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.
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 sick room,
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 morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the bright morning air.
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.
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 mightier 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.
The Revenant
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you—not one bit.
When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would
sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.
I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and—greatest of insults—shake hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner—
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.
Carry
I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.
Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a row boat on the far side of the lake.
They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.
Fool Me Good
I am under the covers
waiting for the heat to come up
with a gurgle and hiss
and the banging of the water hammer
that will frighten the cold out of the room.
And I am listening to a blues singer
named Precious Bryant
singing a song called “Fool Me Good.”
If you don’t love me, baby, she sings,
would you please try to fool me good?
I am also stroking the dog’s head
and writing down these words,
which means that I am calmly flying
in the face of the Buddhist advice
to do only one thing at a time.
Just pour the tea,
just look into the eye of the flower,
just sing the song—
one thing at a time
and you will achieve serenity,
which is what I would love to do
as the fan-blades of the morning begin to turn.
If you don’t love me, baby,
she sings,
as a day-moon fades in the window,
and the hands circle the clock,
would you please try to fool me good?
Yes, Precious, I reply,
I will fool you as good as I can,
but first I have to learn to listen to you
with my whole heart,
and not until you have finished
will I put on my slippers,
squeeze out some toothpaste,
and make a big foamy face in the mirror,
freshly dedicated to doing one thing at a time—
one note at a time for you, darling,
one tooth at a time for me.
The Trouble with Poetry
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night—
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky—
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—
to be perfectly honest for a moment—
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
FROM BALLISTICS
(2008)
Brightly Colored Boats Upturned on the Banks of the Charles
What is there to say about them
that has not been said in the title?
I saw them near dawn from a glassy room
on the other side of that river,
which flowed from some hidden spring
to the sea; but that is getting away from
the brightly colored boats upturned
on the banks of the Charles,
the sleek racing sculls of a college crew team.
They were beautiful in the clear early light—
red, yellow, blue and green—
is all I wanted to say about them,
although for the rest of the day
I pictured a lighter version of myself
calling time through a little megaphone,
first to the months of the year,
then to the twelve apostles, all grimacing
as they leaned and pulled on the long wooden oars.
Searching
I recall someone once admitting
that all he remembered of Anna Karenina
was something about a picnic basket,
and now, after consuming a book
devoted to the subject of Barcelona—
its people, its history, its complex architecture—
all I remember is the mention
of an albino gorilla, the inhabitant of a park
where the Citadel of the Bourbons once stood.
The sheer paleness of her looms over
all the notable names and dates
as the evening strollers stop before her
and point to show their children.
These locals called her Snowflake,
and here she has been mentioned again in print
in the hope of keeping her pallid flame alive
and helping her, despite her name, to endure
in this poem where she has found another cage.
Oh, Snowflake,
I had no interest in the capital of Catalonia—
its people, its history, its complex architecture—
no, you were the reason
I kept my light on late into the night
turning all those pages, searching for you everywhere.
High
On that clear Octo
ber morning,
I was only behind a double espresso
and a single hit of anti-depressant,
yet there, on the shore of the reservoir
with its flipped-over row boats,
I felt like I was walking with Jane Austen
to borrow the jargon of the streets.
Yes, I was wearing the crown,
as the drug addicts like to say,
knitting a bonnet for Charlie,
entertaining the troops,
sitting in the study with H.G. Wells—
so many ways to express that mood
of royal goodwill
when the gift of sight is cause enough for jubilation.
And later in the afternoon
when I finally came down,
a lexicon was waiting for me there, too.
In my upholstered chair by a window
with dusk pouring into the room,
I appeared to be doing nothing,
but inside I was busy riding the marble,
as the lurkers like to put it—
talking to Marco Polo,
juggling turtles,
going through the spin cycle,
or—my favorite, if I had to have one—out of milk.
The Four-Moon Planet
I have envied the four-moon planet.
—The Notebooks of Robert Frost
Maybe he was thinking of the song
“What a Little Moonlight Can Do”