The Changing Light at Sandover
Page 56
How easily, beneath a flickering dome,
Would occur to your symposiasts
Their own excesses! What they haven’t tried
Thanks to evenings when the world went dim
And Ephraim talked! MICHAEL DEPARTING CASTS
THE SHADOW HIS ARRIVAL SHORTENS. ENTERING FOR ‘GOOD’ OR ‘EVIL’ THE MORTAL COIL,
I THROW BLINDING LIGHT INTO A SCENE TOO SLOWLY PICKING ITS WAY
ALONG SOME FATAL PATH: ‘AH, HERE’S THE TURN!’
AND OFF THE HIGH HISTORIC CLIFF GOES TOPPLING
A MOTLEY PAGEANT CALLED IMPERIAL ROME,
TRAILING ITS SHRIEKING PANTHEON. THUS YOUR MR E
HAD MANY USES, WHO NOW FROM HIS SUNNY TERRACE GAZES
UP AT A MIRROR. HOW DOES HE VIEW ME?
O, WITH THAT DEFERENTIAL & RELIEVED AWARENESS GIVEN
TO HIS EX-BOSS BY A FORMER EMPLOYEE
OR BY THE POET TO A USED IDEA.
Maria then…? BIRD! (Calling Mirabell?)
741 HERE. OUR LORD SUMMOND ME YOU HAVE A QUESTION?
One we thought He would answer. Anyhow,
Yes, about the part Maria played?
—The cup from One to Zero warily
At first moves, then with mounting agitation:
MM H ER FIL E IS
Breaking off—a cry from his new heart:
O LORD DO NOT TEST ME! I CANNOT
Whatever’s happening to Mirabell?
MES CHERS, I HAVE DECIDED TO USE OUR BIRD, BUT HIS WEAK FORCE RESISTS GOING TO THE HIGHER INFORMATION BANKS
Poor wild thing, like a hummingbird lost in the Alps,
Or half-tamed merlin, prey to Heisenberg’s
“Irreducible uncertainty”—
I’LL TAKE OFF HIS HOOD YET.
YOUR MM? PLATO, THE MUSE, OUR ARIEL,
OUR MOTHER’S SERAPH. SHE CREATED YOU
FIRST IN OUR SIGHT: ‘QUICK, QUICK MA MERE, THEY ARE HERE, LOOK, & SEND MICHAEL DOWN!’
‘MRS SMITH’ STUDIED THE MIRROR IN HER DARLING’S GOLD COSMETIC CASE
(FROM HERMES, AS YOU SAID DEAR SCRIBE IN THE FIRST PLACE),
SNAPPED IT TO MY LIGHT & ON ITS SHAFT PIERCING THAT FAR BLUE DAY
WE, ARIEL AND I, DESCENDED CHATTING:
‘NOW MICHAEL, THEY ARE COMME CA, SO WHY NOT THAT BECOMING GREEK BOY LOOK YOU DID SO WELL?’
WE ALL INDULGE HER, WHO COULD NOT? I ENTERED YOUR RED SPACE
WRINGING MY HANDS, AS EPHRAIM’S REPRESENTATIVE
WENT UP IN FLAME Friction? The warehouse fire!
Simpson—poor sizzling moth who then became
Wendell! All mirror-kindled, laser-cut!
AND THEN MY MOTHER SNAPPED THE COMPACT SHUT.
“These chaps the Greek found”—Ephraim found us first?
THE BLIND PERSIAN RUG TESTER RUNS HIS FINGERS OVER THE WEAVE AND POINTS OUT INVISIBLE FLAWS.
SO I MICHAEL AM FOREVER FEELING THE TEXTURE OF MINDS.
I FELT, THAT HAPPY NIGHT AFTER I’D PUT THE SUN TO BED,
A BUMP, A NUBBY RISE, & THOUGHT ‘AHA, WHAT HAVE WE HERE, WHAT TWIST OF SILK
IS MAKING THIS APPEAL FOR MY ATTENTION?’
THE CRIES IN THE FIRE SUBSIDED, ARIEL WAS SUMMONED,
ON WENT THE SUPPLE TOGA AND OUR TALKS BEGAN.
DJ: One little inconsistency?
You know, we met Maria seven years
After we met “Ephraim”. HERE WE KNOW
NO TIME. THOSE ‘YEARS’ WHICH SEPARATE YOUR RED ROOM ON THAT DISTANT NIGHT WITH E
FROM MM’S NOON ATHENIAN CAFE
(LIKE THE EARTH-MILES BETWEEN THEM) SERVE AS BASE
TO JUST ONE OF OUR
JM: Oh please, let me
Say it, or try to! Base to just one of Your
“Elevations” inexhaustibly
Roving within a pyramid—am I right?—
Whose apex, the dimensionless
Point of Light,
We have now glimpsed the glory and the power of?
MES CHERS, EXACTLY, YES & YES & YES
Strand after silken strand caught in your twist!
Old Friend who could have torn
That mental fabric clean in two—
Instead, your touch was light, you saw us through.
Not tell this secret? God, how to resist—
And for what other reason were we born?
DJ: The part about our being chosen
Won’t sound complacent? Do the poem harm?
LET NOT GRACE FILL YOU WITH UNDUE ALARM.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE WITH YOUR RADIO BUT (AS RM PUT IT) PART OF A WHOLE CRYSTAL SET.
TRUE, WE SELDOM (AS WITH WBY & YOU) PROPOSE THE SUBJECT FOR A TEXT,
YET REVELATION’S CONSTANT PROCESS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO THE HACK JOURNALIST: EXTRA! EXTRA! GOD SURVIVES!
RATHER, ON A TUSCAN HILLSIDE A SIMPLE MENDICANT BEGINS: THERE ARE NINE STAGES
AND NOW AWAY!
DOWN AT THE HEDGE AWAIT U LAUGHTER & HORSEPLAY
BUT YR OLD SLAVE HAS THE LIGHT BILL TO PAY
IF THE BALLROOM IS TO GLOW ANOTHER DAY!
*
The Ballroom at Sandover
Empty perfection, as I take you in
My heart pounds. Not the shock of elegance,
High ceiling where a faun-Pythagoras
Loses his calipers to barefoot, faintly
Goitrous nymphs, nor pier-glasses between
Floral panels of the palest green,
Nor chandeliers—indulgent chaperones—
Aclick, their crystal charges one by one
Accenting the donnée sun-beamed through tall
French window, silver leaf and waxing bud;
All a felicity—that does not, however,
Fully account for mine. Great room, I know you!
Somewhere on Earth I’ve met you in disguise,
Scouted your dark English woods and blood-red
Hangings, and glared down the bison head
Above a hearth of stony heraldry—
How many years before your “restoration”
Brought to light this foreign, youthful grace.
Ah, but styles. They are the new friend’s face
To whom we sacrifice the tried and true,
And are betrayed—or not—by. For affection’s
Poorest object, set in perfect light
By happenstance, grows irreplaceable,
And whether in time a room, or a romance,
Fails us or redeems us will have followed
As an extension of our “feel” for call them
Immaterial, the real right angle,
The golden section—grave proportions here,
Here at the heart of structure, and alone
Surviving now to tell me where I am:
In the old ballroom of the Broken Home.
The checkerboard parquet creaks at a step.
A girl in white, dark hair upswept, has entered
Wonderingly, and to no music still
Revolves a moment in remembered arms;
Falters, runs to the first window—vainly.
Each in turn she tries them, at the last
Resting a bloodless cheek against the pane.
Next, her fellow guests materialize
In twos and threes. There’s tiny Pope! There’s Goethe
Drumming his fingers while Colette and Maya
Size one another up through jet-set eyes.
Mallarmé looks blank. With a stern nod
Dante agrees to change seats, so that Proust
&n
bsp; Be far as possible from Agatha’s
Huge baby’s-breath and rose and goldenrod
Arrangement masking the lectern. Rilke breaks
A bud off, takes it to the girl in white
Who looks down, blushing with confusion. From
My standpoint just inside the mirror-frame
I feel…forgotten. Friends are letting me
Compose myself in tactful privacy
When what I need—ha! a young man in gray
Three-piece pinstripe suit has veered my way,
Smiling pleasantly: NOT THE MOMENT QUITE
TO GOSSIP BUT THERE’S ONE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW.
THESE WORKS, YOU UNDERSTAND? THAT OTHERS ‘WRITE’
(It’s Eliot, he’s thinking of Rimbaud)
ARE YET ONE’S OWN That’s kind of you to say—
NO DOUBT GRATUITOUS. CHICKEN & EGG
AS I BELIEVE YOU PUT IT. (CHER POETE!
CA VA, MERCI, ET VOUS? TOUJOURS A SETE?)
IMAGINE, ESPADRILLES…WELL WELL, I SEE
MANY A FACE FROM THE ACADEMY
Oh? Which academy? THERE’S ONLY ONE.
PLATO FIRST, OR SO WE LIKE TO THINK,
PRESIDED, DREAMILY PRESENT Who’s taken over?
JUVENAL BUT I’LL BE IN THE SOUP
UNLESS I NIP BACK TO MY OWN AGE GROU
AH! —All necks crane. A gust of freshest air
Blowing through the room, LOOK THIS WAY, MAM!
But She’s already quietly in her chair,
Golden head and the shy girl in white’s dark one
Bowed together over the programme.
Ephraim has risen. The room dims. His glance
Lights the chandeliers. A reverence,
MAJESTY AND FRIENDS —when shatteringly
The doorbell rings. Our doorbell here in Athens.
We start up. David opens to a form
Gaunt, bespectacled, begrimed, in black,
But black worn days, nights, journeyed, sweated in—
Vasíli? Ah sweet Heaven, sit him down,
Take his knapsack, offer food and brandy—.
He shakes his head. Mimí. Mimí in Rome
Buried near Shelley. He can’t eat, can’t sleep,
Can’t weep. D makes to put away the Board,
Explaining with a grimace of pure shame
—Because, just as this life takes precedence
Over the next one, so does live despair
Over a poem or a parlor game—
Explaining what our friend has stumbled in on.
Lightly I try to shrug it off, lest he,
Shrewd leftwing susceptible myth-haunted
As only a Greek novelist can be,
Take Mimí’s “presence” at our fête amiss,
Or worse, lest anguish take its lover’s leap
Into the vortex of credulity
—Vasíli, drink your brandy, get some sleep,
Look, we’ve these great pills…No; he asks instead,
Anything, anything to keep his head
Above the sucking waves, merely to listen
A little while. So in the hopelessness
Of more directly helping we resume.
Out come cup, notebook, the green-glowing room,
And my worst fear—that, written for the dead,
This poem leave a living reader cold—
But there’s no turning back. The absolute
Discretion of our circle, as of old,
Takes over. Sympathetic glances bent
Upon the newcomer; murmurs of assent
As Ephraim, winding up his Introduction,
Hints that Vasíli is himself a V
Work cut out—whereupon Her Majesty
Rises. A rapt hush falls. (She can’t be wearing,
Yet is, the brightest, bluest, commonest
Greek school smock.) Drawing Mimí to her breast,
She dries her tears; praising their constancy,
Their CHILDLESS LOVE and MR BASIL’S WIT
Bids him ATTEND AND MAKE GOOD SENSE OF IT
(& CHANGE THAT SHIRT!) NOW POET, READ! A splendor
Across lawns meets, in Sandover’s tall time-
Dappled mirrors, its own eye. Should rhyme
Calling to rhyme awaken the odd snore,
No harm done. I shall study to ignore
Looks that more boldly with each session yearn
Toward the buffet where steaming silver urn,
Cucumber sandwiches, rum punch, fudge laced
With hashish cater to whatever taste.
Something Miss Austen whispers makes Hans laugh.
Then a star trembles in the full carafe
As the desk light comes on, illuminating
The page I open to. Both rooms are waiting.
DJ brighteyed (but look how wrinkled) lends
His copy of the score to our poor friend’s
Somber regard—captive like Gulliver
Or like the mortal in an elfin court
Pining for wife and cottage on this shore
Beyond whose depthless dazzle he can’t see.
For their ears I begin: “Admittedly…”
APPENDIX
Voices from Sandover
Characters
(in order of appearance)
God B
JM
DJ
Ephraim
40076
Maria Mitsotáki
Wallace Stevens
40070
W. H. Auden
741 (Mirabell)
The Five Elements
Michael
Raphael
Emmanuel
Gabriel
Author’s Note
The text is largely drawn from my long poem, The Changing Light at Sandover. The upper case, with its often abbreviated spelling and limited punctuation, represents messages received over the Ouija Board. While the distinction means little in a spoken performance, I have retained it here as a cue to readers and interpreters.
GOD B:
O O O O O O O O O O
JM:
The Book of a Thousand and One Evenings Spent
With David Jackson at the Ouija Board
In Touch with Ephraim Our Familiar Spirit.
Backdrop: The dining room at Stonington.
Walls of ready-mixed matte “flame” (a witty
Shade, now watermelon, now sunburn).
Overhead, a turn of the century dome
Expressing white tin wreathes and fleurs-de-lys
In palpable relief to candlelight.
Wallace Stevens, with that dislocated
Perspective of the newly dead would take it
For an alcove in the Baptist church next door
Whose moonlit tower saw eye to eye with us.
The room breathed sheer white curtains out. In blew
Elm- and chimney-blotted shimmerings, so
Slight the tongue of land, so high the point of view.
DJ:
1955 this would have been,
Second summer of our tenancy.
Another year we’d buy the old eyesore
Half of whose top story we now rented;
Build, above that, a glass room off a wooden
Stardeck; put a fireplace in; make friends.
Now, strangers to the village, did we even
Have a telephone? Who needed one!
We had each other for communication
And all the rest. The
stage was set for Ephraim.
JM:
—Our golden-eyed Greek Jew who only learned
The modern languages after being put
To death on Capri by Tiberius.
Properties: a milk glass tabletop,
A blue-and-white cup from the Five and Ten.
Pencil, paper. Heavy cardboard sheet
Over which the letters A to Z
Spread in an arc, our covenant
With whom it would concern; also
The Arabic numerals, and YES and NO.
What more could a familiar spirit want?
Ah well—a mirror, so that friends who’ve died
May see us when they speak from its far side.
EPHRAIM:
AM I IN YR ROOM? SO ARE ALL YR DEAD WHO HAVE NOT GONE INTO
OTHER BODIES. IT IS EASY TO CALL THEM, BRING THEM AS FIRES WITHIN
SIGHT OF EACH OTHER ON HILLS. YOU & YR GUESTS THESE TIMES WE
SPEAK ARE WITHIN SIGHT OF & ALL CONNECTED TO EACH OTHER DEAD
OR ALIVE. NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT HEAVEN IS? IT IS THE
SURROUND OF THE LIVING.
OURS IS A GREAT WHITE WAY OF NAMES IN LIGHTS:
BYRON PAVLOVA BILLY SUNDAY JOB
OTTO KAHN GENGHIZ KHAN MME CURIE
JM:
And so on, anytime we liked. The question
Of who or what we took our friend to be
And how much truth he spoke, we neatly sidestepped,
Taking meanwhile his—call them revelations—
For comfort, thrills and chills, “material.”
He didn’t cavil. He was the revelation
(Or if we had invented him, then we were).
The point—one twinkling point by now of thousands—
Was never to forego, in favor of
Plain dull proof, the marvelous nightly pudding.
*
JM:
Twenty years pass before those early sessions
Beget a poem bearing Ephraim’s name.
But sterner teachers, it would seem, await us.
The Board is more than a mere parlor game.
EPHRAIM:
CLEARANCE HAS COME TO SAY I HAVE ENCOUNTERED
SOULS OF A FORM I NEVER SAW ON EARTH,
SOULS FROM B4 THE FLOOD, B4 THE LEGENDARY
& BY THE WAY NUCLEAR IN ORIGIN
FIRE OF CHINA: MEN B4 MANKIND
JM: