And—like insomniacs all over the country—
She will stroke the cat and gulp warm milk.
But she won’t see the new junior executive
In the established firm of Bradley & Bradley
Slipping from a motel room in Miami Beach
Registered in Mrs. Bradley’s name; she won’t
See the Young Democrats in massage parlors
Or the Communists and the born-again Christians
Handing out fervent leaflets to pedestrians
Who smile and nod; and she will never see
Naked men touching themselves in dark theaters,
Or whores adjusting their uniforms, or drunk
Conventioneers rubbing pink lipstick out of
Their white collars, muttering excuses.
The greatest moments of the night parade
Take place under the open tent where muscular
Sleepwalkers tiptoe across tightropes, carefully
Holding up umbrellas, and two married acrobats
Float through miles and miles of empty space
Just to hold hands on a wooden platform
Hammered into the air. Everyone laughs
When the clowns of sleep mimic the lions,
Tower over the midgets, and pinch the backsides
Of beautiful bareback riders. And everyone
Drifts home slowly when the half-moon dims
And confetti falls from the sky like applause.
3
The televisions are droning at the Hotel Insomnia
Where every room is identical and no one feels
Like seeing a parade on a black-and-white screen.
It’s boredom that keeps the businessmen watching
A rerun of the seven o’clock evening news and
The housewives restlessly switching channels
Between a dull soap opera and a musical comedy
About a rich Italian who falls in love with a poor
Girl from southern Iowa. The movie finally ends
And everyone listens to “The Star-Spangled Banner,”
Waiting for the message of blankness that follows
The message of patriotism at the end of every day.
And so all the televisions whiten at dawn,
The radios blur with static. The stragglers
At the town hall and the junior-college gym
Pull down the last orange and black streamers
And snap off the skulls of the last beers
Buried in the cooler. Happy musicians, baton
Twirlers, professional pool players, and
Even the hit men for the syndicate of sleep
All clamp instruments into heavy black cases
While the sheriff leans back in his dark chair
And the sentry dozes off at his dark post
And the custodian of wind vanishes like smoke.
The cedars and pines stand in an ashen trance.
At this hour even the staunchest insomniac
Falls through a gaping hole opening up
In his body like a flower or a fresh grave.
And now the long arm of exhaustion reaches
Across the rooftops to douse the candles.
That’s why no one ever sees the pale trains
Pulling out of subways and abandoned stations
All over the country; no one sees the ghostly
Trucks and gaunt steamers loaded with bodies;
No one sees the blind searchlights or hears
The foghorns bellowing in the early morning.
3
The Village Idiot
No one remembers him anymore, a boy
who carried his mattress through the town at dusk
searching for somewhere to sleep, a wild-eyed
relic of the Old World shrieking at a cow
in an open pasture, chattering with the sheep,
sitting alone on the front steps of the church,
gnawing gently at his wrist. He was tall
and ungainly, an awkward swimmer who could swim
the full length of the quarry in an afternoon,
swimming back on his back in the evening, though
he could also sit on the hillside for days
like a dim-witted pelican staring at the fish.
Now that he is little more than a vague memory,
a stock character in old stories, another bewildering
extravagance from the past—like a speckled seal
or an auk slaughtered off the North Atlantic rocks—no
one remembers the day that the village children
convinced him to climb down into an empty well
and then showered him for hours with rocks and mud,
into tiny shreds of cloth, darkened with blood.
He disappeared long ago, like the village itself,
but some mornings you can almost see him again
sleeping on a newspaper in the stairwell, rummaging
through a garbage can in the alley. And some nights
when you are restless and too nervous to sleep
you can almost catch a glimpse of him again
staring at you with glassy, uncomprehending eyes
from the ragged edges of an old photograph
of your grandfather, from the corner of a window
fogging up in the bathroom, from the wet mirror.
Fever
In Memory of Anna Ginsburg, 1893–1977
So the fever leans back in its icy chair
and lies to her about the night. She thinks the
full moon is German; she believes the empty white face
of the moon is saying that it wants to arrest her
for plotting crimes against the light.
And she can’t sleep. It’s as if the fever
had dropped a cube of dry ice into her throat and
it is scalding hot. No, it is the smell of gas seething
in her chest. And she keeps hearing footsteps,
the wind pronouncing names in the street.
She can’t get up. She is so drugged
that she can’t focus on the living room wall
or see the stark painting that hangs above her chair.
It is a picture of the sky above a stone house
that is crumbling in a stony field.
She can’t forget the night the fever
interrogated her for hours. That was before
it flooded the country and left corpses in the trees,
bodies floating face-up in the muddy streams.
She can’t forget their faces, either.
And she keeps hearing voices. Someone
says the night is like a sick child who raves
and cries out in her sleep because her head is on fire
and she sees the tall pines bursting into flame,
waterlogged corpses going up in smoke.
Sometimes she dreams about a red setter
barking furiously at a squirrel who is racing
across the branches for its life. Always she can smell
the singed brown fur and feel the thin squirrel
finally losing its balance and falling.
She whimpers. And that’s when shadows
begin to grow out of the wet floor, the water
rises along the misty walls. The windows are barred
against the night, but the night waits calmly.
Muskrats paddle in a neighbor’s yard.
And now she is drifting in a shadow
against the door; now she has fallen asleep
in her own chair. So the fever holds her in its arms
and all night she dreams about the dark clouds
and the white moon coming to arrest her.
Ancient Signs
In Memory of Oscar Ginsburg, 1894–1958
He loved statues with broken noses,
the flaking white bodies of bi
rches
after disease had set in,
the memory of peasants
kneeling at garish, hand-carved altars.
He loved old women washing laundry
by the river, coolly slapping the
bedsheets senseless on the stones.
It was sixty years later
and yet he still couldn’t forget them.
And he was still ashamed of the damp
bodies of men’s shirts filling the wind,
flapping about like chickens
at the signs of hard weather.
Only a woman’s hands could calm them.
My grandfather loved thunderstorms.
He loved to see the restless weaving
of trees and all the small shrubs
kneeling down like penitents.
As a child, in southern Latvia,
he used to run through the streets shouting
while the ominous clouds moved slowly
across the dark horizon
like a large foreign army
coming to liberate the village.
My grandfather used to stand calmly
by the open window during storms.
He said that he could see lightning
searching the empty rooftops,
rifling the windows for his body.
He said that rain is an ancient sign
of the sky’s sadness. And he said
that he could feel the wind trying
to lift him into its arms,
trying to carry him home again.
Dino Campana and the Bear
Here, in the night, I’m staring
At the photograph of a stranger faking
A brave heel and toe, a lyrical
Dance with the gypsy’s favorite bear
Stumbling in front of the dying
Campfire light
In a small clearing of birches
On the outskirts of Odessa. Tambourines
Flash like swords in the spoked
Shadows, and you can
Feel the drunken bear stagger
And weave with exhaustion
From too many cities, too many
Ringing triangles and suspicious eyes,
Too many bored adults, pawing children.
All the bear wants is to
Collapse in his own poor cage
Under stars scattered
Like red kerchiefs through the trees;
All he wants is to sleep. But
The stranger whispers something
Indecipherable, something convincing
In a fluent tongue, and so
The four thick arms continue to
Grip and lock and hug,
The four heavy legs stagger on.
Fur and skin. Dino Campana
And the bear. 1911. Russia.
In three long years the bear
Will have left his body forever
To travel easily, in another forest,
While the stranger will still
Be selling flowers and stoking
Furnaces, peddling songs in cafes
Out of hard need. But tonight
All he knows is that wherever
He is going is going
To be better than wherever
He is, wherever he was.
And so he tilts the bear’s grim
Forehead to the sky
And keeps on dancing and dancing.
He wants to feel the moon’s
Wild eye staring
Into their dark faces. He wants
To vanish into its hard, cold light.
Curriculum Vitae (1937)
I should have been the son of a wolf
and a bear; I should have been born
in a small cave in the forest at night;
I should have been licked clean by a mother
with thick fur and a fistful of claws,
with a roar and a howl instead of a voice.
I was named after a rampaging King of the Huns,
but Attila József isn’t a name; it’s a shout
from a corpse disguised as a man, it’s
the twelve naked apostles of a lie, an echo
that steams in the bowels of a mirror, a proof
that ghosts wear the clothes of the living.
My father stacked crates of soap in a factory
and disappeared when I was three, a watery bucket
with a hole in it, a slippery white arm leaving
a soapy trail of blood. I was an erratic circle
rotating from a country village to a mother at home;
I was an orphaned circle searching for its center.
There’s a black iron that burns in my lungs
because my mother washed laundry in an aristocrat’s
house; she ironed a gentleman’s white collars,
and creased his gray slacks, and steamed his jackets.
Sometimes my diminutive mother carried a skillet
of cold leftovers home for us to devour.
She slept on a rotting straw mattress on the kitchen
floor and never thought about the clouds of steam
rising from her lips, the filthy red kerchief
knotting in her chest. My mother always slept
poorly, but she was sweet and respectful and
kept a clean white apron ironed in her dreams.
I stole chickens for mama; I stole firewood
and coal from the Ferenvcáros freight yard; I
snatched red apples from the baskets at Market Hall;
I swiped bread; I waited in line for cooking lard;
I scrubbed boilers in dank basements; I sold paper
whirligigs and drinking water at the Világ Cinema.
But nothing helped. When my mother finally died
I dreamt the full moon was a tumor of the uterus,
my body was pressed under the purple iron of night.
Etus and Jolán thought we were starving suitcases
packed for a house of detention. We were so scared
that one night we sliced a ripe pear into thirds
and offered its three soft faces to the darkness
as a gift of appeasement. The darkness refused to
acknowledge the fruit, but scavengers accepted it
gladly. And yet no one—not even the crows—can
pronounce the misery of a childhood floating
through the streets at night, hanging on dark windows.
I served faithfully on the tugs Vihar, Torok, and Tatár;
I trained as a novice with the dwindling Salesian Order
at Nyergesujfalu; I taught the Bible to an idiot savant;
I guarded the huge cornfields at Kiszombor; I clerked
in a tiny bookstore and trafficked in postage stamps.
I finished the sixth year of gymnasium stifled by boredom.
My favorite colors were always blue and yellow:
the blue of self-forgetfulness, the yellow of suicide.
At nine I drank a mug of starch in the kitchen
and faked convulsions to get even with my sister.
I sobbed, howled, stamped and raged; I foamed
spectacularly at the mouth, ready to die for revenge.
At fifteen I put my right elbow on the iron tracks
and waited for the freight train to sever my arm.
But the train never lumbered through our village:
It had already killed a girl farther up the line.
Oh white owl of paranoia, I was young
and histrionic, but somebody died for me.
I was freedom’s serious, dark-haired son,
a scandalous thief, a tough Hungarian punk paroled
to a life of corrections. At seventeen I begged
for radiance between hard covers, and a high court
accused me of blasphemy. Later, I was prosecuted
for claiming I had no father and no mother,
no country and no god, a
nd I was expelled
from the university for shaking an anarchical fist
at the world in a small magazine. I was denounced,
but someone called me an infant prodigy in print,
a lyrical spokesman for the postwar generation.
No, I was just an orphan tutoring orphans.
I went to Vienna with a suitcase of bruised
manuscripts, a stick of salami, a loaf of bread
and thirty shillings. All winter I shivered
in an icy room and attended somber lectures
on the sublime in German. I sold newspapers
and scrubbed floors at the Collegium Hungaricum
until a Mæcenas sent me to the Sorbonne.
That’s when I lived at 10 Rue de la Huchette
and wrote in French about the iron world of factories,
our inheritance of empty lots and slums. One night
I shouted from the rooftops that I was homesick—I
wanted the distant earth to roar in my lungs
and I missed the dark vowels of my own language.
But I was a lost European at home. In 1927
I fell in love with a wealthy girl whose parents
snatched her away from me. Oh Márta, my poppy,
I’ll confess to anything but your betrayal:
indecent exposure, sedition, espionage, poverty.
I went mad twice. Once I saw the wind
kneel down in the soot like a crazed preacher;
once I saw the large red claws of darkness
scratch out the eyes of night. I hid in stairways
because I believed that the streets were on fire,
every street lamp was a warrant for my arrest.
I wanted an insurrection and in the hospital
I yelled that the rugs on the floors of all rich
merchants are the scalps of our young brothers,
the animals; I screamed that the bright roses
flowering on coffee tables in their living rooms
are the scalps of our sisters in the garden.
After that, I lived on the rim of a grave city
with an illegible scrawl on my high forehead.
My comrade and I passed out fervent red leaflets