faze you, nor the fat ogres beyond the icehouse.
Lilies and sweet peas think you’re swell.
I even have a nephew who is about
to invite you to the cotillion in Baltimore,
after taking a few more readings, and say,
wasn’t it cool the way the alive came up to you,
all combustible, dreadful with tears,
and capped your burning oil well?
You’ve got friends
out there, more than you know,
but time is running short and we have to do something about it.
How about a nice whistle, something Grandma
can use on her back porch. Or a subscription
to Reader’s Digest and the black methane-haunted city.
In any case it will be a peaceful interlude
when you get around to it—limning storm clouds
with the rigor one knows of old
of you—and caution an angered bluebottle
to calm his romantic hopes.
The Blot People
Something’s not right. There were vibrations,
“vibes,” a moment ago. A bush rubbed its bark against the sky.
The miserable thicket smelt of firecrackers
and I found everything in more or less the same order
when I got home. Still, it’s hard to remember
what the order was after the first few things: a tie, a sofa,
a sheet of paper artfully placed so as to point to
who might have moved it in my ripe absence:
the bruised, alien thing, but familiar
as a smile on the face of anyone.
A few coat hangers jingled slightly
in the breeze from the closet. Someone was here.
Someone may triumph over the other one.
The family returns from the sea
with dogs and radios and fishing rods.
Old fishermen greet them in the ruddy glow
of lamps. The prisoner, an Uncle Joe,
returns after a great distance—so many miles,
so many hours tethered into days
that built the long log road from here to the east.
The Captive Sense
Nothing I’d ever want to own,
this feudal inequity transmits
its haze through the computer’s
silent convulsions.
I’d wager there’s life in the old bird yet—
the chateau of shaving cream is the most refreshing
thing to come along since tires in the theater.
When I arrive in the morning can I send it
collect, on the half shell? No? Not my fault?
I’m not going to tell you about regularity and anything,
me, Moses on my little raft. When it comes time
to rescue me, they will. Even four thousand years are
“like an evening gone.” Some prosperity spurts
from its core, the core of waiting.
How could it be otherwise? Colored fountains in the night,
playing to dulcimers who dream of crocodiles?
My wish kept me captive, growing in it
till I fitted it exactly. And now the soothsayers can take over.
The movie dream was corny anyway, something
with spear carriers and a woman spinning flax
in a hovel by the sea, how great waves carried her along
to this pleasant plateau we are pleased to think of as
the present, conniving with something eldritch behind there
that takes me back. Never knew my heart could be so yearny.
From Hollyhock House to the Hollywood Hotel
the ill-lit Undine evolves, sashays even.
Who could have known the future would be such a big bunch,
and our share in it so meticulously outlined?
Not fiends, surely. But not friends, either.
The Confronters
Which of the incredible lies will prove true?
Ah, you ask me things
I wish I could not even ask myself.
A fire burns in a fireplace.
Cups are on a sill.
A man is working. He moves along. There is so
much to learn, so many teachers.
A dog howls from a roof.
Is it a wolf? Someone wants it to be.
In short there are these topics.
In winter and in summer there were.
The other seasons mediate
and end up having more topics.
“Hives with no bees,” you said.
Which is how I remember them
through a bloodred transparent curtain, that looked
like rubber.
The various inequalities are parceled out,
now. There are suburban subdivisions
with no shards of land left on them.
Impatient dawns arrive.
The Desolate Beauty Parlor
on Beach Avenue
So much has impaired here
as well as getting here. It’s where
we used to trade personals, then divide up
the aptly named “spoils.” You know the kind of crud
I mean. Zombie set-tos,
the kind of thing.
It was impossible to locate hell or heaven
standing in the basement, inspecting
which pipes might have led to upstairs.
And the little pines off the street—
so sweet, but no sweeter
than what’s been taken down in the interim.
I wonder where people hang their laundry nowadays,
who’s for sale.
Then I saw it over Cannibal Beach—
a big baboon of a moon wafting this way
and that across the silken heather. It gave me
the widdershins. I’m still counting.
But the nice octagon trainer—he offered something
in the way of comfort, that eyeglasses can choose to go
and fit if they’re so inclined. I’m talking
product now, and the new productivity
that comes from it. No one can afford
to ignore it anymore. Sure, sheep
bawl at their station, mad at having voted,
at being voided. But another way of sexy being
has been unveiled, and disturbed. I almost think
they won’t be able to fix it, but it’s so new—
Wait for the end, though. It’s a small, arched close
built to contain ragged passions, and emptied
of them at present. The dale sweeps down
the sober dawn. Every face shows signs
of extreme concentration. Now that’s
the way I’d like to behold you. For always.
For when the clipper blows astray and the
cheap shot is parted.
The Faint of Heart
were always right
about things like chansons de geste
and why they couldn’t, at the time, be bothered.
Huon de Bordeaux was a highly important person
at least in Bordeaux which is an important French city,
that smells better than Perth Amboy but worse than Newton-le-Willows.
As has been pointed out
by myself and by other researchers, the object of the game
is to sit on a cold rattle.
I love the broad avenues of Washington, D.C.,
all leading toward—what? What is it they are escaping from?
Who in this great city cares anything about these data
that are the wellspring of truth? Torches emblazon the field
in front of the White House, which is where our president sits,
and Congress, when it is in session. Have I omitted anybody?
No, only the man who summons the president’s taxi
who is too unimportant to figure in your list.
Wh
at about that dray horse’s withers? Ah,
I shall have to begin again,
to start all over again from the beginning. Nomenclature
being its own reward.
And the fang? It’s pleasant-looking and practical.
The board of surveyors is ours.
I trust in and admire it.
The Bureau of Mines belongs to all of us
in this dang-blasted country. Each of us has a share in tomorrow.
The light on that ilex
reminds me of an old school-chum of mine. None of us,
you see, was ever divested of anything,
which is why we’re running riot now, in the alphabet-coded streets
and others named in memory of hydrangeas and vernal blushes.
And he said, “Varnish the floor!”
Winter is coming and it’s going to be spectacular.
The squirrels and woolly caterpillars told me so.
In time the review squads appeared.
They carried Gatlings and were dressed in plum-colored eighteenth-century uniforms.
The mood was sour. I offered to chase a member of the enemy
but it wasn’t going down well. Then you appeared, covered
with rubies, and it was decided we should “get down.”
Secaucus had looked better. The snow on the reeds—
Soon the president joined us. He was worried but polite.
The daughters in their simple white frocks came out on the White House lawn
and had a very nice chat. They said it was an allegory
or oligarchy, and to roll with the punches. Better
alive and upbraided than rocked in the cradle of the deep,
someone said. But that’s what I’m trying to oppose—
how you been?
The Green Mummies
Avuncular and teeming, the kind luggage
hosed down the original site. Who is ready
last, but I kind of get a kick
out of what-the-heck’s surface optimism.
He doesn’t believe in sex—that’s one point
in his favor—but knows all the standard
Antonio stories and has told them to the Ladies’
Auxiliary in Loophole. You see, all his life
he wanted to be a trainer, or something, maggots
even. But fate’s crow-like wing
had other plans for him. We were meant to have slept
during the time we were awake and learning; conversely,
as air-raid wardens we made good Michelin men—the tummy
always in repose, the chin barely protected by a ruff
of sneering blight. But it’s time
you took that old comforter off. Adam and Eve
on a raft could say good day here, laughter in the
loved opus sounding. Yet wan derision only
watches, won’t come forward. Next year is electric;
this one only divides and serves us, bathes us,
as we know how. Better pickled moray
than a jungle diorama, full of who-knows-what quirks
and surfaces. Yet I like him; his white hat
fell off and landed in the sound. Mortified,
he herded us into the vestibule; we had brought
the wrong kind of medlars.
The Latvian
Knowing John, it might have been.
Then again, maybe you know him—
food on his dried-up puss,
handsome for a day, a stunning
figure.
Why any of this bothers me, I’ll never
know. My place is down here, with you
pagans and sun-worshippers, to whom
we turn when all else is exhausted, as, in fact,
it usually is. Then smiles break out
on rain-stippled streets, plaid plastic hats
and flowers appear. It’s enough
to put the “cow” back in “macabre.”
And we weave together the lesson
of today, me holding the ball of yarn,
you at your embroidery hoop.
Relief comes on strong. It pits
man against ghost, neighbor to neighbor,
falling down as the fur flies.
Who knew if the embassy had tickets,
or if they would even sell one?
By that time it was half past nine:
too late to dust the refrigerated air,
too early for the hockey scores.
Yet if I infiltrate this page of music,
like a violinist inflating Mozart, the seams,
the dear themes, come true.
We are all a falling in love.
Let’s leave it that way.
The Military Base
Now, in summer, the handiwork of spring
is all around us. What did we think those
tendrils were for, except to go on growing
some more, and then collapse, totally
disinterested. “Uninterested” is probably
what I should say, but they seem to like it here.
At any rate, their secret says so,
like a B-flat clarinet under the arches
of some grove.
The house took a direct hit
but it didn’t matter; the next moment
it was intact, though transparent.
No injuries were reported.
There were no reports of looting
or insane buggery behind altars.
The Peace Plan
These are the eyes I have stared out—
the others’ suit them. Not to cry,
though. I brought the wind
and a pharmacist with me. You know, nuts and bolts.
Once on Lake Ontario
the swan heaped up her cries, the wind then
knew what to do, came in at a right angle,
the lake stoppered, parceled, traduced made it all seem plainer
as plain things can seem.
Then a licensed party might be drawn
from foot to foot—when was I last shod?
Will all these old differences unmake me at last,
or do I have to wait for a peach to blow?
A white-headed sage
remarks your angst, walks on
to the corner of Tilsit and Mulberry
whence he is abruptly inducted into heaven.
To what uncheer
has this oasis brought us?
Have some pagan robbers bought us
without our knowing? Then stealth
will be my cry, season after season, even
as the virgins on the porch circle round, take up a collection
of obliging smiles.
The Penitent
What are these apples doing here?
I thought I told you never to bring them inside.
And that wedding cake—what does it think it is?
Promises? Was it for this I sublet the apartment,
consecrated myself to a life of prudery
and banal satisfaction? I could have sold my life
story to a famous writer. But by then
it would have been over. Too much to write about isn’t a good thing.
He recognized me! The famous man
knew my name! He held my hand
a second. I’d do that for someone.
The library is too fast tonight,
there’s some spoilage in the lagoon, but everyone
is looking forward to your coming of age,
to the diamond stickpin and the hat.
Yet others carp,
seek annoyance, complain of the shadow,
as though ’twere always dusky night,
but your face looks good in the bathroom mirror.
I like your air freshener, your after-shave—
Say, what is it you do to look and smell so good?
Methinks
some of it might come off on me
in the forest, with the cool sky
ambient with rubbings.
The Problem of Anxiety
Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
I was telling you about.
Well, not much has changed. I still can’t figure out
how to get from the post office to the swings in the park.
Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,
and my hair is the color of dandelion fluff.
Suppose this poem were about you—would you
put in the things I’ve carefully left out:
descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily
people behave toward each other? Naw, that’s
all in some book it seems. For you
I’ve saved the descriptions of chicken sandwiches,
and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement
from the bronze mantel, and will never be appeased.
The Sea
We carry our anxiety about the land with us
when we leave the land to travel overseas.
She shouts: “This is the dimmest
thing you ever did! In all time
was never such lurching, so much rubbing of the chin.”
It’s true: I’d have deserted the land of my forefathers
a dozen times before if I’d thought
I could get away with it.
And a triangular shadow whose apex is my toe
comes to tell me of my rights, warning me
of perjury, in some books the most serious crime of all.
Even the crinkled stars in the meadow
cannot look the other way, forcing me
into my constrained idea of myself.
I must go out with the light, and some day
someone will see through and love me.
I look down at these asters, unsteady,
unsure of what to grab. The tuneless sing to me.
The Shocker
What would I learn? That this vale
of sudden diphtheria matters less than a string.
That nudism equals terror.
My universities, you let me graduate
into a world riddled with solemn put-puts,
echoing across a bay in south Jersey,
fresh from delivering funnel cakes, a local specialty.
The brambles of the surf tangle
with the rafters of the beach. The Sea of Tranquility.
You’ll always get a kind of hum. No use