The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  in opposite directions.

  They would not stop, resolution of will

  and helplessness, as the eye

  is helpless

  when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,

  driving up into

  the mind, and the world

  unfastens itself

  from the deep ocean of the given … Justice, aspen

  leaves, mother attempting

  suicide, the white night-flying moth

  the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in

  right through the crack

  in my wall …. How helpless

  the still pool is,

  upstream,

  awaiting the gold blade

  of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,

  I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,

  a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,

  climb onto each other,

  on the terrace floor,

  and ride—two gold currents

  wrapping round and round each other, fastening,

  unfastening. I hardly knew

  what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world

  it was the one each cast

  onto the other,

  the thin black seam

  they seemed to be trying to work away

  between them. I held my breath.

  as far as I could tell, the work they did

  with sweat and light

  was good. I’d say

  they traveled far in opposite

  directions. What is the light

  at the end of the day,

  deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,

  the corridors, light that is no longer light,

  no longer clarifies,

  illuminates, antique, freed from the body of

  that air that carries it. What is it

  for the space of time

  where it is useless, merely

  beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance

  one from the other

  and slept, outstretched,

  on the warm tile

  of the terrace floor,

  smiling, faces pressed against the stone.

  Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

  Driving Lesson1

  Beside him in the old Ford pickup

  that smelled of rope and grease and cattle feed,

  sat my sister and I, ten and eight, big

  now our grandfather would teach us

  that powerful secret, how to drive.

  Horizon of high mountain peaks visible

  above the blue hood, steering wheel huge

  in our hands, pedals at our toe-tips,

  we heard his sure voice urge us

  Give it gas, give it gas. Over the roar

  of the engine our hearts banged

  like never before and banged on

  furiously in the silence after

  we bucked and stalled the truck.

  How infinitely empty it then seemed—

  windy flat rangeland of silver-green

  gramma grass dotted with blooming cactus

  and jagged outcrops of red rock, beginnings

  of the Sangre de Cristos fifty miles off.

  All Guadelupe County, New Mexico,

  nothing to hit, and we could not

  get the damn thing going. Nothing to hit

  was no help. It was not the mechanics

  of accelerator and clutch, muscle and bone,

  but our sheer unruly spirits

  that kept us small with the great desire

  to move the world by us, earth and sky

  and all the earth and sky contained.

  And how hard it was when,

  after our grandfather who was a god

  said Let it out slow, slow time and again

  until we did and were at long last rolling

  over the earth, his happy little angels,

  how hard it was to listen

  not to our own thrilled inner voices

  saying Go, go, but to his saying

  the Good, good we loved but also

  the Keep it in the ruts we hated to hear.

  How hard to hold to it—

  single red vein of a ranch road

  running out straight across the mesa,

  blood we were bound to follow—

  when what we wanted with all our hearts

  was to scatter everywhere, everywhere.

  Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

  The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery1

  The cicadas were loud and what looked like a child’s bracelet was coiled at the base of the Pilgrim. It was a snake. Red and black. The cemetery is haunted. Perhaps by the Pilgrim. Perhaps by another. We were looking for names for the baby. My daughter liked Achsa and Luke and John Jacob. She was dragging her rope through the grass. It was hot. The insect racket was loud and there was that snake. It made me nervous. I almost picked it up because it was so pretty. Just like a bracelet. And I thought, oh the child will be a girl, but it was not. This was around the time of the dream. Dreams come from somewhere. There is this argument about nowhere, but it is not true. I dreamed that some boys knocked down all the stones in the cemetery, and then it happened. It was six months later In early December. Dead cold. Just before dawn. We live a long way off so I slept right through it. But I read about it the next day in the Johnsburg paper. There is this argument about the dead, but that is not right either. The dead keep working. If you listen you can hear them. It was hot when we walked in the cemetery. And my daughter told me the story of the White Pilgrim. She likes the story. Yes, it is a good one. A man left his home in Ohio and came East, dreaming he could be the dreamed-of rider in St. John’s Revelations. He was called The White Pilgrim because he dressed all in white like a rodeo cowboy and rode a white horse. He preached that the end was coming soon. And it was. He died a month later of the fever. The ground here is unhealthy. And the insects grind on and on. Now the pilgrim is a legend. I know your works, God said, and that is what I am afraid of. It was very hot that summer. The birds were too quiet. God’s eyes are like a flame of fire, St. John said, and the armies of heaven … but these I cannot imagine. Many dreams come true. But mostly it isn’t the good ones. That night in December The boys were bored. They were pained to the teeth with boredom. You can hardly blame them. They had been out all night breaking trashcans And mailboxes with their baseball bats. They hang from their pickups by the knees and pound the boxes as they drive by. The ground here is unhealthy, but that is not it. Their satisfaction just ends too quickly. They need something better to break. They need something holy. But there is not much left, so that night they went to the cemetery. It was cold, but they were drunk and perhaps they did not feel it. The cemetery is close to town, but no one heard them. The boys are part of a larger destruction, but this is beyond what they can imagine. War in heaven and the damage is ours. The birds come to feed on what is left. You can see them always around Old Christian. As if the bodies of the dead were lying out exposed. But of course they are not. St. John the Evangelist dreamed of birds and of the White Rider. That is the one the Ohio preacher wanted to be. He dressed all in white leather and rode a white horse. His own life in the midwest was not enough, And who can blame him? My daughter thinks that all cemeteries have a White Pilgrim. She said that her teacher told her this. I said this makes no sense but she would not listen. There was a pack of dogs loose in my dream Or it could have been dark angels. They were taking the names off the stones. St. John said an angel will be the one who invites the birds to God’s Last Supper, when he eats the flesh of all the kings and princes. Perhaps God is a bird. Sometimes I think this. The thought is as good as another. The boys shouldered over the big stones first, save for the Pilgrim. And then worked their way down to the child-sized markers. These they punted like footballs. The cemetery is close to town but no one heard them. They left the Pilgrim for last because he is a legend, although only local. My daughter t
hinks that all cemeteries have a White Pilgrim, ghost and stone, and that the stone is always placed dead in the center of the cemetery ground. In Old Christian this is true. The Ohio Pilgrim was a rich man and before he died he sunk his wealth into the marble obelisk called by his name. We saw the snake curled around it. Pretty as a bracelet. But the child was not a girl. The boys left the Pilgrim till last, and then took it down, too. The Preacher had a dream but it was not of a larger order so it led to little. Just a stone broken like a tooth, and a ghost story for children. God says the damage will be restored. Among other things. At least they repaired Old Christian. The Historical Society raised a collection and the town’s big men came out to hoist the stones. The boys got probation, but they won’t keep it. I don’t go to the cemetery anymore. But once I drove past and my babysitter’s family was out working. Her father and mother were cutting back the rose of Sharon, and my red-haired sitter, who is plain and good-hearted, was pushing a lawn mower. Her beautiful younger sister sat on the grass beside the Pilgrim pretending to clip some weeds. She never works. She has asthma and everybody loves her. I imagined that the stones must have fine seams where they had been broken. But otherwise everything looked the same. Maybe better … The summer we walked in the cemetery it was hot. We were looking for names for the baby and my daughter told me the story of the White Pilgrim. This was before the stones fell and before the worked-for restoration. I know your works, says God, and talks of the armies of heaven. They are not very friendly. Some dreams hold and I am afraid that this may be one of them. The White Rider may come with his secret name inscribed on his thigh, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the child is large now … But who will be left standing?

  Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

  In Simili Materia1

  When she stopped on the sidewalk,

  near the yellow storm drain,

  near gnats swarming above the hedge,

  the little girl, perhaps three,

  yelled something unintelligible

  at the doll in the pink carriage.

  When she slapped her baby

  I remembered flocks of pigeons

  erupting from beams and ledges

  at the Sinter Plant,

  how they would flutter and circle,

  flickering in the sun, and always

  return to their niches to roost.

  Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

  Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)1

  Translated from the Irish by Paul Muldoon

  I place my hope on the water

  in this little boat

  of the language, the way a body might put

  an infant

  in a basket of intertwined

  iris leaves,

  its underside proofed

  with bitumen and pitch,

  then set the whole thing down amidst

  the sedge

  and bulrushes by the edge

  of a river

  only to have it borne hither and thither,

  not knowing where it might end up;

  in the lap, perhaps,

  of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

  Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

  Rain2

  At ten pm it starts. We can hear from the bar

  as if somebody humorless fills in the dots,

  all the dots on the window, the gaps in between.

  It is raining. It rained and has always been raining.

  If there were conditionals they too would be rain.

  The future tense is partly underwater. We must leave.

  There’s a road where the bus stop is too far away

  in the dark between streetlights. The shelter’s stove-in

  and a swill of old tickets awaits us.

  Transitional, that’s what we’re saying,

  but we’re metaphysical animals:

  we know a watery grave when we see it

  and how the bald facts of brute nature

  are always entailed by mere human opinion,

  so this is a metaphor. Someone’s to blame

  if your coat is dissolving, if rain is all round us

  and feels like the threats-cum-advice of your family

  who know I am up and have come and will go to

  no good.

  They cannot be tempted to alter their views

  in the light of that sizzling bulb. There it goes.

  Here we are: a black street without taxis or buses.

  An ankle-high wave is advancing

  to ruin your shoes and my temper. My darling,

  I know you believe for the moment the rain is my doing.

  Tonight we will lie in the dark with damp hair.

  I too am looking for someone to blame. O send me

  a metro inspector, a stony-faced barmaid.

  The library is flooding and we have not read it,

  the cellar is flooding and we shall be thirsty,

  Trevor McDonald has drowned as the studio shorts

  and the weather-girl goes floating past

  like Esther Williams with her clothes on,

  mouthing the obvious: raining.

  Shu Ting (b. 1952)

  Assembly Line1

  Translated from the Chinese by Carolyn Kizer

  In time’s assembly line

  night presses against night.

  We come off the factory night-shift

  in line as we march towards home.

  Over our heads in a row

  the assembly line of stars

  stretches across the sky.

  Beside us, little trees

  stand numb in assembly lines.

  The stars must be exhausted

  after thousands of years

  of journeys which never change.

  The little trees are all sick,

  choked on smog and monotony,

  stripped of their color and shape.

  It’s not hard to feel for them;

  we share the same tempo and rhythm.

  Yes, I’m numb to my own existence

  as if, like the trees and stars

  —perhaps just out of habit

  —perhaps just out of sorrow,

  I’m unable to show concern

  for my own manufactured fate.

  Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

  Woolworth’s1

  Everything stands wondrously multicolored

  and at attention in the always Christmas air.

  What scent lingers unrecognizably

  between that of popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches,

  malted milkballs, and parakeets? Maybe you came here

  in winter to buy your daughter a hamster

  and were detained by the bin

  of Multicolored Thongs, four pair

  for a dollar. Maybe you came here to buy

  some envelopes, the light blue par avion ones

  with airplanes, but caught yourself, lost,

  daydreaming, saying it’s too late over the glassy

  diorama of cakes and pies. Maybe you came here

  to buy a lampshade, the fake crimped

  kind, and suddenly you remember

  your grandmother, dead

  twenty years, floating through the old

  house like a curtain. Maybe you’re retired,

  on Social Security, and came here for the Roast

  Turkey Dinner, or the Liver and Onions,

  or just to stare into a black circle

  of coffee and to get warm. Or maybe

  the big church down the street is closed

  now during the day, and you’re homeless and poor,

  or you’re rich, or it doesn’t matter what you are

  with a little loose change jangling in your pocket,

  begging to be spent, because you wandered in

  and somewhere between the bin of animal crackers

  and the little zoo in the back of the store

  you lost something, and because you came here

  not to forget, but to remember to live
.

  Richard Jones (b. 1953)

  Certain People1

  My father lives by the ocean

  and drinks his morning coffee

  in the full sun on his deck,

  talking to anyone

  who walks by on the beach.

  And in the afternoons he works

  part-time at the golf course—

  sailing the fairways like a sea captain

  in a white golf cart.

  My father must talk

  to a hundred people a day,

  yet we haven’t spoken in weeks.

  As I get older, we hardly speak at all.

  It’s as if he were a stranger

  and we had never met.

  I wonder, if I

  were a tourist on the beach

  or a golfer lost in the woods

  and met him now for the very first time,

  what we’d say to each other,

  how his hand would feel in mine

  as we introduced ourselves,

  and if, as is the case

  with certain people, I’d feel

  when I looked him in the eye,

  I’d known him all my life.

  Leaving Town after the Funeral1

  After the people and the flowers

  have gone, and before the stone

  has been removed from your mother’s house

  and carved into a cross, I come back

  on my way out of town

  to visit your grave. And nothing

  is there—only the ground,

  roughed up a little, waiting for rain.

  I sit down beside you

  in my dark glasses

  and put my hand on the earth

  above your dead heart.

  Two workmen are mowing grass

  around the graves beside us.

  They pretend not to see

  I am crying. Quietly,

  they walk over to their truck

  to give me time.

  They day is hot. They hold paper cups

  under the water cooler on the flatbed

  and drink together.

  They are used to this.

  The heat. The grief.

  After a few minutes the younger one

  walks back to work.

  He gets down on his knees