by Carl Dennis
His skill makes me a star at the tourist bureau
When I’m asked for ideas to make Lake Erie
More glamorous than it is in the current brochures,
The photographs more arresting, the copy spicier.
Good thing for the tourists I’ve also inherited
Truth-telling genes from the Hebrew prophets
That keep me from claiming our seagulls special,
As musical as the nightingale and as retiring.
So many dispositions, but no reason to worry
About caulking and splicing them into unity.
Each ancient voice asks to be kept distinct,
A separate species of tree in a crowded forest,
Cedar and pine, oak, ash, and cherry.
It isn’t an accident, as I sit in the yard reading poems
Under the hemlock, that I’m drawn to Bashō.
It’s clear that his blood flows in my veins,
Clear he’s my father or else my twin
Misplaced at birth in a shorthanded village hospital.
How else explain that a poem of his
Is nearer to me than the proverbs of seven uncles?
Witness the first haiku in the new translation
I bought this morning at Niagara Books:
“Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry,
I long for Kyoto.”
Improbable Story
Far from here, in the probable world,
The stable reign of the dinosaurs
Hasn’t been brought to a sudden, unlooked-for end
By a billion-to-one crash with an asteroid
Ten miles across at impact, or a comet.
No dust cloud there darkens the sky
Till it snuffs out half the kingdom of vegetation,
As it might in a B movie from Hollywood,
And half the animal families,
The heavy feeders and breathers among them.
The dinosaurs rule the roost over there,
And the mammals, forced to keep hidden,
Only survive as pygmies. No time for the branching
That leads to us. None of our lean-tos or igloos,
Churches or silos, dot the landscape,
No schools or prisons. Not a single porch
Where you can sit as you’re sitting here
Writing to Martha that your fog has lifted,
That despite the odds against transformation
You’ve left the age of ambivalence far behind you.
Over there, in the probable world, your “yes”
Means what it always has, “Who knows?”
Your “maybe” means that your doubts are overwhelming.
Martha doesn’t believe one sentence as she reads
In the shade of a willow that could never survive
The winter’s killer ice storms. No purple martins return
In the probable world to the little house you made them,
Ready to eat in a week their weight in mosquitoes
While Martha completes a letter that over there
She’ll never be foolish enough to begin.
Bishop Berkeley
Maybe the material world would have seemed to him
Real enough, his doubts mostly illusion,
If his boyhood had been less bookish.
Maybe if he’d grown up on a farm,
A glass of milk left on his desk by a servant
To help him ease into sleep would have seemed like more
Than a prop in a play, and the wall of books behind it
Would have looked more solid than a painted backdrop.
The glass might have recalled his milking days,
The boy in the barn with Madge, the Guernsey.
Few arguments then could have convinced him
That he merely dreamed the warmth of her fur,
The ripe barn smell, the weight of the pail
As he carried it, waving the flies away, to the kitchen.
Then the Bishop might have turned his philosophy
To questions a farmer might ask on Sunday evening
Like the deepest difference between the perspective of cows
And that of the man who keeps the herd.
Is it their failure to guess the fate that awaits them
While we, intent on the truth, guess ours,
Or do they know something unknown to us
That keeps them quiet and uncomplaining,
Free of the wish for triumph or travel? Even today
A farmer might read that chapter with profit
Before he turns to wonder why his wife’s awakened
Each morning for three weeks running with a dream of Prague,
The city she left with her family when she was five.
Why have those buried images shaken loose
From the bottom of the pond just now, after thirty years,
And floated up till the woman won’t rest
Till she compares the city she still recalls
To the one that’s bound to be disappointing?
Soon near the outskirts of Prague, in a budget motel,
The farmer will lie beside her listening to the road noise.
It’s too far for him to glimpse the roof of his barn,
Which the Bishop doesn’t think solid anyway,
But he can almost hear, when the traffic slows,
The sound of the cows crossing the gravel path,
And then their softer steps on the grass of the pasture,
And then their stillness as they bend to browse.
Sunrise
The Aztecs may not, after all, have been brutal,
Though they believed the sun wouldn’t rise
Unless the shrines of the sun god reeked with the odor
Of human blood. Maybe their notion of debt
Was stricter than ours. What could they pay the sun
For the priceless gift of corn but men and women
With their lives before them, young and happy?
As for a god who didn’t expect repayment,
Who was happy to give as long as our species
Showed it was grateful, more a parent than lender—
That notion was no more rational than the other
And far less likely to explain disaster,
Though in the long run it proved as practical
As other great inventions, the lever, the wheel.
Just the token first fruits of the field,
Just the firstlings among the calves and lambs
Sacrificed in the Temple to the sound of chanting.
And when the Romans pulled the Temple down,
The scattered worshipers decided upon a god
Who was willing to come with them into exile,
To forgo his rich diet of cattle
And make do with a bowl of peas or lentils
Left in the night at the door of a widow’s cottage.
For a god so loyal, his people were willing
To overlook his inability to protect them,
Taking the blame on themselves instead.
And didn’t their refusal to cast a shadow
On his reputation for justice win them an extra
Ounce of forgiveness when they tried his patience?
They tried his patience on days when the law
Felt to them like a burden, not like a blessing,
But by most evenings they’d worked their way,
Grumbling, back to acceptance. And at night,
Worn out from the effort, they slept hard,
And hours later were sleeping still
When the sun god they didn’t worship
Rose in the dark on his own to feed his horses,
Just as his sunny nature prompted,
And hitch his golden chariot.
Eternal Poetry
How to grow old with grace and firmness
Is the kind of eternal problem that poetry
Is best reserved for, unagin
g poetry
That isn’t afraid of saying what time will do
To our taste and talents, our angles of observation.
As for a local problem mentioned in passing
In this morning’s news, like the cut in food stamps,
It’s handled more effectively in an essay
With graphs and numbers. A poem’s no proper place
To dwell on the prison reforms my friend proposes
Based on his twenty-year stint inside the walls.
In an essay there’s room to go into details
So the State of New York can solve the problem
Once and for all and turn to issues more lasting.
Facing old age, the theme I’m developing here,
Will still be an issue when the failure of prisons
Interests only historians of our backward era.
A poem’s the place to answer the question
Whether it’s best to disdain old age as a pest
Or respect it as a mighty army or welcome it
As a guest with a ton of baggage. Three options
That health-care professionals might deem too harsh
To appear in their journals. I wish they would help
My friend publish his essay on prison reform,
His practical plan to inspire the inmates
By cutting their minimum sentences if they master a trade
So they won’t return, as is likely now, in a year or two.
The odds are long against getting the ear of the governor
But not impossible if he’s only a year from retirement
And old age prompts him to earn a paragraph
In the history of reform. The bill might squeak through
If the Assembly decides it hasn’t the wherewithal
To keep old prisons in decent repair
Let alone build new ones. No money now
To pay the prison inspector what he deserves
As he makes his rounds in his battered pickup.
An old man shaking his head in disgust
At the roof leaks, peeling plaster, and rusty plumbing
That might have been avoided with a little foresight
And therefore don’t deserve a place in a poem.
And to think he’s been at it for thirty years
Despite his vow, after a month on the job,
To be out of it at the latest by Christmas.
Nobody’s eager to wear his shoes
Unless we count the people inside the walls
Whose envy of those growing old outside
Is a constant always to be relied on,
And so can enter a poem at any time.
In the Short Term
There’s no denying that the only joy
Likely to last lies in our power completely,
As the Stoics say, not in the power of others.
The joy, for example, of placing one’s life in harmony
With laws that reason deduces to be eternal,
Of doing our work as it should be done—
No cutting corners to speed delivery,
No rushing to finish the job before closing time.
No closing time in fact, so long as the work is pleasing.
The joy of winning glory among one’s fellows,
However sweet, lasts only until the fellows
Sail off for better jobs overseas.
Lucky for them if they learn to become
The citizens of the world that the Stoics say
We should all become, indifferent to local applause
From Romans, Egyptians, Medes, or Athenians.
There’s no denying fame-hungry Alcibiades
Thrusts up on sand a magnificent tower
That threatens his neighbors’ roofs as well as his own.
Shame on him for wrecking the peace talks with Sparta
So he could have the war he longed to shine in
And be cheered the loudest when he strolled the agora.
An hour after his fleet set sail for Sicily, his enemies,
In envy of all the glory soon to be his, were working
To turn the minds of the crowd against him.
Too bad he didn’t agree with Socrates
On the nourishment that the rational soul requires,
Different from praise, to become immortal,
The praise that Homer was wrong to bestow on war.
There’s no denying insight to Epictetus
When he argues the story of Troy is about illusion,
That Paris was crazy to endanger his town for the sheen
Of a woman’s body, Helen crazy to love a playboy,
Menelaus to think a wife as wayward as his
Worth regaining. As for Achilles, whatever possessed him
To squabble with Agamemnon over a war prize?
All dust now, Troy as much as the flesh of Helen,
Though Homer never assumes they’re immortal,
Just that you won’t be likely to forget them quickly
Once their story is told in the leisurely way
It should be told, over many evenings.
Time enough to make clear that fault-ridden Paris
Is loved by a goddess, that Helen’s a gift
Only a goddess could have provided.
And who is he to deny a goddess
Even if her gift only lasts a day?
Guardian Angel
Not the angel that helps you resist temptation
(Conscience and heart are enough for that,
And, besides, when have you been tempted lately?),
But the one with advice about tactics
For possessing your share of the true and beautiful.
The one who tells you the plaid of your jacket
Will prove too loud for the soft-spoken sensitive woman
You’re destined to meet tonight in line at the theater
When everything depends on a first impression.
With the angel’s help you can open a conversation
On a fruitful subject like happiness and explain
People are wrong to seek it directly,
How it comes on the back of other things
Like losing oneself in a casual conversation
That tests our powers of empathy, not cleverness.
A practical angel, ignorant in philosophy
But peerless in group dynamics, who can show you
Why it’s unwise to urge your hesitant friend
To leave her apartment for yours too quickly,
How a sudden fear of confinement may choke off feelings
That otherwise would be sure to bloom.
And if eagerness wins out over prudence, the angel,
Instead of saying, “I told you so,” will help you
Turn from errors that can’t be altered
And sally out in quest of a local problem
Where your many talents can make a difference.
Why not get involved with the block-club committee
Dedicated to stopping the corner drugstore
From tripling in size and knocking down in the process
Houses that keep the scale of the neighborhood human?
Soon you may find yourself toasting the cause
By candlelight with your eager co-chair,
A woman fearless in the face of officialdom.
It’s true if she had an angel to help her
She wouldn’t be wearing the dress she’s wearing,
A duplicate of the one your mother wore
Thirty summers ago at Cape May when your father
Embarked full-time on his career of drinking.
But doesn’t this ignorance, which her angel
Should have dispelled, make her appealing
To someone like you, who’s quick to discern a soul mate?
As you sit across the table you can feel your heart
Swell with so much sympathy that your jacket
Feels tight in the chest,
your loud plaid jacket.
“Why not remove it,” the angel you need would ask,
“And drape it out of sight on the back of your chair?”
May Jen
This is the evening I was hoping for,
The one when my bad times are transposed to stories
Offered as a small return for the story you’ve just told me
Here at this window table in the May Jen restaurant
On rain-washed Elmwood. How once,
When drink had driven your dad from the family,
Meeting you on the street, he gave you his promise,
In a voice cold sober, to send you the dress
You needed for confirmation, and how you felt
When it never arrived. A sad story
That makes me happy I’ve carried for years
Memories that till this evening I’ve never valued.
This is the rainy April evening toward which our lives,
Despite the odds, have been moving for decades
Along different paths, without our knowing,
So we might notice through this rain-streaked window
How the glinting streetlamps and street reflections,
Stoplights and traffic, set off by contrast
Our easy calm, our stillness.
This is the conversation that can have no midpoint,
However clear its beginning, if it has no end.
And why would we turn to ask for the bill,
Why don our raincoats and walk to the car
And join the pitiful traffic that has to make do
With the dream of a life behind it or a life ahead?
The past we need is only a kind of currency
Stamped in red with the date of this day.
And the fabulous future is beginning to understand