loyalty because someone misspelled a word
or didn’t speak French or never had stood with his hand
under his chin supporting the elbow with one
middle finger in front of a gorgeous old
Simone Martini painted on mountain pine;
and this is what Amos taught, that you should rebuke
all liars, straddlers, and accommodators,
all paper rats, all priests with castanets,
and all their scoffing, indifference and silence,
that you should obstruct them and even intervene,
and you should remove the wall and you should grow
your own lilac and you should kiss on the mouth;
dried-out marsh grass, dead lilies, August roses.
Night
If only the bell keeps him alive though that is
an odd way of looking at his new life, then
missing an hour because of sleep or guessing the
time and being off sometimes for two hours
won’t be his undoing, not that alone, though it is
hard to attach yourself to a new lover
and learn how she smooths her dress down or listens
to some kind of voice there or to her own silence
which he also listens to hour after hour,
sometimes lying there so long he thinks the cat
has got her tongue or that the electricity
has stopped, as in a flood, though he says to
himself there has to be another system, a
backup generator slow to crank up, he can even
hear the bell slurring, or dragging, a different sound
but reassuring nonetheless, oh more than
that, a gift in his six-hour crisis, a melodic
stroking, it is new to him, and hearing it when
it is dark and he is freezing, though pleasantly,
but lying awake, and guessing, he sometimes gets it
right on the hour, but sometimes night has just started,
the drunks are only coming home and he has
four or five more hours, the sound is brief,
forbidding, harsh, indifferent, and he is surprised that
he has guessed wrong, a voice has wounded him, wind
has slammed his window shut or his door but he
just lies on his back and even opens his eyes
in the dark, for that is a life too, and he turns
to one side or the other and hangs onto something,
a chair, a windowsill, and waits for the next
shocking stroke and sometimes he changes pillows.
Drowning on the Pamet River
Because of the pull I ended up swimming in the grasses
a hundred yards from nowhere my beloveds
ready to jump in after me a black willow
rushing in to save me—my kind of dolphin—you
think I struggled a yard at a time but I was
nudged a little that’s why my lips were red
instead of blue that’s why I had the words
to “The Dipsy Doodle” still on my tongue and I was
waltzing under your huge white towel your bathrobe
over my head hot tea already burning
my throat that’s why I loved the two Labradors
so much that’s why I kissed you so desperately.
Mexican
for A.M.M.
By holding the mirror above my head your face
was tilted just enough so that the light
came in between the window and the tree
and half the clouds were shining and by twisting
one way then the other first the rays,
though beaten into the tin, half rose above
the painted bricks as if they came from your eyes
and not the other way around and second
your hair changed color since there was red somewhere
and light was the cause, although there were my wrinkles
and there was my stubble since it was already morning,
but when it came to that, by turning the mirror
a little one way half my face was in shadow
and there was a shadow under the tree, a classic
tree shadow, perfect for robins tearing those
living worms apart—if it was April and
there was some air in the ground; and we were looking
ravenous and whimsical, your right hand
was on my shoulder and we were struggling a little
to hold the mirror straight, for topping it off
there was a vertical on either side and
they were on hinges, we could close them like doors
and cover up the center glass or we could
move them back and forth and get a triple
or even quadruple image, we could grieve
three or four times at once and we could kiss
for hours if we held the doors just so,
and it was a kind of relief that we would miss
the lavender rising over the city—you would
call it purple anyhow, you would fight me
on blues, I know—and it was almost a pleasure
that we would miss the thaw, the river rising
and fog and pneumonia and gardens turning red
in the wrong season and ice melting and mud
wherever we walked and lightning storms without
the sound of thunder as if we were deaf and nights
so warm the phoebes were terrified and titmice
were starting to hunt for grasses while we made love.
Paris
As I recall the meal I ate was liver
with mashed potatoes, and out of simple courtesy
I kept what I could in my briefcase or half hidden
under the table; I think an Underwood brought me
two months’ free living and the Polish architect
I sold it to whose teeth the Germans had smashed
at Auschwitz it gave him seven months at least,
depending on other forces. The whole thing
lasted maybe a year for by my reckoning
when I was ready to leave the stores were already
full of new things and they were cleaning the bridges
and polishing the squares. My own time
was somewhere between the Ordeal and the Recovery,
but there was food enough. The one thing
I remember about him we had the same
name in Hebrew though I don’t know what he was called
in Polish—I hope not Gerald—we always walked
after lunch and stopped for coffee. By my
reckoning he was in his forties. I went
to Italy on that money, it was my first
grant, a little hopeless by later standards,
but that only made it easier to practice
deprivation—in one or two years—ketchup
with beans, seven pounds of lamb for a dollar,
bread eight cents a loaf. It was
more loyal that way, I was so stubborn I did it
ten years too long, maybe twenty, it was
my only belief, what I went there for.
Already April
The second day in a row I watched the same
untrimmed drooping woody forsythia
for I was thinking of getting ready, though this time
I couldn’t find the shirt I wanted or even
one dry chair to sit on though I found
a violet for my hair for I was lucky,
counting the first ten houses south of the creek,
and no one had a stump that huge and yellow
poison frothing like that and white moths drowning
in what they thought was soup, and no one studied
the obituaries like that or scattered petals
when he walked through the geese and calmed them down
by talking to the bowleg
ged guards and whispering
something from before the war half almost
joyous half ironic given the fact that
it was already April and no one I loved had
died since early November and this year the bush
turned yellow much too soon, it was so hot
so early, I almost felt cheated, the zone I’m in,
north of Trenton and south of Allentown,
I had been so ashamed and outmaneuvered.
March 27
The hat he bought in 1949 for
fifty cents, he knew it for sure, the scarf
in 1950, for fourteen cents, he planted
his beans three inches apart, two inches deep,
and put a worm in every two holes for he was
giving back and for this purpose he carried
a twenty-ounce can without a label though it had
probably housed asparagus tips or even
French-cut beans itself, and that should be coming
full cycle, and he would get on his knees for that and
let the water take him where it had to, he
was where he wanted to be, his shirt cost a quarter,
his pants cost eighty cents, but that was before
the legs were covered with mud; the can was rusty
and both of his hands were red, he was on a hill
down from the cheap mulberry, the birch
was in a corner by itself, his shoulder
was getting tender but he had fifty more worms
to go—or a hundred—he used a stick and he would
stay there at least an hour—swelling or no swelling—
and he would finish his scraping, God or no God.
August 20–21
In the age of loosestrife
a man walked down then up on the waterway
overwhelmed by the basic weeds in August which
having their last chance they stopped disguising
and flowered one more time he thought though he
may just as well have been thinking of the briefcase,
the first time in six or seven years,
and what it had inside as well as the smoothness
since it was calfskin and a gift from his son
to boot, which broke his heart, and past two small
roses of Sharon, one of the plants which gave him
endless pleasure, ridiculously on the bank of
the waterways as if they somehow were wild,
and weeds to boot, though he knew where they came from and
where the mother was planted, he had walked there so
much and by the color of the flower he
could identify it too exactly the same as
the one up north, exactly the same as the one
behind his outhouse in central Pennsylvania, though
they came in purple too, they must have been planted
to hold the soil down, to give some color, for
now he realized how far what he called the mother was
planted, near some locusts, near an iron fence,
and one of the locusts was eighty feet high, the trunk
was covered with poison ivy almost as far as
the first fork, and on his way back he stopped
by the dusty cornflowers for he was beleaguered and only
blue could help him though they were almost dead,
the way they get, and he was worn out and had to
force himself a little when he got up
from his chair, he found himself rocking for leverage,
it was a kind of joke, and it was funny, the
flag next door, a striped green and brown disc,
and next to that, two houses down, a faded
American, with fifty states, all those who
live near rivers display their flags, it is
the jauntiness, not the patriotism, he has
lost so many things, now he is losing
souls, the New York Times keeps track of that,
here is the carrot, here is the snowflake ragweed
he hung on another fork, it is weird that
one day it’s in the business section, one day
it’s in the Metro, here he is strewing his sage
and here he is strewing his coneflower, there’s a daisy
and he doesn’t know what it stands for though he strews it
more than he does the others, everyone has
his own water, sore decayer, he stands
above the spillway and he walks back as he did
a thousand times, the pain is in his knee,
he loves the wetness, he hates the violent sneezing.
This Life
for A.M.M.
Mostly I opened my napkin with a flair
and held my two hands neatly in my lap
or tapped the spoon as if I were deep in thought,
and once or twice I worked on a small fish
until the bones were free of almost everything
resembling this life for I was against corruption
of any kind and I ate pears and apples
until I almost exploded, and on my way
to Sarah Lawrence College in early September,
1997, I broke a white cloud in
half, through one of my open windows and watched
it change two times before I was over the bridge,
struggling to see in my mirror, and I would have given
you your half except it was gone in a minute,
just like the phlox I gave you and the rose
that turned to dust when I touched it; mostly I drove
close to the side of the road for I was careful
of all the exits and I turned at the last
second or I would have drifted through God knows what
blocks of pure Spanish with my Italian lips
looking for north and slowing down my guess is
at every corner and breathing a little since water
was gone from my life—or would have been gone—if I hadn’t
found my exit, and I could concentrate now
on whether the petals were evenly dispersed
and whether the leaves were shiny or not and what
loves acid and what is hairy and what is lacy
and when it is good for eating and should you drink it
and if it was streaked with green or spotted with purple
and if it was sweet and vernal, the cloud I gave you.
Snowdrop
There had to be more than one day of rain
and temperatures in the fifties, but even more
there had to be a letup for us to go out
with one umbrella between the four of us
and give up our argument for a minute
for one of us even to notice; and since she
came from one zone north of us and there was
a catch in her voice when she bent down we stopped
short in the rain to see the green unlacing
the white, of all places in zone six,
where half our ideas come from and umbrellas
are used with a vengeance; though as I remember
it was more like a cry and so loving that
I was a little jealous, and when she touched me,
and her way is a hand on the back, loverly
the way she gets, I coughed for comfort and even
the purple stones were a comfort, the way they bulge
like buttresses, and since the mournful Chow,
of all the dogs that ruined our walk, only stared
and if he barked it was almost silent we had
time in between to look at the white sycamores
and balance wood with water and hate umbrellas.
Last Blue
You want to get the color blue right,
just drink some blue milk from a blue cup;
wait for the blue light of morning
or evening
with its blue aftermath.
You want to understand,
look at the parking lines outside my window,
the neon moon outside Jabberwocky’s.
And funk! You have to know funk.
A touch of blue at the base of the spine;
long threads going into your heart;
a steaming fountain you pour into your own bowl.
My dead sister’s eyes!
Those of her porcelain twin at the Lambertville Flea,
twenty dollars a day for the small table,
all the merde you need to get you across the river.
And one kind of blue for a robin’s egg;
and one kind of blue for a bottle of ink.
Two minds to fathom the difference.
Your earrings which as far as I can see
are there as much to play with as to look at.
Your blue pencil
which makes your eyes Egyptian. Bluebells, bluebirds,
from Austin, Texas, the dead hackster
who drank potassium, Governor Bush
who drank milk of magnesia; a chorus of saints
from Wylie Avenue and one kind of blue
for my first prayer shawl and one kind of blue for the robe
Fra Lippo gave to Mary. Blue from Mexico
and blue from Greece, that’s where the difference lay
between them, in the blues; a roomful of scholars,
in Montreal one year, in New York another,
that is blue, blue was their speech, blue
were their male and female neckties, their food was blue,
their cars were rented, Christmas lights
were in the lobby, one of the bars had peanuts
in all the urns and on the upper floors
the hospitality rooms were crowded with livid
sapphire cobalt faces—I was blue
going into the tunnel, I am blue every night
at three or four o’clock; our herring was blue,
we ate it with Russian rye and boiled potatoes,
and in the summer fresh tomatoes, and coffee
mixed with sugar and milk; I sat in a chair
so close to Sonny Terry I could hear
him mumble, the criticism he made
of his own sorrow, but I was that close to Pablo
Casals in 1950, talk about blue, and
though I left it a thousand times I stood—
since I didn’t have a seat—in front of an open
window of Beth Israel in Philadelphia
Blessed as We Were Page 3