by
Halvard Johnson
Acknowledgements: Some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in slightly
different
versions, in the following journals, magazines, and anthologies:
Asian Marylander: Americans Playing Slow-Pitch Softball
at an
Airbase near Kunsan, South Korea
Blue Moon Review: Gennady Goes to School
City Paper (Baltimore): Marriage, X
Coe Review: Tiger in the Village
Confrontation: Take Me to the Water
CrossConnect: Calle de Sueños
Dakotah Territory: St. Amour
Deep Breath: Fuji
Florida Review: Guide to the Tokyo Subway
George Washington Review: Still Life
Gulf Stream Magazine: Nothing I Can Put My Finger On
Hanging Loose: Killing Time
Mudfish: Tokyo: At Ueno Zoo; For Your Eyes Only
Orogrande: My Inner Life; In the Open Air
Puerto del Sol: New Year; Six Marimbas; Clouds; North-Gliding
Star
RealPoetik: Warm Symphonies
Snakeskin: How to Write Your Own Obituary
This Sporting Life: Spiel
The Pearl: Landing in a Storm in Baltimore; Astronomical
Valparaiso Review: Nimbus; Obligation
“Fringe-Area Reception” first appeared in Mixed Voices (an anthology
of poems about
music published by Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, Minnesota).
“Americans Playing Slow-Pitch Softball . . . ” has also appeared in
This
Sporting Life (an
anthology of poems about sports published by Milkweed Editions), as
well as in Hummers,
Knucklers, and Slow Curves (University of Illinois Press), Finding
America (Amsco School
Publications), and War, Literature and the Arts: An International
Journal of the Humanities.
“Guide to the Tokyo Subway” is included in the anthology American
Diaspora (University of
Iowa Press).
Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State
Arts Council, and the
(Baltimore) Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Arts and Culture helped immeasurably
in the
making of this book and its contents, as did fellowships at the Ragdale
Foundation in Lake
Forest, Illinois, and a number of fellowships at the Virginia Center
for the Creative Arts in
Sweetbriar, Virginia. Many, many thanks.
This book is for Lynda.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[page numbers refer to MS Word vers.]
Guide to the Tokyo Subway /5
Peaceable Disasters /8
Tokyo: At Ueno Park Zoo /9
Morning Calm /10
Americans Playing
Slow-Pitch Softball at an Airbase near Kunsan, South Korea /11
Tiger in the Village /15
Fuji /17
Landing in a Storm in Baltimore
/20
New Year /23
Six Marimbas /24
Killing Time /26
Nimbus /27
Gennady Goes to School / 28
In the Open Air /29
Spiel /30
The Summer Day /31
St. Amour /32
Marina /33
My Inner Life /34
Markers /35
Crosstown /36
Waking the Dead /37
A Certain Friday /38
Flesh /39
Warm Symphonies /40
Marriage /41
X /42
Astronomical /43
Emulsions /44
Calle de Sueños /45
Nothing I Can Put My Finger
On /47
For Your Eyes Only /48
Wings /49
Clouds /50
Take Me to the Water /51
Obligation /52
A Sensitive Girl /53
World Without End /54
Six Running Women /55
Dog Sled 1920s /57
Theory of the Leisure Class /58
On the Red Line /60
On a Bus /61
North-Gliding Star /62
Fringe-Area Reception /63
At Shinjuku Station
one entrance is haunted
by the spirit of a lost traveler
one who missed her train
and never found her way
around or through
that incredibly
personal disaster
passing by, I lower my head
—I who am lost every day—
feeling I ought to
have met her
*
how many foreigners
dream of walking where we do now
along the palace moat
speaking of this and that
—keep, keep moving—
not even wondering
where the next bottle
of beer will come from
*
there’s a circle line
around the central city
on which you could ride forever
for a one-stop fare
but the trains here don’t
run all night long
so you must get off somewhere
—be quiet, be quiet—
don’t ask me where
*
in dreams
we wander through
mazes of tunnels
and passageways
underground
—hush, hush—
in the dark corridors
turnings
stairways
and escalators smoothly
sliding downward
*
coming up from below
my eyes take their time
adjusting to daylight
a crowd of commuters surge
past me down the steps
at a trot, at a trot
suddenly you stand before me
having walked all that way
just to meet me
we have sandwiches
and tea together
before deciding to separate
leaving to others
the end of our
carefully rehearsed story
*
I know that at Ueno
a long time coming
cherry blossoms
glisten in lamplight
—go under, go under—
and nighttime’s the best time
for viewing sakura, sipping sake
*
what I said
there in the station
was not what I
meant to
meanings stretch out
in all directions
turn back, turn back
on themselves
on their central
unmeaning
*
I’d always thought
that if I positioned myself
just so,
as the train pulled
into the station
certain forces would come
into play, changing
my outlook on things
in surprising ways
the train would transport me
to a distant station
with an unfamiliar name
in an unfamiliar script
and I would get off
happy to be alive
not knowing which way to turn
Your face on a billboard
was blown away by
the last typhoon, last seen
heading west across the East
China Sea.
Your outdoor performance
of King Lear was canceled due to
inclement weather.
It’s so soggy here, your
letters turn to jelly in my hands,
especially your sinuous s’s.
The teleconcerto is out of order.
Your children have been treated
and retreated, their abnormal
propensities thoroughly looked into.
Even so, you want more more than ever.
Your beanbag butterfly has
turned into a frog.
There’s been no mail for days.
England is gone forever.
These cherry petals in the rain
clinging momentarily to wet, black branches
as they fall: faces of early morning
commuters leafing through Pound’s Cantos
while changing trains at Borough Hall, Brooklyn.
After some lifetimes of dreaming
I awake one morning just before dawn
like a light summer wind
just springing up from the valley.
I find myself
drifting over the rice paddies,
the mound tombs of ancient rulers.
I arouse the farmers, who dream
of the Three Kingdoms, their coming
together. I ruffle the waters
of the North Stream. In the courtyards
of Pulguk-sa I shuffle through
the leaves. I enter the mountains
at Jade Gate, rise lazily through pine
woods along the slopes of Toham-san,
and as the sun lifts from the Eastern Sea
I find the granite Buddha in his cave.
I remember Kim Tae-song, who carved
the rounded roof, which broke into three
parts. He wept bitterly and fell
into a trance. I move on calmly up the sky.
Americans
Playing Slow-Pitch Softball at an Airbase
near Kunsan, South Korea
—Early September
The first game of
the evening begins
about five-thirty.
The men (not that
only men play—
one team has
a female catcher)
finish their work
on whatever they
work on—
correspondence,
water mains, Phantoms—
get out of one uniform,
into another, and come
out to the ballpark.
The light go on early.
By eight here it’s totally
dark. Half an hour earlier
the sky was a tangle
of rose, magenta,
lavender, as the sun
went down in China,
beyond the Yellow Sea.
Brisk wind tonight—
raises the infield dirt,
whips it into narrowed eyes
of batter, catcher, umpire,
the three or four spectators
in the bleachers behind them.
A regulation seven-inning
game is played, unless one
team is so far out in front
that the ten-run rule
is invoked, ending
the game after five. A ball
the size of a small
grapefruit is lofted
into the air, a slight
backspin making it
seem to drift and float
down toward the plate.
No easy hit. The batter
has to apply his own
muscle to put it anywhere.
This batsman clips the top
and bounces to the third
baseman, who fires to first
for an easy out. He shrugs
and jogs to the dugout.
The next batter flies out,
and the game ends 15-zip
after five full innings.
Another two teams take the field.
Some of the players stand
by to watch the second game,
but most wander off,
concerned with other things.
The bleachers are fuller now—
a rowdier crowd, raring for action.
Crisp evening air. Korean girlfriends
huddle close for warmth. An airman
pops open a beer. Behind their
backs a pair of Phantoms
roar into the sky, their afterburners
glowing as they lift from the runway
vanish into black clouds. Uncertain
weather tonight, a stiff wind, high
scudding clouds. A tricky weather
system reaching north to
the DMZ, east to the Sea of Japan,
south to the East China Sea.
Typhoon Orchid approaches Okinawa,
far to the south. Possibly
this is all a part of that. Inning
after inning goes by, vanishing
into a past that exists only on paper.
Hits, runs, and errors go down
in the league’s record book,
but screw the past, we’re having
fun tonight. Neither the pitcher,
the fliers, nor the Korean
women in the stands
remember or care about a war
that happened thirty years ago.
It’s the girls’ father who have
the bad dreams, wake in terror in
the night. Their grandfathers, too.
They’ll all support General Chun
and pray he’ll protect them
from devils. A friend of mine
in Europe once wrote a poem
about memory and the historical
imagination, which ended
with these lines:
“Our assignment is to remember,
to deliver blows.”
No American could have written that.
We live our lives inning by inning,
season by season, war by war.
I’ll end this in an American way—
with the words of the great, black
American pitcher, Satchel Paige:
“Don’t look back.
Something may be
gaining on you.”
The tiger in the village fed
on what it found: the calves and thighs
of young boys, breasts and buttocks
of girls. The man with the wife from heaven
locked her up until the tiger
had been killed or driven off.
Another man, who’d once been a toad,
said to the assembled villagers,
“Let me speak to this tiger. Let me
find out who he is, and why he
is hungry for our young men and women ”
The elders applauded his calm bravery,
urged him to save the village from destruction.
The man found the tiger and immediately
broached the question: “Who are you?”
The tiger, knowing a former toad when he
saw one, was not in a hurry to answer.
It scratched the ground three times
and disappeared, utterly.
The man with the wife from heaven
heaved a sign of relief, and praised his neighbor,
the man who had once been a toad. But the tiger,
who, in a former existence, had been a used-car
salesman in Kansas City, Missouri, USA,
had not gone so very far. That night, he reappeared
in the village, the eight-year-old leg of a girl
in his mouth. The village council
reconvened. “What shall we do?” was the question
on all lips. “We don’t know who he is
or where he comes from. How can we know what
to do next?” An elder from a nearby town
who just happened to be passing through on his way
home from the mountain made a suggestion.
“Let’s put on a tiger head,” he said, “and see how
he thinks.” An old tiger skull and a piece
of tatty skin were found in a villager’s hut. The old man
put on the head and draped the skin over it.
He immediately fell into a dream-like trance
from which he did not awake until morning.
“That’s one strange tiger,” were his first words.
The old man spoke of long, flat places
where shining carriages sped on whirling roundnesses
over the earth. He spoke of stone huts that rose
to the moon. Strange fleeting visions of a world that had
not yet been. “What he wants is the wife from heaven,”
the old man said. The villagers gasped.
“Not to eat, but just to take away.”
So it was that the next day the wife from heaven—
she who’d been sent down to earth to marry
a humble farmer—rode off into the jungle
on the back of a tiger who had once been
an unsuccessful used-car dealer in Kansas City, Missouri.
The farmer wept as his former wife disappeared
among the trees. But the night-long celebration began.
Neither the tiger nor the wife from heaven
was ever seen again. But the farmer (who was always
a farmer, life after life after life) often
thought of the tiger from Kansas City, and of his wife,
who’d come down to him from heaven, and who, in former lives
in times yet to come, had been twice a saint, once
a hypnotist, and once a radical-feminist-terrorist
from Ashtabula, Ohio, USA.
1.
Some say Mount Fuji was
in another life a beautiful
young woman whose eyes
and feet
wandered after
men not her husband
and was therefore condemned
in this life (a long one) to stand
rooted to one spot.
But I like to think
of Mount Fuji living long
eons underground
in dark and lonely
splendor
searching always searching
for a chink
in the solid earth
and rock above her head
when she found one
breaking free
giving birth to herself
in a single week
in sunlight
and brightness of sky
between inland mountains
and glittering sea.
2.
This morning the telephone rang
and much to my surprise it was Mount Fuji
speaking clear, unaccented English.
“Let’s have more Mozart,” he said
after the amenities, apparently
referring to the music I often play
as I work at my desk in the morning.
“Let’s have more Mozart,” he said again
“and less of that other stuff you were playing.”
“You must be thinking of the Satie,” I replied.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Not much
in the way of reverence there. We sacred
mountains have to think of our position.
No piece of cake being a sacred mountain.
And by the way,” he added before hanging up
“how’s your Japanese coming?”
“S’koshi by s’koshi” I said.
3.
It is morning
and the air is cold.
I wrap my death around
me like an old coat.
The cats have had their
breakfast and already
are sleeping.
Fuji-san peeks from behind
a pinetree and a cloud.
4.
Life is amazing.
If you’ve ever seen Mount Fuji
riding down the street
on a bicycle, guiding the bike
with no hands but just
a shifting of weight,
why then you’d know what I mean.
And—even more amazing—yesterday I saw
Mrs. Takahashi, my neighbor,
washing out Mount Fuji in a blue
plastic bucket, hanging it up
on her clothesline to dry.
5.
Now you’ve done it!
Haven’t I told you a million times
to leave that mountain alone?
What did your father say?
Didn’t he tell you to keep
your hands to yourself?
I just don’t know what to do
about you. Why can’t you
be like your brother?
He never breaks mountains.
6.
Now I am sitting at my desk
and far off behind me
Mount Fuji crouches in the gloom
of a cloudy mid-January evening.
Even as I write this, the mountain
—its peak whipped by snow
rising off the lower slopes—
begins to move toward me. It clambers over
range after range of foothills
wind screaming at its crest, along
its icy ridges. My back
my neck—they’re suddenly
cold. I pretend there’s a window behind me
and get up to close it. I pretend
there’s still time to do that.
7.
On a gray
day the cherry
blossoms hang
like bits
of crumpled pink
tissue paper
in the trees.
Fuji-san blinks
and misses
them as he has
every spring
now for centuries.
Landing in a Storm at Baltimore
Peas in a pod, we
flew through the
night from Chicago,
not a long flight,
just late
in our day.
In the last half
we buckled for
chop, plunged
down through a storm,
lightning flashing
all around
all of us
dreaming of what
happened next
the pod, that
delicate
mem
brane torn open,
peas tossed about
bleeding their
green blood,
burning,
torn.
But when
the plane hit
the rain-
spattered
tarmac,
we combed
our hair
and reached
for our bags.
We got off,
pretending
that nothing
had happened,
and nothing
really had.
This morning
I awoke from
a dream
about poems
about poets
about poetry.
I remembered
or dreamt
I remembered
a poem by
Robert Bly,
or maybe
someone
else, about
a people
a group of
people, a tribe
who lived
in thrall to
their past, who
couldn’t wake
up from a dream
in which they
all were
wrapped.
I remember
a poem of mine
about poets
(a poet) and
their natural
alliance with
thieves and crazies,
travelers,
the homeless,
all those who
stand outside
the normal
course of
things.
This morning,
after getting home
last night and
crashing,
after a night
that was turbulent
with dreams,
of poetry, planes
and you,
I find
myself waking
from one dream
into another,
being born
again
into a world
we both fall
asleep in.
Cardinals fly up
from the edge of the near
field, another
year’s luck.
The haiku poet gives
us a morning gift:
Starry night:
she squeezes in between
her husband and her ex
A road, a fence, a field.
A table on which a book
lies open: History
of the Great American
Fortunes by Gustavus Myers.
A glimpse out the window
of gray and white
cat. I open the door
and in it comes.
This is the first day,
unlike any other.
I was sick as a dog, and some NYC radio station
was playing Steve Reich’s Six Marimbas on an all-day basis,
over
and over and over again. The music’s patterns lapped
over me, the repeated, gradually altered
phrases moving toward and away from each other in the yellowy
gray of a confined-to-the-apartment afternoon.
Almost not sick enough to be in bed,
I sprawled on my back on the couch, occasionally making
an effort to catch up on my students’ compositions,
but giving up before long and pitching
myself backwards into the music
and into dreamland.
Phasing requires a loose sort of listening,
the aural equivalent of sitting in the sand on a beach,
watching the small waves lapping up on the shore,
seeing the rhythms there as they caught up with each
other, moved in unison motion for a time, and then
fell out of phase again, into some eccentric motion you
couldn’t put a name to if you wanted to.
It’s like being stopped at a red light
on a rainy afternoon, in the left turn lane, you and the car
ahead of you both signaling left
turns, but your flashers just ever so slightly out of
synch. For a moment, they seem to beat together
as the hearts of two lovers do, and then one
or the other pulls ahead or drops behind
and there’s a period of curious
but increasingly complicated rhythms
which topple for some moments into chaos—
when the two cars seem totally uncon-
nected before leaning back toward synchrony again.
And then the light turns green, the cars round the corner
and the flashers stop. And the rhythm goes on to
seek out a new set of dancers.
A passing truck and then silence.
Two actors in a small-town hotel room
argue as to which was the better Christ.
The offering of a cup of coffee is refused.
A renegade angel stands in the doorway,
one hand against the wall, the other
thrust deeply into a pocket. Cities of central
Europe, no longer known by their true names.
As old friends speak without exchanging
words, the mirror on the wall cannot possibly
reflect the same face you have presented unto it.
We finally meet in the deserted conservatory.
In this one we sit in the Marienplatz,
feeding the pigeons. The last of a race of giants
sits on an overstuffed couch, sipping brandy,
the light from beneath the fringed lampshade
softly falling. And suddenly it is dying
that is upon us, coming to us softly and without
question in the night. The courtyards of small
buildings, half-circled stairways, precipitous
descents. And then it is a simple chase.
Our friends have all left us, concerned with
other things. An aerial view of Vienna.
The wings of angels pounding in eventual time.
Back to this—
going back from what you are
(boss, party hack, elder statesman)
to something else, some sort of breakthrough.
To win people’s hearts after all these
years on your own little island,
gulls crying out along your private shore,
the metropolis a formless mass across the water, glare
of neon dancing on the waves. A dozen clouds,
electric in the sunset. Hills
kneeling down before you.
To find at last—after the storms
of doctrine—that you can talk to someone,
discuss a book, a film. Bandy about aesthetics
and sentiment without looking over your shoulder.
The nebulous arts and primal religions
are once again enchanting. You bid
the hills to rise, and they do.
Gennady is hungry
for knowledge. He has a thirst
that water will not quench.
His teacher, Madam Tchalikova,
comes from Gorokhov, somewhere
near the Polish border, where she
never knew a moment’s quiet in her life.
Gennady lives in Staro-Kievsky Street,
where horses thunder by. He has
a sister named Anna, a dog named
Mischka. On a table near his bed
sits an inkstand made of milky glass
and a pile of books and papers.
Gennady wants to write.
Gennady writes stories with titles
like “The Ill-Fated” or “The Abandoned.”
His outlook is dour, and one wonders why.
His mother, before she died, certainly
loved him and looked after him with
a certain tendresse. His father,
though busy, was not unkind.
Gennady is encouraged in his efforts
by his teacher, Madame Tchalikova, who
lives here now, but once lived near
the Polish border. When he has
finished dressing, Madame Tchalikova
always makes it a point to tell him
to write it all down as soon as he gets home.
It is late in the day.
All afternoon, clouds have hung
heavily over the farms, the villages,
the forests. They have trailed
long ribbons of rainfall over
the countryside. Now that it’s evening
they drift off toward the horizon
like theatergoers heading for the exits.
The sky is lit from below.
For hours now, I have been walking along
in the clear air, thinking
of nothing. To walk and breathe is enough,
keeping an eye on what the farmers
are doing, what the foresters in the woods
have done. It occurs to me that none
of this is my responsibility.
Why should I worry? The sunset arranges
its own colors. If a bird dies alone
in the woods, who would suspect me
of having murdered it? If you’re thinking
that no one’s accused me, of course,
you’re quite right. But the clouds,
the clouds. Why have the clouds
washed their hands of me?
Touching the leg of a girl
I used to go to bed with,
I was waiting for something
to happen, something
unusual, or more promising.
What did it matter that I had no eye
for her, or anyone else for that matter?
We’d tried various things for breakfast—
but breakfast remained our most
uninteresting meal of the say.
Stormclouds appeared on the horizon,
just letting us know that Nature
has the final say in things,
and then they went away.
In the early afternoon, a softball game
formed on the playing field. A batsman
with a level swing popped one up high
to the infield. All eyes were on the ball
as it neared the zenith of its arc,
but then to our amazement, instead of falling,
it arched even higher, looped the loop,
and, gathering speed and swelling, flew into
orbit around the earth. There it glides
to this day, a second moon, and people say,
“How lovely it is. Both moons are out tonight.”
The sun moved
shifting and turning
in the wind
blown hurly-burly clouds.
The light of the
sun moved toward us
and yet
in a sense moved
away, brightening
some other corner
of our world.
The breeze
lifted the hair
on our heads
but still it seemed
to stand still
blocking
our every move.
The earth so
solid beneath
our feet
wanted at once
to wander off among the clouds
and to stay here
at home with us.
Our thoughts
our deep humanity
anchored it.
Rainstorms flirting
with sunshine
came and went
on an irreg-
ular basis.
Love is a limited
access freeway in southern
Michigan bounding
a forest in which every
other tree is marked “Keep Out.”
I’m in a bus called Voyageur
that moves me farther away
from you with each passing minute.
Or perhaps it is you
moving away from me
who will arrive in Chicago to be
greeted by those to whom you
have passed beyond all recognition.
I went down to the harbor marina
and by some ruse got past the man at the gate.
I walked dock after dock, cutting loose
the yachts and small boats,
which just sat there at first, bobbing.
Then, through some confluency of air
and water, they turned themselves
about and slowly began to move out into
the larger current of the river
heading toward the bay. Cut
loose from their moorings, no hands
at their rudders, they nuzzled
and nudged each other out into the larger
traffic of the harbor, dipping and rising
across the wakes of larger, startled
craft, they went—
Merry Vista III, The Heimlich Maneuver,
Roam in a Day, Sea Chase II, Plover,
The Sea Castle, Time and Tide, Rex,
Pipe Dream I, Lusitania Two, What, Me Worry?
Ellen, New Age V, Little Rascal, Honeydew,
Monkey Business, The Santa Maria
In my inner life, all conversations
are conducted in Italian.
I never run out of milk, and everything
runs smoothly from day to day.
I think a lot about carnivals and balls,
but never incur expenses
or have to soak up
the willful excretions of uninvited guests.
The days of my inner world
are extraordinary and, in the some essential way,
magical. The first twenty minutes
are unintelligible—almost always.
But after that it begins to be great.
On that note, she left him
But wait!—What did she
ever see in him to bring her back
in such infinite faith in his
finer features. What nonsense,
he thought. I can’t go on this way.
It was as though the markers at
the borders between their two
countries had long since been buried
in muck and filth and decay. His
leaves filtered into her forest; her
latest wish, his fondest desire.
He sat at home listening to recorded silence
his hopes pinned forever on the blue marimba
in the corner of the room. What could he expect?
He had a wife who didn’t care for showtunes.
Some decimal point of refrigerated worry
took his breath away. Fine aptitudes, he
thought, and turned back to his book.
One light among many caused unnoticed stip-
ulations to appear in old familiar contracts.
England or Northern Ireland? He thought
it was a toss-up. Jackdaws spread out along
the plain, and much that had previously been
exposed was covered over. Who do you think
you are? he was suddenly asked, daily.
Toeing the line, dropping a hint, beating the drum, climbing
the wall, pulling my leg, lending an ear, taking the plunge,
biting the bullet, fearing no evil, awaiting your reply,
taking forever, spilling the beans, breaking the mirror,
killing the story, scaling the heights, pinching her pennies,
taking his time, smelling the coffee, cracking a smile, a joke.
Taking a turn for the worse, biting the hand that feeds him,
pacing the floor, walking the dog, fixing the cat,
blinking an eye, reading between the lines, turning over
a new leaf, spelling it out for her, giving them the bird,
looking forward to your next visit, voting early
and often, putting on their thinking caps, giving a damn.
For the record, I was out demonstrating
cellulite removal at a major downtown
university when your message came. Something
querulous in your voice immediately struck
a sympathetic note with me during playback.
Seventh Avenue rang with alternative
musics, and several of us yearned for normal
days, the likes of which have not been known
for eons. Most men, we’ve found, will not go
out very long with a girl who would not put out
or at least go out with them to meet the candidates.
Free treatments for bulimia present themselves
at every streetcorner, and the man doing his dance
at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 18th Street
hands out blue fliers as fast as he can press them
into the hands of stolid passersby. While noisy
neighbors clamor for low-cost health insurance,
I look for some way out of feeling
stressed, tense, trapped.
Oh, yes, intelligence jobs are always
there to fall back upon. Someone’s always around
to tell you how to take care of your baby,
but then, as I’ve often told you, wedding videos
at $700 a crack are not my idea of Nirvana.
The feel of it. The moist warmness
of it. Not that a promiscuity
of wishes were already beyond
their
splendid abundance of energies.
one at
partners
mistaken
response
cushion
the crush of
beginning
hand
confusing
fast
logic of their positions
not so embarrassed
prey
urgent.
1.
Three pieces of the meadow were amenable to quick solutions,
the distant grove of trees notwithstanding. I was in distinct
foliage, working through the labyrinth of my desires. A fenceline
on the rising slope spoke volumes of our private spaces, where
rain came through the slatted roof, our bodies curled in their cocoons.
2.
Anesthesia wheels in on its colored throne. Self-replication signifies
nothing less than your mother’s mustache safe on its shelf beneath
the counter, salesgirls breaking into song. Stop slapping Richard.
But if your shoes don’t fit, just trade them in on larger, smaller,
wider,
narrower ones, whatever. If the rope hangs down from the wall
3.
take a swing on it. A sensitive person wouldn’t make such remarks.
Grey in the water, her body rose and fell in the tangling
weeds. Every accident is a learning experience, some say. Testimony
can now be taken via telephone, no need for direct confrontation.
All you have to do is hand them a rose and tell them you’re not a Moonie.
This is the poem that answers
the question “What happens when an adult male
who has been unmarried since childhood
suddenly has his wife restored?”
She just walks in the door one day
and says, “Honey, guess what, I’m home!”
He, looking up quizzically yet with good humor
over the top of his newspaper, says,
“Well, I never . . . ,” but
she interrupts with a smile, saying,
“You’ll never guess where I’ve been!”
He allows that that is true but holds
his tongue. She, extracting a hatpin, takes
her time explaining. And then, when she’s
done, things go on pretty much as one
might expect. She finds everything
out of order and begins to rearrange, and he
wonders who it is she so reminds him of.
An unknown factor
in an equation
the planet beyond the outermost
planet, perturbations
we haven’t ex-
plained
yet
the mark of those who cannot
write their names
the spot where a hold
should be drilled,
a signature
signed
two roads inter-
secting in a forest
obliquely
four angles
emanating from a single
point, encompassing
every thing
upon a single
plane
a kiss
On the slow nights
when there aren’t many trucks on the road
when the last of the dishes have been washed and dried
and put away, when the boss has gone home
leaving me to lock up, I like to stand out in back
where the streetlights aren’t bright. I like it
especially when the moon goes down, leaving us alone
together for a while. Then I say—
Stars!
Listen to me! I know you can hear
me, stars.
I want to thank you. I admire
your work, all that fancy
stuff you’re doing—rotating, revolving,
flashing and
shining through space. That really
takes some doing.
Thank you again and good night.
Milk, say,
or maybe blood.
Silt in a rage
of river. Birds
in a tumult of breezes.
Poised, suspended,
vast crowds of people—
men and women at work in the cities,
or out in the fields,
stopping and looking around.
Children and pets, at play in
playgrounds and yards.
Sea full of fish.
And the night sky?
Down low, a flow
of clouds and wet gasses,
a stream of airy wetnesses.
Above? An infinity of planets and stars,
swirls and clouds of dark matter. Fire and
ice dancing toward and away from each other,
in deeps and shallows of space.
1.
In my dream, I dream I speak
only Spanish, so when I go
to Moscow to interview Mayakovsky
an interpreter must be found, and finding
one proves to be quite a task, but after
some days a dancer in the corps de ballet
at the Bolshoi turns up. She is small and thin
and graceful, and, after dancing in Russia
for several years, she has an almost perfect
command of the language. I fall in love with her
immediately, in love with the mole
on her lower lip, and we eat meals and make
love together several times, but always in
dark Moscow streets somewhere, pressed up
against the alley wall of some steamy bistro.
She shares a room with three other dancers,
and smuggling her up to my hotel room would
take more luck than I’ve been given for this
lifetime. Mayakovsky seems to understand
what’s going on between us, but he only
smiles, very slightly. I have to get back to
Paris and can’t take her with me. Or, more
truthfully, she will not come with me. Her life,
after all, is the dance. Mayakovsky knows
my heart is breaking, but doesn’t say a word.
My train’s chuffing out of the station. They’re
both there on the platform, waving goodbye
to me. Mayakovsky is smiling. She isn’t.
2.
In my dream, I dream I am dreaming.
The dream is an old one I’ve had many times
before. It is the dream of flying. I dream I
am flying high above a great city, high
in the dark. I amuse myself by swooping
and soaring. I hover and look into rooms
where people are sleeping or making love
or fighting or maybe just watching TV.
But mostly I soar and swoop, climbing higher
and higher up into the night sky until the lights
of the city have become just a small point
of light down below, and then I plunge
downward faster and faster and faster, pulling
out of my dive just before hitting
some sidewalk.
3.
Instead of hitting the sidewalk,
I plunge on through it into some
other dream, in which I am on a train
chugging into a station in Paris. All
of my friends—Miguel, Vicente, the others—
have turned out to greet me. They
shout their greetings in Spanish, our
common tongue. They ask about
Mayakovsky, and I have some trouble
remembering anything about him.
What comes to mind is an image—the face
of a Spanish dancer, her dark eyes,
the mole on her lower lip. “Mayakovsky?”
I say, bewildered. And then I am sitting
on the couch in my livingroom watching
late news on TV, and then I have the uneasy
feeling that I am being watched. No one
else is at home, but I have a look around anyway.
There’s no one but me in the room, but when
I look out toward the dark, ever-flowing river,
I see someone hovering, arms outstretched,
just beyond the window. I can almost make
out his face, almost make out who it is, but then
he is gone, and I fall asleep again, dreaming.
Nothing I Can Put My Finger On
It’s the bricks maybe
or the painted screens.
It’s the humid summer
nights perhaps, when people
sit outside on their steps
late into the night
watching cars go by
in the street. Maybe
it’s the skinny
hookers down at the corner
of Broadway and Gough,
their eyes both dull and direct.
I know it’s the dark
water down by the harbor,
slapping at the pilings.
It’s yesterday’s paper
stuffed into a wire trashcan.
It’s the voice in the street:
“No, no. Nobody’d
kill him.”
Sometimes, when the wind
is right, it’s on the air,
that drifty smell of sea.
It’s in the little
tune of the ice cream truck.
It’s in the voice of
the out-of-town poet
come to read to us,
his accent still there
after all these years.
It’s in between one breath
and the next, where the voice
catches in anticipation
of some continuation, some
continuity, along the sidewalks to
the waters of the dark harbor.
Just for you
I leave the phone off the hook.
If there is anyone
who will not reach me today,
it shall be you.
These words are only
for you, they come straight
from my heart.
My mind
is a windy sky,
where drifting
clouds are thoughts of you—
just passing by
and won’t be staying long.
Some things are music
against melancholy.
The whole world
knows them. These are
the dark things—
shadows at the bottom
of a brook beneath
the final stones,
the pages beyond
(or just before)
the one you now
are reading.
As children, in broad
daylight, we would hide
our heads under blankets,
listening for the distant
pounding of their wings.
Nuages, fêtes, sirènes, Hiram exclaimed,
but the greatest of these is Nuages.
Hiram stood in relation to the other philosophers of Central City
as Copernicus did to other Polish astronomers
of the fifteenth century. He revolutionized our thinking.
The reality of the world lies with its ephemera,
Hiram would say, thus aligning himself with the Japanese
in their love of fireflies, fireworks, and cherry blossoms, and
with American businessmen in their love of quick, short-term profits.
Hiram focused us on clouds rather than rocks. He tuned our
telescopes to fluffs of evanescent white, their drift
across our skies. And windy days were best. White
puffs blown by on random winds, here today and
gone in just a minute.
I wanted to go over to the lake, but instead he drove me inland,
starting from the driveway, where bricks were laid in a herring-bone
pattern and a sign said don’t block the cow-path; inland to a town
not far from a naval air station. I said drive me to the lake,
so that I can clamber over the piled-up, quarry-cut rocks along the
shore,
so that I can watch the birds seeking fish where the nuclear power
plant
lets its warmed-up water flow into the much cooler water of the lake.
I said take me to the water, so that I can watch the smudge of a steamer
far out on the lake, working its way slowly to the right along the
line
of a straight, hard, sharp, direct, flat, utterly convincing horizon.
We pass the woody creek
and run along down valley through the trees.
Then there’s a hairpin curve and the
long climb. We are excited. The snarling dog
on the backseat noses the breeze and drools.
On the edge of the high desert, we stop
and let him run.
The dog runs on and on, becomes a speck in the far
distance, then loops back. By the time it gets back it is
evening, and everything is already in shambles.
Cocktails and coke had already been
done, and upstairs the telephone rings incessantly.
When we first got there it was really wonderful—
all friendly and cozy. Skiing was often a pleasure. Later,
in the kitchen, drinks would be mixed and stirred.
Then we’d all take our guns and go riding around shooting
at the mountainsides. Now, it’s hard to remember
what all of that was like.
The dog’s lost ten seconds off its time
of several years ago. Illegal explosions wake us
at all hours of the night. Well-intentioned parties turn
into riots. Cats cannonball through the house.
Nobody gives thought anymore to any
sort of obligation. Bills pile up on the kitchen counter.
Children’s need go unmet. They are unclean, unfed.
Radios blare in the night. Taxis continually
show up at the gate, and are sent away. Nobody
wants to use them. The dog runs on and on.
Did I? I thought I did not, but maybe I was wrong.
She turned up one day on my doorstep, and that was in Cuba.
In those days, beyond the pillars, they were marching
portraits of Fidel out into the street. They were leaned
against a wall and then shot. She came with a petition
she wanted me to sign, but I was in no position to do that.
I had family to think of. She had something to say
about the stained glass, about religious iconography in general.
I don’t know. I thought I handled that right. Anybody
would have done what I did. Where is she now? Did you say?
The plunged villager, looking upwards from his awareness,
tugged for all he was worth at the end of his tether.
Slithery thing abounded in the wet pools of his last
amazed perplexion. “Here,” he said, offering up what he could.
“Take it all, you bastard. What choice do I have?”
The answer, whatever he’d expected, was not forthcoming.
His temples were pounding, and he screamed until his throat was raw
as rain. Light worked its way along his corpuscles. Amen, amen.
1. Lisa
Lisa runs with her head thrown back,
her mouth open, one arm lifted
up before her chest,
the other trailing off behind
her to the right.
2. Joanna
Joanna’s showing us her teeth.
Her weight is coming forward
onto her right foot. Her smile
is breathtaking. She leads
with her left shoulder.
3. Hazel
Hazel’s gaze is direct, but
her smile is self-conscious,
almost embarrassed. She’s a
little bit nervous. One arm
crosses before her, protecting.
4. Lucille
Lucy runs with her eyes closed.
She’s entirely internal. But she
runs strongly and directly
as though she knows, even with her
eyes shut, just where she is going.
5. Amy
Amy is slightly off balance.
She’s come down heavily on one
foot. She leads with one knee
and the underside of a wrist.
Heaven knows where she’s going.
6. Helen
Helen’s up in the air, entirely
off the floor. She runs in little
leaps. Her blonde hair streams
behind her. Any moment now
she’ll come down to earth.
The dog sled was not our metier.
We had two problems with it. The first
was the sled, and the second was the dogs.
The sled itself, small and rickety
could not hold all our belongings.
At every encampment we were forced to leave
precious objects behind—jewels, watches, furs.
The ride on the runners was always precarious,
and some of us were always falling off.
Those who sat down complained
ad nauseam of jolts and jounces.
The dogs resented the whip,
complained about their food,
verged on mutiny.
And yet it was a rich time, a time of high
and spirited living, a time of great accomplishments.
The clear, taut air was bracing. The light
was real light then. But the decade ended with
a real crash. Not enough snow for our runners. The light
itself seemed to have decayed. Nothing worked out
anymore, and we found ourselves on a paved,
snowless road in southern Virginia,
depressed, and utterly stranded.
Penelope’s melons ripen on the vine.
October sun streams down. Penelope’s sister,
never having fully considered her options,
languishes by the poolside, the last warm
sun of the season deepening her brown.
Awakening late in the afternoon, Jessica
comes down reluctantly to join us for drinks.
Her husband (or lover)—the wonder of it—
has never let us down. Even now, he scoops
with a small net at the one or two leaves
floating on the surface of the pool.
Susan, as always, is deep in a book, her
hair fallen into her eyes. She brushes
it away with the back of a hand.
Far away in the house, a doorbell rings.
The emptiness of the long, curving drive
had yielded to the advances of a white panel
truck. A uniformed driver has borne to the door
a rose. He presents it to Amy, who receives
it with a smile, and, reading the card,
announces that it is for Susan.
No one hears this but the driver lingering
at the door, expecting perhaps a tip.
The others, all save Penelope, somewhere upstairs,
are out by the pool. Jessica’s silly lover
(or husband) swipes at a leaf with his net.
Jessica sips at her drink, and Monica whispers to Amy
“But nevertheless, dear Amy, he wasn’t very kind.”
Susan, the lady in question might never
have even suspected had not one of the others
dropped her some kind of a hint. Certainly Penelope
is never truly vindictive, the history of her vague,
disturbed sister notwithstanding. Susan’s eyes
are green in that light, the late light shining
on the pool, its outlet clogged with leaves
as always in this season. Susan thinks
about Jessica’s husband, or lover, or boyfriend—
whatever he is. She doesn’t really like him. But
the episode of the rose is still fresh with her.
Why did they say it was hers? Why did they say that?
She closes the book in her lap, goes back indoors and runs
right up to her room. There’s not enough light for reading.
Riding the Metro to work,
underground through Washington,
something like living a life
on the surface—beginning,
middle, end—although you don’t
know where the middle was
until you get to the end,
somewhere near which you come out
into air and light. Monuments
and rivers go by. Planes fly past
overhead. And then you go down
again, into the earth. You notice
that people getting off rarely
have anything to say to people
getting on. And when you
get off, you come up not into some
blue heaven but into a huge building
with endless corridors, stairways
leading to nowhere, doors with
warnings scrawled on paper:
If you pass through here
you won’t come back.
No hardware on other side.
Door will lock.
I didn’t even notice
the nun on board until sometime after Jackson, Michigan,
when she got up from her seat and came
back down the aisle, carefully
stepping over the outstretched legs of sleepers.
She wore the old-style black
flowing garment, had a typically nunnish
middle-aged face—pale verging on pasty & non-
cosmeticized. Glasses in gray plastic frames.
Behind me, she entered
the washroom and locked herself in.
Small noises came from inside as she
attended to her body’s needs
with, I suppose, no more or less embarrassment
than any of us. I contemplated the mechanics of this,
imagined her hoisting her skirts up to her waist,
pulling down underthings, hunkering down to the seat.
I wondered at the proximity of her hand
to the cunt that is only Christ’s—bemused
confrontation of spirit and flesh. And then she
rearranged herself, washed her hands, and turned
to unlock the door. Its failure to open provoked
a moment’s reflection on the recalcitrance
of physical objects—and then alarm. Small clicks
and tappings were what I first heard. Then pounding
and pounding and pounding, all the way in to Chicago.
We’re standing out at the road
in the dark (except for his yellow flashers)
talking to a man who’s just had his
second blowout of the day, and to a man
who lives across the road—a neighbor
we’ve never met before, who’s just had (we learn)
his day in court and won custody of his son.
That’s Joe, whom I’ve met, who (just back from
California and his mom) stands shivering by the road
in the early morning light, waiting for
his schoolbus as I go out to pick up the paper.
We talk the polite talk of strangers
out there in the darkness, just slightly
chilled. I watch the sky—small planes
crossing at odd angles, full moon just rising
from the trees. And then I see a shooting
star high above, moving north.
It doesn’t fade, and we realize
it’s a satellite headed for
the pole—moving along in its steady
mindless way—north and then south
and then north again, just east
or west enough we wouldn’t see another pass
tonight even if the tow-truck never came.
Driving to work
I pick up an FM station in Baltimore.
Emma Kirkby is singing songs by John Dowland
on mutability and metamorphosis.
I’m driving south through rolling Maryland farmland,
and then onto I-95. The station begins to decay.
Voice and lute flicker and fade.
A Washington station starts cutting in.
The musicians do their best, pushing out and out
on ever-weakening signals.
The music dissolves.
Bits of words and phrases elbow in.
A voice speaks of pain—excruciating pain—
breaks off, returns, breaks off again. Soon single
notes and unintelligible phrases are all I hear.
The voice becomes a roar, an old man’s voice
screaming in rage and joy. I’m nearly
where I’m going, or someone
very like me is.