Collected Poems, 1953-1993

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Collected Poems, 1953-1993 Page 26

by John Updike

convulsively departing from the exhausting regimen—

  the rising at 6 a.m. to sharpen twelve pencils

  with which to cut, as he stands at his bookcase,

  269 or 312 or 451 more words into the paper

  that will compose one of those many rumored books

  that somehow never appear—did he abruptly exclaim,

  “I must have a fishing tourney!”

  and have posters painted and posted

  in cabañTas, cigar stores, and bordellos,

  ERNEST HEMINGWAY FISHING COMPETITION,

  just like that?

  And did he receive, on one of those soft Havana mornings,

  while the smoky-green Caribbean laps the wharf legs,

  and the señToritas yawn behind grillwork,

  and the black mailmen walk in khaki shorts,

  an application blank stating CASTRO, Fidel?

  Occupation: Dictator. Address:

  Top Floor, Habana-Hilton Hotel (commandeered).

  Hobbies: Ranting, U.S.-Baiting, Fishing (novice).

  And was it honest? I mean, did Castro

  wade down off the beach in hip boots

  in a long cursing line of other contestants, Cubans,

  cabdrivers, pimps, restaurant waiters, small landowners,

  and make his cast, the bobbin singing,

  and the great fish leap, with a splash

  leap from the smoky-green waves,

  and he, tugging, writhing, bring it in

  and stand there, mopping the brow

  of his somehow fragile, Apollonian profile

  while the great man panted back and forth

  plying his tape measure?

  And at the award ceremony,

  did their two so-different sorts of fame—

  yet tangent on the point of beards and love of exploit—

  create in the air one of those eccentric electronic disturbances

  to which our younger physicists devote so much thought?

  In the photograph, there is some sign of it:

  they seem beatified, and resemble

  two apostles by Dürer, possibly Peter and Paul.

  My mind sinks down through the layers of strangeness:

  I am as happy as if I had opened

  a copy of “Alice in Wonderland”

  in which the heroine does win the croquet contest

  administered by the Queen of Hearts.

  Cosmic Gall

  Every second, hundreds of billions of these neutrinos pass through each square inch of our bodies, coming from above during the day and from below at night, when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth!

  —from “An Explanatory Statement on Elementary Particle Physics,” by M. A. Ruderman and A. H. Rosenfeld, in American Scientist

  Neutrinos, they are very small.

      They have no charge and have no mass

  And do not interact at all.

  The earth is just a silly ball

      To them, through which they simply pass,

  Like dustmaids down a drafty hall

      Or photons through a sheet of glass.

      They snub the most exquisite gas,

  Ignore the most substantial wall,

      Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,

  Insult the stallion in his stall,

      And, scorning barriers of class,

  Infiltrate you and me! Like tall

  And painless guillotines, they fall

      Down through our heads into the grass.

  At night, they enter at Nepal

      And pierce the lover and his lass

  From underneath the bed—you call

      It wonderful; I call it crass.

  A Vision

  (After Being Heavily Drugged with Inhalations of Literary Criticism, circa 1960)

  Said Harvey Swados to Herbert Gold,

  “American Fiction has to be bold.”

  Said Leslie Fiedler to Seymour Krim,

  “American Fiction ought to have vim.”

  Said Alfred Kazin to Lionel Trilling,

  “American Fiction must become willing

  To take the reader upon its knee

  And criticize Society.”

  So saying, all took pen in hand

  And scratched away to beat the band

  And wrote these splendid works themselves

  And then arranged them on the shelves,

  Proud row on row, immutable ranks.

  American Fiction wept, and gave thanks.

  Les Saints Nouveaux

  Proust, doing penance

  in a cork-lined room,

  numbered the petals

  in the orchards of doom

  and sighed through the vortex

  of his own strained breath

  the wonderfully abundant

  perfume called Death.

  Brancusi, an anchorite

  among rough shapes,

  blessed each with his eyes

  until like grapes

  they popped, releasing

  kernels of motion

  as patiently worked

  as if by the ocean.

  Cézanne, grave man,

  pondered the scene

  and saw it with passion

  as orange and green,

  and weighted his strokes

  with days of decision,

  and founded on apples

  theologies of vision.

  The Descent of Mr. Aldez

  Mr. Aldez, a cloud physicist, came down last year to study airborne ice crystals.

  —dispatch from Antarctica in the Times

  That cloud—ambiguous, not

  a horse, or a whale, but what?—

  comes down through the crystalline mist.

  It is a physicist!

  Like fog, on cat’s feet, tiptoeing

  to where the bits of ice are blowing,

  it drifts, and eddies, and spies

  its prey through vaporous eyes

  and pounces! With billowing paws

  the vague thing smokily claws

  the fluttering air, notes its traits,

  smiles knowingly, and dissipates.

  Upon Learning That a Town Exists in Virginia Called Upperville

  In Upperville, the upper crust

  Say “Bottoms up!” from dawn to dusk

  And “Ups-a-daisy, dear!” at will—

  I want to live in Upperville.

  One-upmanship is there the rule,

  And children learn about, at school,

  The Rise of Silas Lapham and

  Why gravitation has been banned.

  High hamlet, ho!—my mind’s eye sees

  Thy ruddy uplands, lofty trees,

  Upsurging streams, and towering dogs;

  There are no valleys, dumps, or bogs.

  Depression never dares intrude

  Upon thy sweet upswinging mood;

  Downcast, long-fallen, let me go

  To where the cattle never low.

  I’ve always known there was a town

  Just right for me; I’ll settle down

  And be uplifted all day long—

  Fair Upperville, accept my song.

  Recital

  ROGER BOBO GIVES

  RECITAL ON TUBA

  —headline in The New York Times

  Eskimos in Manitoba,

      Barracuda off Aruba,

  Cock an ear when Roger Bobo

      Starts to solo on the tuba.

  Men of every station—Pooh-Bah,

      Nabob, bozo, toff, and hobo—

  Cry in unison, “Indubi-

      Tably, there is simply nobo-

  Dy who oompahs on the tubo,

  Solo, quite like Roger Bubo!”

  I Missed His Book, but I Read His Name

  “The Silver Pilgrimage,” by M. Anantanarayanan … 160 pages. Criterion. $3
.95.

  —The New York Times

  Though authors are a dreadful clan

  To be avoided if you can,

  I’d like to meet the Indian,

  M. Anantanarayanan.

  I picture him as short and tan.

  We’d meet, perhaps, in Hindustan.

  I’d say, with admirable élan,

  “Ah, Anantanarayanan—

  I’ve heard of you. The Times once ran

  A notice on your novel, an

  Unusual tale of God and Man.”

  And Anantanarayanan

  Would seat me on a lush divan

  And read his name—that sumptuous span

  Of “a”s and “n”s more lovely than

  “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan”—

  Aloud to me all day. I plan

  Henceforth to be an ardent fan

  Of Anantanarayanan—

  M. Anantanarayanan.

  On the Inclusion of Miniature Dinosaurs in Breakfast Cereal Boxes

  A post-historic herbivore,

  I come to breakfast looking for

  A bite. Behind the box of Brex

  I find Tyrannosaurus rex.

  And lo! beyond the Sugar Pops,

  An acetate Triceratops.

  And here! across the Shredded Wheat,

  The spoor of Brontosaurus feet.

  Too unawake to dwell upon

  A model of Iguanodon,

  I hide within the Raisin Bran;

  And thus begins the dawn of Man.

  The High-Hearts

  Assumption of erect posture in man lifts the heart higher above the ground than in any other animal now living except the giraffe and the elephant.

  —from an article titled “Anatomy” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica

  Proud elephant, by accident of bulk,

  Upreared the mammoth cardiacal hulk

  That plunged his storm of blood through canvas veins.

  Enthroned beneath his tusks, unseen, it reigns

  In dark state, stoutly ribbed, suffused with doubt,

  Where lions have to leap to seek it out.

  Herbivorous giraffe, in dappled love

  With green and sunstruck edibles above,

  Yearned with his bones; in an aeon or so,

  His glad heart left his ankles far below,

  And there, where forelegs turn to throat, it trem-

  Bles like a blossom halfway up a stem.

  Poor man, an ape anxious to use his paws,

  Became erect and held the pose because

  His brain, developing beyond his ken,

  Kept whispering, “The universe wants men.”

  So still he strains to keep his heart aloft,

  Too high and low at once, too hard and soft.

  Marriage Counsel

  WHY MARRY OGRE

  JUST TO GET HUBBY?

  —headline in the Boston Herald

  Why marry ogre

      Just to get hubby?

  Has he a brogue, or

      Are his legs stubby?

  Smokes he a stogie?

      Is he not sober?

  Is he too logy

      And dull as a crowbar?

  Tom, Dick, and Harry:

      Garrulous, greedy,

  And grouchy. They vary

      From savage to seedy,

  And, once wed, will parry

      To be set asunder.

  O harpy, why marry

      Ogre? I wonder.

  The Handkerchiefs of Khaibar Khan

  Arriving for a Paris vacation with a wardrobe which included … 818 handkerchiefs … Iran’s Khaibar Khan explained with disarming candor: “I was fortunate to be born in the middle of an area where oil comes from.”

  —Life

  In Nishapur did Khaibar Khan

  With stately ease exclaim “Kerchoo!”

  And Standard Oil dispatched its man

  With bales of linen to Iran

  To minister unto his flu.

  The prince allowed, “O lucky me,

  To have been born above a sea

  Where microörganisms died

  By barrelfuls and so supplied

  The engines of the fabled West

  With fuel for which I take the fee

  In handkerchiefs my valet crams

  In chests and filing cabinets

  In order of their monograms,

  Which range from ‘K’ to ‘K,’ ” said he,

  With candor, quite disarmingly.

  Dea ex Machina

  In brief, shapeliness and smoothness of the flesh are desirable because they are signs of biological efficiency.

  —David Angus, The New York Times Book Review

  My love is like Mies van der Rohe’s

                 “Machine for living”; she,

  Divested of her underclothes,

                 Suggests efficiency.

  Her supple shoulders call to mind

                 A set of bevelled gears;

  Her lower jaw has been aligned

                 To hinge behind her ears.

  Her hips, sweet ball-and-socket joints,

                 Are padded to perfection;

  Each knee, with its patella, points

                 In just the right direction.

  Her fingertips remind me of

                 A digital computer;

  She couldn’t be, my shapely love,

                 A millimeter cuter.

  Die Neuen Heiligen

  Kierkegaard, a

  cripple and a Dane,

  disdained to marry;

  the consequent strain

  unsprang the whirling

  gay knives of his wits,

  which slashed the Ideal

  and himself to bits.

  Kafka, a lawyer

  and citizen of Prague,

  became consumptive

  in the metaphysic fog

  and, coughing with laughter,

  lampooned the sad state

  that judged its defendants

  all guilty of Fate.

  Karl Barth, more healthy,

  and married, and Swiss,

  lived longer, yet took

  small comfort from this;

  Nein! he cried, rooting

  in utter despair

  the Credo that Culture

  left up in the air.

  Miss Moore at Assembly

  (Based Finically upon an Item in The New York Times Describing Marianne Moore’s Lecture Appearance before the Students of a Brooklyn High School)

  A “chattering, gum-snapping audience”

      held rapt by poetess, hat

                 tricorn, “gigantic white orchid

      fluttering at her shoulder”—that

                 suffices, in mid-

  century, to tax one’s fittingness’s sense.

  But why?…Birds heard Francis. Who else could come

      to Eastern District High School

                 (“slum,” “bubble-gum-snapping”) and stand—

      tobacco-eschewer but Bol-

                 lingen Prize-winner—and

  say, “I’ve always wanted to play a snare drum”?

  White Dwarf

  Discovery of the smallest known star in the universe was announced today.… The star is about one half the diameter of the moon.

  —The New York Times

  Welcome, welcome, little star!

  I’m delighted that you are

  Up in Heaven’s vast extent, />
  No bigger than a continent.

  Relatively minuscule,

  Spinning like a penny spool,

  Glinting like a polished spoon,

  A kind of kindled demi-moon,

  You offer cheer to tiny Man

  ’Mid galaxies Gargantuan—

  A little pill in endless night,

  An antidote to cosmic fright.

  Exposure

  Please do not tell me there is no voodoo,

  For, if so, how then do you

  Explain that a photograph of a head

  Always tells if the person is living or dead?

  Always. I have never known it to fail.

  There is something misted in the eyes, something pale,

  If not in the lips, then in the hair—

  It is hard to put your finger on, but there.

  A kind of third dimension settles in:

  A blur, a kiss of otherness, a milky film.

  If, while you hold a snapshot of Aunt Flo,

  Her real heart stops, you will know.

  Exposé

  LE CHAMP MAGNÉTIQUE DE VÉNUS EST EXTRÊMEMENT FAIBLE

  —headline in Le Monde

  Le Monde regrets it must report—

      In simple duty to the nation,

                 And favoring no clique or faction—

                 That Venus’ powers of attraction,

  When measured coolly, fall far short

      Of their much-vaunted reputation.

  “Extrěmement”—harsh word, but, then,

      Le monde, it is a brutal planet,

                 Unsentimental, unromantic.

 

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