Collected Poems, 1953-1993

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Collected Poems, 1953-1993 Page 9

by John Updike


  Nothing is poorly made; nothing is dull:

  The Crabgrass thinks itself adorable.

      Cherish your work; take profit in the task:

  Doing’s the one reward a Man dare ask.

  The Wood confides its secrets to the plane;

  The Dovetail fits, and reconfirms the Grain.

  The white-hot writhing Steel is tonged and plunged,

  A-sizzle, into Form, all flecks expunged.

  The Linotyper leans above his keys,

  And feathers down a ton of journalese;

  Engraver and Apprentice, in their room

  Of acid baths and photophobic gloom,

  Transform to metal dots ten shades of gray,

  And herald Everyman’s beginning day.

      The Clergyman, beside the sighing bed,

  Strains for a sign of Credence from the dead.

  The Lawyer eagle-eyed for Falsehood’s glint,

  The Doctor bent on Hardening’s murmured hint,

  The Biochemist analyzing sera,

  The Astrophysicist alone with Lyra,

  The Archaeologist with pick and brush,

  The Nature-walker having heard a thrush—

  Attentiveness! The pinpoint is the locus

  Of Excellence in lands of softened focus.

      Applaud your Neighbor; admire his style

  That grates upon you like a bastard file.

  His trespasses resemble yours in kind;

  He, too, is being crowded from behind.

  Don’t kill; or, if you must, while killing, grieve.

  Doubt not; that is, until you can’t believe.

  Don’t covet Mrs. X; or if you do,

  Make sure, before you leap, she covets you.

      Like meat upon the table, we will spoil:

  Time is the troubled water; Faith, the oil.

  The curse of Tempo regulates the dance;

  To move necessitates Impermanence.

  So flow, flow outward; Heraclitus saw,

  In Nature’s crystalline, the fluid flaw:

  Our Guilt inheres in sheer Existing, so

  Forgive yourself your death, and freely flow.

      Transcendent Goodness makes elastic claims;

  The merciful Creator hid His Aims.

  Beware false Gods: the Infallible Man,

  The flawless formula, the Five-Year Plan.

  Abjure bandwagons; be shy of machines,

  Charisma, Ends that justify the Means,

  And oaths that bind the postulant to kill

  His own Self-love and independent Will.

  A Mussolini leads to Hitler; hate

  Apostles of the all-inclusive State.

      Half-measures are most human; Compromise,

  Inglorious and gray, placates the Wise.

  By messianic hopes is Mankind vexed;

  The Book of Life shows margin more than text.

  Ecclesiastes and our glands agree:

  A time for love, for work, for sleep, for tea.

  Organic drumbeats score our ancient nerves:

  Hark to their rhythms, conform to their curves.

      All wrong? Advice, however sound, depends

  Upon a meliorism Truth upends;

  A certain Sinkingness resides in things.

  The restless heart rejects what Fortune brings;

  The Ego, too athletic, grows perverse

  And muscle-builds by choosing worse and worse.

  Our bones are prison-bars, our flesh is cells:

  Where Suicide invites, Death-wish impels.

  Earthquake, Diseases, Floods, Eruptions, Drought,

  Black Comets, Starry Landslides, Wreck and Rout—

  Beneath a cliff of vast Indifference

  We light our frail fires, peg our poor tents.

  The sleepless mouse-gray hours gnaw and stress:

  “The Wisdom of the Earth is Foolishness.”

      Yet morning here, by Chilmark Pond, is fair.

  The water scintillates against the air,

  The grassy Earth spins seed from solar rage,

  And patiently denies its awful age.

      I am another world, no doubt; no doubt

  We come into this World from well without.

  The seasons lessen; Summer’s touch betrays

  A tired haste, a cool Autumnal trace.

  The playground dust was richer, once, than loam,

  And green, green as Eden, the slow path home.

  No snows have been as deep as those my sled

  Caressed to ice before I went to bed.

  Perhaps Senility will give me back

  The primitive rapport I lately lack.

      Adulthood has its comforts: these entail

  Sermons and sex and receipt of the mail,

  Elimination’s homely paean, dreams’

  Mad gaiety, avoidance of extremes,

  The friendship of children, the trust of banks,

  Thoracic pangs, a stiffness in the shanks,

  Foretastes of death, the aftertaste of sin,

  In Winter, Whiskey, and in Summer, Gin.

      The marsh gives way to Pond, to Dunes, to Sea;

  Cicadas call it good, and I agree.

  At midpoint, center of a Hemisphere

  Too blue for words, I’ve grown to love it here.

  Earth wants me, it shall have me, yet not yet;

  Some task remains, whose weight I can’t forget,

  Some package, anciently addressed, of praise,

  That keeps me knocking on the doors of days.

      The time is gone, when Pope could ladle Wit

  In couplet droplets, and decanter it.

  Wordsworth’s sweet brooding, Milton’s pride,

  And Tennyson’s unease have all been tried;

  Fin-de-siècle sickliness became

  High-stepping Modernism, then went lame.

  Art offers now, not cunning and exile,

  But blank explosions and a hostile smile.

      Deepest in the thicket, thorns spell a word.

  Born laughing, I’ve believed in the Absurd,

  Which brought me this far; henceforth, if I can,

  I must impersonate a serious man.

  April–August 1968

  Chloë’s Poem

  When Chloë flies on silken wings

      She pulls the sky itself along,

  And every tugging moment brings

      The butterfly’s request: “Be strong.”

  Her several mouths are graciousness;

      Her many hands, discovery:

  A hurricane in each caress

      Is Chloë’s way of treating me.

  Minority Report

  My beloved land,

  here I sit in London

  exiled by success of sorts.

  I listen to Mozart

      in my English suit and weep,

                 remembering a Swedish film.

  But it is you,

      really you I think of:

                 your nothing streetcorners

                 your ugly eateries

                 your dear barbarities

                 and vacant lots

  (Brer Rabbit demonstrated:

                 freedom is made of brambles).

  They say over here you are choking

      to death on your cities and slaves,

                 but they have never smelled dry turf,

                 smoked Kools in a drugstore,

                 or pronounced a flat “a,” an honest “r.”


  Don’t read your reviews,

  you are the only land.

  Living with a Wife

  At the Piano

  Barefoot in purple pants

  and my ski sweater you

  play the piano most seriously

  Mozart fumbled with a grimace

  the lamplight fumbling unfelt

  in the down of your neck

  Kind field from which my progeny

  have fled to grow voices and fangs

  you are an arena where art

  like a badly killed bull swerves again

  Your bare foot lifts

  the lamplight pedals on

  my house is half music

  my wife holds no harm

  In the Tub

  You are a pond mirroring

  pink clouds there is moss

  where your white roots meet

  when you lift your arm to shave

  you are a younger kind of tree

  Silver you rise from the lead

  your swan arm seeks a towel

  magic has taken place because

  my Excalibur razor is dull

  and the water would boil a man

  Under the Sunlamp

  Neuter your hair tugged back

  harshly your face a shield

  of greased copper less sexy

  than a boy by Donatello

  too bright to look at long

  eyelids sealed in Urfreude

  metal locked in blinding earth

  During Menstruation

  My house is on fire red

  pain flickers on the walls wet

  flame runs downstairs eggs

  are hurled unripe from the furnace

  and a frown hurts like smoke

  Help I am sliding my cry

  stands helpless as Galileo

  at the side of moons revolving

  of unwinding novae burning

  flinging Tampax tubes of ash

  All the While

  Upstairs to my downstairs

  echo to my silence

  you walk through my veins shopping

  and spin food from my sleep

  I hear your small noises

  you hide in closets without handles

  you surprise me from the cellar

  your foot-soles bright black

  You slip in and out of beauty

  and imply that nothing is wrong

  Who sent you?

  What is your assignment?

  Though years sneak by like children

  you stay as unaccountable

  as the underwear set to soak

  in the bowl where I brush my teeth

  À l’École Berlitz

  Mademoiselle Printemps, my sometimes instructress,

  with whom I slowly form pained sentences

  (Je n’y en ai pas vu,

  par exemple, ou

  À quelle heure vous ětes-vous couchée hier soir?),

  at the end of one lesson

  let down her French, and we faced

  each other naked, I stripped

  of the strange tongue that stiffly cloaks

  each cretin utterance in dignity,

  and she exposed in all her English vowels,

  as luminous and slow as skin,

  her consonants curling like bits of fleece,

  the sense of her sentence as stunning and clear

  as a tear-filled surrender.

  “I am interested in doing translation,”

  she said, and I couldn’t think of a word. Not one.

  South of the Alps

  Signorina Angeli, veteran of Vogue

  and a New York marriage, had a heavy foot

  between Milan and Como.

                                          The speedometer swung

  to 160 kilometers per hour,

  pressed through, trembling, and clung

  like a locust husk that cannot let go.

                           Presto, troppo presto!

  the sides of our Alfa Romeo hissed

  at aquavita trucks we narrowly missed.

  Less fluidly, in middle distance, villages

  in red hats slowly turned to gaze

  like groups of streetcorner pensioners

  who had seen worse ruins than ours.

  Green Alps, bearing aqueducts,

                           drew dreamily near—

                           a quattrocento paradise

  extending its wings to bear us away.

  Her chatting lover occupied the death seat. As

  I cringed behind him, I felt my face

  on the edge of explosion, my tender teeth

  strewn in a stew of glass, my spine

  a row of dominoes, my ghostless flesh

  an interval of metal; and I saw her eyes

  suspended in the rearview mirror,

  immaculately calm:

                                          fringed jewels flattered

  by the velvet hypnosis of her task.

                 She was an icon nailed

  to the blank wall of our blinding speed:

  her nose stiletto-straight, her nostrils

  nice as a skull’s, her lips downdrawn

  upon the candy of her pout—

  reversed details that linked

  in clever foldout to the real:

  to the empress oval of her tight-pulled hair,

  her ear’s pearl curve, her hands

  at rest, with tips of nacre, on the wheel.

  Beauty, deep in hock to time,

  is reckless with its assets; I,

  a cowardly word-hoarder, hugged my wish

  to smudge more proofs with dubious

  corrections. She was clean copy,

                 her future a back issue.

  Of course I adored her, though my fate

  was a midge on her wrist she could twitch away;

  the Old Testament said truly: fear

  is love and love is rigid-making fear.

  A traffic circle. The lake. We slowed.

  Acknowledging my grazie, Signorina showed

  on her smiling jaw a small mole Vogue

  had airbrushed out.

                           Her mother—

  who calls the Pope “Montini” and considers

  him a Communist—had had the marriage annulled.

  Hence, she is still “Signorina.”

  We ate, she, I, and her beau,

                 above Lake Como

                 in green air so

  soft we were not dizzy though

  the lake was a little sky below,

  the motorboats blunt comets.

                 The wine

  was Piedmontese and suave; the breeze

  like a nerved-up gambler fidgeted with chips

  of sunlight on the faded tablecloth.

                 Bella, troppo bella.

  Her hand fell heavy on my arm and grasped.

  “Tell me—why doesn’t anything last?”

  A Bicycle Chain

  Left lying in the grass,

                                          unconnected to anything,

  rusted and disjunct,

                                          it becomes itself.

  Dangled, it will stiffly dance,

     �
��                                    parodying legs,

  or curl upon itself in balky knots

                                          nothing like string’s.

  Neither liquid nor rigid,

                                          it returns its metal

  to organic semi-looseness: consult

                                          a snake’s skeleton

  in a museum case, or watch

                                          a python’s differential curve

  parabolize in oozy increments

                                          behind safe glass.

  Think of Insecta

                           rigged and riveted together,

  of protein atoms

                           lightninged into viral chains,

  of language’s linked lines.

                                          The thing is weighty

  with its ancient seedtime secret,

                                          articulation.

  Tossing and Turning

  The spirit has infinite facets, but the body

  confiningly few sides.

                                          There is the left,

  the right, the back, the belly, and tempting

  in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,

  that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation

  in one or another arm.

                                          Yet we turn each time

 

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