with a white-haired guard who offers himself
as our informal guide. So we move slowly,
the three of us, along row upon row of graves.
Everyone, it seems, is here.
It’s quiet, and hot, and the street sounds
of Paris can’t reach. The guard wants to steer us
to the grave of the man who invented the submarine,
and Maurice Chevalier’s grave. And the grave
of the 28-year-old singer, Nonnie,
covered with a mound of red roses.
I want to see the graves of the writers.
My son sighs. He doesn’t want to see any of it.
Has seen enough. He’s passed beyond boredom
into resignation. Guy de Maupassant; Sartre; Sainte-Beuve;
Gautier; the Goncourts; Paul Verlaine and his old comrade,
Charles Baudelaire. Where we linger.
None of these names, or graves, have anything to do
with the untroubled lives of my son and the guard.
Who can this morning talk and joke together
in the French language under a fine sun.
But there are several names chiseled on Baudelaire’s stone,
and I can’t understand why.
Charles Baudelaire’s name is between that of his mother,
who loaned him money and worried all her life
about his health, and his stepfather, a martinet
he hated and who hated him and everything he stood for.
“Ask your friend,” I say. So my son asks.
It’s as if he and the guard are old friends now,
and I’m there to be humored.
The guard says something and then lays
one hand over the other. Like that. Does it
again. One hand over the other. Grinning. Shrugging.
My son translates. But I understand.
“Like a sandwich, Pop,” my son says. “A Baudelaire sandwich.”
At which the three of us walk on.
The guard would as soon be doing this as something else.
He lights his pipe. Looks at his watch. It’s almost time
for his lunch, and a glass of wine.
“Ask him,” I say, “if he wants to be buried
in this cemetery when he dies.
Ask him where he wants to be buried.”
My son is capable of saying anything.
I recognize the words tombeau and mort
in his mouth. The guard stops.
It’s clear his thoughts have been elsewhere.
Underwater warfare. The music hall, the cinema.
Something to eat and the glass of wine.
Not corruption, no, and the falling away.
Not annihilation. Not his death.
He looks from one to the other of us.
Who are we kidding? Are we making a bad joke?
He salutes and walks away.
Heading for a table at an outdoor café.
Where he can take off his cap, run his fingers
through his hair. Hear laughter and voices.
The heavy clink of silverware. The ringing
of glasses. Sun on the windows.
Sun on the sidewalk and in the leaves.
Sun finding its way onto his table. His glass. His hands.
Next Door
The woman asked us in for pie. Started
telling about her husband, the man who
used to live there. How he had to be carted
off to the nursing home. He wanted
to cover this fine oak ceiling
with cheap insulation, she said. That was the first
sign of anything being wrong. Then he had
a stroke. A vegetable now. Anyway,
next, the game warden stuck the barrel
of his pistol into her son’s ear.
And cocked the hammer. But the kid
wasn’t doing that much wrong, and the game
warden is the kid’s uncle, don’t you see?
So everybody’s on the outs. Everybody’s
nuts and nobody’s speaking to anybody
these days. Here’s a big bone the son
found at the mouth of the river.
Maybe it’s a human bone? An arm bone
or something? She puts it back on the window-
sill next to a bowl of flowers.
The daughter stays in her room all day,
writing poems about her attempted suicide.
That’s why we don’t see her. Nobody sees
her anymore. She tears up the poems
and writes them over again. But one of these
days she’ll get it right. Would you believe it —
the car threw a rod? That black car
that stands like a hearse
in the yard next door. The engine winched out,
swinging from a tree.
The Caucasus: A Romance
Each evening an eagle soars down from the snowy
crags and passes over camp. It wants to see
if it’s true what they say back in Russia: the only
career open to young men these days
is the military. Young men of good family, and a few
others—older, silent men—men who’ve blotted their
copybooks, as they call it out here. Men like
the Colonel, who lost his ear in a duel.
Dense forests of pine, alder, and birch. Torrents
that fall from dizzying precipices. Mist. Clamorous
rivers. Mountains covered with snow even now, even
in August. Everywhere, as far as the eye can reach,
profusion. A sea of poppies. Wild buckwheat that
shimmers in the heat, that waves and rolls to the horizon.
Panthers. Bees as big as a boy’s fist. Bears that won’t
get out of a man’s way, that will tear a body to
pieces and then go back to the business of rooting
and chuffing like hogs in the rich undergrowth. Clouds
of white butterflies that rise, then settle and
rise again on slopes thick with lilac and fern.
Now and then a real engagement with the enemy.
Much howling from their side, cries, the drum
of horses’ hooves, rattle of musket fire, a Chechen’s ball
smashing into a man’s breast, a stain that blossoms
and spreads, that ripples over the white uniform like crimson
petals opening. Then the chase begins: hearts racing,
minds emptying out entirely as the Emperor’s young
men, dandies all, gallop over plains, laughing,
yelling their lungs out. Or else they urge
their lathered horses along forest trails, pistols
ready. They burn Chechen crops, kill Chechen stock,
knock down the pitiful villages. They’re soldiers,
after all, and these are not maneuvers. Shamil,
the bandit chieftain, he’s the one they want most.
At night, a moon broad and deep as a serving dish
sallies out from behind the peaks. But this
moon is only for appearance’s sake. Really, it’s
armed to the teeth, like everything else out here.
When the Colonel sleeps, he dreams of a drawing room —
one drawing room in particular—oh, clean and elegant,
most comfortable drawing room! Where friends lounge
in plush chairs, or on divans, and drink from
little glasses of tea. In the dream, it is always
Thursday, 2—4. There is a piano next to the window
that looks out on Nevsky Prospect. A young woman
finishes playing, pauses, and turns to the polite
applause. But in the dream it is the Circassian
woman with a saber cut across her face. His friends
draw back in horror. They lower their eyes, bow,
they mutter. In Petersburg they said that out here,
in the Caucasus, sunsets are everything.
But this is not true; sunsets are not enough.
In Petersburg they said the Caucasus is a country that gives
rise to legend, where heroes are born every day.
They said, long ago, in Petersburg, that reputations
were made, and lost, in the Caucasus. A gravely
beautiful place, as one of the Colonel’s men put it.
The officers serving under him will return
home soon, and more young men will come to take
their places. After the new arrivals dismount
to pay their respects, the Colonel will keep them
waiting a time. Then fix them with a stern but
fatherly gaze, these slim young men with tiny
mustaches and boisterous high spirits, who look
at him and wonder, who ask themselves what it is
he’s running from. But he’s not running. He likes it
here, in the Caucasus, after a fashion. He’s even
grown used to it—or nearly. There’s plenty to do,
God knows. Plenty of grim work in the days, and months,
ahead. Shamil is out there in the mountains somewhere —
or maybe he’s on the Steppes. The scenery is lovely,
you can be sure, and this but a rough record
of the actual and the passing.
A Forge, and a Scythe
One minute I had the windows open
and the sun was out. Warm breezes
blew through the room.
(I remarked on this in a letter.)
Then, while I watched, it grew dark.
The water began whitecapping.
All the sport-fishing boats turned
and headed in, a little fleet.
Those wind-chimes on the porch
blew down. The tops of our trees shook.
The stove pipe squeaked and rattled
around in its moorings.
I said, “A forge, and a scythe.”
I talk to myself like this.
Saying the names of things —
capstan, hawser, loam, leaf, furnace.
Your face, your mouth, your shoulder
inconceivable to me now!
Where did they go? It’s like
I dreamed them. The stones we brought
home from the beach lie face up
on the windowsill, cooling.
Come home. Do you hear?
My lungs are thick with the smoke
of your absence.
The Pipe
The next poem I write will have firewood
right in the middle of it, firewood so thick
with pitch my friend will leave behind
his gloves and tell me, “Wear these when you
handle that stuff.” The next poem
will have night in it, too, and all the stars
in the Western Hemisphere; and an immense body
of water shining for miles under a new moon.
The next poem will have a bedroom
and living room for itself, skylights,
a sofa, a table and chairs by the window,
a vase of violets cut just an hour before lunch.
There’ll be a lamp burning in the next poem;
and a fireplace where pitch-soaked
blocks of fir flame up, consuming one another.
Oh, the next poem will throw sparks!
But there won’t be any cigarettes in that poem.
I’ll take up smoking the pipe.
Listening
It was a night like all the others. Empty
of everything save memory. He thought
he’d got to the other side of things.
But he hadn’t. He read a little
and listened to the radio. Looked out the window
for a while. Then went upstairs. In bed
realized he’d left the radio on.
But closed his eyes anyway. Inside the deep night,
as the house sailed west, he woke up
to hear voices murmuring. And froze.
Then understood it was only the radio.
He got up and went downstairs. He had
to pee anyway. A little rain
that hadn’t been there before was
falling outside. The voices
on the radio faded and then came back
as if from a long way. It wasn’t
the same station any longer. A man’s voice
said something about Borodin,
and his opera Prince Igor. The woman
he said this to agreed, and laughed.
Began to tell a little of the story.
The man’s hand drew back from the switch.
Once more he found himself in the presence
of mystery. Rain. Laughter. History.
Art. The hegemony of death.
He stood there, listening.
In Switzerland
First thing to do in Zurich
is take the No. 5 “Zoo” trolley
to the end of the track,
and get off. Been warned about
the lions. How their roars
carry over from the zoo compound
to the Flutern Cemetery.
Where I walk along
the very beautiful path
to James Joyce’s grave.
Always the family man, he’s here
with his wife, Nora, of course.
And his son, Giorgio,
who died a few years ago.
Lucia, his daughter, his sorrow,
still alive, still confined
in an institution for the insane.
When she was brought the news
of her father’s death, she said:
What is he doing under the ground, that idiot?
When will he decide to come out?
He’s watching us all the time.
I lingered a while. I think
I said something aloud to Mr Joyce.
I must have. I know I must have.
But I don’t recall what,
now, and I’ll have to leave it at that.
A week later to the day, we depart
Zurich by train for Lucerne.
But early that morning I take
the No. 5 trolley once more
to the end of the line.
The roar of the lions falls over
the cemetery, as before.
The grass has been cut.
I sit on it for a while and smoke.
Just feels good to be there,
close to the grave. I didn’t
have to say anything this time.
That night we gambled at the tables
at the Grand Hotel-Casino
on the very shore of Lake Lucerne.
Took in a strip show later.
But what to do with the memory
of that grave that came to me
in the midst of the show,
under the muted, pink stage light?
Nothing to do about it.
Or about the desire that came later,
crowding everything else out,
like a wave.
Still later, we sat on a bench
under some linden trees, under stars.
Made love with each other.
Reaching into each other’s clothes for it.
The lake a few steps away.
Afterwards, dipped our hands
into the cold water.
Then walked back to our hotel,
happy and tired, ready to sleep
for eight hours.
All of us, all of us, all of us
trying to save
our immortal souls, some ways
seemingly more round-
about and mysterious
than others. We’re having
a
good time here. But hope
all will be revealed soon.
V
A Squall
Shortly after three p.m. today a squall
hit the calm waters of the Strait.
A black cloud moving fast,
carrying rain, driven by high winds.
The water rose up and turned white.
Then, in five minutes, was as before —
blue and most remarkable, with just
a little chop. It occurs to me
it was this kind of squall
that came upon Shelley and his friend,
Williams, in the Gulf of Spezia, on
an otherwise fine day. There they were,
running ahead of a smart breeze,
wind-jamming, crying out to each other,
I want to think, in sheer exuberance.
In Shelley’s jacket pockets, Keats’s poems,
and a volume of Sophocles!
Then something like smoke on the water.
A black cloud moving fast,
carrying rain, driven by high winds.
Black cloud
hastening along the end
of the first romantic period
in English poetry.
My Crow
A crow flew into the tree outside my window.
It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow.
Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow.
Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore,
after the battle. This was just a crow.
That never fit in anywhere in its life,
or did anything worth mentioning.
It sat there on the branch for a few minutes.
Then picked up and flew beautifully
out of my life.
The Party
Last night, alone, 3000 miles away from the one
I love, I turned the radio on to some jazz
and made a huge bowl of popcorn
with lots of salt on it. Poured butter over it.
Turned out the lights and sat in a chair
in front of the window with the popcorn and
a can of Coke. Forgot everything important
in the world while I ate popcorn and looked out
at a heavy sea, and the lights of town.
The popcorn runny with butter, covered with
salt. I ate it up until there was nothing
left except a few Old Maids. Then
washed my hands. Smoked a couple more cigarettes
All of Us Page 10