All of Us: The Collected Poems
Page 17
Everybody’s luck has gone south. All I ask
is to be allowed to sit for a moment longer.
Nursing a bite the shelty dog Keeper gave me last night.
And watching these birds. Who don’t ask for a thing
except sunny weather. In a minute
I’ll have to plug in the phone and try to separate
what’s right from wrong. Until then
a dozen tiny birds, no bigger than teacups,
perch in the branches outside the window.
Suddenly they stop singing and turn their heads.
It’s clear they’ve felt something.
They dive into flight.
The Little Room
There was a great reckoning.
Words flew like stones through windows.
She yelled and yelled, like the Angel of Judgment.
Then the sun shot up, and a contrail
appeared in the morning sky.
In the sudden silence, the little room
became oddly lonely as he dried her tears.
Became like all the other little rooms on earth
light finds hard to penetrate.
Rooms where people yell and hurt each other.
And afterwards feel pain, and loneliness.
Uncertainty. The need to comfort.
Sweet Light
After the winter, grieving and dull,
I flourished here all spring. Sweet light
began to fill my chest. I pulled up
a chair. Sat for hours in front of the sea.
Listened to the buoy and learned
to tell the difference between a bell,
and the sound of a bell. I wanted
everything behind me. I even wanted
to become inhuman. And I did that.
I know I did. (She’ll back me up on this.)
I remember the morning I closed the lid
on memory and turned the handle.
Locking it away forever.
Nobody knows what happened to me
out here, sea. Only you and I know.
At night, clouds form in front of the moon.
By morning they’re gone. And that sweet light
I spoke of? That’s gone too.
The Garden
In the garden, small laughter from years ago.
Lanterns burning in the willows.
The power of those four words, “I loved a woman.”
Put that on the stone beside his name.
God keep you and be with you.
Those horses coming into the stretch at Ruidoso!
Mist rising from the meadow at dawn.
From the veranda, the blue outlines of the mountains.
What used to be within reach, out of reach.
And in some lesser things, just the opposite is true.
Order anything you want! Then look for the man
with the limp to go by. He’ll pay.
From a break in the wall, I could look down
on the shanty lights in the Valley of Kidron.
Very little sleep under strange roofs. His life far away.
Playing checkers with my dad. Then he hunts up
the shaving soap, the brush and bowl, the straight
razor, and we drive to the county hospital. I watch him
lather my grandpa’s face. Then shave him.
The dying body is a clumsy partner.
Drops of water in your hair.
The dark yellow of the fields, the black and blue rivers.
Going out for a walk means you intend to return, right?
Eventually.
The flame is guttering. Marvelous.
The meeting between Goethe and Beethoven
took place in Leipzig in 1812. They talked into the night
about Lord Byron and Napoleon.
She got off the road and from then on it was nothing
but hardpan all the way.
She took a stick and in the dust drew the house where
they’d live and raise their children.
There was a duck pond and a place for horses.
To write about it, one would have to write in a way
that would stop the heart and make one’s hair stand on end.
Cervantes lost a hand in the Battle of Lepanto.
This was in 1571, the last great sea battle fought
in ships manned by galley slaves.
In the Unuk River, in Ketchikan, the backs of the salmon
under the street lights as they come through town.
Students and young people chanted a requiem
as Tolstoy’s coffin was carried across the yard
of the stationmaster’s house at Astapovo and placed
in the freight car. To the accompaniment of singing,
the train slowly moved off.
A hard sail and the same stars everywhere.
But the garden is right outside my window.
Don’t worry your heart about me, my darling.
We weave the thread given to us.
And Spring is with me.
Son
Awakened this morning by a voice from my childhood
that says Time to get up, I get up.
All night long, in my sleep, trying
to find a place where my mother could live
and be happy. If you want me to lose my mind,
the voice says okay. Otherwise,
get me out of here! I’m the one to blame
for moving her to this town she hates. Renting
her the house she hates.
Putting those neighbors she hates so close.
Buying the furniture she hates.
Why didn’t you give me money instead, and let me spend it?
I want to go back to California, the voice says.
I’ll die if I stay here. Do you want me to die?
There’s no answer to this, or to anything else
in the world this morning. The phone rings
and rings. I can’t go near it for fear
of hearing my name once more. The same name
my father answered to for 53 years.
Before going to his reward.
He died just after saying “Take this
into the kitchen, son.”
The word son issuing from his lips.
Wobbling in the air for all to hear.
Kafka’s Watch
from a letter
I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns, and
an infinite eight to nine hours of work.
I devour the time outside the office like a wild beast.
Someday I hope to sit in a chair in another
country, looking out the window at fields of sugarcane
or Mohammedan cemeteries.
I don’t complain about the work so much as about
the sluggishness of swampy time. The office hours
cannot be divided up! I feel the pressure
of the full eight or nine hours even in the last
half hour of the day. It’s like a train ride
lasting night and day. In the end you’re totally
crushed. You no longer think about the straining
of the engine, or about the hills or
flat countryside, but ascribe all that’s happening
to your watch alone. The watch which you continually hold
in the palm of your hand. Then shake. And bring slowly
to your ear in disbelief.
III
The Lightning Speed of the Past
The corpse fosters anxiety in men who believe
in the Last Judgment, and those who don’t.
— ANDRÉ MALRAUX
He buried his wife, who’d died in
misery. In misery, he
took to his porch, where he watched
the sun set and the moon rise.
The days seemed to pass, only to return
again. Like a dream in which one thinks,
I’ve alread
y dreamt that.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
With his knife he cut the skin
from an apple. The white pulp, body
of the apple, darkened
and turned brown, then black,
before his eyes. The worn-out face of death!
The lightning speed of the past.
Vigil
They waited all day for the sun to appear. Then,
late in the afternoon, like a good prince,
it showed itself for a few minutes.
Blazing high over the benchland that lies at the foot
of the peaks behind their borrowed house.
Then the clouds were drawn once more.
They were happy enough. But all evening
the curtains made melancholy gestures,
swishing in front of the open windows. After dinner
they stepped onto the balcony.
Where they heard the river plunging in the canyon and,
closer, the creak of trees, sigh of boughs.
The tall grasses promised to rustle forever.
She put her hand on his neck. He touched her cheek.
Then bats came from all sides to harry them back.
Inside, they closed the windows. Kept their distance.
Watched a procession of stars. And, once in a while,
creatures that flung themselves in front of the moon.
In the Lobby of the Hotel del Mayo
The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.
The man in the lobby using a broom.
The boy in the lobby watering plants.
The desk clerk looking at his nails.
The woman in the lobby writing a letter.
The old man in the lobby sleeping in his chair.
The fan in the lobby revolving slowly overhead.
Another hot Sunday afternoon.
Suddenly, the girl lays her finger between the pages of
her book.
The man leans on his broom and looks.
The boy stops in his tracks.
The desk clerk raises his eyes and stares.
The woman quits writing.
The old man stirs and wakes up.
What is it?
Someone is running up from the harbor.
Someone who has the sun behind him.
Someone who is barechested.
Waving his arms.
It’s clear something terrible has happened.
The man is running straight for the hotel.
His lips are working themselves into a scream.
Everyone in the lobby will recall their terror.
Everyone will remember this moment for the rest of their lives.
Bahia, Brazil
The wind is level now. But pails of rain
fell today, and the day before,
and the day before that, all the way back
to Creation. The buildings
in the old slave quarter are dissolving,
and nobody cares. Not the ghosts
of the old slaves, or the young.
The water feels good on their whipped backs.
They could cry with relief.
No sunsets in this place. Light one minute,
and then the stars come out.
We could look all night in vain
for the Big Dipper. Down here
the Southern Cross is our sign.
I’m sick of the sound of my own voice!
Uneasy, and dreaming
of rum that could split my skull open.
There’s a body lying on the stairs.
Step over it. The lights in the tower
have gone out. A spider hops from the man’s
hair. This life. I’m saying it’s one
amazing thing after the other.
Lines of men in the street,
as opposed to lines of poetry.
Choose! Are you guilty or not guilty?
What else have you? he answered.
Well, say the house was burning.
Would you save the cat or the Rembrandt?
That’s easy. I don’t have a Rembrandt,
and I don’t have a cat. But I have
a sorrel horse back home
that I want to ride once more
into the high country.
Soon enough we’ll rot under the earth.
No truth to this, just a fact.
We who gave each other so much
happiness while alive —
we’re going to rot. But we won’t
rot in this place. Not here.
Arms shackled together.
Jesus, the very idea of such a thing!
This life. These shackles.
I shouldn’t bring it up.
The Phenomenon
I woke up feeling wiped out. God knows
where I’ve been all night, but my feet hurt.
Outside my window, a phenomenon is taking place.
The sun and moon hang side-by-side over the water.
Two sides of the same coin. I climb from bed
slowly, much as an old man might maneuver
from his musty bed in midwinter, finding it difficult
for a moment even to make water! I tell myself
this has to be a temporary condition.
In a few years, no problem. But when I look out
the window again, there’s a sudden swoop of feeling.
Once more I’m arrested with the beauty of this place.
I was lying if I ever said anything to the contrary.
I move closer to the glass and see it’s happened
between this thought and that. The moon
is gone. Set, at last.
Wind
FOR RICHARD FORD
Water perfectly calm. Perfectly amazing.
Flocks of birds moving
restlessly. Mystery enough in that, God knows.
You ask if I have the time. I do.
Time to go in. Fish not biting
anyway. Nothing doing anywhere.
When, a mile away, we see wind
moving across the water. Sit quiet and
watch it come. Nothing to worry about.
Just wind. Not so strong. Though strong enough.
You say, “Look at that!”
And we hold on to the gunwales as it passes.
I feel it fan my face and ears. Feel it
ruffle my hair—sweeter, it seems,
than any woman’s fingers.
Then turn my head and watch
it move on down the Strait,
driving waves before it.
Leaving waves to flop against
our hull. The birds going crazy now.
Boat rocking from side to side.
“Jesus,” you say, “I never saw anything like it.”
“Richard,” I say —
“You’ll never see that in Manhattan, my friend.”
Migration
A late summer’s day, and my friend on the court
with his friend. Between games, the other remarks
how my friend’s step seems not to have any spring
to it. His serve isn’t so hot, either.
“You feeling okay?” he asks. “You had a checkup
lately?” Summer, and the living is easy.
But my friend went to see a doctor friend of his.
Who took his arm and gave him three months, no longer.
When I saw him a day later, it
was in the afternoon. He was watching TV.
He looked the same, but—how should I say it? —
different. He was embarrassed about the TV
and turned the sound down a little. But he couldn’t
sit still. He circled the room, again and again.
“It’s a program on animal migration,” he said, as if this
might explain everything.
I put my arms around him and gave him a hug.
Not the really bi
g hug I was capable of. Being afraid
that one of us, or both, might go to pieces.
And there was the momentary, crazy and dishonorable
thought —
this might be catching.
I asked for an ashtray, and he was happy
to range around the house until he found one.
We didn’t talk. Not then. Together we finished watching
the show. Reindeer, polar bears, fish, waterfowl,
butterflies and more. Sometimes they went from one
continent, or ocean, to another. But it was hard
to pay attention to the story taking place on screen.
My friend stood, as I recall, the whole time.
Was he feeling okay? He felt fine. He just couldn’t
seem to stay still, was all. Something came into his eyes
and went away again. “What in hell are they talking about?”
he wanted to know. But didn’t wait for an answer.
Began to walk some more. I followed him awkwardly
from room to room while he remarked on the weather,
his job, his ex-wife, his kids. Soon, he guessed,
he’d have to tell them … something.
“Am I really going to die?”
What I remember most about that awful day
was his restlessness, and my cautious hugs—hello, goodbye.
He kept moving until
we reached the front door and stopped.
He peered out, and drew back as if astounded
it could be light outside. A bank of shadow
from his hedge blocked the drive. And shadow fell
from the garage onto his lawn. He walked me to the car.
Our shoulders bumped. We shook hands, and I hugged him
once more. Lightly. Then he turned and went back,
passing quickly inside, closing the door. His face
appeared behind the window, then was gone.