Nouns & Verbs

by Campbell McGrath

  blasted fields and ravaged orchards of the homeland.

  And the camps of the Union Army,

  numberless crates of supplies at the quartermaster’s depot,

  acres of wagon teams like the truckers

  hauling debris away from Ground Zero, how Whitman

  would have lauded their patriotic industry,

  carting the wreckage of empire,

  as he praised the young soldiers in their valor,

  “genuine of the soil, of darlings and true heirs,”

  as he cared for them in the army hospitals in Washington,

  bringing to the wounded small, homely comforts—

  apples, tobacco, newspapers, string,

  pickles and licorice and horehound candy,

  pocket change to buy a drink from the dairywoman

  peddling fresh milk cot to cot in the field wards,

  a comb, a book, a bowl of rice pudding

  for Henry Boardman of the 27th Connecticut—

  the democratic simplicity of his compassion,

  whatever the erotic charge of its currency,

  whatever its voyeuristic aspect,

  discovering in the moment of material attention

  the salve for a wounded life, and in the lives of the wounded

  a serum for the injured nation. Meaning, by compassion,

  his unique, coercive, actively embodied brand of empathy,

  his conspiratorial love of self and other

  intermingled, undivided, prelapsarian and entire,

  his kindness, his tenderness,

  Walt Whitman’s tenderness is everything,

  source of his greatness and key to his enigmatic soul,

  the agent that calls sentimental platitudes to task

  and elevates his grief into lasting eloquence,

  the force that disavows anger for love

  even amid the inconceivable

  carnage of that war, the suffering of those men,

  the magnitude of that national trauma.

  But Leaves of Grass does not negate Gettysburg,

  lilacs could not return Lincoln

  to a grieving people.

  No poem can refute the killing fields.

  Art will not stop the death squads

  sharpening their machetes in the village square before dawn,

  the militiamen, the partisans, the cutters-off of hands,

  boy soldiers in new barracks playing dice,

  the child nailed to the hawthorn tree and the parents

  beyond the barbed wire forced to admire the work of the nailers,

  the nails themselves, iron ore and machines to quarry it,

  mills and factories, depots and warehouses,

  the distribution software,

  the brown truck and the deliveryman,

  wheelbarrows of lopped hands burned in pits with gasoline,

  pretty smiling girls favored by the rape brigades,

  the believers, the zealots, sergeants at arms, gangsters,

  ethnic cleansers and counterinsurgency units,

  tyrants, ideologues, defenders of justice,

  technological sentinels in hardened bunkers

  scanning infrared monitors for ignition signatures,

  mass graves and secret facilities,

  scientists chained to the lightning of matter,

  the atoms themselves,

  neutrinos and quarks, leptons

  refracting alpha particles as words reflect

  the stolen light of truth or revelation,

  the faces of the terrorists as the airplane strikes the tower,

  the faces of the firemen ascending the stairwell,

  the faces of Stephen Biko’s torturers at the amnesty hearing

  while the dutiful son listens impassively

  as if attending Miltonic lectures on human suffering,

  the real, the actual, the earthly, ether of bodily want,

  love and its granules pouring from the crucible,

  rain to bathe the ingots, a gray horizon of muddy shoals

  where oceangoing freighters are taken to pieces

  by half-naked laborers wielding hammers and blowtorches,

  a wrecking ground reverberating with gong-sounds

  and the screams of yielding metal,

  black-and-white photographs to document

  that place, that labor, human history,

  the work of men.

  5.

  Strange that we are born entire, red-faced and marsupial,

  helpless but whole, no chrysalis or transformation

  to enlarge or renew us, unless—who is to say that death

  might not signify a wing-engendering reanimation

  such as believers in the afterlife propose?

  Is it a dream, then, this beach of seraphic sunlight,

  silos full of clouds, monarch butterflies

  flown from Mexico to roost on storm-uprooted trees

  as schools of stingrays weave their way

  through a realm of water which is their own,

  the breaking through, the crossing over,

  wing tips in the wave-curl

  impinging upon us as ghosts or angels might,

  cracks in the crystal spheres through which perfume

  floods unending into our world?

  Which passes, as lightning or a waning moon

  drawn above the Atlantic, my Atlantic,

  rose petals poured from silver goblets into molten glass,

  nectar of apples and papayas,

  shoes composed of wampum and desire,

  my own Atlantic—but, why are you laughing?

  Not at you, no.

  Then with me?

  No . . .

  Clouds more enormous than souls,

  more sacred, fatal, devoted,

  saints climbing pearl-inlaid stairs into the burning sky,

  saints or golden ants, but no—No?

  Are you sure? And the god smiled,

  and picked up his scythe.

  6.

  Odor on the breeze of sea foam and decay,

  the stars’ genuflections,

  subsidence, forgetfulness, the tides.

  And beneath the still surface,

  what depths?

  And the creatures in the chasms below the waves?

  All night I dreamt of mermaids caught in fishing nets

  and now, jeweled with sargassum in the surf,

  the body of a mermaid, drowned.

  Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year’s Day

  Beneath a ten-foot-tall apparition of Frosty the Snowman

  with his corncob pipe and jovial, over-eager, button-black eyes,

  holding, in my palm, the leathery, wine-colored purse

  of a pomegranate, I realize, yet again, that America is a country

  about which I understand everything and nothing at all,

  that this is life, this ungovernable air

  in which the trees rearrange their branches, season after season,

  never certain which configuration will bear the optimal yield

  of sunlight and water, the enabling balm of nutrients,

  that so, too, do Wal-Mart’s ferocious sales managers

  relentlessly analyze their end-cap placement, product mix,

  and shopper demographics, that this is the culture

  in all its earnestness and absurdity, that it never rests,

  that each day is an eternity and every night is New Year’s Eve,

  a cavalcade of B-list has-beens entirely unknown to me,

  needy comedians and country singers in handsome Stetsons,

  sitcom stars of every social trope and ethnic denomination,

  pugilists and oligarchs, femmes fatales and anointed virgins

  throat-slit in offering to the cannibal throng of Times Square.

  Who are these people? I grow old. I lie unsleeping

  as confetti falls, ash-girdled, robed in sweat and melancholy
,

  click-shifting from QVC to reality TV, strings of commercials

  for breath freshener, debt reconsolidation, a new car

  lacking any whisper of style or grace, like a final fetid gasp

  from the lips of a dying Henry Ford, potato-faced actors

  impersonating real people with real opinions

  offered forth with idiot grins in the yellow, herniated studio light,

  actual human beings, actual souls bought too cheaply.

  That it never ends, O Lord, that it never ends!

  That it is relentless, remorseless, and it is on right now.

  That one sees it and sees it but sometimes it sees you, too,

  cowering in a corner, transfixed by the crawler for the storm alert,

  home videos of faces left dazed by the twister, the car bomb,

  the war always beginning or already begun, always

  the special report, the inside scoop, the hidden camera

  revealing the mechanical lives of the sad, inarticulate people

  we have come to know as “celebrities.”

  Who assigns such value, who chose these craven avatars

  if not the miraculous hand of the marketplace

  whose torn cuticles and gaudily painted fingernails resemble nothing

  so much as our own? Where does the oracle reveal our truths

  more vividly than upon that pixilated spirit-glass

  unless it is here, in this tabernacle of homely merchandise,

  a Copernican model of a money-driven universe

  revolving around its golden omphalos, each of us summed

  and subtotaled, integers in an equation of need and consumption,

  desire and consummation, because Hollywood had it right all along,

  the years are a montage of calendar pages and autumn leaves,

  sheet music for a nostalgic symphony of which our lives comprise

  but single trumpet blasts, single notes in the hullabaloo,

  or even less—we are but motes of dust in that atmosphere

  shaken by the vibrations of time’s imperious crescendo.

  That it never ends, O Lord. That it goes on,

  without pause or cessation, without pity or remorse.

  That we have willed it into existence, dreamed it into being.

  That it is our divine monster, our factotum, our scourge.

  That I can imagine nothing more beautiful

  than to propitiate such a god upon the seeds of my own heart.

  Part Five

  Poems

  Woe

  Consider the human capacity for suffering,

  our insatiable appetite for woe.

  I do not say this lightly

  but the sandwiches at Subway

  suck. Foaming lettuce,

  mayo like rancid bear grease,

  meat the color of a dead dog’s tongue.

  Yet they are consumed

  by the millions

  and by the tens of millions.

  So much for the food. The rest

  I must pass over in silence.

  The Key Lime

  Curiously yellow hand grenade

  of flavor; Molotov cocktail

  for a revolution against the bland.

  Vice President of Pants

  turns out to be my friend Marvin’s job title

  at a local clothing manufacturer

  as I learned from a recent newspaper article

  about “victims of the downturn,”

  though even after some serious erosion

  his paycheck rolls enough biweekly zeros

  to belie whatever expectations

  you may have harbored about those

  who toil in the vineyards of leisurewear,

  and I can’t help but envy the Director of Kneesocks,

  and the Undersecretary of Ascots,

  and wonder whether the Alcalde of Guayaberas

  might be hiring an assistant sometime soon,

  because in all honesty this poetry gig

  is like feeding chocolate donuts to a hungry tiger

  or planting sunflowers on the moon.

  Wild Thing

  I will be forever nineteen driving a white Impala convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway while the radio plays nothing but my favorite songs.

  I will live among the wild men of Borneo, drink boar’s blood, watch the slow dance of planets through my bamboo telescope.

  I will alter the consciousness of the free world, shake the philosophical foundations of Western civilization while dating Vanna White.

  I will rock the Roxy and the Ritz, ride the rails, roam center field for the Cubs.

  I will rise and shine, I will reign, I will rule, believe me.

  Alas, life is poor preparation for death.

  All those years of practice for the grand event that never happens,

  no flute recital before the masses, no squash game with God.

  In such matters our shortsightedness is fundamental.

  History is a wave and we surf it beautifully,

  carving the face, shredding the curl of that perfectly marbled breaker

  spiced with essential stoke. Or so we imagine.

  But before this wave came others, and beyond it lies

  a veritable ocean of rills and wavelets and mighty tsunamis

  we’ve failed to notice, our eyes so full of spray,

  blinded by the tingling sensations of the moment,

  as if time were a force field or energized aura,

  a second skin, like gravity or desire,

  that by its very nature constricts our vision, contains us

  as a pig’s intestine stuffed with pork and anise

  by some overwrought Italian butcher. How else

  could my wife continue to wear those shoes,

  those black-buckled high-tops, combat boots for elves,

  which will so clearly seem an utter embarrassment

  in the photo album twenty years from now.

  My god, look what I wore in the ’90s!

  How else to explain the statue of Ceres atop the Board of Trade,

  elegantly appropriate but left without a face, unfinished,

  because they didn’t think the city would grow tall enough to notice.

  And don’t we all recognize that blank expression?

  Don’t we each cherish our unique and individual nature,

  every paper cut or broken heart the first, the most severe,

  each vow or resolution the mark of some brave new beginning.

  No two snowflakes are exactly alike

  but every fucking snowflake is pretty much the same,

  every life a variation on a theme of suffering and meaninglessness,

  full of distractions—frisbees, beautiful trees,

  girls in orange sandals—in fact the distractions

  are the main event, there is no grace period,

  no warm-up tosses or pre-season schedule,

  the game has not only begun it’s the top of the sixth inning

  and you still haven’t scored. A shutout.

  The world has pitched a shutout against your life.

  For all your slick manipulations of that magic bat

  you’re deep in the hole, the count’s against you,

  your net result is a fat string of goose eggs

  hung like loops of fresh kielbasa from the rafters.

  And time is running out, we’re into the seventh,

  now it’s the eighth and the lights are coming on,

  the fans are clapping with nervous anticipation.

  Look, out in the bullpen, he’s warming up:

  the main man, the big guy, the stopper, the ace.

  But what about those dreams, your hopes for the future—

  to plumb the depths of the Marianas Trench in a gilded bathysphere,

  to write the epic masterwork of greed and heroism and love,

  to build a house with your own two hands in the h
ills outside of Santa Fe

  and raise up chickens and dogs and a family there,

  the Jet Ski, the guitar lessons, the macramé? Hey,

  I’d better get serious, get something going before it’s too late.

  It is too late. Bottom of the ninth. Two gone.

  They’ve given the signal and he’s entering the game,

  he’s coming in to face you, he’s making his way slowly across the grass.

  The inexorable closer is coming, believe me,

  it isn’t Mitch Williams.

  Poem That Needs No Introduction

  I.

  Listen, I have endured so much bad art in my lifetime

  that my brain actually throbs and pulses

  in the manner of a 1960s comic-book supervillain

  and my skull threatens to burst at the seams like a lychee nut

  at the mere thought of all those tuneless bands and lousy etchings

  and earnest readings in coffeehouses

  smelling of clove cigarettes,

  pretentious photos of phallomorphic icebergs,

  the opening at the gallery hung with stillborn elephants—

  what could you say?—and one unforgettable night

  a conceptual dance performance akin to a ritual sacrifice

  with the audience as victims—as if art

  might prove the literal death of me—all this,

  all this and so much more,

  only to find myself here, in Bratislava,

  at the Ars Poetica poetry festival,

  yet again drinking red wine from a plastic cup

  while the poets declaim in languages

  dense and indecipherable as knotted silk, thinking, well,

  what could be better than this?

  II.

  Perhaps it would be better if the air-conditioning worked

  and the keg of Zlatý Bažant had not run dry

  but the local wine is unexpectedly delicious, hearty as wild boar’s blood,

  and the very existence of such an exuberantly cacophonous conclave

  in this diminutive and innocuous backwater of Mitteleuropa

  makes me yearn to do something hearty and wine-soaked and boarish—

  no, not boorish—to shout spontaneous bebop musings

  like the hipster Beatnik poet Fred from Paris

  or crack wise like the balding Frank O’Hara imitator from Vienna

  or sing like the yodeling, pop-eyed jokester from Prague

  or simply intone with great seriousness like the well-mannered poets

  from Warsaw and Wrocław, Berlin and Budapest and Brno.