transparent as glass, clairvoyant as crystal.…
Some nights it is almost ready to join them.
Oh, this is a strained, unlikely tethering,
a furious grafting of the quick and the slow:
when the soul flies up, the body sinks down
and all night—locked in the same cramped room—
they go on quarreling, stubbornly threatening
to leave each other, wordlessly filling the air
with the sound of a low internal burning.
How long can this bewildering marriage last?
At midnight the soul dreams of a small fire
of stars flaming on the other side of the sky,
but the body stares into an empty night sheen,
a hollow-eyed darkness. Poor luckless angels,
feverish old loves: don’t separate yet.
Let what rises live with what descends.
Wild Gratitude
Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat’s mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,
And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke’s
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.
This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
“And all conveyancers of letters” for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,
And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn’t until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey’s waggling mouth
That I remembered how he’d called Jeoffry “the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,”
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn’t until I saw my own cat
Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, “a creature of great personal valour,”
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.
And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.
2
Indian Summer
It must have been a night like this one,
Cool and transparent and somehow even-tempered,
Sitting on the friendly wooden porch of someone’s
Summer house in mid-October in the country
That my father, home from the Korean War
And still in uniform, wearing a pilot’s bars
And carrying a pilot’s stark memories (still
Fingering a parachute in the back of his mind)
Jumped from the front steps where he’d been sitting
And held a sweating gin and tonic in the air
Like a newly won trophy, and flushed and smiled
Into the eyes of a strangely willing camera.
It must have been winning to see him again
Safely home at the close of a vague war
That was too far away to imagine clearly,
A little guarded and shy, but keenly present,
Tall and solid and actual as ever, and anyway
Smiling past the camera at his high-school sweetheart
(Now his wife, mother of his two small children)
Surrounded by friends on a calm midwestern night.
It must have been so soothing to have him back
That no one studied him closely, no one noticed
Dark and puzzling in his eyes, something deeply
Reluctant staring into the narrow, clear-eyed
Lens of the camera. I’ve imagined it all—
And tonight, so many light years afterwards,
Looking intently at a torn photograph
Of that young soldier, my distant first father,
Home from a war that he never once mentioned,
I can foresee the long winter of arguments
Ahead, the hard seasons of their divorce,
The furious battles in court, and beyond that,
The unexpected fire, the successive bankruptcies,
The flight to California with a crisp new bankroll,
The move to Arizona with a brand-new family.
Tonight the past seems as sharp and inevitable
As the moment in Indian Summer when you glance up
From a photograph album and discover the fireflies
Pulsing in the woods in front of the house
And the stars blackening in a thicket of clouds.…
It must have been a night like this one
When my mother glanced over her husband’s head
Into a cluster of trees emerging behind him
And heard the wind scraping against the branches
Like the strop strop of a razor on rawhide,
And saw the full moon rising between the clouds
And shattering into hundreds of glassy fragments.
The Skokie Theatre
Twelve years old and lovesick, bumbling
and terrified for the first time in my life,
but strangely hopeful, too, and stunned,
definitely stunned—I wanted to cry,
I almost started to sob when Chris Klein
actually touched me—oh God—below the belt
in the back row of the Skokie Theatre.
Our knees bumped helplessly, our mouths
were glued together like flypaper, our lips
were grinding in a hysterical grimace
while the most handsome man in the world
twitched his hips on the flickering screen
and the girls began to scream in the dark.
I didn’t know one thing about the body yet,
about the deep foam filling my bones,
but I wanted to cry out in desolation
when she touched me again, when the lights
flooded on in the crowded theatre
and the other kids started to file
into the narrow aisles, into a lobby
of faded purple splendor, into the last
Saturday in August before she moved away.
I never wanted to move again, but suddenly
we were being lifted toward the sidewalk
in a crush of bodies, blinking, shy,
unprepared for the ringing familiar voices
and the harsh glare of sunlight, the brightne
ss
of an afternoon that left us gripping
each other’s hands, trembling and changed.
Prelude of Black Drapes
Now the city deepens in smoke,
now the darkness raises a withered hand
and the night begins, like a prelude,
in real earnest. This is the music
that hurries pedestrians home
and follows a fading breath of ashes
out of the faded commuter stations.
Slowly the bridges open their arms
over the river and the cars
fan out in the mist like a peacock’s
feathers, or a deck of luminous cards
dealt into shadows. This is the hour
when the tugs slide into their cells
and the gates snap shut behind them, when
prisoners stare at their blank ceilings
and windows are bolted in factories.
Some of us remember the moon:
it is a tarnished silver ball worn
into our memories, a faint smudge
of light rubbed into the heavy fog.
In this city even the ginkgoes
turn up their collars in self-protection
while the buildings stiffen like hills
against the wind. And as we hurry home
in the cold, in our separate
bodies, it takes all our faith to believe
these black drapes, this curtain of ash
will ever rise again in the morning.
Commuters
It’s that vague feeling of panic
That sweeps over you
Stepping out of the #7 train
At dusk, thinking, This isn’t me
Crossing a platform with the other
Commuters in the worried half-light
Of evening, that must be
Someone else with a newspaper
Rolled tightly under his arm
Crossing the stiff, iron tracks
Behind the train, thinking, This
Can’t be me stepping over the tracks
With the other commuters, slowly crossing
The parking lot at the deepest
Moment of the day, wishing
That I were someone else, wishing
I were anyone else but a man
Looking out at himself as if
From a great distance,
Turning the key in his car, starting
His car and swinging it out of the lot,
Watching himself grinding uphill
In a slow fog, climbing past the other
Cars parked on the side of the road,
The cars which seem ominously empty
And strange,
and suddenly thinking
With a new wave of nausea
This isn’t me sitting in this car
Feeling as if I were about to drown
In the blue air, that must be
Someone else driving home to his
Wife and children on an ordinary day
Which ends, like other days,
With a man buckled into a steel box,
Steering himself home and trying
Not to panic
In the last moments of nightfall
When the trees and the red-brick houses
Seem to float under green water
And the streets fill up with sea lights.
In the Middle of August
The dead heat rises for weeks,
Unwanted, unasked for, but suddenly,
Like the answer to a question,
A real summer shower breaks loose
In the middle of August. So think
Of trumpets and cymbals, a young girl
In a sparkling tinsel suit leading
A parade down Fifth Avenue, all
The high school drummers in the city
Banging away at once. Think of
Bottles shattering against a warehouse,
Or a bowl of apricots spilling
From a tenth-floor window: the bright
Rat-a-tat-tat on the hot pavement,
The squeal of adults scurrying
For cover like happy children.
Down the bar, someone says it’s like
The night she fell asleep standing
In the bathroom of a dank tavern
And woke up shivering in an orchard
Of lemon trees at dawn, surprised
By the sudden omnipotence of yellows.
Someone else says it’s like spinning
A huge wheel and winning at roulette,
Or drawing four aces and thinking:
“It’s true, it’s finally happening.”
Look, I’m not saying that the pretty
Girl in the fairy tale really does
Let down her golden hair for all
The poor kids in the neighborhood—
Though maybe she does. But still
I am saying that a simple cloud
Bursts over the city in mid-August
And suddenly, in your lifetime,
Everyone believes in his own luck.
Sleepwatch
In the middle of the middle of the night
it is a dull tom-tom
thudding in your chest, a ghostly drumroll
of voices keening in the dark, words
vibrant with echoes, keeping you awake.
The body next to yours is already asleep.
Already you’ve lost it
to invisible caves, the slight stirring
of leaves in a wet field, the crescent
of another man’s face flaming in the trees.
Outside, the snow falls into yesterday’s snow,
tomorrow’s stormy rain.
But, inside, a moon shivers in the spaces
between your wife’s outstretched arms, between
her shoulders and her legs, between the skin
of water pulled over her watery lungs
and the white egg growing
larger and larger in her chest. This is
the same moon that shudders in darkness
inside of darkness, behind your eyes.
Last night you walked along a cold, snowy beach
and watched a flock of gulls
flapping into a drift of stars, a drift
of flakes thickening on the water
like a mist of empty hands. You paused,
but your dog loped hopelessly downbeach after
them, swallowed up by fog,
too far away to call. It was like this:
your legs walked a stark beach, but your hands
were at home fastened to your wife’s body.
All night you could feel them rising and falling
on the dim waves, helpless
in moonlight, wanting to be anchors, mouths,
wanting to be anything else but hands
drifting farther and farther out of reach.
Tonight you’re alive in your own dank forest.
And now the body
sleeping next to yours makes small gaping
noises, like birds flying overhead
with an alien upwards gesture.
But down here all your bones make music.
Down here in the middle
of the middle of the night, you’re awake
listening to the steady drumroll of a heart
ghostly with losses, your tribal chant.
The Night Parade
Homage to Charles Ives
1
Officially, the parade begins at midnight
When the vice-president of sleep calls the assembly
To order while the sergeant-at-arms bangs
A drowsy gavel against the empty brown forehead
Of the podium and all the slumbering senators
Turn over at once, bleary-eyed, weary, and
Still a little drunk, though a few junior
Republicans from Idaho and Mississippi
&nbs
p; Rise up in their plush seats to applaud
The honorable gentleman from Alabama calling
For a vote. The burly speaker announces
That the unanimous motion of sleep carries
And on the well-lit corners of Maple and Elm,
On Main Street in small towns and villages
All over America, the children of sleep stand
In plaid nightshirts, rubbing their eyes,
The veterans of sleep surround the flagpole
For that brave radiant moment when the first
Notes of the National Anthem of Night float
Over the bandshell like balloons and then
Drift across the bleachers of the high-school
Football stadium where the janitor and
The assistant principal are preparing to fire
A cannon and spangle the sky with stars.
And now the mayor of sleep shakes hands
With the owner of sleep and the newly elected
President of the Chamber of Commerce, and maybe
He even pecks his wife on her fat cheek.
This is the signal for the prom queen to hop
Into the back seat of a ghostly blue convertible
Driven by her blond boyfriend who is already
Dreaming of the moment when he can park
The triumphant car by the lagoon and slip
His arm around her naked white shoulders.
Because at night in even the smallest towns
Desire spreads through the body like a stain.
2
That’s why his cousin with the thick glasses,
Braces and skinny blue legs is sobbing
Into her pillow, refusing to dry her eyes
Or comb her hair, refusing to listen
To her mother in pink curlers and a silky
Gray nightgown, even refusing to look up
At her beloved father in maroon pajamas.
Later, she will watch the night parade on
Television, like hotel clerks, night-watchmen,
Prison guards, waitresses in all-night diners,