All of Us: The Collected Poems
Page 21
combing and combing their long hair, as if it were
simply another day in an otherwise unremarkable campaign.
When Xerxes demanded to know what such display signified,
he was told, When these men are about to leave their lives
they first make their heads beautiful.
She lays down her bone-handle comb and moves closer
to the window and the mean afternoon light. Something, some
creaking movement from below, has caught her
attention. A look, and it lets her go.
Two Worlds
In air heavy
with odor of crocuses,
sensual smell of crocuses,
I watch a lemon sun disappear,
a sea change blue
to olive black.
I watch lightning leap from Asia as
sleeping,
my love stirs and breathes and
sleeps again,
part of this world and yet
part that.
Smoke and Deception
When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down
and took up her knitting, he kept his eyes fixed on her
fingers and chatted away without ceasing.
“Make all the haste you can to live, my friends …” he said.
“God forbid you should sacrifice the present for the future!
There is youth, health, fire in the present; the future is smoke
and deception! As soon as you are twenty,
begin to live.”
Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle.
— ANTON CHEKHOV
“The Privy Councillor”
In a Greek Orthodox Church near Daphne
Christ broods over our heads
as you comment on this, on that.
Your voice
is borne through those empty chambers still.
Halt with desire, I follow
outside where we wonderingly examine
ruined walls. Wind
rises to meet the evening.
Wind, you’re much overdue.
Wind, let me touch you.
Evening, you’ve been expected all day.
Evening, hold us and cover us.
And evening sinks down at last.
And wind runs to the four corners of the body.
And walls are gone.
And Christ broods over our heads.
For the Record
The papal nuncio, John Burchard, writes calmly
that dozens of mares and stallions
were driven into a courtyard of the Vatican
so the Pope Alexander VI and his daughter,
Lucretia Borgia, could watch from a balcony
“with pleasure and much laughter”
the equine coupling going on below.
When this spectacle was over
they refreshed themselves, then waited
while Lucretia’s brother, Caesar,
shot down ten unarmed criminals
who were herded into the same courtyard.
Remember this the next time you see
the name Borgia, or the word Renaissance.
I don’t know what I can make of this,
this morning. I’ll leave it for now.
Go for that walk I planned earlier, hope maybe
to see those two herons sift down the cliffside
as they did for us earlier in the season
so we felt alone and freshly
put here, not herded, not
driven.
Transformation
Faithless, we have come here
this morning on empty stomachs
and hearts.
I open my hands to quiet
their stupid pleading, but
they begin to drip
onto the stones.
A woman beside me slips
on those same stones, striking
her head in the Grotto.
Behind me my love with the camera
records it all on color film down
to the finest detail.
But see!
The woman groans, rises slowly
shaking her head: she blesses
those very stones while we escape
through a side door.
Later we play the entire film again and
again. I see the woman keep falling
and getting up, falling and
getting up, Arabs evil-eyeing
the camera. I see myself striking
one pose after the other.
Lord, I tell you
I am without purpose here
in the Holy Land.
My hands grieve in this
bright sunlight.
They walk back and forth along
the Dead Sea shore
with a thirty-year-old man.
Come, Lord. Shrive me.
Too late I hear the film running,
taking it all down.
I look into the camera.
My grin turns to salt. Salt
where I stand.
Threat
Today a woman signaled me in Hebrew.
Then she pulled out her hair, swallowed it
and disappeared. When I returned home,
shaken, three carts stood by the door with
fingernails showing through the sacks of grain.
Conspirators
No sleep. Somewhere near here in the woods, fear
envelops the hands of the lookout.
The white ceiling of our room
has lowered alarmingly with dark.
Spiders come out to plant themselves
on every coffee mug.
Afraid? I know if I put out my hand
I will touch an old shoe three inches long
with bared teeth.
Sweetheart, it’s time.
I know you’re concealed there behind
that innocent handful of flowers.
Come out.
Don’t worry, I promise you.
Listen…
There is the rap on the door.
But the man who was going to deliver this
instead points a gun at your head.
This Word Love
I will not go when she calls
even if she says I love you,
especially that,
even though she swears
and promises nothing
but love love.
The light in this room
covers every
thing equally;
even my arm throws no shadow,
it too is consumed with light.
But this word love —
this word grows dark, grows
heavy and shakes itself, begins
to eat, to shudder and convulse
its way through this paper
until we too have dimmed in
its transparent throat and still
are riven, are glistening, hip and thigh, your
loosened hair which knows
no hesitation.
Don’t Run
Nadya, pink-cheeked, happy, her eyes shining with tears
in expectation of something extraordinary, circled
in the dance, her white dress billowing and showing glimpses
of her slim, pretty legs in their flesh-tinted
stockings. Varya, thoroughly contented, took Podgorin by the arm
and said to him under her breath with significant expression:
“Misha, don’t run away from your happiness. Take it
while it offers itself to you freely, later you will be running
after it, but you won’t overtake it.”
— ANTON CHEKHOV
“A Visit to Friends”
Woman Bathing
Naches River. Just below the falls.
Twenty miles from any town. A day
of dense sunlight
heavy with odors of love.
H
ow long have we?
Already your body, sharpness of Picasso,
is drying in this highland air.
I towel down your back, your hips,
with my undershirt.
Time is a mountain lion.
We laugh at nothing,
and as I touch your breasts
even the ground-
squirrels
are dazzled.
II
The Name
I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree at the side of the road. Rolled up in the back seat and went to sleep. How long? Hours. Darkness had come.
All of a sudden I was awake, and didn’t know who I was. I’m fully conscious, but that doesn’t help. Where am I? WHO am I? I am something that has just woken up in a back seat, throwing itself around in panic like a cat in a gunnysack. Who am I?
After a long while my life comes back to me. My name comes to me like an angel. Outside the castle walls there is a trumpet blast (as in the Leonora Overture) and the footsteps that will save me come quickly quickly down the long staircase. It’s me coming! It’s me!
But it is impossible to forget the fifteen-second battle in the hell of nothingness, a few feet from a major highway where the cars slip past with their lights on.
— TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
(translated by Robert Bly)
Looking for Work [2]
I have always wanted brook trout
for breakfast.
Suddenly, I find a new path
to the waterfall.
I begin to hurry.
Wake up,
my wife says,
you’re dreaming.
But when I try to rise,
the house tilts.
Who’s dreaming?
It’s noon, she says.
My new shoes wait by the door,
gleaming.
The World Book Salesman
He holds conversation sacred
though a dying art. Smiling,
by turns he is part toady,
part Oberführer. Knowing when
is the secret.
Out of the slim briefcase come
maps of all the world;
deserts, oceans,
photographs, artwork —
it is all there, all there
for the asking
as the doors swing open, crack
or slam.
In the empty
rooms each evening, he eats
alone, watches television, reads
the newspaper with a lust
that begins and ends in the fingertips.
There is no God,
and conversation is a dying art.
The Toes
This foot’s giving me nothing
but trouble. The ball,
the arch, the ankle—I’m saying
it hurts to walk. But
mainly it’s these toes
I worry about. Those
“terminal digits” as they’re
otherwise called. How true!
For them no more delight
in going headfirst
into a hot bath, or
a cashmere sock. Cashmere socks,
no socks, slippers, shoes, Ace
bandage—it’s all one and the same
to these dumb toes.
They even looked zonked out
and depressed, as if
somebody’d pumped them full
of Thorazine. They hunch there
stunned and mute—drab, lifeless
things. What in hell is going on?
What kind of toes are these
that nothing matters any longer?
Are these really my
toes? Have they forgotten
the old days, what it was like
being alive then? Always first
on line, first onto the dance floor
when the music started.
First to kick up their heels.
Look at them. No, don’t.
You don’t want to see them,
those slugs. It’s only with pain
and difficulty they can recall
the other times, the good times.
Maybe what they really want
is to sever all connection
with the old life, start over,
go underground, live alone
in a retirement manor
somewhere in the Yakima Valley.
But there was a time
they used to strain
with anticipation
simply
curl with pleasure
at the least provocation,
the smallest thing.
The feel of a silk dress
against the fingers, say.
A becoming voice, a touch
behind the neck, even
a passing glance. Any of it!
The sound of hooks being
unfastened, stays coming
undone, garments letting go
onto a cool, hardwood floor.
The Moon, the Train
The moon, the landscape, the train.
We are moving steadily along the south shore
of the lake, past the spas and sanitoriums.
The conductor comes through the club car to tell us
that if we look to the left—there, where those
lights are shining—we will see a lighted tennis
court, and it’s probable, even at this hour, we’ll
find Franz Kafka on the court. He’s crazy about
tennis and can’t get enough of it. In a minute, sure
enough—there’s Kafka, dressed in whites,
playing doubles against a young man and woman.
An unidentified young woman is Kafka’s partner. Which
pair is ahead? Who is keeping score? The ball goes back
and forth, back and forth. Everyone seems to be playing perfectly,
intently. None of the players even bothers to look up
at the passing train. Suddenly the track curves
and begins to go through a woods. I turn in the seat
to look back, but either the lights on the court have been
extinguished suddenly, or the train car is in such
a position that everything behind us is darkness.
It is at this moment that all the patrons left in the club car
decide to order another drink, or something to snack on.
Well, and why not? Kafka was a vegetarian and a teetotaler
himself, but that shouldn’t crimp anyone’s style. Besides,
no one in the train car seems to show the slightest
interest in the game, or who was playing on the court under
the lights. I was going forward to a new and different
life, and I was really only half interested myself, my
thoughts being somewhere else. Nevertheless, I thought it
was something that was of some slight interest and should be
pointed out; and I was glad the conductor had done so.
“So that was Kafka,” someone behind me spoke up.
“So,” somebody else replied. “So what? I’m Perlmutter.
Pleased to meet you. Let’s have a drink.” And saying this, he
took a deck of cards out of his shirt pocket and began to shuffle
them back and forth on the table in front of him. His huge
hands were red and chapped; they seemed to want to
devour the cards whole. Once more the track curves
and begins to go through a woods.
Two Carriages
Again the flying horses, the strange voice of drunken Nicanor, the wind and the persistent snow which got into one’s eyes, one’s mouth, and every fold of one’s fur coat.… The wind whistled, the coachmen shouted; and while this frantic uproar was going on, I recalled all the details of that strange wild day, unique in my life, and it seemed to me that I really had gone out of my mind or become a d
ifferent man. It was as though the man I had been till that day were already a stranger to me.… A quarter of an hour later his horses fell behind and the sound of his bells was lost in the roar of the snowstorm.
— ANTON CHEKHOV
“The Wife”
Miracle
They’re on a one-way flight, bound from LAX
to SFO, both of them drunk and strung-out
having just squirmed through the hearing,
their second bankruptcy in seven years.
And who knows what, if anything, was said
on the plane, or who said it?
It could have been accumulation
of the day’s events, or years on years
of failure and corruption that triggered violence.
Earlier, turned inside out, crucified and left
for dead, they’d been dropped like so much
garbage in front of the terminal. But
once inside they found their bearings,
took refuge in an airport lounge where they tossed
back doubles under a banner that read Go Dodgers!
They were plastered, as usual, as they buckled
into their seats and, as always, ready to assume
it was the universal human condition, this battle
waged continually with forces past all reckoning,
forces beyond mere human understanding.
But she’s cracking. She can’t take any more
and soon, without a word, she turns
in her seat and drills him. Punches him and
punches him, and he takes it.
Knowing deep down he deserves it ten times over —
whatever she wants to dish out—he is being
deservedly beaten for something, there are
good reasons. All the while his head is pummeled,
buffeted back and forth, her fists falling
against his ear, his lips, his jaw, he protects
his whiskey. Grips that plastic glass as if, yes,