to have a tongue and sit in New York and bleed
only a little, from one or two cuts, and lucky
to walk the way I do and have my own secret
and shoulder my bag as I get up and walk
to another part of the city, past, I’m sure,
shoes and wine and futons, thinking up
a plan for not eating, a place for my papers, a room
to read in, a chair to live in my next two years
and keep my tongue intact, poor suffering mouth
at the corner of Fourth and Grove, and lie down hard
when I have to and sit where I want and wait for my own
restaurant to open and drink my coffee at last
in a certain park, at another bench, this one
with curved iron sides in stamped black: fruit and flowers
and yellow lacquered slats, a bench for wailing,
with a name on it in English and even dates
for someone to study and only three short lines
to memorize, the plate attached with bolts
from front to back, the metal treated, a rat
for witness, a sparrow to eat the pizza, a Times
to sit on, a daughter for whistling, a mother for staring,
and someone to loosen the bolts and someone to stand
in front of me with a flute and throw his hat
on a little Turkish rug and someone to sit
beside me and wail, “coffee from 1940,”
“pie from 1936,” the only
song I know, half Mississippi, half Poland.
His Cup
His song was only a dot—a flash—if anything,
somewhere above that haze which he remembered,
when he thought about it, as a world on fire
or a white mind watching. When he shook his cup
there was a tremor, something like a distant
coruscation, he knew this and his own mind
was always either on that or on the sky
north of his grandmother’s house and the long building
they called the forge and the 1939 Chevy
with the gray metal visor and the sweet acorn
with the spiked helmet. He remembered a pig
burning in sand and how they hunted all day
for the two hot eyes, and he remembered floating
under the wire they stretched across the creek
and holding his breath. The violin star is closest,
the trombone star is farthest—or the drum star—
depending on what he sang. He worked this out,
some ratio or other, forty years ago
in order to learn how music worked. If there
was an analogue for what he did it was a
nova exploding in front of the Chemical Bank,
a state of mind of the millionth brightness, his cup
gone wild, the light spilling—nothing
could take that from him. He ate from a leather case
and slept where he worked; he put quarters in one pocket
and dimes in another. As far as a change of belief,
as far as the red and the blue, as far as abortion
and standing armies and cheaper health care, even as
far as the final outburst, he was silent—
dumb, you’d say—that was the evil of music
as well as the good; and twice he changed his corner,
and once he left his cup where it was and started
howling, what else could you call it? Moaning,
hissing even, such was the light there and such
was the uncreated light. He ended up
somewhere between a rubbing and scraping, maybe
a kind of sucking, but mostly he plucked, for plucking
was how he explained it, he was both singing and plucking
and dust and gases were collecting for he was
thinking of something else, oh, prairie schooners
fording the creek, the raging channel against
the farther side; and justice again, that which
confounded it from the beginning, and he was
dying to taste those pork chops and walk the fences
between the cows, and he was dying to feed them
and watch them eat; and in the second brain,
for it is always the second brain that makes
the lucid sounds, or so he reasoned, he watched
himself in a black suit seated at a score
on a polished stage with pipes behind him and baffles
to the left and right, his shoes polished, the light
shining on the wood, a rapt audience
of college students in rags and older professionals
and businesspeople ready to leap to their feet
and shout for him, but he just finished the piece
on a long slow note and waited for the last
invisible sound and then two seconds of silence
before he rose and entered that thunder, his mind
already on the next great piece, how this time
the strings would fly more and the lights would burst
without stopping, or put it this way, there would
be a desert and he would walk till the blood
was almost gone and he would be a thrasher
with only two sharp sounds, or he would play
the first instrument, something to do with slapping
and something with whistling. He was grateful to the woman
who kept applauding, he bowed to her, he did
that dumb kissing with his hand, only finding
a ratio between the two, the sound of kissing,
the sound of clapping—she would give him a dollar
if she were passing by his bank, the light
was on her and she was the light; like him
she made it appear and disappear, her clapping
in tune with his kissing, in an empty hall
of maybe three hundred seats—they were the last
and walked into the parking lot, a single
Plymouth was there, the moon was full, the frogs
were at it again, such melody, and such, such
gruesome rhythm—he loved all frogs—his head
was in her lap, the car was moving, the cup
was spilling again, this was his major explosion.
Greek Neighbor Home from the Hospital
Where he hung the bird feeder a month ago
a kind of film is covering the thin glass
and where he threw his wine glass down a bleeding heart
is starting to show under the motherly leaves.
He has walked to the wire fence three times
to study my tomatoes and he has smelled
my roses in a downward movement in which
his good leg was one anchor and his cane another.
I can tell by the clicks of triumph and the loud
rattle of his newspaper the Russians
have sold missiles to the Greek Cypriots
and Turkey is going to suffer. As I recall
he put the key to the padlock in the pot
of new lettuce and I can see his glasses
under his chair in case he panics. The wind
makes both of us smile a little and the swallows
for just a second seem to lounge, the sky
is so blue, they almost rest. He leaves his chair
by twirling; he hates their rectitude, and since
the dog is dead, and since his wife went to live
with her daughter again he closes the door by himself
and either sits in the kitchen and falls asleep
over his cane or climbs his eighteen stairs
before he turns the light on—I’ll know which
by the count of thirty, either one of which,
to my way of thinking, is better than the brutal
battles they had, at least for my own s
leep
over the honey locust, before his stroke
a month ago in front of the glass feeder
separating the different kinds of birdseed
into their small compartments without giving
too much away to the poisonous squirrels, poor Greek.
Pennsylvania Bio
I wore a black knit hat
so I could be undistinguished in the war
and carried a small bag
so I could be mistaken for a doctor;
and once in a whorehouse
while waiting for a friend of mine to finish
I examined the madam on the kitchen table;
and I spent Sunday at either the Serbian Club
or the postwar Literary Club on Atwood Street
above the prewar clothing store, and ate
hot sausage sandwiches and cold buttermilk
across the street from the first Carnegie Library
and made plans for the next seventy years. I drove
Andy Warhol to the East Liberty train station
in my father’s 1949 Ford. Believe it or
not I bought a 1950 Buick
thirteen years later for fifteen dollars and drove it
into a junkyard five years after. My first
instrument was a kind of kazoo and that led
naturally to a golden trombone. I was
loyal to my own music for fifty years
though I detested snare drums and tap dancing,
just as I do those singers now who hold
their left fists in the air while holding the microphone
inside their mouths. And I hate short-sleeved shirts
when they wear them with dark neckties, skinny swine
knocking on closed doors; and I had a habit
of counting bricks, a nice obsession compared to
washing hands or touching car doors, it gave me
freedom with walls so I could handle bulging
and sagging when I had to; and one of the summers
I read Steinbeck and made love—in the bedroom—
to my aunt’s cleaning woman in upstate Pennsylvania
and learned to adore the small town with its rows
of stores and trees on the sidewalk and only a short walk
into the country, in this case up a steep hill,
the dogs more sullen the farther up you went,
and Russian and Roman churches below, the sunlight
on the river, the bridge empty, the outer one
half-hidden, I was shocked by the sudden distance,
and I had a Brown’s Beach jacket with a reddish
thorn in one of the pockets, which was my toothpick
for thirty-five years, and a vest to match, and a flattened
acorn I kept in the darkness; and I had a pencil
I used to keep my balance, the edges were eaten,
the lead was gray, the green eraser was worn
down to the metal, and I had a spiral notebook
I kept for emotions, and I folded my money.
Massachusetts Song
That is the education of a tree,
one stick by which morality, aesthetics,
music, and politics are taught,
whether a pecan or plum;
and that the wire,
although I hate to mention the wire,
and reddish apples and limbs so low
they drag on the ground;
and that the confluence where
five branches start, a university
hard by the lonely peach;
and that a nest for the bluebird,
a wooden box with a hole
too small for the sparrow;
and that is the loaded branch of the pitch pine where
I saw the perfect body and heard the song
in secret oh I swear you swallows I swear
you sunlight on the salt grass what the blue jay
called silence what the rose hip
and the dead raccoon called home you crows.
A Rose Between the Sheets
Taffeta for you and taffeta for me, a rose
between the sheets and one sitting on my finger
as if it were a ruben-stein; a dress
you held once in your arms against your face
and one I lifted over your waist and spread
like a noisy pillow; you in your silk and me
in my leather jacket, nothing else, raw silk
for you, cowhide for me, and velvet
on your lips, your cheek on fire, the red of the one
against the red of the other; lustrous, I’d say;
and always bright, and always florid, and ready
always to escape; your marriage for you
and mine for me, wool, wool, in my face
and cotton in my arms, a linen once I touched
with such a silly reverence, and burlap
with the loose weave, the smell of burlap, and crepe,
the way it draped, the way it absorbed the light;
and lace for romance, and corduroy for romance,
and satin for you, and satin for me, and creases
and buttons, a kind of board, I’d say, a bed,
a cushion for your ear, maybe green, maybe
gray for your hair—and blue for me, or peach—
I love the peach—a scarf for you, a scarf
for me, a white carnation for the cold,
a sunburst, a rose of Sharon for the darkness.
Street of the Butchers
It was called the early years in upstate Pennsylvania
or it was called the first long trek with a footlocker
up over his shoulder so he had to bend both knees
at almost every landing. He held his head
sideways, as if for listening, it was called killing
worms, the bells had already started, the second
or third, he thought; by his calculations, the ringing
would stop by the number seven. He thought maybe
almost two seconds for each long ring; he counted
himself among the chosen ones to be in the
bell’s range. He knew he would lie down on his back
after he tried the faucets and opened the windows,
and go to sleep with the sound. It was called
the first concert, the bird in the iron mouth.
Last Home
The name of the alley is Pine Street where the rottweiler
pushed his way into a degrading doghouse
past a filthy towel that served as a floating
door or window to keep out the light. The street
is called Walnut where there is a posted sign
and six or seven refrigerators for sale
in the front yard and two or three boarded-up windows,
and it is Fifth, I think, where I walked through
the mourners in front of the converted synagogue;
and it is one of the hills, Ferry or College,
that I climbed up to see if I could strike a
balance between my leather lung and my sodden
thigh, and which would go first and how long it took
before we could breathe on our own and whether the sycamore
that split the stone sidewalk came by the wind
a half a mile below or it was just planted
for shade and beauty. And how high you had to go
to see both bridges, and where you should stand to hear
the roar, and if you still could hear the ringing.
Larry Levis Visits Easton, PA, During a November Freeze
I said “Dear Larry” as I put down his book, Elegy,
across the street from the Home Energy Center
and its two embellished secular Christmas trees
and its two red wreaths over red ribbon crosses
enshrining a thirty-inch stove in one of its windows
and a fifty-gallon
water heater in the other,
knowing how wise he would have been with the parking lot
and the tree that refused against all odds and all
sane agreements and codicils to let its dead leaves
for God’s sake fall in some kind of trivial decency
and how he would have stopped with me always beside him
to watch a girl in a white fur parka and boots
build the first snowball on Northampton Street she collected
from the hood of a Ford Fairlane underneath that tree
and throw it she thought at a small speed-limit sign
although it landed with a fluff just shy of the twin
painted center lines inducing the three of us,
her lover, Larry, and me to make our own snowballs
from the hoods and fenders of our own Fairlanes although
she threw like none of us and to add to it
she was left-handed, so bless her, may she have
a good job and children and always be free of cancer
and may the two of us scrape some roofs before the
rain relieves us, and may we find gloves for our labor.
Short Words
Some dried-up phlox so old the blue was white
and something like a fireweed and grass
hopeful as always and I with a poison berry
I wanted to eat and make it my morning cracker,
and coffee so sweet I knew I put a sugar
substitute into my cup and milk so sweet
it might have been Carnation, and there was wind,
whether it was the rain coming in or only
a little cleanliness, and in the burn pile
a dead and rusty pine tree halfway sticking
out to remind me of the 1950 Buick
Mike Levey gave me in 1963
and I drove five years later into a junkyard,
and how I lost two jobs and almost three
because I was a little like Amos and longed
only to hear short words and one day a whole
student body waited in the parking lot
while I walked in alone to get my letter
of intent from a nervous college president
with pink fingernails and shaking fingers;
and who was it climbed the six-foot wall by himself
in order to teach his classes the Board of Idiots
at Temple University erected to keep
the Negroes out, and who is still ashamed
after fifty years he turned away from his first
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