which is never enough?
No goodbyes on either side,
she goes to help the kids alone,
she wades through fire to her thighs,
she grabs them up and swings them high,
her hair catches the flames’ glow.
But she’d wanted to buy a ticket,
take a quick vacation,
write a letter,
open the window after a storm,
beat a track through the woods,
admire ants,
watch the lake
blinking in the wind.
A moment of silence for the dead
can take all night.
I’ve borne witness
to the flight of clouds and birds,
I hear grass growing
and know what to call it,
I’ve read millions
of printed marks,
I’ve trained a telescope
along strange stars,
but no one so far
has called for my help,
and what if I regret
a leaf, a dress, a rhyme—
We know ourselves only
as far as we’ve been tested.
I tell you this
from my unknown heart.
Rehabilitation
I wield imagination’s oldest right
and summon up the dead for the first time,
I watch for their faces, anticipate their steps,
though I know that dead is dead and gone.
It’s time to take my head in hand
and say: Poor Yorick, where’s your ignorance,
where’s your blind faith, where’s your innocence,
your wait-and-see, your spirit poised
between the unproved and the proven truth?
I believed in their betrayal, they didn’t merit names,
since weeds sway on their unknown graves
and the crows mock them, and the snowflakes scoff
—but Yorick, all this bore false witness.
Tickets to the afterlife are paid
by our collective memory.
Uncertain coinage. Every day
some dead man’s banished from eternity.
I see eternity more clearly now:
how we give it, how we strip it from
the so-called traitor—how
his name dies alongside of him.
We must give the dead due weight,
our power over them is what we make it:
this court cannot convene at night,
the judge presiding can’t be naked.
The earth surges—those once turned to earth
rise up, clod by clod, a fistful at a time;
they leave silence behind, return to names,
to the nation’s memory, to wreaths and cheers.
Where is my power over words?
Words fallen to a tear’s depths,
words words not meant to conquer death,
dead record, like a photo with its magnesium flash.
I can’t even restore them to half-breath,
a Sisyphus assigned to the hell of poetry.
They come to us. Sharp as diamonds,
they pass along shop windows lit in front,
along the windowpanes of cozy houses,
along rose-colored glasses, along the glass
of hearts and brains, quietly cutting.
To My Friends
Well versed in the expanses
that stretch from earth to stars,
we get lost in the space
from earth up to our skull.
Intergalactic reaches
divide sorrow from tears.
En route from false to true
you wither and grow dull.
We are amused by jets,
those crevices of silence
wedged between flight and sound:
“World record!” the world cheers.
But we’ve seen faster takeoffs:
their long-belated echo
still wrenches us from sleep
after so many years.
Outside, a storm of voices:
“We’re innocent,” they cry.
We rush to open windows,
lean out to catch their call.
But then the voices break off.
We watch the falling stars
just as after a salvo
plaster drops from the wall.
Funeral (I)
His skull, dug up from clay,
rests in a marble tomb;
sleep tight, medals, on pillows:
now it’s got lots of room,
that skull dug up from clay.
They read off index cards:
a) he has been/will be missed,
b) go on, band, play the march,
c) too bad he can’t see this.
They read off index cards.
Nation, be thankful now
for blessings you possess:
a being born just once
has two graves nonetheless.
Nation, be thankful now.
Parades were plentiful:
a thousand slide trombones,
police for crowd control,
bell-ringing for the bones.
Parades were plentiful.
Their eyes flicked heavenward
for omens from above:
a ray of light perhaps
or a bomb-carrying dove.
Their eyes flicked heavenward.
Between them and the people,
according to the plan,
the trees alone would sing
their silence on command.
Between them and the people.
Instead, bridges are drawn
above a gorge of stone,
its bed’s been smoothed for tanks,
echoes await a moan.
Instead, bridges are drawn.
Still full of blood and hopes
the people turn away,
not knowing that bell ropes,
like human hair, turn gray.
Still full of blood and hopes.
* * *
I hear trumpets play the tune
to a history of woe.
For I lived once in the town
that is known as Jericho.
The walls, they all go tumbling,
tra ta ta, sounds the fanfare,
and I stand stripped to nothing
but a uniform of air.
So blow, you trumpets, blow true,
quickly, strike up the whole band.
My skin will fall away too,
only whitened bones will stand.
Brueghel’s Two Monkeys
This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.
The exam is History of Mankind.
I stammer and hedge.
One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away—
but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say
he prompts me with a gentle
clinking of his chain.
Still
Across the country’s plains
sealed boxcars are carrying names:
how long will they travel, how far,
will they ever leave the boxcar—
don’t ask, I can’t say, I don’t know.
The name Nathan beats the wall with his fist,
the name Isaac sings a mad hymn,
the name Aaron is dying of thirst,
the name Sarah begs water for him.
Don’t jump from the boxcar, name David.
In these lands you’re a name to avoid,
you’re bound for defeat, you’re a sign
pointing out those who must be destroyed.
At least give your son a Slavic name:
he’ll need it. Here peopl
e count hairs
and examine the shape of your eyelids
to tell right from wrong, “ours” from “theirs.”
Don’t jump yet. Your son’s name will be Lech.
Don’t jump yet. The time’s still not right.
Don’t jump yet. The clattering wheels
are mocked by the echoes of night.
Clouds of people passed over this plain.
Vast clouds, but they held little rain—
just one tear, that’s a fact, just one tear.
A dark forest. The tracks disappear.
That’s-a-fact. The rail and the wheels.
That’s-a-fact. A forest, no fields.
That’s-a-fact. And their silence once more,
that’s-a-fact, drums on my silent door.
Greeting the Supersonics
Faster than sound today,
faster than light tomorrow,
we’ll turn sound into the Tortoise
and light into the Hare.
Two venerable creatures
from the ancient parable,
a noble team, since ages past
competing fair and square.
You ran so many times
across this lowly earth;
now try another course,
across the lofty blue.
The track’s all yours. We won’t
get in your way: by then
we will have set off chasing
ourselves rather than you.
Still Life with a Balloon
Returning memories?
No, at the time of death
I’d like to see lost objects
return instead.
Avalanches of gloves,
coats, suitcases, umbrellas—
come, and I’ll say at last:
What good’s all this?
Safety pins, two odd combs,
a paper rose, a knife,
some string—come, and I’ll say
at last: I haven’t missed you.
Please turn up, key, come out,
wherever you’ve been hiding,
in time for me to say:
You’ve gotten rusty, friend!
Downpours of affidavits,
permits and questionnaires,
rain down and I will say:
I see the sun behind you.
My watch, dropped in a river,
bob up and let me seize you—
then, face to face, I’ll say:
Your so-called time is up.
And lastly, toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind—
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.
Fly out the open window
and into the wide world;
let someone else shout “Look!”
and I will cry.
Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition
So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo—a white mute.
Quiet.
Yeti, down there we’ve got Wednesday,
bread, and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.
Yeti, crime is not all
we’re up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.
We’ve inherited hope—
the gift of forgetting.
You’ll see how we give
birth among the ruins.
Yeti, we’ve got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.
Up here it’s neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!
I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.
An Effort
Alack and woe, oh song: you’re mocking me;
try as I may, I’ll never be your red, red rose.
A rose is a rose is a rose. And you know it.
I worked to sprout leaves. I tried to take root.
I held my breath to speed things up, and waited
for the petals to enclose me.
Merciless song, you leave me with my lone,
nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body:
I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
Four A.M.
The hour between night and day.
The hour between toss and turn.
The hour of thirty-year-olds.
The hour swept clean for roosters’ crowing.
The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.
The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.
The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.
Empty hour.
Hollow. Vain.
Rock bottom of all the other hours.
No one feels fine at four A.M.
If ants feel fine at four A.M.,
we’re happy for the ants. And let five A.M. come
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