but the long whistling through the dark—
no basement, no boy,
no everlasting summer afternoon.
Building with Its Face Blown Off
How suddenly the private
is revealed in a bombed-out city,
how the blue and white striped wallpaper
of a second story bedroom is now
exposed to the lightly falling snow
as if the room had answered the explosion
wearing only its striped pajamas.
Some neighbors and soldiers
poke around in the rubble below
and stare up at the hanging staircase,
the portrait of a grandfather,
a door dangling from a single hinge.
And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed
by its uncovered ochre walls,
the twisted mess of its plumbing,
the sink sinking to its knees,
the ripped shower curtain,
the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.
It’s like a dollhouse view
as if a child on its knees could reach in
and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.
Or it might be a room on a stage
in a play with no characters,
no dialogue or audience,
no beginning, middle and end—
just the broken furniture in the street,
a shoe among the cinder blocks,
a light snow still falling
on a distant steeple, and people
crossing a bridge that still stands.
And beyond that—crows in a tree,
the statue of a leader on a horse,
and clouds that look like smoke,
and even farther on, in another country
on a blanket under a shade tree,
a man pouring wine into two glasses
and a woman sliding out
the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper
filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.
Special Glasses
I had to send away for them
because they are not available in any store.
They look the same as any sunglasses
with a light tint and silvery frames,
but instead of filtering out the harmful
rays of the sun,
they filter out the harmful sight of you—
you on the approach,
you waiting at my bus stop,
you, face in the evening window.
Every morning I put them on
and step out the side door
whistling a melody of thanks to my nose
and my ears for holding them in place, just so,
singing a song of gratitude
to the lens grinder at his heavy bench
and to the very lenses themselves
because they allow it all to come in, all but you.
How they know the difference
between the green hedges, the stone walls,
and you is beyond me,
yet the schoolbuses flashing in the rain
do come in, as well as the postman waving
and the mother and daughter dogs next door,
and then there is the tea kettle
about to play its chord—
everything sailing right in but you, girl.
Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,
but not the mosquito,
and as water swirls down the drain,
but not the eggshell,
so the flowering trellis and the moon
pass through my special glasses, but not you.
Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,
as I lay my special glasses on the night table,
pull the chain on the lamp,
and say a prayer—unlike the song—
that I will not see you in my dreams.
THREE
The Lanyard
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the archaic truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Boy Shooting at a Statue
It was late afternoon,
the beginning of winter, a light snow,
and I was the only one in the small park
to witness the lone boy running
in circles around the base of a bronze statue.
I could not read the carved name
of the statesman who loomed above,
one hand on his cold hip,
but as the boy ran, head down,
he would point a finger at the statue
and pull an imaginary trigger
imitating the sounds of rapid gunfire.
Evening thickened, the mercury sank,
but the boy kept running in the circle
of his footprints in the snow
shooting blindly into the air.
History will never find a way to end,
I thought, as I left the park by the north gate
and walked slowly home
returning to the station of my desk
where the sheets of paper I wrote on
were like pieces of glass
through which I could see
hundreds of dark birds circling in the sky below.
Genius
was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.
Or if you walked into an open locker door,
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.
Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,
or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,
or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little
night music.
But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,
the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.
Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—
forty-eight if we count their white reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to throw in me
and the dog running up ahead,
who were at least smart enough to be out
that day—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the bright morning air.
The Student
My poetry instruction book,
which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river,
contains many rules
about what to avoid and what to follow.
More than two people in a poem
is a crowd, is one.
Mention what clothes you are wearing
as you compose, is another.
Avoid the word vortex,
the word velvety, and the word cicada.
When at a loss for an ending,
have some brown hens standing in the rain.
Never admit that you revise.
And—always keep your poem in one season.
I try to be mindful,
but in these last days of summer
whenever I look up from my page
and see a burn-mark of yellow leaves,
I think of the icy winds
that will soon be knifing through my jacket.
Reaper
As I drove north along a country road
on a bright spring morning
I caught the look of a man on the roadside
who was carrying an enormous scythe on his shoulder.
He was not wearing a long black cloak
with a hood to conceal his skull—
rather a torn white tee-shirt
and a pair of loose khaki trousers.
But still, as I flew past him,
he turned and met my glance
as if I had an appointment in Samarra,
not just the usual lunch at the Raccoon Lodge.
There was no sign I could give him
in that instant—no casual wave,
or thumbs-up, no two-fingered V
that would ease the jolt of fear
whose voltage ran from my ankles
to my scalp—just the glimpse,
the split-second lock of the pupils
like catching the eye of a stranger on a passing train.
And there was nothing to do
but keep driving, turn off the radio,
and notice how white the houses were,
how red the barns, and green the sloping fields.
The Order of the Day
A morning after a week of rain
and the sun shot down through the branches
into the tall, bare windows.
The brindled cat rolled over on his back,
and I could hear you in the kitchen
grinding coffee beans into a powder.
Everything seemed especially vivid
because I knew we were all going to die,
first the cat, then you, then me,
then somewhat later the liquefied sun
was the order I was envisioning.
But then again, you never really know.
The cat had a fiercely healthy look,
his coat so bristling and electric
I wondered what you had been feeding him
and what you had been feeding me
as I turned a corner
and beheld you out there on the sunny deck
lost in exercise, running in place,
knees lifted high, skin glistening—
and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours.
Constellations
Yes, that’s Orion over there,
the three studs of the belt
clearly lined up just off the horizon.
And if you turn around you can see
Gemini, very visible tonight,
the twins looking off into space as usual.
That cluster a little higher in the sky
is Cassiopeia sitting in her astral chair
if I’m not mistaken.
And directly overhead,
isn’t that Virginia Woolf
in her inflatable canoe?
See the wide-brimmed hat and there,
the outline of the paddle, raised and dripping stars?
The Drive
There were four of us in the car
early that summer evening,
short-hopping from one place to another,
thrown together by a light toss of circumstance.
I was in the backseat
directly behind the driver who was talking
about one thing and another
while his wife smiled quietly at the windshield.
I was happy to be paying attention
to the rows of tall hedges
and the gravel driveways we were passing
and then the yellow signs on the roadside stores.
It was only when he began to belittle you
that I found myself shifting my focus
to the back of his head,
a head that was large and expansively bald.
As he continued talking
and the car continued along the highway,
I began to divide his head into sections
by means of dotted lines,
the kind you see on the diagram of a steer.
Only here, I was not interested in short loin,
rump, shank, or sirloin tip,
but curious about what region of his cranium
housed the hard nugget of his malice.
Tom, my friend, you would have enjoyed the sight—
the car turning this way and that,
the sunlight low in the trees,
the man going on about your many failings,
and me sitting quietly behind him
wearing my white butcher’s apron
and my small, regulation butcher’s hat.
On Not Finding You at Home
Usually you appear at the front door
when you hear my steps on the gravel,
but today the door was closed,
not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney.
I peered into a window
but there was nothing but a table with a comb,
some yellow flowers in a glass of water
and dark shadows in the corners of the room.
I stood for a while under the big tree
and listened to the wind and the birds,
your wind and your birds,
your dark green woods beyond the clearing.
This is not what it is like to be you,
I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds
flew over the rooftop.
It is just me thinking about being you.
And before I headed back down the hill,
I walked in a circle around your house,
making an invisible line
which you would have to cross before dark.
The Centrifuge
It is difficult to describe what we felt
after we paid the admission,
entered the aluminum dome,
and stood there with our mouths open
before the machine itself,
what we had only read about in the papers.
Huge and glistening it was
but bolted down and giving nothing away.
What did it mean?
we all openly wondered,
and did another machine exist somewhere else—
an even might
ier one—
that was designed to be its exact opposite?
These were not new questions,
but we asked them earnestly and repeatedly.
Later, when we were home again—
a family of six having tea—
we raised these questions once more,
knowing that this made us part
of a great historical discussion
that included science
as well as literature and the weather
not to mention the lodger downstairs,
who, someone said,
had been seen earlier leaving the house
with a suitcase and a tightly furled umbrella.