by Carl Dennis
If it wants to meet us it will have to swallow its pride
And come to our table, not wait for us to come looking,
For we have no plans to go anywhere.
Eternal Life
An immortal soul, that’s something for me to wish for,
To be off on a long trek after my body’s buried
And my friends have driven away from the graveyard.
Where am I headed? Not downward, if I’m permitted
To judge by the rules of fairness as I conceive them,
For nothing I’ve done seems ripe for eternal punishment.
Not upward, for nothing seems worthy of eternal bliss.
Odds are I’ll stay where I am, forever earthbound,
And face the problem of filling the endless return
Of earthly summers and autumns, winters and springs.
It won’t be easy for a being retired from action,
A shadow too weak even to hold open a door
When a friend among the living, bearing a tea tray,
Steps out to join her guests on the verandah.
The conversation should hold my interest all evening
Even if I can’t participate, my voice too small.
But later, when strangers fill the familiar rooms,
I’ll seem to be listening to a script that’s conventional,
To acting forced and wooden, and slip outside.
What then? Do I keep my distance from other ghosts
Or join them in sharing stories about the old days
In cricket whispers? Either way, I’ll wonder about the joy
I imagined coming my way with death behind me,
Not looming ahead, and leisure, so scarce before,
Suddenly limitless. Not much solace is likely
When I compare the vague ghosts of my friends
With the living originals, whose particular lusters
Can’t be divorced from their lifelong gloom on birthdays,
Their protests against their mirrors, their witty admissions
In listing the enemies that creased their foreheads
And slowed their pace to a hobble, and made them forgetful,
Though they remembered their promises well enough
And tried to keep many till death released them.
But how can ghosts swear loyalty to the end
If there is no end for them, only a boundless ocean;
Or does a truth I haven’t a map to now
Wait in my ghostly existence to be discovered? If not,
It won’t surprise me if I find myself on my knees
Cupping my hands with others at the river’s edge
To sip forgetfulness. No surprise if I’m ferried back,
Oblivious, to be born again in the flesh
Among strangers it will take me years to recognize.
The God Who Loves You
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.
CARL DENNIS is the author of eight other books of poetry, including, most recently, Practical Gods, which in 2002 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. In 2000 he received the Ruth Lilly Prize from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Association for his contribution to American poetry. He lives in Buffalo, where he is Artist in Residence at the State University of New York, and is a sometime member of the faculty of the MFA Program in creative writing at Warren Wilson College.
PENGUIN POETS
Ted Berrigan
Selected Poems
The Sonnets
Philip Booth
Lifelines
Jim Carroll
Fear of Dreaming
Void of Course
Carl Dennis
New and Selected Poems
1974-2004
Practical Gods
Barbara Cully
Desire Reclining
Diane di Prima
Loba
Stuart Dischell
Dig Safe
Stephen Dobyns
Pallbearers Envying the
One Who Rides
The Porcupine’s Kisses
Roger Fanning
Homesick
Amy Gerstler
Crown of Weeds
Ghost Girl
Medicine
Nerve Storm
Debora Greger
Desert Fathers, Uranium
Daughters
God
Robert Hunter
Sentinel
Barbara Jordan
Trace Elements
Mary Karr
Viper Rum
Jack Kerouac
Book of Blues
Book of Haikus
Joanne Kyger
As Ever
Ann Lauterbach
If in Time
On a Stair
Phyllis Levin
Mercury
William Logan
Macbeth in Venice
Night Battle
Vain Empires
Derek Mahon
Selected Poems
Michael McClure
Huge Dreams:
San Francisco and
Beat Poems
Carol Muske
An Octave Above
Thunder
Alice Notley
The Descent of Alette
Disobedience
Mysteries of Small Houses
Lawrence Raab
The Probable World
Visible Signs
Stephanie Strickland
V
Anne Waldman
Kill or Cure
Marriage: A Sentence
Philip Whalen
Overtime: Selected
Poems
Robert Wrigley
Lives of the Animals
Reign of Snakes
John Yau
Borrowed Love Poems
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