by Stanley Moss
thoughts go back to friends who would visit,
most now are in places quite exquisite,
where it is better to receive than to give,
where every night and every morning
is for no thanks on Thanksgiving.
My friends thanked bees for buttercups.
Dandelions and buttercups
taught them to go on living,
be numerous, singular everywhere,
better to be here than elsewhere.
Friends sang the blues,
some passed on, are almost forgotten,
some wrote books I and others use.
(Goya buried five of his six children.)
Workers and idle readers, creatures of the den,
did what they could not and what they could.
In hard times they did good
that helps me and others every day.
Some kisses are not wiped away—
some kissed on the cheek, some on the mouth,
some way down south.
Undone, I will never be remade,
life has shadows, but not death.
I will never be a shade
strolling above or beneath the earth.
I’m tired of rhyming death and breath.
Thank you, Doctor Freud,
for teaching about
hasty nightmares: I found out
I played with ladies who toyed
with me. I was seldom disenchanted,
I thanked God for the gift of trees I planted.
If I ever told the truth, I’ve not recanted.
It’s true, I’ve looked too much for rhymes,
and such like. No one looks for a rhyme
for his or her last words. Rhymes
are out of mind when dying—
there is a little crying,
nothing is for fun.
Pardon, I wrote this for fun,
always under the gun.
PROVINCIAL LETTER
Allegro Moderato
The word “We” is celebrating the New Year.
The word “I” begins the New Year
with rapture verses reason, difference between
caste of mind verses state of mind,
unfinished verses fluent style.
Descartes believed in no final ends,
studied admiration
verses Kantian sublime—the origin of tears.
Descartes himself was an anatomist,
dissected a skull, studied the brain,
wrote on a skull, then later on
(translated by silly us)
“the most important thing was to write,
that would please on account of its style alone.”
I tell myself later Paul Valéry wrote
off the cuff ex cathedra:
“Everything written with precision
is as good as indestructible, a monument.”
(A soliloquy: I’m trapped.
I write to be read aloud,
speak extra lines to make clear who’s speaking—
my echoing pronouns, cheap theatrics.)
New York City is not a poem. I remember
buildings built with architectural precision,
early 20th Century temples,
destroyed for business reasons.
I’d rather give attention to the precise
Hanging Slaughtered Ox by Rembrandt
seen as the body of Christ.
The word “We” hung and hooked.
“I” is just a rib.
* * *
We recall history differently.
Your Aeschylus was killed precisely
by a falling turtle dropped on his bald head
by an eagle, who thought his head was a rock.
On Aeschylus’ headstone, no words he’d written,
something like:
Take word to the Eleusians, here lies one
who fought the Persians.
I, an intruder from unstable infanthood,
I was not allowed to feel We, I
was often told: Who are you to think?
I never slept in a bed that fit—
I sometimes thought I was not,
therefore I ached to become “We.”
We, my dog Rumba and I, slept together.
Lovers wrap around each other. Opposites
can be man and man, woman and woman,
but man and woman are not opposites
like the days of the week, except the Sabbath
that may be Friday, Saturday, or Sunday,
depending on this or that religion.
There are “I” and “We” prayers
for the God fearing.
Jesus prayed to himself, John 17.
There are prayers for men,
prayers for women to say,
prayers for different times of day.
By the way, does God fear mankind?
JANUARY 2ND, 2018
“We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.”
—Winston Churchill
“Abandon Ship,” I said to myself
for no reason
just a little before a late sunrise.
Why do I say two words that frighten me,
a command I was never given except by myself?
In a drill, we rehearsed the possibility
three score and ten years ago.
January 2nd, 2018,
last night I made a resolution:
this year no friends will die.
In the cloistered convent of Santo Domigo,
in Toledo, Spain, a black veiled nun
greeted me through iron bars, said,
“Quien pasa un Enero, vive un año entero,”
that was icy January 1959
in a place of contemplation.
* * *
Five days passed. On the seventh of January,
Daniel, my friend for 60 years,
Eugene, my friend for 50, died on the same day.
In the evening of that day,
I heard a third friend, a poet
refused a tablespoon of coffee
he just asked for, stumbling for words—
he could not swallow or get out of bed.
When we first met I was nineteen,
he was buying a girlfriend a pretty bottle
of perfume, Evening in Paris.
My first words to him in a pharmacy-bookstore:
“Every whore in Paris wears that.”
8th of January, about noon
his wife called and said, “Aaron’s dead,
eight days after his 92nd birthday.”
January 10, Laren called from Germany,
“Yusef had a stroke, his right side and left arm
are paralyzed.” I called him, we chattered,
he did not say, “Goodbye,” he said, “Man, keep the faith.”
January 22, Christopher emailed me from Tangier,
“Stanley,
I’m sorry to tell you Bill Jordan just died.”
February 1, at a party I was told,
“Arthur died yesterday.”
He was my oldest friend.
At seventeen, we joined the Navy,
bunked together. Later he lost a leg,
had six children, twenty-nine grandchildren last count.
He had the heartiest laugh I ever heard,
it rocked the ship. I loved him.
I do not abandon ship, I bail with my hands.
I’m not afraid to say I don’t know.
I wish the world a Happy New Year!
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
Dear Yusef, after a stroke
not of an oar or swimmer,
you’re paralyzed on the right side,
part of both arms. They’re attaching
a pacemaker to your heart right now.
It should keep your heart beating,
so you will get off the table into a bed.
My h
eart feels funny, guess my heart’s praying,
but I don’t pray.
Life is suddenly a battlefield,
the world needs you more than anyone.
I don’t want to write: “more than anyone I know.”
You have given us holy information,
your heart and intelligence have constructed
a free nation for all, beauty for all
like rice and sweet potatoes.
The Greeks say, I know, “A poet is a maker.”
I don’t know the Greek word for cook.
I think poems are not made,
they’re cooked, or eaten raw.
God invented us and green poison ivy.
Simple fact, it’s absolutely senseless doing evil.
God, if you exist, are you grateful?
I would be grateful if you grabbed me
by the balls and pulled me up to heaven,
only if I can tell stories of a child murdered.
What would Mary have done if she strangled Jesus—
man, you know from experience:
she would have hanged herself. Now this.
IT’S A PITY
It came out of my mouth for no reason,
I said, “Es tut mir Leid,”
talking to a friend about lunch.
I have reasons to mourn,
but sorrow is out of mind. Why did I speak German,
afraid my German friends will die?
I don’t know The Sorrows of Young Werther.
I sang when I was three or four
Hänschen klein ging allein.
Now I sing,
Es tut mir Leid,
the sun is still bright,
out of sight.
Yesterday, Death wrote
me a note: “You hog,
there’s one too many in the boat.
The curtain has fallen.
It’s all epilogue,
you’re a has been
from here on in.”
I say, “Clocks don’t tell time, they just grin.”
ITALY
Italy is your stage name,
you taught me the sexuality of everything,
blessed my cazzo, my todger according to a lost dialect,
my penis, my North American “dick.”
“Madness,” you say, “obscene.”
Italy, I hid my love for you from the world
and myself—that’s obscene.
Yes, I am excommunicated and I don’t care.
Your body was, is an altar I prayed, pray, and kneel before,
I practice the several religious practices you prefer.
Your vagina is vestal, hearth Goddess of sacred fires.
I entered, enter your sanctuary
with my ignorant pagan tongue.
I worship your fields of poppies under the wheat.
You made a language tasting of figs,
made fica the word for “cunt.” Beg pardon.
I don’t forget the many emperors you had to worship,
but it was good news on the Rialto
when you told me, and I knew you were right,
I gave you more orgasms than any other.
You went to a doctor to find out
if that many orgasms
would give you a heart attack.
There is Pergolesi’s High Mass in you,
there’s commedia dell’arte—
Cavalcanti’s a buttock, Dante another.
I read, smell, touch, taste Dante’s
Paradise, Hell and Purgatory—
in the paradise, hell, purgatory of your vagina.
I crash a celebration behind Ghiberti’s doors.
I hear Vivaldi, Verdi, visiting Stravinsky.
Then there’s your music,
seven percussions with a few strings and piano.
A cello changes the world,
a harp washes the feet of prisoners.
Garibaldi united you—
then wrote Lincoln, offered to come over
and head the Union armies.
Till recently you obeyed the Napoleonic code
which found me guilty.
I had to prove my innocence.
I still want to make a bella figura,
when my suits are definitely off the rack.
Italy, you sexualize everything.
When Galileo looked through a telescope,
he saw the stars making love in the dark,
proof gravity is a clear demonstration
of lovemaking in the universe
that is what we call male, female, other preferences.
Every star clitoral, touches, then kisses a todger,
some erect, a few circumcised.
Italy wishes God tante belle cose.
A Roman in the Catskills, I ache for you,
Italian poetry and prose,
today Leopardi and Montale.
Outside my window apple trees and maples.
I’m a copper centaur, hands tied behind my back,
winged Eros riding me—
how many times have I told you this,
taken you by the hand to the Campidoglio,
shown you my marble Hellenistic ancestor.
Italy, on my lawn I’m an ordinary green garden hose.
I become the fountain in Piazza Barberini,
a triton blowing water from a shell held to my lips.
I write this in an open Italian style.
I am to you another waxed hot red pepper
with a price on my shoulder,
you are to me bell’Italia.
* * *
I loved you from first sight in Taormina
in February 1935.
I loved you sexually before I knew this from that,
ci from ça—I see the Greeks played sacred seesaw
on a red and black bilingual amphora.
Italy, beautiful hermaphrodite
lying face down or open legged,
I see and saw you as a woman.
I wanted to score when I first heard music
on the radio, I think it was a violin.
I loved what I could see and touch,
your harbor of Naples, your Cittavecchia,
Port of Rome. I was faithful
even when I held naked France
in my arms on Avenue de l’Opéra,
I know now when I kissed in France, China, Portugal,
I thought of your mouth. I thrust my todger
into temperate, tropical, and artic zones.
You taught me life begins, and begins again.
There are intervals, five act tragedies.
Sarah Bernhardt’s one legged ghost is in me,
expect thirteen years of final performances,
my La Dame Aux Camelias, my Hamlet.
Buon giorno. Buona sera. Good night.
TRA LA
In the garden or on my fire escape,
I water Peace Lilies, flower pots.
I plant flowers in full sun, shade,
if they need it. I often fail,
flowers die.
I’ve heard flowers play a divertimento,
I’ve seen a rose bush die,
given last rites, Buddhist services,
another rose bush mourned by blooming.
I whistle a dirge without thinking,
word rhythms certainly, no ensemble
for clarinet, horn, drums and cello.
Yet I have overtures in me,
solos, sonatas, military bands.
I want to write a quintet for strings
that fits local architecture,
near a crucifix in a synagogue,
Hebrew Bibles in Christian churches,
Korans among racks for hymnals.
One sky above—why not one religion?
I sing my hims and hers
to pilgrims walking with bare feet,
preaching one religion. Tra la, tra la.
BEYOND MY REACH
Poetry makes distance come close.
In the eternalized past,
the snows of Leningrad in 1945,
drowned Virginia Woolf, heavy with stones,
never met Akhmatova
among the murdered and starving,
Anna would not wear lipstick or rouge.
Worthless information.
Are they trees or lumber now?
Among the dead, worthless Beauty
sometimes wears makeup.
In the United States court of appeals,
judges refuse to count rivers and trees as persons,
but rule corporations are persons.
The Gods do not want their rights as persons,
they take for granted their immortality.
Aphrodite and Ares dance together
as prose and poetry sometimes do.
Perhaps Artemis, not afraid of lightning,
is afraid of the sun,
that one day will stop shining.
Bit of a leap, in time I want to be a tree
with roots and green leaves—
I’ll be blind, but I love water and sunshine.
I will stare headfirst into the earth.
REPUTATION
I am surprised by my reputation
at dinners of readers and poets,
a few I don’t know know me.
Take a group of art historians, some puppets,
a few know me, I don’t know. Dogs recognize me,
a pharmacist with a Greek name told me
he heard someone read my poems on the radio.
I was delighted a chimney fixer asked me:
“Are you the Stanley Moss I read in prison.”
Still what will be my reputation
50 years from now?
I am more likely to be reputed
than to have reputation. I may touch
a happy few and unhappy readers
for a while—or “a while” times two,
rememberèd, scraped on something lonely
like a rock or fence: he was.
HAPPINESS
One foot on the ground, I steal
what I love from a wordy wilderness,
I don’t rob banks or make dirty deals,
no pick pocket I steal words, your happiness
without taking away your happiness.
I might name a dog Happy but not Happiness.
I peek in on two lovers tethered,
reading, writing, bathing together,
happy opposites and birds of a feather.
Happiness is tongues playing follow the leader
doing unto others as you
would have others do unto you.
I offer shelter to homeless readers.
I still have my voice but I cannot whistle.
Happiness perks my lips so I can whistle