by John Updike
“Igor, you never listen.”
Solitaire
Black queen on the red king,
the seven on the black
eight, eight goes on nine, bring
the nine on over, place
jack on queen. There is space
now for that black king who,
six or so cards back,
was buried in the pack.
Five on six, where’s seven?
Under the ten. The ace
must be under the two.
Four, nine on ten, three, through.
It’s after eleven.
Duet, with Muffled Brake Drums
50 Years Ago Rolls met Royce—a Meeting that made Engineering History
—advertisement in The New Yorker
Where gray walks slope through shadows shaped like lace
Down to dimpleproof ponds, a precious place
Where birds of porcelain sing as with one voice
Two gold and velvet notes—there Rolls met Royce.
“Hallo,” said Rolls. His umber silhouette
Seemed mounted on a blotter brushed when wet
To indicate a park. Beyond, a brown
Line hinted at the profile of The Town.
And Royce, his teeth and creases straight, his eye
A perfect match for that well-lacquered sky
(Has zenith since, or iris, been so pure?),
Responded, “Pleased to meet you, I am sure.”
A graceful pause, then Rolls, the taller, spake:
“Ah—is there anything you’d care to make?
A day of it? A fourth at bridge? Some tea?”
Royce murmured, “If your afternoon is free,
I’d rather—much—make engineering history.”
Player Piano
My stick fingers click with a snicker
As, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;
Light-footed, my steel feelers flicker
And pluck from these keys melodies.
My paper can caper; abandon
Is broadcast by dint of my din,
And no man or band has a hand in
The tones I turn on from within.
At times I’m a jumble of rumbles,
At others I’m light like the moon,
But never my numb plunker fumbles,
Misstrums me, or tries a new tune.
Snapshots
How good of Mrs. Metz! The blur
Must be your cousin Christopher.
A scenic shot Jim took near Lyme.
Those rocks seemed lovely at the time.
And here’s a product of the days
When Jim went through his gnarled-tree phase.
The man behind the man in shorts—
His name is Shorer, Shaw, or Schwartz.
The kids at play. This must be Keith.
Can that be Wilma underneath?
I’d give my life to know why Josh
Sat next to Mrs. McIntosh.
Jim looked so well in formal clothes.
I was much slimmer than this shows.
Yes, Jim and I were so in love.
That hat: what was I thinking of?
This disappointed Mrs. Weicker.
I don’t know why, it’s very like her.
The dog is Skip. He loved to play.
We had to have him put away.
I guess these people are the Wrens.
An insect landed on the lens.
This place is where I was inspired
To—stop me, if your eyes are tired.
An Imaginable Conference
(Mr. Henry Green, Industrialist, and Mr. Wallace Stevens, Vice-President of the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., Meet in the Course of Business)
Exchanging gentle grips, the men retire,
prologued by courteous bumbling at the door,
retreat to where a rare room deep exists
on an odd floor, subtly carpeted. The walls
wear charts like checkered vests and blotters ape
the green of cricket fields. Glass multiplies
the pausing men to twice infinity.
An inkstand of blue marble has been carven:
no young girl’s wrist is more discreetly veined.
An office boy misplaced and slack intrudes,
apologizes speaking without commas
“Oh sorry sirs I thought” which signifies
what wellmeant wimbly wambly stuff it is
we seem to be made of. Beyond the room,
a gander sun’s pure rhetoric ferments
embarrassments of bloom. The stone is so.
The pair confers in murmurings, with words
select and Sunday-soft. No more is known,
but rumor goes that, as they hatched the deal,
vistas of lilac weighted their shrewd lids.
Dilemma in the Delta
An extra quarter-inch on Cleopatra’s nose would have changed the entire course of history.
—Pascal, misquoted in a newspaper
Osiris pales; the palace walls
Blush east; through slatted arches falls
The sun, who stripes the cushions where
Empires have been tucked away.
Light fills her jewels and rims her hair
And Cleopatra ripens into day.
Awake, she flings her parakeets
Some chips of cinnamon, and beats
Her scented slave, a charming thing
Who chokes back almond tears. The queen,
Her wrist fatigued, then bids them bring
Her mirror, a mammoth aquamarine.
She rests the gem upon her thighs
And checks her features. First, the eyes:
Weight them with ink. The lips need rose
Tint: crush a rose. And something’s wrong
Between her mouth and brow—her nose,
Her nose seems odd, too long. It is too long!
These stupid jokes of Ra! She sees,
Through veils of fury, centuries
Shifting like stirred-up camels. Men
Who wrought great deeds remain unborn,
Unthought-of heroes fight like ten,
And her own name is lost to praise or scorn.
While she lies limp, seduced by grief,
There enters, grand beyond belief,
Marc Antony, bronze-braceleted,
Beloved of Venus as of Mars.
A wreath of laurel girds his head;
His destiny hangs balanced in the stars.
“Now dies,” she cries, “your love, my fame!
My face shall never seem the same!”
But Marc responds, “Deorum artis
Laudemus! Bonum hoc est omen.
Egyptian though your wicked heart is,
I can’t resist a nose so nobly Roman!”
Shipbored
That line is the horizon line.
The blue above it is divine.
The blue below it is marine.
Sometimes the blue below is green.
Sometimes the blue above is gray,
Betokening a cloudy day.
Sometimes the blue below is white,
Foreshadowing a windy night.
Sometimes a drifting coconut
Or albatross adds color, but
The blue above is mostly blue.
The blue below and I are, too.
Song of the Open Fireplace
When silly Sol in winter roisters
And roasts us in our closed-up cloisters
Like hosts of out-of-season oysters,
The logs glow red.
When Sol grows cool and solely caters
To polar bears and figure skaters
And homes are turned refrigerators,
The flames are dead.
And when idyllically transpires
The merger every man desires
Of air that nips and wood that fires,
It’s time for bed.
The Clan
Emlyn reads in Dickens’ clothes.
Tennessee writes fleshy prose;
William Carlos, bony poems.
Esther swims in hippodromes.
Ted likes hits but hates his fans;
Gluyas draws Americans.
Vaughan pens music, score on score;
Soapy sits as governor.
I trust everybody is
Thankful for the Williamses.
Youth’s Progress
Dick Schneider of Wisconsin … was elected “Greek God” for an interfraternity ball.
—Life
When I was born, my mother taped my ears
So they lay flat. When I had aged ten years,
My teeth were firmly braced and much improved.
Two years went by; my tonsils were removed.
At fourteen, I began to comb my hair
A fancy way. Though nothing much was there,
I shaved my upper lip—next year, my chin.
At seventeen, the freckles left my skin.
Just turned nineteen, a nicely molded lad,
I said goodbye to Sis and Mother; Dad
Drove me to Wisconsin and set me loose.
At twenty-one, I was elected Zeus.
Humanities Course
Professor Varder handles Dante
With wry respect; while one can see
It’s all a lie, one must admit
The “splendor” of the “imagery.”
Professor Varder slyly smiles,
Describing Hegel as a “sage”;
But still, the man has value—he
Reflects the “temper” of his “age.”
Montaigne, Tom Paine, St. Augustine:
Although their notions came to naught,
They still are “crucial figures” in
The “pageantry” of “Western thought.”
V. B. Nimble, V. B. Quick
Science, Pure and Applied, by V. B. Wigglesworth, F.R.S., Quick Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge.
—a talk listed in the B.B.C.’s Radio Times
V. B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,
Washes, shaves, and very soon
Is at the lab; he reads his mail,
Tweaks a tadpole by the tail,
Undoes his coat, removes his hat,
Dips a spider in a vat
Of alkaline, phones the press,
Tells them he is F.R.S.,
Subdivides six protocells,
Kills a rat by ringing bells,
Writes a treatise, edits two
Symposia on “Will Man Do?,”
Gives a lecture, audits three,
Has the Sperm Club in for tea,
Pensions off an aging spore,
Cracks a test tube, takes some pure
Science and applies it, finds
His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,
Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,
And, by one o’clock, is gone.
Lament, for Cocoa
The scum has come.
My cocoa’s cold.
The cup is numb,
And I grow old.
It seems an age
Since from the pot
It bubbled, beige
And burning hot—
Too hot to be
Too quickly quaffed.
Accordingly,
I felt a draft
And in it placed
The boiling brew
And took a taste
Of toast or two.
Alas, time flies
And minutes chill;
My cocoa lies
Dull brown and still.
How wearisome!
In likelihood,
The scum, once come,
Is come for good.
Pop Smash, Out of Echo Chamber
O truly, Lily was a lulu,
Doll, and dilly of a belle;
No one’s smile was more enamelled,
No one’s style was more untrammelled,
Yet her records failed to sell
Well.
Her agent, Daley, duly worried,
Fretted, fidgeted, complained,
Daily grew so somber clever
Wits at parties said whenever
Lily waxed, poor Daley waned.
Strained
Beyond endurance, feeling either
He or Lily must be drowned,
Daley, dulled to Lily’s lustre,
Deeply down a well did thrust her.
Lily yelled; he dug the sound,
Found
A phone, contacted Victor,
Cut four sides; they sold, and how!
Daley disclaims credit; still, he
Likes the lucre. As for Lily,
She is dry and famous now.
Wow.
Sunglasses
On an olive beach, beneath a turquoise sky
And a limeade sun, by a lurid sea,
While the beryl clouds went blithely by,
We ensconced ourselves, my love and me.
O her verdant hair! and her aqua smile!
O my soul, afloat in an emerald bliss
That retained its tint all the watery while—
And her copper skin, all verdigris!
Pooem
Writing here last autumn of my hopes of seeing a hoopoe…
—Sir Stephen Tallents in the London Times
I, too, once hoped to have a hoopoe
Wing its way within my scoopoe,
Crested, quick, and heliotroopoe,
Proud Upupa epops.
For what seemed an eternity,
I sat upon a grassy sloopoe,
Gazing through a telescoopoe,
Weaving snares of finest roopoe,
Fit for Upupa epops.
At last, one day, there came to me,
Inside a crusty enveloopoe,
This note: “Abandon hope, you doopoe;
The hoopoe is a misanthroopoe.
(Signed) Your far-off friend, U. e.”
To an Usherette
Ah, come with me,
Petite chérie,
And we shall rather happy be.
I know a modest luncheonette
Where, for a little, one can get
A choplet, baby lima beans,
And, segmented, two tangerines.
Le coup de grâce,
My petty lass,
Will be a demi-demitasse
Within a serviette conveyed
By weazened waiters, underpaid,
Who mincingly might grant us spoons
While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.
Ah, with me come,
Ma mini-femme,
And I shall say I love you some.
Time’s Fool
Frederick Alexander Pott
Arrives at parties on the dot.
The drinks have not been mixed, the wife
Is still applying, with a knife,
Extract of shrimp and chicken spread
To parallelograms of bread
When Pott appears, remarking, “I’m
Afraid I’m barging in on time.”
For Frederick Pott is never late
For any rendez
vous or date.
Arrange to meet at some hotel;
You’ll find he’s been there since the bell
Tolled the appointed hour. Not
Intending to embarrass, Pott
Says shyly, “Punctuality
Is psychological with me.”
Pott takes the most preposterous pains
To suit the scheduled times of trains.
He goes to concerts, races, plays,
Allowing nicely for delays,
And at the age three score and ten
Pott plans to perish; doubtless then
He’ll ask, as he has often done,
“This was the time agreed upon?”
Superman
I drive my car to supermarket,
The way I take is superhigh,
A superlot is where I park it,
And Super Suds are what I buy.
Supersalesmen sell me tonic—
Super-Tone-O, for Relief.
The planes I ride are supersonic.
In trains, I like the Super Chief.
Supercilious men and women
Call me superficial—me,
Who so superbly learned to swim in
Supercolossality.
Superphosphate-fed foods feed me;
Superservice keeps me new.
Who would dare to supersede me,
Super-super-superwho?
An Ode
(Fired into Being by Life’s 48-Star Editorial, “Wanted: An American Novel”)