Map
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No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed—that is, was still alive.
You think at least the note must tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note—
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.
Apple Tree
In heavenly May, under an apple tree, lovely
and bursting with blossoms like peals of laughter,
under something unruffled by both good and evil,
under something that rustles its branches regardless,
under no one’s, no matter what anyone calls it,
under something that bears just a foretaste of fruit,
under something not caring which year and what country,
what kind of planet and where it is rolling,
under something so distant, so different from me,
that it neither heartens nor horrifies me,
under something untroubled by whatever happens,
under something whose every leaf trembles with patience,
under something as puzzling as if I had dreamed it,
or had dreamed not it but everything else,
all too completely and conceitedly—
to linger longer, not to go home again.
Since only prisoners want to go home.
In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.
On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is number one.
Life While-You-Wait
Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.
Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.
Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run—
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.
If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).
You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.
On the Banks of the Styx
Dear individual soul, this is the Styx.
The Styx, that’s right. Why are you so perplexed?
As soon as Charon reads the prepared text
over the speakers, let the nymphs affix
your name badge and transport you to the banks.
(The nymphs? They fled your woods and joined the ranks
of personnel here.) Floodlights will reveal
piers built of reinforced concrete and steel,
and hovercrafts whose beelike buzz resounds
where Charon used to ply his wooden oar.
Mankind has multiplied, has burst its bounds:
nothing, sweet soul, is as it was before.
Skyscrapers, solid waste, and dirty air:
the scenery’s been harmed beyond repair.
Safe and efficient transportation (millions
of souls served here, all races, creeds, and sexes)
requires urban planning: hence pavilions,
warehouses, dry docks, and office complexes.
Among the gods it’s Hermes, my dear soul,
who makes all prophecies and estimations
when revolutions and wars take their toll—
our boats, of course, require reservations.
A one-way trip across the Styx is free:
the meters saying “No Canadian dimes,
no tokens” are left standing, as you see,
but only to remind us of old times.
From Section Tau Four of the Alpha Pier
you’re boarding hovercraft Sigma Sixteen—
it’s packed with sweating souls, but in the rear
you’ll find a seat (I’ve got it on my screen).
Now Tartarus (let me pull up the file)
is overbooked, too—no way we could stretch it.
Cramped, crumpled souls all dying to get out,
one last half drop of Lethe in my phial . . .
Not faith in the beyond, but only doubt
can make you, sorry soul, a bit less wretched.
Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
Pi
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything el
se
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief—a mouse tail, a pigtail—is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.
THE PEOPLE ON THE BRIDGE
1986
Stage Fright
Poets and writers.
So the saying goes.
That is poets aren’t writers, but who—
Poets are poetry, writers are prose—
Prose can hold anything including poetry,
but in poetry there’s only room for poetry—
In keeping with the poster that announces it
with a fin-de-siècle flourish of its giant P
framed in a winged lyre’s strings
I shouldn’t simply walk in, I should fly—
And wouldn’t I be better off barefoot
to escape the clump and squeak
of cut-rate sneakers,
a clumsy ersatz angel—
If at least the dress were longer and more flowing
and the poems appeared not from a handbag but by sleight of hand,
dressed in their Sunday best from head to toe,
with bells on, ding to dong,
ab ab ba—
On the platform lurks a little table
suggesting séances, with gilded legs,
and on the little table smokes a little candlestick—
Which means
I’ve got to read by candlelight
what I wrote by the light of an ordinary bulb
to the typewriter’s tap tap tap—
Without worrying in advance
if it was poetry
and if so, what kind—
The kind in which prose is inappropriate
or the kind which is apropos in prose—
And what’s the difference,
seen now only in half-light
against a crimson curtain’s
purple fringe?
Surplus
A new star has been discovered,
which doesn’t mean that things have gotten brighter
or that something we’ve been missing has appeared.
The star is large and distant,
so distant that it’s small,
even smaller than others
much smaller than it.
Small wonder, then, if we were struck with wonder;
as we would be if only we had the time.
The star’s age, mass, location—
all this perhaps will do
for one doctoral dissertation
and a wine-and-cheese reception
in circles close to the sky:
the astronomer, his wife, friends, and relations,
casual, congenial, come as you are,
mostly chat on earthbound topics,
surrounded by cozy earthtones.
The star’s superb,
but that’s no reason
why we can’t drink to the ladies
who are incalculably closer.
The star’s inconsequential.
It has no impact on the weather, fashion, final score,
government shakeups, moral crises, take-home pay.
No effect on propaganda or on heavy industry.
It’s not reflected in a conference table’s shine.
It’s supernumerary in the light of life’s numbered days.
What’s the use of asking
under how many stars man is born
and under how many in a moment he will die.
A new one.
“At least show me where it is.”
“Between that gray cloud’s jagged edge
and the acacia twig over there on the left.”
“I see,” I say.
Archeology
Well, my poor man,
seems we’ve made some progress in my field.
Millennia have passed
since you first called me archeology.
I no longer require
your stone gods,
your ruins with legible inscriptions.
Show me your whatever
and I’ll tell you who you were.
Something’s bottom,
something’s top.
A scrap of engine. A picture tube’s neck.
An inch of cable. Fingers turned to dust.
Or even less than that, or even less.
Using a method
that you couldn’t have known then,
I can stir up memory
in countless elements.
Traces of blood are forever.
Lies shine.
Secret codes resound.