COMMERCIAL FOR ABSENCE
Try it,
just a touch
of being noplace
at the pulse points.
And I’m not
mad (when I’m mad
you will know it)—
I am here, and I’m not
angry with anyone.
Can’t you sense it.
I’m here, and I’m not.
THINKING OF FRANCE
from Celan
Think along with me: Paris sky, spacious eternity of fall.
From the flower girl we bought these hearts:
they were blue and bloomed in water.
It started raining in our room
and the neighbor came over, Monsieur Le Songe, a haggard little man.
Then we played poker, I misplaced my pupils;
you let me wear your hair, I lost it, he depressed us.
He walked through the door, the rain following.
We were dead and could still breathe.
THE WAY WE LOOK TO THEM
Though perhaps when I thought you were looking away
you, too, were wishing
not to be seen; when
I thought you were looking at me
with coiling sneer, or pity, maybe
you too with your eyes
were beseeching
to be seen,
friend—
THE MIRACLE
You mean I am not an automaton
subject
to his most thoughtless whim? You mean
all this isn’t his dream?
She mixed tears with a little dirt, and applied it to her eyes—
suddenly she was seeing.
And then she was not going back
there tomorrow, so
nothing could stop her.
REQUEST
Please love me
And I will play for you
this poem
upon the guitar
I myself made
out of cardboard and black threads
when I was ten years old.
Love me or else.
HOMAGE
There are a few things I will miss,
a girl with no
shirt on lighting a cigarette
and brushing her hair in the mirror;
the sound of a mailbox
opening, somewhere,
and closing at two in the morning
of the first snow,
and the words for them.
TO A BLOSSOMING NUT CASE
Why isn’t Jesus’ face ever described?
Because
it doesn’t make a difference
what one looks like,
I suppose
face up
on the motel bed
And yes I’ve seen
my records
in three manila volumes
thick as the Boston white pages
It looks like a suitcase
you can’t get to close
it looks like a bed that hasn’t been made
in over a year
Face
up on the grubbled sea
of this infected unfamiliar
and infinite room, the sheet
tenting my nose
the toilet filled with blood
And I almost forgot
is my mind in this
room or this room
in my mind
all in my mind
Dark the computer dies in its sleep
LEARNING A LANGUAGE
She’s reading your minds
as you pass by the
dipsomane déguisée en rose
While she waits
for her date
to turn up, the moon
in the man …
She knows exactly what is going to happen
she’ll be guided
upstairs
to a bedroom, and turning around
he will show her his
gun
He’ll ask if she would like to
hold it,
which she will
amazed
at its lightness
and beauty
this thing
it must have taken 4 million years to make
squeezing it she will feel cold
and invisible light flowing
into her spine
So there is a door out of here after all
And to visit a new place creates one
in the brain
How do you say no
How do you say anything
to throw up in
Can I use this room to cry
Radiant fuel
body
of water
along which she walks, she is
walked
Why
did we leave, and how
are we ever getting back—
FINE PRINT
Look at the hand you’ve drawn
the corpse of diamonds
for the third time.
PRIMOGENITURE
My dad beat me with his belt
for my edification and further
improvement and later that other
stranger took over
somewhat more expertly
which both learned from their fathers
some heavily armed
monkeys, from Plato’s cave
to Darwin’s— …
So that’s how it is done
here,
I thought
and may my hand wither
may it forget how to write
if I ever strike a child.
MOVING
You were gone love
voice invisible
presence
for lack of which
welling up
how would I live
No lightbulbs
And how would I write
without
light
corner of Nowhere and Everywhere, I swear
on my own grave
I’ll never move again
PLANTING
The table set
the endless
table
set inside
the seed
It’s not
what goes into
your mouth that defiles you but
what comes out of it
On second thought
the definitely finite
places set
There will only have been
so many of us
PC LULLABY
Martian polar storm as seen
in blue light with sound of the wind there
Recording of a Chinese bird bone flute 9,000 years ago
This is better than looking at pictures of gorging nineteen-year-old vaginas
Your human blood under my fingernail soul-
black dawn of these streets gorgeously empty yes
It is still
dark out still snowing
You are still here still asleep
DYING THOUGHT NEAR THE SUMMIT
Apples have wings, true or false.
And this is just one place, one time
EMPTY STAGE
I’m a ghost
that everyone can see;
one of the rats
who act
like they own the place.
CLARIFICATION
Someone once told me about a Buddhist
monk who on awakening
each morning said, “Master!”
Then he would answer
“Yes, master?” And then
in a loud voice demand
“Become sober!”
Listen to what I am saying,
but listen especially
to what I’m not saying—
Of all the powers of love,
this: it is possible
to die; which means
it’s possible to live.
Now it is possible to die
without being mad or afraid.
NOTHINGSVILLE, MN
The sole tavern there, empty
and filled
with cigarette smoke;
the smell
of beer, urine, and the infinite
sadness you dread
and need so much of
for some reason
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Franz Wright was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. His most recent works include Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and IllLit: Selected & New Poems. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He works at the Edinburg Center for Mental Health and the Center for Grieving Children and Teenagers and lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, Elizabeth.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set in Monotype Dante, a typeface designed by Giovanni Mardersteig (1892-1977). Conceived as a private type for the Officina Bodoni in Verona, Italy, Dante was originally cut only for hand composition by Charles Malin, the famous Parisian punch cutter, between 1946 and 1952. Its first use was in an edition of Boccaccio’s Traffafello in Laude di Dante that appeared in 1954. The Monotype Corporation’s version of Dante followed in 1957. Although modeled on the Aldine type used for Pietro Cardinal Bembo’s treatise De Aetna in 1495, Dante is a thoroughly modern interpretation of the venerable face.
Composed by NK Graphics,
Keene, New Hampshire
Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers,
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Designed by Virginia Tan
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2000 by Franz Wright
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which a number of these poems previously appeared: Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Conduit, DouhleTake, Field, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slope.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wright, Franz, [date]
The beforelife: poems/by Franz Wright.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-55457-4
1. Narcotic addicts—Rehabilitation—Poetry. 2. Drug abuse—Poetry. I. Title.
PS3573.R5327 B44 2001
8II′.54—dc21 00-042854
Published January 31, 2001
Second Printing, June 2004
v3.0