All riots, sensual or for a cause;
Vast village where the wise enjoy the young;
Refuge of the misshapen and unformed;
Stylistic medley (Richardson’s stout brown,
Colonial scumble, Puseyite cement,
And robber-baron Gothic pile their slates
In floating soot, beneath house-tower domes
The playtime polychrome of M & Ms);
Fostering mother: time, that doth dissolve
Granite like soap and dries to bone all tears,
Devoured my quartet of student years
And, stranger still, the twenty minus one
Since I was hatched and certified your son.
A generation steeped in speed and song,
In Doctor Spock, TV, and denim chic
Has come and gone since, Harvard, we swapped vows
And kept them—mine, to grease the bursar’s palm,
To double-space submitted work, to fill
All bluebooks set before me (spilling ink
As avidly as puppies lap a bowl
Till empty of the blankness of the milk),
To wear a tie and jacket to my meals,
To drop no water bags from windows, nor
Myself (though Werther, Kierkegaard, and Lear
All sang the blues, the deans did not, and warned
That suicide would constitute a blot
Upon one’s record), to obey the rules
Yclept “parietal” (as if the walls, not I,
Were guilty if a girl were pinched between
Them after ten); in short, to strive, to bear,
To memorize my notes, to graduate:
These were my vows. Yours were, in gourmet terms,
To take me in, raw as I was, and chew
And chew and chew for one quadrennium,
And spit me out, by God, a gentleman.
We did our bits. All square, and no regrets.
On my side, little gratitude; but why?
So many other men—the founding race
Of farmer-divines, the budding Brahmins
Of Longfellow’s time, the fragile sprats
Of fortunes spun on sweatshop spindles
Along the Merrimack, the golden crew
Of raccoon-coated hip-flask-swiggers and
Ritz-tea-dance goers, the continual tribe
Of the studious, the smart, and the shy—
Had left their love like mortar ’twixt your bricks,
Like sunlight synthesized within your leaves,
Had made your morning high noon of their days
And clung, there seemed no need for me to stay.
I came and paid, a trick, and stole away.
The Fifties—Cold-War years par excellence—
Loom in memory’s mists as an iceberg, slow
In motion and sullenly radiant.
I think, those years, it often snowed because
My freshman melancholy took the print
Of a tread-marked boot in slush, crossing to Latin
With Cerberean Dr. Havelock
In Sever 2, or to Lamont’s Math 1
With some tall nameless blameless section man
To whom the elegant was obvious,
Who hung Greek letters on his blackboard curves
Like trinkets on a Christmas tree and who
I hope is happy in Schenectady,
Tending toward zero, with children my age then
To squint confused into his lucent mind.
There was a taste of coffee and of cold.
My parents’ house had been a hothouse world
Of complicating, inward-feeding jokes.
Here, wit belonged to the dead; the wintry smiles
Of snowmen named Descartes and Marx and Milton
Hung moonlit in the blizzards of our brains.
Homesick, I walked to class with eyes downcast
On heelprints numberless as days to go.
And when bliss came, as it must to sophomores,
Snow toppled still, but evening-tinted mauve,
Exploding on the windows of the Fogg
Like implorations of a god locked out
While we were sealed secure inside, in love,
Or warmly close—but close enough, we felt,
To make a life or not, as chances willed.
Meanwhile there were cathedral fronts to know
And cigarettes to share—our breaths straight smoke—
And your bicycle, snickering, to wheel
Along the wet diagonal of the walk
That led Radcliffewards through the snowy Yard.
Kiss, kiss, the flakes surprised our faces; oh,
The arching branches overhead exclaimed,
Gray lost in gray like limestone ribs at Rheims;
Wow-ow!—as in a comic-strip balloon
A siren overstated its alarm,
Bent red around a corner hurtling toward
Extragalactic woe, and left behind
Our blue deserted world of silent storm.
Tick, tick-a, tick-a, tick, your bike spokes spake
Well-manneredly, not wishing to impose
Their half-demented repetitious thoughts
Upon your voice, or mine: what did we say?
Your voice was like your skin, an immanence,
A latent tangency that swelled my cells,
Young giant deafened by my whirling size.
And in your room—brave girl, you had a room,
You were a woman, with inner space to fill,
Leased above Sparks Street, higher than a cloud—
Water whistled itself to tea, cups clicked,
Your flaxen flat-mate’s quick Chicago voice
Incited us to word games, someone typed,
The telephone and radio checked in
With bulletins, and, nicest noise of all,
All noises died, the snow kept silent watch,
The slanting back room private as a tent
Resounded with the rustle of our blood,
The susurration of surrendered clothes.
We took the world as given. Cigarettes
Were twenty-several cents a pack, and gas
As much per gallon. Sex came wrapped in rubber
And veiled in supernatural scruples—call
Them chivalry. A certain breathlessness
Was felt; perhaps the Bomb, which after all
Went muSHROOM! as we entered puberty,
Waking us from the newspaper-nightmare
Our childhoods had napped through, was realer then;
Our lives, at least, were not assumed to be
Our right; we lived, by shifts, on sufferance.
The world contained policemen, true, and these
Should be avoided. Governments were bunk,
But well-intentioned. Blacks were beautiful
But seldom met. The poor were with ye always.
We thought one war as moral as the next,
Believed that life was tragic and absurd,
And were absurdly cheerful, just like Sartre.
We loved John Donne and Hopkins, Yeats and Pound,
Plus all things convolute and dry and pure.
Medieval history was rather swank;
Psychology was in the mind; abstract
Things grabbed us where we lived; the only life
Worth living was the private life; and—last,
Worst scandal in this characterization—
We did not know we were a generation.
Forgive us, Harvard; Royce and William James
Could not construe a Heaven we could reach.
We went forth, married young, and bred like mink.
We seized what jobs the System offered, raked
Our front yards, stayed together for the kids,
And chalked up meekly as a rail-stock-holder
Each year’s depreciation of our teeth,
Our skin-tone, hair, and confidence. The white
Of Truman’s smile and Eisenhower’s brow
Like mildew furs our hearts. The possible
Is but a suburb, Harvard, of your city.
Seniors, come forth; we crave your wrath and pity.
Commencement, Pingree School
Among these North Shore tennis tans I sit,
In seersucker dressed, in small things fit;
Within a lovely tent of white I wait
To see my lovely daughter graduate.
Slim boughs of blossom tap the tent and stamp
Their shadows like a bower on the cloth.
The brides in twos glide down the grassy ramp
To graduation’s candle, moth and moth.
The Master makes his harrumphs. Music. Prayer.
Demure and close in rows, the seniors sway.
Class loyalty solidifies the air.
At every name, a body wends her way
Through greenhouse shade and rustle to receive
A paper of divorce and endless leave.
As each accepts her scroll of rhetoric,
Up pops a Daddy with a Nikon. Click.
Conversation
My little girl keeps talking to me.
“Why do you look so sad?” she asks,
and, “Isn’t Mommy beautiful?”
As if she knows next summer she
will be too near a woman’s state
to be so bold, she propositions,
“Let’s run along the beach!”
So, hand in hand, we feel to fly
until as if with grains of sand
our skin turns gritty where we touch.
We flirt and giggle, driving back.
With nervous overkill of love
she comes to see me hammer
at the barn, and renders praise:
“You must be the carefullest shingler
in all the world.” Indeed, I snap
the blue-chalked line
like a ringmaster’s whip, and stare
in aligning the cedar butts
as if into a microscope whose slides
have sectioned the worms of my mind.
At night, guarding her treasure,
watching me frown and read, she falls
asleep, her morning-brushed hair
gone stiff like straw, her braces
a slender cage upon her humid face.
Too heavy to lift, slumped helpless
beneath the power of my paternal gaze,
her half-formed body begs,
“Don’t leave. Don’t leave me yet.”
Melting
Airily ice congeals on high
from Earth’s calm breath and slantwise falls
and six-armed holds its crystal faith until
Sun, remembering his lordly duty, burns.
Commences then this vast collection:
gutters, sewers, rivulets
relieve the finned drift’s weight
and the pace-packed pavement unsheathe.
It glistens, drips, purls—the World:
brightness steaming, elixir sifting
by gravity’s simplicity from all that will silt.
The round-mouthed drains, the square-mouthed grates
take, and they take; down tunnels runs
the dead storm’s soul to the unmoved sea.
Query
Pear tree, why blossom?
Why push this hard glitter
of life from your corpse?
Headless and hollow,
each major limb broken
by old storm or snowfall,
you startle the spring.
Doesn’t it hurt?
Your petals say not,
froth from your shell
like laughter, like breath.
But (your branchlets spew up
in an agony’s
spoutings) it must.
Heading for Nandi
Out of Honolulu
heading for Nandi
I ask them, “Where’s Nandi?”
The man tells me, “Fiji.”
The airport is open
the night sky black panels
between cement pillars.
I wish I had a woman.
Around me Australians
are holding hands matily
as back in Waikiki
the honeymooners strolled.
By daylight bikinis
strolled bare on the pavement
the honeymoon brides
with waists white as milk
and the Japanese couples
posed each for the other
the women as dainty
as self-painted dolls
and the watching Polynesians
laughed quick as Fayaway
dark as cooking chocolate
that always tasted bitter
and the haunted Americans
with flatland accents
in plastic leis wandered
the blue streets of love.
From the taxi I witnessed
two men embracing
embracing and crying.
I assumed they were sailors.
Nandi? I’ll see it
or die in these hours
that face me like panels
in a chapel by Rothko.
I wish I had a woman
to touch me or tell me
she is frightened to go there
or would be, but for me.
Sleepless in Scarsdale
Prosperity has stolen stupor from me.
The terraced lawn beneath my window
has drained off fatigue; the alertness
of the happy seizes me like rage.
Downstairs, the furniture matches.
The husband and wife are in love.
One son at Yale, another in law,
I rejoice. The bed is narrow.
I long for squalor’s relaxation,
fantasizing a dirty scene
and mopping the sheet with a hanky.
There is a tension here. The books
look arranged. The bathroom
has towels of too many sizes.
I weigh myself on the scales.
Somewhere, a step. Muffled.
The stairs are carpeted.
A burglar has found us. A son
is drunk. The wife desires me.
But nothing happens, not even
oblivion. Life can be too clean.
Success like a screeching of brakes
pollutes the tunnel of silence.
Mock-Tudor, the houses are dark.
Even these decent trees sleep.
I await the hours guiltily,
hoping for one with whom I can make a deal.
Note to the Previous Tenants
Thank you for leaving the bar of soap,
the roll of paper towels,
the sponge mop, the bucket.
· · ·
I tried to scrub the white floor clean,
discovered it impossible,
and realized you had tried, too.
Often, no doubt. The long hair in the sink
was a clue to what? Were you
boys or girls or what?
How often did you dance on the floor?
The place was broom clean. Your lives
were a great wind that had swept by.
Thank you; even the dirt
seemed a gift, a continuity
underlying the breaking of leases.
And the soap, green in veins
like meltable marble, and curved
like a bit of an ideal woman.
Lone, I took a bath with your soap
and had no towel not paper ones
and dried in the air like the floor.
Pale Bliss
Splitting a bottle of white wine
with a naked woman
in the middle of the day.
Mime
on the black stage he
was in an imaginary box
mime mime mime mime mi
its inner surface stopped his
hand. the audience gasped
amazing amazing amazing ama
he climbed stairs that were
not there, walked and went
nowhere nowhere nowhere no
the real world was what his
head told his hands to delimit
in air in air in air in a
chill certain as glass. the
other world was fuzzy and
treacherous treacherous trea
he took a plane, it began
to fall, the passengers shrieked
help o God o help help he
the mime imagined a box.
his feet hit glass, the plane’s
fall halted. up, up. praise be
mimesis mimesis mimesis mime
Golfers
One-gloved beasts in cleats, they come clattering
down to the locker room in bogus triumph, bulls
with the pics of their pars still noisy in them,
breathing false fire of stride, strike, stride, and putt.
We dread them, their brown arms and rasp of money,
their slacks the colors of ice cream, their shoes,
whiter than bones, that stipple the downtrodden green
and take an open stance on the backs of the poor.
Breathing of bourbon, crowing, they strip:
the hair of their chests is grizzled, their genitals
hang dead as practice balls, their blue legs twist;
where, now, are their pars and their furor?
Emerging from the shower shrunken, they are men,
mere men, old boys, lost, the last hole a horror.
Poisoned in Nassau
By the fourth (or is it the fifth?)
day, one feels poisoned—by
last night’s rum, this morning’s sun,
the tireless pressure of leisure.