Elder blues, right?
Under Your Wing
for PAUL CELAN
Blue rolls over me
as it always did
even against my will
and I am leaning again
against one of the fake pillars
of the House of God
and later the House of Peace
House of Good Morning, House of Good Night
sitting on a red pipe
in the September sunlight
in my new wool suit
among the helpless and bored
a Clark bar in my pocket
part of the debris too
of my existence—
or would you prefer
the anguish I
carried from place to place
neatly folded and perfectly creased
in my small velvet bag?
Punching Holes
There’s no right and wrong here
but I just want you to know that
Tu Fu in the eighth century
and two of my students in the twentieth
confounded fireflies with distant stars
whereas my first take was to conflate them
with the holy sparks buried in the physical,
a figure basic to southern French Kabbalah
though I see now that the star collusion
was more literal and mine more in the realm of Thought
and is more a stretch, even as it’s nice to think
of the small insect as a part of Jewish mysticism.
Think of the bottle as containing everything.
Think of the lid and how we punctured the holes.
This had to be the first zoo, although there were no leopards.
Never
No sense burning the red ants
with your father’s Zippo lighter
when the freezing weather will do it,
and both red and black will soon be curling
and freezing, your friends, your enemies,
as the Fahrenheit goes from 80 down to
28 overnight in a shift that amazes
the weather gurus in front of their maps.
It’s better to sink with Ophelia
in her crown of weeds
singing, in my case, songs from the thirties
or better yet to lie down with Lear
on Chalk Mountain, repeating what the Galilean said
and give, if you can, your last dollar
to a good cause or a half an apple
to someone living on garbage
or lying down to sleep
on the steps of St. Patrick’s
or the First Romanian Shul on Rivington
saying again and again
in your grandfather’s language,
he of the greasy white curls,
never, never, never, never.
The Late Celan
The late Celan
eating God
eating Jews eating
flies eating
corpses eating mud
eating blood eating
paper eating
Kafka eating
das Schloss eating
Melina eating
the clock eating
the Germans eating
their supper in the square
essing and fressing
eating worms eating germs
eating ham eating flan,
eating Clarissa, pig of my heart
thanks to my love
and her darling son
thanks to Celan
thanks to August
thanks to May Day
not Labor Day
and white shoes
and the news
down with Ronald
down with Donald
down with priests
down with Cohens
down with tweets
and student loans
and what did he love
he loved the field mouse
and the lizard
he loved the snow
and the blizzard
and the breaststroke
the legs that scissored
and ah, the Seine
his death again
and he loved she
Ilana Shmueli
and Mandelshtam
and a cat named Lily
and she loved him
and sometimes they kissed
Friday cold noodles
Friday cold night
Shabbos dinner
by candlelight
who knew my gimp
all day Saturday
who knew my limp
a davening imp,
a demon, a wizard,
again the lizard
with bulging eyes
freezing to death
no surprise
how wounded he was
performing for Heidegger
a friend of Goebbels
John Skelton
an early rimester
I’m writing like
gefilte fish
Lake Erie pike
Mel Brooks
hotsy-totsy
a sick and brilliant Jewish poet
reading to a Nazi.
Warbler
The dead warbler started to sing
as she whom I love
bent down to pick him up with two reluctant fingers,
maybe the small finger (of the left hand)
curling, as at dinner,
and carry him home
and quietly put him
into a see-through plastic bag
as she did for salmon and roast chicken and pie.
I want to say “alas, poor warbler”
but warblers die too,
of disease, of age, of accidents,
as all birds do.
And like all birds
they sing when they’re buried,
in this case in the freezer,
a cold graveyard,
two cartons of ice cream,
one vanilla, one dulce de leche,
to remember him by.
He was lifelike stiff and unapologetic
and he sang from time to time, dead or not,
a “rising trill,” as the book says,
in the upper levels where the worms are.
At the Memorial of Al Dazzo, 1939–2017
for AL DAZZO AND FOR ROSS GAY
Weird the thing about fathers
Ross said to me,
the deacon said his father was talking to him
in Heaven by which he meant, we thought, the Father,
but maybe he did mean his father, the deacon’s,
or maybe Al, his father,
who sold apples during the Depression,
in Brooklyn, I think, and I
seeing the crucifix on the wall, Jesus
in some kind of skirt, I said
“that is the craziest Jew of all,” it was
the moment he cried his cry, the “father
why have you forsaken me,” the 22nd
Psalm, first four words, before he drank
the sour wine, before he turned to smoke,
before he walked through fire, which purifies
as it destroys, it is that which nothing else
is so free as, that which is alive, and quick,
and quick, for where there’s smoke there’s fire
and where there’s fire there’s smoke
and where there’s a shower, in Poland, there’s a smokestack
and when there’s IG Farbin there’s Zyklon B,
and what about Heine—his “softly flows the Rhine”
became my soft the Delaware I used to swim across
to the island and back,
I was younger and happier then
walking up old 611, my towel
flung over my shoulder, my house lit up,
hungry, starving, for peach pie,
a little vanilla piled
on, dear Rossky.
Acknowledgments
The new poems in this volume have appeared or will appear in the following journals:
American Poetry Review: “No Kissing There,” “Hearts Amiss,” “Wet Peach,” “Under Your Wing,” “Knucklebones,” “Frutta da Looma,” “Punching Holes”
Birmingham Review: “Baby Rat,” “The Cost of Love,” “March 17th”
Five Points: “Red and Swollen”
The New Yorker: “Adonis,” “No House,” “Warbler”
Plume: “Lake Country”
Poetry Magazine: “Cherries,” “Hebrish,” “Torn Coat”
I’d like to thank my editor, Jill Bialosky, and her assistant, Drew Weitman, for their guidance and support. I also want to thank my partner, Anne Marie Macari, and my assistant, Chase Berggrun, for their endless help and support.
Index of Titles and First Lines
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
59 N. Sitgreaves, 114
86th Birthday at MacDowell, 159
112th Street (1980), 183
1946 there was an overcoat, 111
1946, 165
A blind baby rat Luke and Melina tell me, 233
A part of me eats her fingers and a part of me, 116
A saltwater pond in the Hamptons near David, 72
A wet towel so many times you’d think, 175
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, 1946, 49
Across a space peopled with stars I am, 80
Adonis, 249
After Ritsos, 181
After the Church Reading Against the War, 182
Against the Crusades, 8
Albatross 1, 77
Aliens, 135
All she wants is for you to stay away from her egg, 91
Alone, 51
Already April, 33
Always it’s putting two things together, 214
American Heaven, 72
Among the whatnots and the barnyard animals, 243
Ancient Chinese Egg, 220
Apt. 5 FW I, 161
As far as clocks—and it is time to think of them—, 56
As far as love, 251
As far as the color red, 42
As far as the hiphole, every night I dug, 196
As for those who face their death by wind, 127
As I recall the meal I ate was liver, 32
As if one poet then who was in his sixties, 124
As if some creature down there was having a smoke, 114
Asphodel, 121
At last I’m taking the accusation, 244
At the confluence of tea roses and Russian sage, 236
At the horizon line there was a touch of pink, 217
At the Memorial of Al Dazzo, 1939–2017, 268
August 20–21, 35
Aunt Bess died from forgetting and when I, 204
Azaleas, 200
Baby Rat, 233
Battle of the Bulge, 97
Beautiful, The, 254
Because of the pull I ended up swimming in the grasses, 29
Before Eating, 117
Bejewels, 95
Bess, Zickel, Warhol, Arendt, 204
Bio, 96
Bio III, 166
Bio IV, 169
Bio VIII, 195
Blessed as We Were, 251
Blue Like That, 113
Blue Particles, 197
Blue rolls over me, 261
Bolero, 86
Box of Cigars, 70
Broken bottles brought him to Mickle Street, 150
Broken Glass, 150
Bronze Roosters, 112
Burning, 63
By holding the mirror above my head your face, 30
Camargue, The, 231
Castro himself—you won’t believe it—ate Wheaties, 225
Cherries, 238
Cigars, 93
Cost of Love, The, 234
Cost, 65
Counting, 162
D., 173
Day of Grief, 163
Death by Wind, 127
Died in the Mills, 144
Diogenes, 109
Diogenes for me and sleeping in a bathtub, 109
Divine Nothingness, 190
Dolly, 172
Domestic, 140
Don’t ever think of Coney Island, 197
Don’t think that being a left-handed nightingale was all legerdemain, 8
Driven, 100
Droit de Faim, 164
Drowning on the Pamet River, 29
Dumb, 136
Durante, 187
E.P. 1, 76
Elder Blues, 260
Everyone gets her day, Maryanne whom I, 185
Exordium and Terminus, 55
Fall 1960, 225
February 22, 133
Finally daisies and tomatoes, I have settled for, 75
Fleabane again and I have another year, 136
For D., 153
For only three dollars I was able to see, 88
For sleeplessness, your head facedown, your shoulder blades, 87
For the Bee, 50
Forfor, 258
Free Lunch, 184
Frogs, 141
From the beginning it was the money, how I, 65
From Wackadoodle, 257
Frutta da Looma, 248
Gelato, 219
Ghost, 198
Gimbel’s, 88
Given how deer are pests now, 179
Golden Rule, 91
Good to lie down in a yard of shadowing bimbo trees, 192
Gracehoper, 137
Grand Hotel, 61
Greece, the light of my life, but there was a man who, 101
Greek Neighbor Home from the Hospital, 16
Hamlet Naked, 223
Having outlived Allen I am the one who, 149
He kept a hog in Utah, 216
He reached inside his chest for understanding, 241
He was dead so he was only a puff, 121
He who has a forehead, 191
He Who Is Filthy, 191
Hearts, 68
Hearts Amiss, 235
Hebrish, 236
Hell, 177
Hemingway’s House, 81
Here I am again and what brings me here, 186
Here’s to your life, 117
Hiphole, 196
His Cup, 13
His song was only a dot—a flash—if anything, 13
Homesick, 102
How could I ever lie down like that, 187
How dumb he was to wipe the blood from his eye, 143
How dumb it was to put my box of records, 260
How fitting it was to see a fat and evil cat, 212
How love of every single human creature, 112
How on the river the loosestrife has taken over, 135
How when I cut the giant Norway maple down, 138
How wrong it was to look at those hearts incised, 235
How you like these threads, said white spider, 59
Hydrangea, 58
I counted wrong in the other poem, 220
I created an unassailable Utopia amidst Max Factor the powder, 169
I don’t give a damn who gets a free lunch, 184
I don’t know one thing from another but I, 152
I don’t want to go to Hemingway’s house, 81
I forgave him the debt of having to explain, 249
I grew up with bituminous in my mouth, 47
I had to sit on the steel railroad tracks, 82
I had two uncles who were proletarians, 62
I have been here so long I remember Salazar, 146
I have had the honor of being imprisoned, the, 49
I have slept with a Crow and a Robin and it’s, 157
I have to say I can’t find the Book of Brightness, 190
I hung onto her likeness and centered it, 158
I lost my rage while helping a beetle recover, 154
I loved your sweet neck but I loved your shoulder blades more, 155
I myself a bottom-feeder I knew what, 90
I never heard no, 254
I once planned a room for pure silence, 210
I said “Dear Larry” as I put down his book, Elegy, 24
I tried either one or two but they were stale, 70
I was alone and I could do what I wanted—, 51
I was eating half a chicken and keeping, 208
I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window, 163
I was pleased by blue hydrangea because at, 58
I was reading again and French apples, 102
I was thinking about pears—or you were—I, 52
I was waiting to try out one of my inventions, 238
I will go down in history without a hotel, 166
I woke up determined to turn everything, 227
I wore a black knit hat, 18
I would be happy if one of them would offer his, 84
Iberia, 146
Ich Bin Jude, 199
If I had to I could have banged my head, 234
If only the bell keeps him alive though that is, 28
If you grew rich, as you say, by finding, 257
In Beauty Bright, 142
In beauty bright and such it was like Blake’s, 142
In New York the Second Avenue Deli is on, 258
In Pittsburgh we used to say, “Tomorrow we strike, 83
In the age of loosestrife, 35
In the museum of thumbs there was one red, 232
In the way Ovid lectured a green grasshopper, 137
In Time, 56
In your rendition of The Year 25–25, 55
Independence Day, 147
Ink Spots, The, 54
Iris, 60
It didn’t work that the bores I grew up with, 160
It is not knowing what a mulberry sidewalk looks like, 10
It was a theater west on 47th, 223
It was another one of his petite visions, 69
It was as if his gills were going in and out, 140
It was called the early years in upstate Pennsylvania, 22
It was easy to call it that because of the, 177
It was Galway kept talking about the sidewalk, 182
It was while he was collapsing under the weight of, 213
It wasn’t me but someone else in his eighties, 180
It wasn’t only Eleanor I kissed, 239
It were the ink splats from a writing machine, 95
It’s not just Larry who keeps going to, 201
It’s true that in spite of the sign that said, 172
Journey, 143
June, 48
Justice, 71
Kingdom, 42
Knucklebones, 247
L’Chaim, 92
La Pergola, 75
Lake Country, 240
Larry, 216
Blessed as We Were Page 16