womb,
clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness.
Tomorrow he’ll give a lecture
on homeostasis in megagalactic cosmonautics.
For now, though, he has curled up and gone to sleep.
Discovery
I believe in the great discovery.
I believe in the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in the fear of the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in his face going white,
his queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.
I believe in the burning of his notes,
burning them into ashes,
burning them to the last scrap.
I believe in the scattering of numbers,
scattering them without regret.
I believe in the man’s haste,
in the precision of his movements,
in his free will.
I believe in the shattering of tablets,
the pouring out of liquids,
the extinguishing of rays.
I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,
that it will take place without witnesses.
I’m sure no one will find out what happened,
not the wife, not the wall,
not even the bird that might squeal in its song.
I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.
These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.
Dinosaur Skeleton
Beloved Brethren,
we have before us an example of incorrect proportions.
Behold! the dinosaur’s skeleton looms above—
Dear Friends,
on the left we see the tail trailing into one infinity,
on the right, the neck juts into another—
Esteemed Comrades,
in between, four legs that finally mired in the slime
beneath this hillock of a trunk—
Gentle Citizens,
nature does not err, but it loves its little joke:
please note the laughably small head—
Ladies, Gentlemen,
a head this size does not have room for foresight,
and that is why its owner is extinct—
a mind too small, an appetite too large,
more senseless sleep than prudent apprehension—
Distinguished Guests,
we’re in far better shape in this regard,
life is beautiful and the world is ours—
Venerated Delegation,
the starry sky above the thinking reed
and moral law within it—
Most Reverend Deputation,
such success does not come twice
and perhaps beneath this single sun alone—
Inestimable Council,
how deft the hands,
how eloquent the lips,
what a head on these shoulders—
Supremest of Courts,
so much responsibility in place of a vanished tail—
Pursuit
I know I’ll be greeted by silence, but still.
No uproar, no fanfare, no applause, but still.
No alarm bells, and nothing alarming.
I don’t expect even a shriveled leaf,
to say nothing of silver palaces and gardens,
venerable elders, righteous laws,
wisdom in crystal balls, but still.
I understand that I don’t walk the moon
in search of ladies’ rings and vanished ribbons.
They pick everything up in advance.
Nothing left to suggest that . . .
Trash, castoffs, peelings, scraps, crumbs,
chips, shavings, shards, bits, pieces.
Of course I only bend over a pebble
that bears no hint of where they’ve gone.
They don’t like leaving signs.
They’re peerless in the art of erasing traces.
I’ve known it for ages: the gift of vanishing just in time,
their divine ungraspability by horns or tail,
by the hem of a robe ballooning in flight.
A hair never falls from their heads that I might snatch.
They’re always one thought smarter,
one step ahead, I can never catch up,
they let me play at being first.
They aren’t there, they never were, but still
I have to keep telling myself,
don’t be a child, stop seeing things.
And whatever just hopped from underfoot
didn’t get far, it toppled over, trampled,
and though it stirs again
and emits a long-drawn muteness,
it’s a shadow—too much my own to point the way.
A Speech at the Lost-and-Found
I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north,
and also some gods while moving east to west.
I let several stars go out for good, they can’t be traced.
An island or two sank on me, they’re lost at sea.
I’m not even sure exactly where I left my claws,
who’s got my fur coat, who’s living in my shell.
My siblings died the day I left for dry land
and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.
I’ve shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,
taken leave of my senses time and again.
I’ve long since closed my third eye to all that,
washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.
Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.
Astonishment
Why, after all, this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,
and why on earth, pinned down by this star’s pin?
In spite of years of my not being here?
In spite of seas of all these dates and fates,
these cells, celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
neither a minute nor eons too early?
What made me fill myself with me so squarely?
Why am I staring now into the dark
and muttering this unending monologue
just like the growling thing we call a dog?
Birthday
So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles!
Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
the flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather—
how to line them all up, how to put them together?
All the thickets and crickets and creepers and creeks!
The beeches and leeches alone could take weeks.
Chinchillas, gorillas, and sarsaparillas—
thanks so much, but all this excess of kindness could kill us.
Where’s the jar for this burgeoning burdock, brooks’ babble,
rooks’ squabble, snakes’ squiggle, abundance, and trouble?
How to plug up the gold mines and pin down the fox,
how to cope with the lynx, bobolinks, streptococs!
Take dioxide: a lightweight, but mighty in deeds;
what about octopodes, what about centipedes?
I could look into prices, but don’t have the nerve:
these are products I just can’t afford, don’t deserve.
Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes
that, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise?
I am just passing through, it’s a five-minute stop.
I won’t catch what is distant; what’s too close, I’ll mix up.
While trying to plumb what the void’s inner sense is,