Plundered Hearts

by J. D. McClatchy

  Are given, not chosen, and the gods

  Whose repertoire of change—from shower of gold

  To carpenter’s son—is limited.

  We need above all to distinguish ourselves

  From one another, and ornament

  Is particularity, elevating

  By the latest bit of finery,

  Pain, wardrobe, extravagance, or privation

  Each above the common human herd.

  The panniered skirt, dicky, ruff, and powdered wig,

  Beauty mole, Mohawk, or nipple ring,

  The pencilled eyebrow above Fortuny pleats,

  The homeless addict’s stolen parka,

  Facelift, mukluk, ponytail, fez, dirndl, ascot,

  The starlet’s lucite stiletto heels,

  The billboard model with his briefs at half-mast,

  The geisha’s obi, the gigolo’s

  Espadrilles, the war widow’s décolletage …

  Any arrangement elaborates

  A desire to mask that part of the world

  One’s body is. Nostalgia no more

  Than anarchy laces up the secondhand

  Myths we dress our well-fingered goods in.

  Better still perhaps to change the body’s shape

  With rings to elongate the neck, shoes

  To bind the feet, lead plates wrapped to budding breasts,

  The sadhu’s penis-weights and plasters,

  The oiled, pumped-up torsos at Muscle Beach,

  Or corsets cinched so tightly the ribs

  Protrude like a smug, rutting pouter pigeon’s.

  They serve to remind us we are not

  Our own bodies but anagrams of their flesh,

  And pain not a feeling but a thought.

  But best of all, so say fellow travellers

  In the fetish clan, is the tattoo,

  Because not merely molded or worn awhile

  But exuded from the body’s sense

  Of itself, the story of its conjuring

  A means defiantly to round on

  Death’s insufferably endless emptiness.

  If cavemen smeared their bones with ochre,

  The color of blood and first symbol of life,

  Then peoples ever since—Egyptian

  Priestesses, Mayan chieftains, woady Druids,

  Scythian nomads and Hebrew slaves,

  Praetorian guards and kabuki actors,

  Hells Angels, pilgrims, monks, and convicts—

  Have marked themselves or been forcibly branded

  To signify that they are members

  Of a group apart, usually above

  But often below the rest of us.

  The instruments come effortlessly to hand:

  Fish bone, razor blade, bamboo sliver,

  Thorn, glass, shell shard, nail, or electric needle.

  The canvas is pierced, the lines are drawn,

  The colors suffuse a pattern of desire.

  The Eskimos pull a charcoaled string

  Beneath the skin, and seadogs used to cover

  The art with gunpowder and set fire

  To it. The explosion drove the colors in.

  Teddy boys might use matchtip sulphur

  Or caked shoe polish mashed with spit. In Thailand

  The indigo was once a gecko.

  In mall parlors here, India ink and tabs

  Of pigment cut with grain alcohol

  Patch together tribal grids, vows, fantasies,

  Frescoes, planetary signs, pinups,

  Rock idols, bar codes, all the insignia

  Of the brave face and the lonely heart.

  The reasons are both remote and parallel.

  The primitive impulse was to join,

  The modern to detach oneself from, the world.

  The hunter’s shadowy camouflage,

  The pubescent girl’s fertility token,

  The warrior’s lurid coat of mail,

  The believer’s entrée to the afterlife—

  The spiritual practicality

  Of our ancestors remains a source of pride.

  Yielding to sentimentality,

  Later initiates seek to dramatize

  Their jingoism, their Juliets

  Or Romeos. They want to fix a moment,

  Some port of call, a hot one-night-stand,

  A rush of mother-love or Satan worship.

  Superstition prompts the open eye

  On the sailor’s lid, the fish on his ankle.

  The biker makes a leather jacket

  Of his soft beer belly and nail-bitten hands.

  The call girl’s strategic butterfly

  Or calla lily attracts and focuses

  Her client’s interest and credit card.

  But whether encoded or flaunted, there’s death

  At the bottom of every tattoo.

  The mark of Cain, the stigma to protect him

  From the enemy he’d created,

  Must have been a skull. Once incorporated,

  Its spell is broken, its mortal grip

  Loosened or laughed at or fearlessly faced down.

  A Donald Duck with drooping forelock

  And swastikas for eyes, the sci-fi dragon,

  The amazon’s ogress, the mazy

  Yin-yang dragnets, the spiders on barbed-wire webs,

  The talismanic fangs and jesters,

  Ankhs and salamanders, scorpions and dice,

  All are meant to soothe the savage breast

  Or back beneath whose dyed flesh there beats something

  That will stop. Better never to be

  Naked again than not disguise what time will

  Press like a flower in its notebook,

  Will score and splotch, rot, erode, and finish off.

  Ugly heads are raised against our end.

  If others are unnerved, why not death itself?

  If unique, then why not immortal?

  Protected by totem animals that perch

  Or coil in strategic locations—

  A lizard just behind the ear, a tiger’s

  Fangs seeming to rip open the chest,

  An eagle spreading its wings across the back—

  The body at once both draws death down

  And threatens its dominion. The pain endured

  To thwart the greater pain is nothing

  Next to the notion of nothingness.

  Is that what I see in the mirror?

  The vacancy of everything behind me,

  The eye that now takes so little in,

  The unmarked skin, the soul without privileges …

  Everything’s exposed to no purpose.

  The tears leave no trace of their grief on my face.

  My gifts are never packaged, never

  Teasingly postponed by the need to undo

  The puzzled perfections of surface.

  All over I am open to whatever

  You may make of me, and death soon will,

  Its unmarked grave the shape of things to come,

  The page there was no time to write on.

  3.

  New Zealand, 1890

  Because he was the chieftain’s eldest son

  And so himself

  Destined one day to rule,

  The great meetinghouse was garishly strung

  With smoked heads and armfuls

  Of flax, the kiwi cloak, the lithograph

  Of Queen Victoria, seated and stiff,

  Oil lamps, the greenstone clubs and treasure box

  Carved with demons

  In polished attitudes

  That held the tribal feathers and ear drops.

  Kettles of fern root, stewed

  Dog, mulberry, crayfish, and yam were hung

  To wait over the fire’s spluttering tongues.

  The boy was led in. It was the last day

  Of his ordeal.

  The tenderest sections—

  Under his eyes, inside his ears—remained

  To be cut, th
e maze run

  To its dizzying ends, a waterwheel

  Lapping his flesh the better to reveal

  Its false-face of unchanging hostility.

  A feeding tube

  Was put between his lips.

  His arms and legs were held down forcibly.

  Resin and lichen, mixed

  With pigeon fat and burnt to soot, was scooped

  Into mussel shells. The women withdrew.

  By then the boy had slowly turned his head,

  Whether to watch

  Them leave or keep his eye

  On the stooped, grayhaired cutter who was led

  In amidst the men’s cries

  Of ceremonial anger at each

  Of the night’s cloudless hours on its path

  Through the boy’s life. The cutter knelt beside

  The boy and stroked

  The new scars, the smooth skin.

  From his set of whalebone chisels he tied

  The shortest one with thin

  Leather thongs to a wooden handle soaked

  In rancid oil. Only his trembling throat

  Betrayed the boy. The cutter smiled and took

  A small mallet,

  Laid the chisel along

  The cheekbone, and tapped so a sharpness struck

  The skin like a bygone

  Memory of other pain, other threats.

  Someone dabbed at the blood. Someone else led

  A growling chant about their ancestors.

  Beside the eye’s

  Spongy marshland a frond

  Sprouted, a jagged gash to which occurs

  A symmetrical form,

  While another chisel pecks in the dye,

  A blue the deep furrow intensifies.

  The boy’s eyes are fluttering now, rolling

  Back in his head.

  The cutter stops only

  To loop the blade into a spiralling,

  Astringent filigree

  Whose swollen tracery, it seems, has led

  The boy beyond the living and the dead.

  He can feel the nine Nothings drift past him

  In the dark: Night,

  The Great Night, the Choking

  Night, the All-Brightening Night and the Dim,

  The Long Night, the Floating

  Night, the Empty Night, and with the first light

  A surging called the War Canoe of Night—

  Which carries Sky Father and Earth Mother,

  Their six sons borne

  Inside the airless black

  The two make, clasped only to each other.

  Turning onto his back,

  The eldest son struggles with all his force,

  Shoulder to sky, straining until it’s torn

  Violently away from the bleeding earth.

  He sets four beams,

  Named for the winds, to keep

  His parents apart. They’re weeping, the curve

  Of loneliness complete

  Between them now. The old father’s tears gleam

  Like stars, then fall as aimlessly as dreams

  To earth, which waits for them all to return.

  Hers is the care

  Of the dead, and his tears

  Seep into her folds like a dye that burns.

  One last huge drop appears

  Hanging over the boy’s head. Wincing, scared,

  He’s put his hand up into the cold air.

  THE AGAVE

  The villa’s switchback garden path,

  between the potted railing and the sea

  and under the canopy of overlapping pines,

  winds through what can grow under them:

  plants from a moon orbiting Venus maybe,

  brambly fig, yucca, holm oak, firethorn,

  and silvery, bloated succulents—

  The Penitent, Dead-Child’s-Fingers,

  Mother’s-Stool, Chapel-of-Solitude.

  The agave beside the stone bench,

  where I have sat heavily all day,

  reaches out in all directions,

  its meaty, grizzled leaves each

  the length of a man, each edged

  with back-turned venomous thorns,

  thumbnail billhooks in ranks down

  from the empurpled spike at its tip.

  The largest leaf, right next to me,

  has so bent under itself, the spike

  has come around and gone up through

  another part of itself—the heart, say,

  or whatever comes to as much as that.

  Yesterday the gardener told me

  it could take thirty years for the spike

  slowly—never meaning to, thinking

  it was headed toward the water-glare

  it mistook for the little light that kept

  not coming from above—slowly

  to pierce its own flesh, to sink its sorrow

  deep within and through its own life.

  It only took me a month.

  THE FEVER

  The fever has lasted three days.

  Layers of skins and weavings

  were first heaped on the bed

  but nothing kept out the cold

  that shook my body

  like a crackhead mother

  angry because her baby

  won’t stop crying.

  Then another body crawled in

  beside me, held me—

  she throws the blue baby

  down the furnace chute,

  the ceiling hisses at

  the ice pack’s beaded apathy,

  the hidden air, the voices,

  the voices all too calm.

  I’m hauled up, they listen

  to my back. What can it say?

  They listen to my front.

  A deep breath. Does this hurt?

  So much I can’t answer.

  They ease me back down.

  The one beside me slips away.

  I can hear him in the next room.

  He’s laughing. He’s given up.

  This is how love feels, they write.

  So which one am I in love with?

  THE INFECTION

  In those days I used to refuse the medicine

  because the infection then made it hurt so

  when I came, hurt so that the pain—

  its intolerable scalding contractions,

  the knot choked by appetite, desperate

  to advance and retreat, to thrash further

  inside its own swollen sentence,

  the little useless gash, the bitter spasm—

  each night left me frightened and smiling.

  The tears had rinsed my eyes, the whining

  stilled any desire to repeat myself.

  I thought of it as a kind of mutilation,

  less of my body than of my longing not to have one.

  Afterwards, I would limp to the bathroom

  for a hot washcloth and hold it to myself,

  and then to my face. The cloth smelled

  of the rotten hyacinths, their stalks snapped,

  their milky petals gone brown and sticky,

  I would pass each weekend, thrown to the back

  of the stalls, pots of them, at the flower market.

  I went to the window, put the cloth on the stone

  ledge. Until it dried, it would be my standard,

  my scorn and seamark, my flag of surrender.

  LATE AFTERNOON, ROME

  Down the street, on the path to the oratory,

  the stations of the cross—huge bronze slabs,

  their ordinary agonies modernized to poses

  on a fashion runway—have been wired shut.

  A river of swallows sheers off course again

  around air-locked spurs of warmth or chill.

  The sun is out late, panning for gold

  in the silt of our ochre upper floors.

  Everything is looking up for a change.

  Isn’t that white capsule o
n the blue tablecloth

  the daily jumbo jet? It’s so far beyond

  the cross and thorns, beyond the drawstring

  of birds, beyond the last light down here.

  And there’s already a glass of water on the table,

  for the pill I was meant to take hours ago.

  THE BOOKCASE

  My empty bookcase yawns and rises

  from its paint job, white asphalt

  newly laid over a grid of back streets,

  the chill of what assurance supports it all

  still in the air, no music, no voices.

  Who wants to live with what he knows?

  While I sit on the storage boxes,

  my double’s slowly making his way

  among shop windows and bloody altars,

  holding pages to the light, changing

  sex to distance himself from force

  or faithfulness, the household demons.

  It’s late. Opportunities are multiplying.

  I am what I did? I am what I wait for?

  I feel something returning, like a book

  put back on the shelf, slid between

  names like mine, my story, my fault.

  HOTEL BAR

  The saxophonist winds up “My Romance,”

  the song with a scar. In the red lacquer ceiling,

  the night’s raw throat, I can just make out

  lampshades the color of a smoker’s breath.

  One is at our table. Across sits a woman

  in tiny furs from before the war, the mouth

  of one gnawing on the tail of the other,

  like comets. A sudden brightness onstage,

  a flaring spot, flashes on the nodding brass.

  The little thud at a nova’s heart predicts

  the gradual, dimming ebb and flow

  of light—or love—soon enough burnt out,

  remembered only as desire’s afterglow.

  So which one has the room key? Neither of us

  wants to guess what won’t ever be opened.

  Something is found in a galactic pocket.

  Something is left behind on a chair.

  The elevator doors close soundlessly.

  A constellation of numbers rises in order.

  Again, the argument from design’s invoked.

  Tomorrow we’ll get to go back over it all,

  what’s partially false and almost always true,

  as in “My romance doesn’t need a thing but you.”

  A TOUR OF THE VOLCANO