Earlier Poems
Page 7
as long as you can talk,
as long as you can still pronounce
your drink by name and are tactful
enough not to fall off your stool
or call anyone's attention
to the fetus in the vodka bottle
to the left of the vast Bartender's
telepathic, “Another?”
It was then you walked past,
outside the window, unhindered
by the event's complete impossibility.
This kind of thing's happened to everyone.
No? Never mind, then:
I will describe it.
At whichever ground zero
you've found yourself waiting, waiting,
there is one and only one person
whose sudden dumbfounding appearance
could, if not exactly save you,
afford you some respite
from the slightly green outpatient
you're supposed to be keeping an eye on there
behind the beverages in the mirror, the one
whose job is watching you …
Then she walks by.
Though the instant this transpires
you know it's already too late,
she's vanished right back again
into one of those infinite places
where you are not. And it's pointless
to run to the door, tear it open and scream
her name into the freezing wind:
it doesn't stand a chance
of being heard above
the amused roar of the sky's numberless sports fans.
No—you need a strategy.
Needless to say, this calls for a drink or ten.
Now this individual, her special haunts:
there is still a very slight chance
they are all in your mind, that grim city
that's changed somewhat since you've been here
attending your dark little party.
And God only knows what's happened to the one
outside the door, a place
you have never really been to
and one where you never intended
to do a lot of sightseeing.
You are a peaceful man.
But what can you do—time's passing faster,
and your loneliness is ruined anyway.
You down your shot of fear and hit the street.
Late Late Show
Undressing, after working all night, the last thing I see is the room
in the house next door.
At four in the morning, a dark room
filled with that flickering blue
so familiar, almost maternal if you were born
in my generation: this light
so intimate, reassuring you that the world is still there
filled with friendly and beautiful people, people who would like to give you helpful products—
adoring families— funny Nazis …
Undressing, the last thing I will see.
Heroin
And now it's gone
I'll wait
for time to come
and tuck me in
a little white blank
envelope,
and mail me
on this pretty wind-lights
midnight:
I am safe
here in the darkness,
the gloating
vampire
of myself,
waiting for the sudden light
to open, its enormous hand
to sort me from the others
and raise me up
and finding me spotless, devoid of destination or origin,
transport me
to the painless fire
of permanent, oblivious
invisibility.
Rorschach Test
To tell you the truth I'd have thought it had gone out of use long ago, there is something so nineteenth century about it,
with its absurd reverse Puritanism.
Can withdrawal from reality or interpersonal commitment be gauged by uneasiness at being summoned to a small closed room to discuss ambiguously sexual material with a total stranger?
Alone in the presence of the grave examiner, it soon becomes clear that, short of strangling yourself, you are going to have to find a way of suppressing the snickers of a ten-year-old sex fiend, and feign curiosity about the whole process to mask your indignation at being placed in this situation.
Sure, you see lots of pretty butterflies with the faces of ancient Egyptian queens, and so forth—you see other things, too.
Flying stingray vaginas all over the place, along with a few of their male counterparts transparently camouflaged as who knows what pillars and swords out of the old brains unconscious.
You keep finding yourself thinking, God damn it, don't tell me that isn't a pussy!
But after long silence come out with, “Oh, this must be Christ trying to prevent a large crowd from stoning a woman to death.”
The thing to do is keep a straight face, which is hard. After all, you're supposed to be crazy
(and are probably proving it).
Maybe a nudge and a chuckle or two wouldn't hurt your case. Yes,
it's some little card game you've gotten yourself into this time, when your only chance is to lose. Fold, and they have got you by the balls—
just like the ones you neglected to identify.
Reunion
Movement of the hour hand, dilating
of the rose …
Once I could write those.
What am I? A skull
biting its fingernails, a no one
with nowhere to be
consulting his watch,
a country music station left on quietly
all night, the motel door left open
to Wheeling's rainy main street, the river
and wind
and every whiskey-breathed
ghost in the family—
left open,
old man,
for you.
Depiction of Childhood
It is the little girl guiding the minotaur with her free hand— that devourer
and all the terror he's accustomed to effortlessly emanating, his ability to paralyze merely by becoming present,
entranced somehow, and transformed into a bewildered and who knows, grateful gentleness …
and with the other hand lifting her lamp.
Night Watering
A big velvet-brown moth
with an eye on each wing, asleep
right in the middle of
the sunflower, its antennae stirring
lightly now and then. We are alone
on this dim barely window-lit street—
stirring, maybe because of the light
breeze or a semiattentiveness
to my presence in its trance,
an inability to decide
if something's really there,
combined with a total indifference
since it has found at last its golden
temple of the myriad gold chambers
and its god. The flower
has virtually tripled in size
since bursting into bloom a week ago, in fact
it's grown so huge it is in danger
of breaking its own neck.
(It reminds me of someone we know.)
I spend about an hour
rummaging around the back porch
for twine and poles and so forth—it's beginning
to get blue out now—and finally
manage to prop up the head
so it will be comfortable.
At this point I am beginning
to appreciate the cool, still night
and it is almost gone. Now the moth
all this time has not budged
from its spot, it will not be disturbed
at its devotions. I stand in my own
fascination a
nd envy, more
difficult to break at this point.
At last I return
to the house from this four o'clock watering,
happy for once
to have something important to tell you
when you wake up, when I
lie watching while the golden
petals of your eyes begin stirring, then
startlingly open
all pupil, meet mine
and cannot decide what I am
or if I'm really there.
Planes
Dream clock—next port of entry— …
By diurnal moonlight, by dream clock, by star-blueprint it approaches
*
Over here they are sharpening
the seeing-eye
knife,
etc.
*
Her hand on my
shoulder without a name
*
Tempus fuckit
*
Funny, I sometimes feel like a motherless child (trad.) too, unknown black voice
*
Friends never met
Put in the dark to hear no lark
*
Heart with a miner's face
*
Poem, my afterlife
Blue underwater statuary
And when the sky gives up its dead …
*
Thank you, I've just received yours
Unless all these years
I've been misunderstanding
the verses. In any event
I'll scratch your back, you knife mine
*
And when the sky gives up its dead
And the dead rise blind and groping
around for scattered bones, the skulls
they don like helmets
before setting out, bumping into another sadly
as they hoarsely cry
the full name
of some only friend
The Weeping
He has considered weeping, only he can't even bring himself to
take a stab at it. He just can't cry— it is terrible to cry
when you're by yourself, because what then?
Nothing is solved,
nobody comes;
even solitary children understand. This
apparent respite, apparent quenching
of the need to be befriended
might (much like love in later years) leave you
lonelier than when you were merely alone?
Untitled
The unanswering cold, like a stepfather to a silent child
And the light if that's what it is
The steplight
No—
the light that's always leaving
The Family's Windy Summer Night
The moon on her shoulder
like skin—
brightest and nightest desire.
Her eyes, unknown to him,
wide open. Dark
for dark's sake, he recalls:
the fallacy still
unavoidable.
Child,
the glass of sleep
unasked for and withheld.
The Leaves
I have been sitting here
all of the past
hour very sleepily watching the wind
as it blows through the black leaves
surrounding the house
in absolute silence, the leaves
swarming like huge moths' wings
in a futile but tireless attempt
to come through the windows. I am so tired,
I don't understand it:
I can barely keep my eyelids open,
barely remain sitting upright.
I have been by myself
far too long watching the wind
blow through the black-green leaves.
It has been so long
since anyone has called;
I can't remember the last time
I heard the doorbell ring.
And even if it did,
what difference would it make.
I don't detect the vaguest desire
to get up and answer the door,
to see another face. No,
I could quite easily remain here
like somebody pleasantly lapsing
into deep sleep, a sleep so profound
no phone or alarm clock or doorbell
could ever reach its lightless depths.
I really have to rouse myself, maybe
even call up a friend I have missed;
or go for a walk in my neighborhood's
shady decrepitude (where do they go
when August comes, where
do they all disappear to) …
And I fully intend to, I certainly should—
just give me a minute or two,
I am so incredibly weary
and I don't know why. I think
these leaves are wishing me
asleep.
That must be what it is.
I must have left a window open.
I can hear them all at once—
they've gotten in somehow
and now
they are covering my body. My face,
they are covering my face;
and I have passed the point
where I might have lifted a hand
to brush them away,
if I'd wished to.
I am drowning, I think:
I have been drowning
now for a number of years,
and I have had the strangest dream.
Ending
It's one of those evenings
we all know
from somewhere. It might be
the last summery day—
you feel called on to leave what you're doing
and go for a walk by yourself.
Your few vacant streets are the world.
And you might be a six-year-old child
who's finally been allowed
by his elders to enter a game
of hide-and-seek in progress.
It's getting darker fast,
and he's not supposed to be out;
but he gleefully runs off, concealing himself
with his back to a tree
that sways high overhead
among the first couple of stars.
He keeps dead still, barely breathing for pleasure,
long after they have all left.
The Mailman
From the third-floor window
you watch the mailman's slow progress
through the blowing snow.
As he goes from door to door
he might be searching
for a room to rent,
unsure of the address,
which he keeps stopping to check
in the outdated and now
obliterated clipping
he holds, between thickly gloved fingers,
close to his eyes
in a hunched and abruptly simian posture that makes you turn away, quickly switching off the light.
Twelve Camellia Texts
The thought of the camellia unfolds
*
The camellia you placed in the mirror
One of those that chooses you
nights
when you can't sleep
On the cool floor at your feet
lies one that fell
unnoticed the moment you entered
like a shooting star …
Nights when you look up afraid all at once
Anything can happen here
Every star in the sky may be nothing but light that still reaches your eyes though each of them died
disappeared as many years ago as people will live on the earth
Then who will see
the camellias that are breathing all around you
who will care
and yet the hand with which you hold the stem is still real
*
Waxy roselike petal eyelid of a sleep
you need never return from
though your head falls
at last
into a sleep even deeper the double
of your life before you were
*
Motionless uninterrupted by the open window still
as a candle's flame under a large glass
perfectly vertical
pointing
at the sky
sunrise sky mirrored in the camellias
before it disappears
*
Motionless yet growing
Tensed faces of the newly dead growing young again before our eyes
at the speed of the hour hand the moon setting on the hill
*
Leaves evergreen immortal for a little while
Formal
the unbreathing
the seemingly unbreathing
manifold flower that exists like the earth
before and beyond life
here forever
approximately
Oh live while you are here
*
Flower mysterious commonplace
Let's say of you in particular
why do you exist
when no one would notice if you'd never been
if you'd never breathed
like any human presence
like the world
the universe …
Mirror of creation beauty itself
for no reason miracle
beauty itself
or a torch that's passed on
both
as Agee noted
its face and sex are one
*
No one has seen the invisible rainbow arc of your fall
Longhaired star of the peripheral Vision
All we imagine but cannot perceive
or believe in
or instantly forget
Our own life a parenthesis of light
then abrupt transition
to an unknowing
where dark ascension
and falling
are one and the same
*
You reflect the hidden wildness
waiting in the wings of earth's
statelier weather
The undivulged grieving
of homesick faces
Dark green hair's-breadth vein or rivers flowing
returning
to a little spot in Asia 1660
*
Evergreen even in shade
nocturnal
bloom at noon
Breathing one another
what garden can contain them
Nagasaki
the Apple Blossom …