by Unknown
“But soon a third stranger came along, saw them and stopped them. This one brandished a sword and said, in a tone of the greatest moral indignation and self-righteousness: ‘O heartless humans! Both of you riding one weak and young pony! What ruthless cruelty toward the dumb and inoffensive beast! Dismount before you kill him, or I will report you to both the civil and sacred authorities!’ Both father and son dismounted hurriedly, and clumsily (for it is difficult for two to dismount from a horse at the same time). ‘Something is always wrong,’ said the father aloud, as he dismounted and the stranger, satisfied, departed.
“ ‘Hans,’ said the father, ‘we will both walk and the pony will walk beside us. Then perhaps all will be content.’ No sooner had he said this than a fourth stranger appeared. Hans drew back and wished to hide in the wood until the stranger passed, especially since the newcomer carried a whip, and a gun, and a sword. But the father decided against hiding. ‘What is wrong with you?’ said the stranger in a voice whose kindliness stunned them with surprise. ‘Why don’t you ride the pony? Why are you so stupid? What is a pony for, if not to ride?’ Then the stranger passed on, before they could tell him of the difficulties involved in riding the pony.
“Desperate by this time, the farmer said: ‘Son, only one choice remains. If either of us ride the pony, we will remain at the mercy of these denunciations of the first, second, and third class. We must carry the pony, then perhaps all sides will be satisfied.’ ‘The pony may not like it, Father.’ ‘He is silent. If he says anything, we will whip him.’ And so they lifted the pony on their backs, although it was a difficult and clumsy thing to do.”
“Father,” I said at this point, in disbelief, “you are inventing this story. You ought not to tell me falsehoods. No one carries a pony upon his back. That is ridiculous.” My father was greatly angered and slapped me savagely, making me howl with pain. “Don’t ever call your father a liar,” he said. “It’s enough that your mother does so.”
“Finish the story, Father, please,” I said meekly, weeping.
“After a slow and painful effort, the farmer and Hans managed to reach the market place, carrying the pony upon their backs and looking very strange. In the market place, idlers were congregated, who, when they saw this sight, began to laugh and their laughter increased in intensity and volume. ‘What are you good-for-nothings laughing about?’ said the father, challenging them, while Hans in shame hid his head in his father’s sleeve. The leader, the biggest wiseacre of all, answered: ‘Why, you damned fool! Whoever heard of carrying a pony? A pony is supposed to carry you.’ Their laughter increased still more at this sally, and the farmer felt completely helpless—at the end of his rope—and besides he could not stand being laughed at, being very sensitive. So he took out his revolver, which he had had in his pocket all the while, and—bang! bang! bang!—shot the pony, shot his son, and, shrugging his shoulders, and brushing the hair back from his forehead, shot himself.”
My mother entered at this moment and began to argue with my father for telling the child such a story, and soon all the hate between them made each bring up past wrongs on each other’s part, and in their heat they forgot my presence and spoke shamelessly and brutally, while I wept loudly, watching them, weeping because of the sad end of the story, because they were denouncing each other and because I had been slapped for calling my father a liar.
(1938)
DAVID IGNATOW (1914–1997)
I sink back upon the ground, expecting to die. A voice speaks out of my ear, You are not going to die, you are being changed into a zebra. You will have black and white stripes up and down your back and you will love people as you do not now. That is why you will be changed into a zebra that people will tame and exhibit in a zoo. You will be a favorite among children and you will love the children in return whom you do not love now. Zoo keepers will make a pet of you because of your round, sad eyes and musical bray, and you will love your keeper as you do not now. All is well, then, I tell myself silently, listening to the voice in my ear speak to me of my future. And what will happen to you, voice in my ear, I ask silently, and the answer comes at once: I will be your gentle, musical bray that will help you as a zebra all your days. I will mediate between the world and you, and I will learn to love you as a zebra whom I did not love as a human being.
(1978)
The Story of Progress
The apple I held and bit into was for me. The friend who spoke to me was for me. My father and mother were for me. The little girl with brown hair and brown eyes who looked and smiled shyly and ran away was for me, although I never dared follow her because I feared she would not understand that she was for me alone.
The bed I slept in was for me. The clothes I wore were for me. The kindness I showed a dead bird one winter by placing it in my warm pocket was for me. The time I went to the rescue of my sister from a bully was to prove myself, for me. The music on the radio, the books I was beginning to read, all were for me.
I had hold of a good thing, me, and I was going to give of my contentment to others, for me, and when I gave, it was taken with a smile that I recognized as mine, when I would be given. I had found that for me was everybody’s way, and I became anxious and uncertain. I held back a bit when I exchanged post card pictures of baseball players, with a close look at what I was getting in return to make sure I was getting what I could like, and when my parents bought me a new pair of gloves after I had lost the first pair I was sure that for me was not as pure in feeling as the first time, because I was very sorry that my parents had to spend an extra dollar to replace my lost gloves, and so when I looked up at the night stars, for me remained silent, and when my grandmother died, for me became a little boy sent on an errand of candles to place at the foot and head of her coffin.
(1998)
BARBARA GUEST (1920–)
Color
He believed if the woman on the right moved over to the left he could place her into the frame where a meadow lay beyond her. But it did not work out that way. The moon came up too early. The glow the moon cast lit up the shadow behind the wheelbarrow. No one could advance in the shattering moonlight. The film begins to take the shape of a milk bottle with the heavy cream on top.
He blamed everything on the use of color. The heavy woman who played the woodcutter’s wife wanted to lay some emeralds on her bosom. They are the color of trees, she says. The skin of the leading actor was the color of ferns which do not blend with the pastel process that turns the clouds to pastel. The girl’s knee is supposed to be grey when she bends it, not the color of blood. The voice coming from the elderberries is colorless, indicating melancholy. He remembers the alluring depths in film without color when tears were dark as drops falling from a raven’s mouth. Once again his efforts have been emptied of meaning.
(1999)
JAMES SCHUYLER (1923–1991)
Two Meditations
Gladioli slant in the border as though stuck not growing there and around the square white wood beehive the bees drone like the layers of a bulb at the center of which is a viscous shoot. Small green apples hang from the small trees and under the skinny boughs ducks a skinny boy in wool swim trunks steering a lawn mower. Damp blades of chopped off grass and clover leaves stick to his shins. The mower ceases, the bees whirl their routes higher and he drinks from the nozzle of a hose. The gravel spurts under the wheels of a car, which, coming from between the lilac hedges, discloses itself as a laundry truck.
Out of the gray bay gray rocks, close spaced and each a little black green north tree forest. This became denser until it was the color of a hole. The trawler anchored and they scrambled ashore in an inlet closed by a little white sand beach like a Negro’s very white palm, the guide experienced and dignified last in laced boots with moccasin bottoms. The clarity of the water reliced a dead tree while he boiled great lake trout in a galvanized bucket on a resinous fire. A green flame. Everyone planned to change his ‘way of life’ until he tasted the fish, which was tasteless. Scales on the
dull sand like garbage, or rain. It began raining, a drop at a time, big as cod liver oil capsules. The two boys’ knees lichened and their shrills faded high and out into the falls of shot grouse curving into a November wet match stick field. Burrs, unfinished houses.
(1953)
Wonderful World
for Anne Waldman
July 23, 1969
“I,” I mused, “yes, I,” and turned to the fenestrations of the night beyond one of Ada and Alex Katz’s windows. Deep in Prince Street lurked thin sullen fumes of Paris green; some great spotty Danes moved from room to room, their tails went whack whack in a kindly way and their mouths were full of ruses (roses). Flames in red glass pots, unlikely flowers, a spot of light that jumped (“Don’t fret”) back and forth over a strip of moulding, the kind of moulding that spells low class dwelling—I, I mused, take no interest in the distinction between amateur and pro, and despise the latter a little less each year. The spot of light, reflected off a cup of strong blue coffee, wasn’t getting anywhere but it wasn’t standing still. They say a lot of gangsters’ mothers live around here, so the streets are safe. A vast and distant school building made chewing noises in its sleep. Our Lady of someplace stood up in a wood niche with lots and lots of dollar bills pinned around her. The night was hot, everybody went out in the street and sold each other hot sausages and puffy sugared farinaceous products fried in deep fat (“Don’t put your fingers in that, dear”) while the band played and the lady in the silver fox scarf with the beautiful big crack in her voice sang about the young man and how he ran out in front of the stock exchange and drank a bottle of household ammonia: “Ungrateful Heart.” Big rolls of paper were delivered, tall spools of thread spun and spelled Jacquard, Jacquard. Collecting the night in her hand, rolling its filaments in a soft ball, Anne said, “I grew up around here,” where, looking uptown on summer evenings, the Empire State Building rears its pearly height.
(1969)
Footnote
The bluet is a small flower, creamy-throated, that grows in patches in New England lawns. The bluet (French pronunciation) is the shaggy cornflower, growing wild in France. “The Bluet” is a poem I wrote. The Bluet is a painting of Joan Mitchell’s. The thick hard blue runs and holds. All of them, broken-up pieces of sky, hard sky, soft sky. Today I’ll take Joan’s giant vision, running and holding, staring you down with beauty. Though I need reject none. Bluet. “Bloo-ay.”
(1980)
KENNETH KOCH (1925–2002)
On Happiness
It was distressing to think that Kawabata had committed suicide. It wasn’t distressing, however, to find out that he had defined happiness as drinking a scotch and soda at the Tokyo Hilton Hotel. An acquaintance of mine thought this was a terrible thing to say, to such an extent that for him it seemed almost to destroy the value of Kawabata’s work.
Sitting on the terrace of the Hilton!
What’s wrong with that?
A friend of mine, a woman, once explained happiness to me.
We were sitting in the Place de la République in Paris, an unlikely spot for happiness. We were tired, had walked a lot, had sat down at a large, generic big-square café. Dear though it may be to its proprietors and its habitués, it seemed ordinary enough to us. So we sat there and she ordered a Beaujolais and I, a beer. After two swallows of the beer, I was overcome by a feeling of happiness. I told her and I told her again about it later.
She had a theory about a “happiness base.” Once, she said, you had this base, at odd times, moments of true happiness could occur.
Without the base, however, they would not.
The base was made of good health, good work, good friendship, good love. Of course, you can have all these and not be “happy.”
You have to have the base, and then be lucky, she said. That’s why you were happy at the café.
Kawabata asked my acquaintance in turn: How would you define happiness? He told me his answer: “I said ‘How can anyone answer a question like that?’ ”
(1993)
The Allegory of Spring
The blossoming cherry trees were quarreling. She thought this when she was fifty yards away and when she was closer, right in amongst them, she imagined she heard them. One tree said to another: I am prettier than you. And the other said: It is impossible for you to see yourself. But I see you. And I tell you you’re wrong. The first tree disputed the illogic of this remark. And so on. She went on walking, and when she came out of the cherry grove, she had been through a lot. She hated quarreling. Dietrich was standing by his boat. Come, can you go out with me? he said. I don’t want to quarrel, she said. He didn’t understand. Well, will you or not? he said. Yes, she said. Then she said, No.
(1993)
The Wish to Be Pregnant
A bird just sat on a tree branch outside my living room window and when it opened its beak, bubbles came out. They looked like soap bubbles. But I have no idea what they actually were.
Serenity was not a main subject or even concern of the New York painters. A big bully of a guy, named Haggis Coptics, was strutting around the bars.
It was spring, and the alloys in the earth were melting. I saw my wife with the pot in which a chestnut soup was cooking. Right after our marriage she began to cook exotic and flavorsome foods. I half-expected quickly to grow fat in this marriage, as L. Tagenquist had in his, but I did not. It was only a few years after this that mildly excessive eating began to cause me to put on some weight. One morning I looked in the glass—“You are much too fat!”
A valentine was exchanged for a handclasp then a kiss and then finally another valentine from the shop. Held hands veered downstreet together. For one, the holiday had not replaced feeling at all. But this one was a dog.
Hello, said Jerry, coming up from behind me with a blindfold in his hand that, he said, he had just tied around the eyes of a girl. I fucked her in the basement, he said. Well, that’s better than doing nothing, huh?
My wife came in from the kitchen. Lunch is ready, she said. Then, Oh, how I want to have a child!
(1993)
ROBERT BLY (1926–)
The Hockey Poem
Duluth, Minnesota
For Bill Duffy
1
The Goalie
The Boston College team has gold helmets, under which the long black hair of the Roman centurion curls out . . . . And they begin. How weird the goalies look with their African masks! The goalie is so lonely anyway, guarding a basket with nothing in it, his wide lower legs wide as ducks’ . . . . No matter what gift he is given, he always rejects it . . . . He has a number like 1, a name like Mrazek, sometimes wobbling on his legs waiting for the puck, or curling up like a baby in the womb to hold it, staying a second too long on the ice.
The goalie has gone out to mid-ice, and now he sails sadly back to his own box, slowly; he looks prehistoric with his rhinoceros legs; he looks as if he’s going to become extinct, and he’s just taking his time . . . .
When the players are at the other end, he begins sadly sweeping the ice in front of his house; he is the old witch in the woods, waiting for the children to come home.
2
The Attack
They all come hurrying back toward us, suddenly, knees dipping like oil wells; they rush toward us wildly, fins waving, they are pike swimming toward us, their gill fins expanding like the breasts of opera singers; no, they are twelve hands practicing penmanship on the same piece of paper . . . . They flee down the court toward us like birds, swirling two and two, hawks hurrying for the mouse, hurrying down wind valleys, swirling back and forth like amoebae on the pale slide, as they sail in the absolute freedom of water and the body, untroubled by the troubled mind, only the body, with wings as if there were no grave, no gravity, only the birds sailing over the cottage far in the deep woods . . . .
Now the goalie is desperate . . . he looks wildly over his left shoulder, rushing toward the other side of his cave, like a mother hawk whose chicks are being taken by two snak
es . . . . Suddenly he flops on the ice like a man trying to cover a whole double bed. He has the puck. He stands up, turns to his right, and drops it on the ice at the right moment; he saves it for one of his children, a mother hen picking up a seed and then dropping it . . . .
But the men are all too clumsy, they can’t keep track of the puck . . . no, it is the puck, the puck is too fast, too fast for human beings, it humiliates them constantly. The players are like country boys at the fair watching the con man—The puck always turns up under the wrong walnut shell . . . .
They come down ice again, one man guiding the puck this time . . . and Ledingham comes down beautifully, like the canoe through white water, or the lover going upstream, every stroke right, like the stallion galloping up the valley surrounded by his mares and colts, how beautiful, like the body and soul crossing in a poem . . . .
3
The Fight
The player in position pauses, aims, pauses, cracks his stick on the ice, and a cry as the puck goes in! The goalie stands up disgusted, and throws the puck out . . . .
The player with a broken stick hovers near the cage. When the play shifts, he skates over to his locked-in teammates, who look like a nest of bristling owls, owl babies, and they hold out a stick to him . . . .