I thought those solitary men were happy, as ever they had been.
Indio’s long avenues
of Medjool date-palm and lemon sweep to the Salton Sea
in Yucca Flats the high desert reaches higher, bleached and spare
of talk.
At Twentynine Palms I found the grave
of Maria Eleanor Whallon, eighteen years, dead at the watering-
hole in 1903, under the now fire-branded palms
Her mother travelled on alone to cook in the mining camps.
X
Soledad. = f. Solitude, loneliness, homesickness; lonely retreat.
Winter sun in the rosetrees.
An old Mexican with a white moustache prunes them back
spraying
the cut branches with dormant oil. The old paper-bag-brown
adobe walls
stretch apart from the rebuilt mission, in their own time. It is
lonely here
in the curve of the road winding through vast brown fields
machine-engraved in furrows
of relentless precision. In the small chapel
La Nuestra Señora de la Soledad dwells in her shallow arch
painted on either side with columns. She is in black lace crisp as
cinders
from head to foot. Alone, solitary, homesick
in her lonely retreat. Outside black olives fall and smash
littering and staining the beaten path. The gravestones of the
padres
are weights pressing down on the Indian artisans. It is the sixth
day of another war.
• • •
Across the freeway stands another structure
from the other side of the mirror it destroys
the logical processes of the mind, a man’s thoughts
become completely disorganized, madness streaming from every throat
frustrated sounds from the bars, metallic sounds from the walls
the steel trays, iron beds bolted to the wall, the smells, the human waste.
To determine how men will behave once they enter prison
it is of first importance to know that prison. (From the freeway
gun-turrets planted like water-towers in another garden,
outbuildings spaced in winter sun
and the concrete mass beyond: who now writes letters deep
inside that cave?)
If my instructor tells me that the world and its affairs
are run as well as they possibly can be, that I am governed
by wise and judicious men, that I am free and should be happy,
and if when I leave the instructor’s presence and encounter
the exact opposite, if I actually sense or see confusion, war,
recession, depression, death and decay, is it not reasonable
that I should become perplexed?
From eighteen to twenty-eight
of his years
a young man schools himself, argues,
debates, trains, lectures to himself,
teaches himself Swahili, Spanish, learns
five new words of English every day,
chainsmokes, reads, writes letters.
In this college of force he wrestles bitterness,
self-hatred, sexual anger, cures his own nature.
Seven of these years in solitary. Soledad.
But the significant feature of the desperate man reveals itself
when he meets other desperate men, directly or vicariously;
and he experiences his first kindness, someone to strain with him,
to strain to see him as he strains to see himself,
someone to understand, someone to accept the regard,
the love, that desperation forces into hiding.
Those feelings that find no expression in desperate times
store themselves up in great abundance, ripen, strengthen,
and strain the walls of their repository to the utmost;
where the kindred spirit touches this wall it crumbles—
no one responds to kindness, no one is more sensitive to it
than the desperate man.
XI
One night on Monterey Bay the death-freeze of the century:
a precise, detached calliper-grip holds the stars and the quarter-
moon
in arrest: the hardiest plants crouch shrunken, a “killing frost”
on bougainvillea, Pride of Madeira, roseate black-purple succu-
lents bowed
juices sucked awry in one orgy of freezing
slumped on their stems like old faces evicted from cheap hotels
—into the streets of the universe, now!
Earthquake and drought followed by freezing followed by war
Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossoming
and I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country.
The history of this earth and the bones within it?
Soils and cities, promises made and mocked, plowed contours of
shame and of hope?
Loyalties, symbols, murmurs extinguished and echoing?
Grids of states stretching westward, underground waters?
Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule
fibre, one woman
like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of
her task?
One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in
passing
—each of us now a driven grain, a nucleus, a city in crisis
some busy constructing enclosures, bunkers, to escape the com-
mon fate
some trying to revive dead statues to lead us, breathing their
breath against marble lips
some who try to teach the moment, some who preach the
moment
some who aggrandize, some who diminish themselves in the face
of half-grasped events
—power and powerlessness run amuck, a tape reeling backward
in jeering, screeching syllables—
some for whom war is new, others for whom it merely continues
the old paroxysms of time
some marching for peace who for twenty years did not march for
justice
some for whom peace is a white man’s word and a white man’s
privilege
some who have learned to handle and contemplate the shapes of
powerlessness and power
as the nurse learns hip and thigh and weight of the body he has
to lift and sponge, day upon day
as she blows with her every skill on the spirit’s embers still burn-
ing by their own laws in the bed of death.
A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot is one who wrestles for the
soul of her country
as she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country
(gazing through the great circle at Window Rock into the sheen
of the Viet Nam Wall)
as he wrestles for his own being. A patriot is a citizen trying to
wake
from the burnt-out dream of innocence, the nightmare
of the white general and the Black general posed in their
camouflage,
to remember her true country, remember his suffering land:
remember
that blessing and cursing are born as twins and separated at birth
to meet again in mourning
that the internal emigrant is the most homesick of all women and
of all men
that every flag that flies today is a cry of pain.
Where are we moored?
What are the bindings?
What behooves us?
XII
What homage will be paid to a beauty built to last
from inside out, executing the blueprints of resistance a
nd mercy
drawn up in childhood, in that little girl, round-faced with
clenched fists, already acquainted with mourning
in the creased snapshot you gave me? What homage will be
paid to beauty
that insists on speaking truth, knows the two are not always the
same,
beauty that won’t deny, is itself an eye, will not rest under
contemplation?
Those low long clouds we were driving under a month ago in
New Mexico, clouds an arm’s reach away
were beautiful and we spoke of it but I didn’t speak then
of your beauty at the wheel beside me, dark head steady, eyes
drinking the spaces
of crimson, indigo, Indian distance, Indian presence,
your spirit’s gaze informing your body, impatient to mark what’s
possible, impatient to mark
what’s lost, deliberately destroyed, can never any way be
returned,
your back arched against all icons, simulations, dead letters
your woman’s hands turning the wheel or working with shears,
torque wrench, knives, with salt pork, onions, ink
and fire
your providing sensate hands, your hands of oak and silk, of
blackberry juice and drums
—I speak of them now.
(FOR M.)
XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
1990–1991
That Mouth
This is the girl’s mouth, the taste
daughters, not sons, obtain:
These are the lips, powerful rudders
pushing through groves of kelp,
the girl’s terrible, unsweetened taste
of the whole ocean, its fathoms: this is that taste.
This is not the father’s kiss, the mother’s:
a father can try to choke you,
a mother drown you to save you:
all the transactions have long been enacted.
This is neither a sister’s tale nor a brother’s:
strange trade-offs have long been made.
This is the swallow, the splash
of krill and plankton, that mouth
described as a girl’s—
enough to give you a taste:
Are you a daughter, are you a son?
Strange trade-offs have long been made.
1988
Marghanita
at the oak table under the ceiling fan
Marghanita at the table counting up
a dead woman’s debts.
Kicks off a sandal, sips
soda from a can, wedges the last bills
under the candelabrum. She is here
because no one else was there when worn-to-skeleton
her enemy died. Her love. Her twin.
Marghanita dreamed the intravenous, the intensive
the stainless steel
before she ever saw them. She’s not practical,
you know, they used to say.
She’s the artist, she got away.
In her own place Marghanita glues bronze
feathers into wings, smashes green and clear
bottles into bloodletting particles
crushed into templates of sand
scores mirrors till they fall apart and sticks them up
in driftwood boughs, drinks golden
liquid with a worm’s name, forgets
her main enemy, her twin;
scores her wrist on a birthday
dreams the hospital dream.
When they were girl and boy together, boy and girl
she pinned his arm against his back
for a box containing false
lashes and fingernails, a set of veils, a string of pearls,
she let go and listened to his tales
she breathed their breath, he hers,
they each had names only the other knew.
Marghanita in the apartment everyone has left:
not a nephew, not a niece,
nobody from the parish
where are the others?
Marghanita comes back because she does,
adding up what’s left:
a rainsoaked checkbook, snapshots
razed from an album,
colors ground into powder, brushes, wands
for eyelids, lashes, brows,
beads of bath-oil, tubes of glycerin
—a dead woman’s luxuries.
Marghanita will
take care of it all. Pay if nothing else
the last month’s rent. The wings of the fan
stir corners of loose paper,
light ebbs from the window-lace,
she needs to go out and eat. And so
hating and loving come down
to a few columns of figures,
an aching stomach, a care taken: something done.
1989
Tattered Kaddish
Taurean reaper of the wild apple field
messenger from earthmire gleaning
transcripts of fog
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:
Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it
badly, too well, and not enough
Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us
Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable
Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.
1989
Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud
I
Through Corralitos under rolls of cloud
between winter-stiff, ranged apple-trees
each netted in transparent air,
thin sinking light, heartsick within and filmed
in heartsickness around you, gelatin cocoon
invisible yet impervious—to the hawk
steering against the cloudbank, to the clear
oranges burning at the rancher’s gate
rosetree, agave, stiff beauties holding fast
with or without your passion,
the pruners freeing up the boughs
in the unsearched faith these strange stiff shapes will bear.
II
Showering after ’flu; stripping the bed;
running the shrouds of sickness through the wash;
airing the rooms; emptying the trash;
it’s as if part of you had died in the house
sometime in that last low-lit afternoon
when your dreams ebbed salt-thick into the sheets
and now this other’s left to wash the corpse,
burn eucalyptus, turn the mirrors over—
this other who herself barely came back,
whose breath was fog to your mist, whose stubborn shadow
covered you as you lay freezing, she survived
uncertain who she is or will be without you.
III
If you know who died in that bed, do you know
who has survived? If you say, she was weaker,
held life less dear, expected others
to fight for her if pride lets you name her
victim and the one who got up and threw
the windows open, stripped the bed, survivor
—what have you said, what do you know
of the survivor when you know her
only in opposition to the lost?
What does it mean to say I have survived
until you take the mirrors and turn them outward
and read your own face in their outraged light?
IV
That light of outrage is the light of history
springing upon us when we’re least prepared,
thinking maybe a little glade of time
leaf-thick and with clear water
is ours, is promised us, for all we’ve hacked
and tracked our way through: to this:
What will it be? Your wish or mine? your
prayers or my wish then: that those we love