Collected Poems, 1953-1993

by John Updike

  That lifts me like a bark canoe

  Adrift in breakers off Peru.

  Neap to my spring, ebb to my flow,

  It turns my pulse to undertow,

  It turns my thoughts to bubbles, it

  Still undulates when I would quit;

  Two bags of water, it and I

  In restless sympathy here lie.

  To a Waterbed

  No Frog Prince ever had a pond

  So faithful, murmurous, and fond.

  Amniotically it sings

  Of broken dreams and hidden springs,

  Automatically it laves

  My mind in secondary waves

  That answer motions of my own,

  However mild—my amnion.

  Fond underbubble, warm and deep,

  I love you so much I can’t sleep.

  The Jolly Greene Giant

  Or is it more shocking … to be forced to consider that he may now be the largest of living English novelists?—Greene, the ambidextrous producer of “novels” and “entertainments”?

  —Reynolds Price, in The New York Times Book Review

  “You are large, Father Graham,” the young fan opined,

      “And your corpus is bulky indeed;

  Yet you pen ‘entertainments’ as thin as a rind—

      How do you so hugely succeed?”

  “In my youth,” said the writer, “I fasted on bile

      With lacings of Romanish rum;

  Compounded each quarter, it swells all the while—

      Permit me to offer you some.”

  “Do you find,” said the lad, “your Gargantuan girth

      Has impaired your professional finesse?

  An author must calibrate Heaven and Earth

      To an eighth of an inch, I would guess.”

  “It is true,” said the sage, “that my typing is rough,

      Though each key is as wide as a platter;

  But the swattable critics hum wonderful stuff,

      And that is the heart of the matter!”

  News from the Underworld

  (After Blinking One’s Way Through “The Detection of Neutral Weak Currents,” in Scientific American)

  They haven’t found the W

  wee particle for carrying

  the so-called “weak force” yet, but you

  can bet they’ll find some odder thing.

  Neutrinos make a muon when

  a proton, comin’ through the rye,

  hits in a burst of hadrons; then

  eureka! γ splits from π

  and scintillation counters say

  that here a neutral lepton swerved.

  Though parity has had its day,

  the thing called “strangeness” is preserved.

  Authors’ Residences

  (After Visiting Hartford)

  Mark Twain’s opinion was, he was entitled

      To live in style; his domicile entailed

  Some seven servants, nineteen rooms, unbridled

                 Fantasies by Tiffany

                 That furnished hospitality

      With tons of stuff, until the funding failed.

  The poet Wallace Stevens, less flamboyant,

      Resided in a whiter Hartford home,

  As solid as his neighbors’, slated, voyant

                 For all its screening shrubs; from here

                 He strolled to work, his life’s plain beer

      Topped up with Fancy’s iridescent foam.

  And I, I live (as if you care) in chambers

      That number two—in one I sleep, alone

  Most nights, and in the other drudge; my labors

                 Have brought me to a little space

                 In Boston. Writers, know your place

      Before it gets too modest to be known.

  Sin City, D.C.

  (As of Our Bicentennial Summer)

  Hays Says Ray Lies;

  Gravel Denies

  Gray Houseboat Orgy Tale;

  Gardner Claims Being Male

  No Safeguard Against

  Congressional Concupiscence;

  Ray Parlays Hays Lay

  Into Paperback Runaway.

  Shaving Mirror

  Among the Brobdingnagians Gulliver

  complained of the pores, the follicles,

  “with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher,

  and hairs hanging from it thicker than pack-threads.”

  Swift hated everything’s being so relative,

  “so varified with spots, pimples, and freckles

  that nothing could appear more nauseous”;

  but, hell, here we are, bad clay.

  In this polished concavity mute enlargement

  hovers on my skin like a flea-sized plane

  surveying another earth, some solemn planet

  hung long in space unknown, a furtive star.

  Draw closer, visitor. These teeth

  trumpet their craters; my lips are shores,

  my eyes bloody lakes, the lashes alarming,

  my whiskers like leafless trees—there is life!

  “But the most hateful sight of all was the lice

  crawling on their clothes”—an image echoed

  by the king, who pronounces that men must “be

  the most pernicious race of little odious

  vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl

  upon the surface of the earth.” Hard words

  from above. I say, the more there is

  of me, the more there is to love.

  Beyond all reproach, beyond readjustment,

  among the corruptible heavenly bodies

  I swim, eluding my measure, “my complexion

  made up of several colors altogether disagreeable.”

  Self-Service

  Always I wanted to do it myself

  and envied the oily-handed boy

  paid by the station to lift

  the gun from its tall tin holster

  and squeeze. That was power,

  hi-octane or lo-, and now no-lead.

  What feminism has done for some sisters

  self-service has done for me.

  The pulsing hose is mine, the numbers

  race—the cents, the liquid tenths—

  according to my pressure, mine!

  I squeeze. This is power:

  transparent horsepower, blood

  of the sands, bane of the dollar,

  soul-stuff; the nozzle might jump

  from my grip, it appears to tremble

  through its fumes. Myself,

  I pinch off my share, and pay.

  The Visions of Mackenzie King

  (Based, More Closely Than You Might Think, Upon Articles in the Toronto Globe and Mail)

  I, William Lyon Mackenzie King,

  age seventy-three in 1948,

  Prime Minister of Canada for twenty-two years,

  had visions, and as such recorded them,

  though merer men might call them dreams.

  · · ·

  In one I saw Hitler

  sewing buttons on a bed quilt.

  My interpretation: “a lesson in patience.”

  In another, Franklin Roosevelt

  and I were in the home of a wealthy man,

  unnamed. As we speculated

  upon the means (suspect, somehow)

  whereby our host had acquired his fortune,

  I had to sit awkwardly upon the floor.

  The meaning was clear: I should return

  to “some simpler life.”

  In yet another, the then Princess

  Juliana of the Netherlands

>   and her charming consort, Prince Bernhard,

  came up to me ceremoniously;

  I looked down and discovered

  I was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown!

  And, later in the dream, lacked trousers.

  But no interpretation

  was confided to my journal.

  Mr. and Mrs. Winston Churchill

  were at Laurier House, my guests; in my unease

  I felt things amiss, and hastened

  to offer the great man a drink and a cigar.

  He had already helped himself to both.

  My valet took a swig from the decanter

  and in my rage I hit the presuming fellow

  with a felt hat that had appeared in my hand.

  I climbed a tower. There was room at the top.

  But my valet, Nicol, informed me

  a “private woman’s club” had occupied the premises

  and there could be no admission for me.

  My conclusion: the summit of my calling

  had been reached, but once there

  I would not find the society of women

  nor “what I had striven for most.”

  I, W. L. Mackenzie King,

  recorded these visions now released

  some thirty years later, as a species

  of Canadian history. Now,

  as then, I am embarrassed. Among

  French dignitaries, my nose began to bleed.

  My handkerchief was stained with blood!

  “I tried to keep it discreetly out of sight.”

  Next, in a shadowy warehouse setting,

  “furies” endeavored to assassinate me.

  When I awoke at last, Gandhi was dead.

  The world’s blood pursued me. The great

  ignored my gaffes. But truth will out.

  The newspapers titter that I was insecure.

  Shaving soap spoke to me, of Mother and dogs,

  in those decades of demons of whom I was one.

  Energy: A Villanelle

  The logs give back, in burning, solar fire

      green leaves imbibed and processed one by one;

  nothing is lost but, still, the cost grows higher.

  The ocean’s tons of tide, to turn, require

      no more than time and moon; it’s cosmic fun.

  The logs give back, in burning, solar fire.

  All microörganisms must expire

      and quite a few became petroleum;

  nothing is lost but, still, the cost grows higher.

  The oil rigs in Bahrain imply a buyer

      who counts no cost, when all is said and done.

  The logs give back, in burning, solar fire

  but Good Gulf gives it faster; every tire

      is by the fiery heavens lightly spun.

  Nothing is lost but, still, the cost grows higher.

  So, guzzle gas!—the leaden night draws nigher

      when cinders mark where stood the blazing sun.

  The logs give back, in burning, solar fire;

  nothing is lost but, still, the cost grows higher.

  On the Recently Minted Hundred-Cent Piece

  What have they done to our dollar, darling,

                 And who is this Susan B.

  Anthony in her tight collar, darling,

                 Instead of Miss Liberty?

  Why seems it the size of a quarter, dearie,

                 Why is it infernally small?

  To fit in the palm of a porter, dearie,

                 As tip, though he mutter, “That’s all?”

  Who shrank it, our greenback and buck, beloved,

                 And made it a plaything of tin?

  Father Time, Uncle Sam, Lady Luck, beloved,

                 Have done done our doll dollar in.

  Typical Optical

  In the days of my youth

      ’Mid many a caper

  I drew with my nose

      A mere inch from the paper;

  But now that I’m older

      And life has grown hard

  I find I can’t focus

      Inside of a yard.

  First pill-bottle labels

      And telephone books

  Began to go under

      To my dirty looks;

  Then want ads and box scores

      Succumbed to the plague

  Of the bafflingly quite

      Unresolvably vague.

  Now novels and poems

      By Proust and John Donne

  Recede from my ken in

      Their eight-point Granjon;

  Long, long in the lens

      My old eyeballs enfold

  No print any finer

      Than sans-serif bold.

  The Rockettes

  Now when those girls, all thirty-six, go

  to make their silky line, they do it slow,

  so slow and with a smile—they know

  we love it, we the audience. Our

  breaths suck in with a gasp you hear

  as their legs in casual unison

  wave this way then, and that, and their top

  hats tilt in one direction,

  and their sharp feet twinkle like a starry row

  as the pace picks up, and the lazy legs

  (thirty-six, thirty-six, what a sex

  to be limber and white and slender

  and fat all at once, all at once!)

  that seemed so calm go higher, higher

  in the wonderful kicks, like the teeth

  of a beast we have dreamed and are dreaming,

  like the feathers all velvet together

  of a violent contracting that pulls us in,

  then lets us go, that pulls us in,

  then lets us go; they smile because

  they know we know they know we know.

  Food

  It is always there,

  Man’s real best friend.

  It never bites back;

  it is already dead.

  It never tells us we are lousy lovers

  or asks us for an interview.

  It simply begs, Take me;

  it cries out, I’m yours.

  Mush me all up, it says;

  Whatever is you, is pure.

  The Sometime Sportsman Greets the Spring

  When winter’s glaze is lifted from the greens,

  And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing,

  Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens

  In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing.

  This year, he vows, his head will steady be,

  His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal;

  And so they are, until upon the tee

  Befall the old contortions of the real.

  So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from

  Hibernal months of television sports,

  Perfects his serve and feels his knees become

  Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts.

  Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss,

  Which shall be high, so that the racket face

  Shall at a certain angle sweep across

  The floated sphere with gutty strings—an ace!

  The mind’s eye sees it all until upon

  The courts of life the faulty way we played

  In other summers rolls back with the sun.

  Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade.

  ZIP Code Ode

  To These Newly Abbreviated States, Including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia

  aMERICA, you caTNip bIN,

      OR DE
n of iNJury,

  iNVest your HINDMOst FLimfLAMS in

      PAID fARes to ALbaNY.

  aCT COcKY, bUT beWAIL the trIAls

      of crAZed, uNHappy MAn.

  diSDain arMTwisting; tricKS and WIles

      uNMAKe a GAMIng plan.

  OH, shoWY land of SChemes NEwborn

  (huMDinger uNCle, be adVIsed),

      i very VAguely want

  to hyMN your harDCore, PRessurized,

  loWValue rows of OK corn

      from TX to VT.

  Déjà, Indeed

  I sometimes fear that I shall never view

  A French film lacking Gérard Depardieu.

  Two Limericks for the Elderly

  I.

  A touchy old gent from Cohasset

  Declared human contact no asset.

                 Said he, “When I say

                 ‘Noli tangere,’ me

  Is implicit but not, I hope, tacit!”

  II.

  There was an old poop from Poughkeepsie

  Who tended at night to be tipsy.

                 Said he, “My last steps

                 Aren’t propelled by just Schweppes!”—

  That peppy old poop from Poughkeepsie.

  Mites

  A house-dust mite (Dermatophagoides farinae)

  is not a house-mouse mite (Liponyssoides sanguineus)

  any more than speaking Portuguese is speaking Manx

  or an elephant is a hyrax, though both are ungulates.