I’ve already quoted wrong the thing you said,
not being you. I can’t be in your head.
You can’t follow me back there, hearing strains
of Vivaldi in cafés. America
had just learned cappuccino, and to say
croissant, not Danish; we went for those parfait
glasses of yogurt, with strata of granola.
I was so new. The year was ’73
or maybe ’72. It doesn’t matter.
I had discovered sex and poetry.
Thinking of either one would make me shudder.
I was happy. I was nervous about exams.
I was going to read all the works of Henry James.
I was going to read all the works of Henry James,
but haven’t. So much unfinished business
unless you’re Henry James, who had time to witness
every minute of life, then record the whole, it seems.
Yes, it was thrilling art, but also bad
to make us wait so long to locate Chad
and Madame de Thing in their adulterous boat.
The Europeans or The Ambassadors—
the grandeur James could pour into a title!
That plural but hawk-like wisdom, above it all—
implied too by your title “The Surveyors.”
Tripod and hard hat, compass, orange vest:
sometimes, I think, more grounded work is best,
or better than the poem you thought I wrote.
Or better than the poem you thought I wrote
is another one I never wrote: it’s set
in shabby, hipster Zagreb, where my love
and I, now sixty, walked past shuttered shops
on a Sunday morning, and found ourselves in front of
the—really?—Museum of Broken Relationships,
which was open. Of course it was open. So we spent
time in the gift shop, where they charged the equivalent
of thirteen dollars for a little pink
eraser that would help you not to think.
RUB IT ALL OUT, it said. A pillowcase
read SLEEP IT OFF. By this age, I’d erased
much of my past quite nicely; so had he.
We walked out holding hands, a bit brokenly.
We walked out holding hands, a bit brokenly,
like Adam and Eve, in my favorite poem of all.
Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour
but you’re not, since these two made sure you were mortal.
No human, though, can dream beyond the power
of your blind omniscience; modernity
in poetry must die if you don’t last.
What’s more Einsteinian than Book Eleven,
Michael escorting Adam up that hill
to make their space-time survey of the past
ahead, witnessed not just in the brain
but in present action? Cain killing Abel
as the seed of countless long-dead wars, and even
while Eve has not yet given birth in pain…
While Eve has not yet given birth in pain,
I have. I try to sneak a look, like Thetis,
over the shoulder of whatever may
now forge my daughters’ prospects. Surely Auden
had Milton’s scene in mind when he shaped his;
what Homer saw on his word-hammered shield
had taken on the sheen of the word-field
surveyed by Adam; implied an unnamed Mary,
who knew It is written, and that she must yield.
I live for nothing more than for my children,
yet I’ll confess, Matt, I know well the If
Clause of self-sabotage: If I must lose
my life, why not make this my hour to choose?
Jesus, tempted, might have jumped off the cliff.
Jesus, tempted, might have jumped. Off the cliff
is where this-poem-that-isn’t now must go.
Today in the paper (“the paper” has a whiff
of yesterday to it, sorry), Elon Musk
averred we might be living in a vast
computer simulation of a past
world re-created by our own descendants.
To them our metaphors can make no sense—
the summer of my life, my day at dusk…
Death, thou shalt die, said Donne. Could that be so?
The only instinct greater than survival
is, apparently, its keenest rival,
the drive to guarantee no thing’s not dead.
Melt all the ice caps. Cut off every head.
Melt all the ice caps. Cut off every head
to serve the crude medieval god up there
and post the act on social media, where
all life went anyway—into the Cloud.
Numberless universes at this minute
(though what’s a minute?) may be simulcast,
we’re also told, in which case nothing’s lost,
yet something’s deathly in the infinite:
it leaves us mortals out. What’s with this glee
we humans feel, enabling the posthuman?
Doubtless we’ll come to singularity
with our machines, but why must we be glad?
A life from here to there, in one direction—
oh, I was content with what I had.
Oh, I was content with what I had:
This is it, Matt, my first memory.
I’m in a wool coat, tailored, double-breasted,
absurd for a toddler; but that’s how things were.
The president was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
So long ago! I look down from my great
height, the fourth step of new-poured concrete,
to survey the new sod of our new backyard.
My mother is on her knees. She’s working hard,
making a garden, planting flowers between
different-sized rocks. She calls it a “rock garden.”
Here in Grand Rapids, people are not so grand.
My mother is making art from her plot of dirt,
Japanese art, and the neighbors won’t understand.
She’ll spend a lot of time feeling proud and hurt.
She’ll spend a lot of time feeling proud and hurt
like her daughter. I came by it honestly,
being stung by life, soothing myself with art,
making stuff up, getting things different-sized.
You doubt my first memory? I’m not surprised.
I must have fused two scenes, since nobody,
I see now, wears a winter coat in weather
warm enough to plant flowers in. It’s wrong
and the sonnet I just wrote contained sixteen
lines, which even I know is too long.
I’ve lived already longer than my mother
and haven’t lived enough. Live all you can,
said Lambert Strether; it’s a mistake not to.
Living by this is the best I think I’ll do.
Living by this is the best I think I’ll do,
while praying not to burden those I love.
What hope I won’t? When my time comes to vault
off the bridge, I’ll be a midget, bent and frail
(I’m too short, even now, to clear the rail)
and besides (will they concede it’s not my fault
my brain is shot?), I won’t be good for new
information, or even old stuff I believe
nobody told me. Half-deaf, paranoid
nihilist nonsense, technophobic rants,
the imagined feats of grandchildren, the round
of half-true stories run into the ground—
and gone will be Vivaldi, sex, romance,
sweet things I must remember I’ve enjoyed.
Sweet things. I must remember. I’ve enjoyed
forgetting
, then remembering again,
the running out (remember, Matt, the chain
gone taut, then running out, over and over?)
of what my life is, before it meets the void.
A buried marriage. Late, my truest lover.
My children jumping too high on the bed,
landing on college campuses. Goodbye,
goodbye, walk through that gate, don’t watch me cry.
Lost friends, a dozen places I called home.
I can’t see all I’m seeing—give me time!
If I wrote the poem you dreamed, would that imply
we’d finalized my list?…For now that’s why,
I’m sorry to say, “The Surveyors” does not exist.
PAPARAZZI
I wish I could escape the paparazzi!
They pop up everywhere I want to go.
I cannot shop, I cannot sunbathe topless,
I fly to Greece, I’m spied at the Acropolis.
How did anyone know?
I wish I could escape the paparazzi!
They leap from limos like it’s some big game—
At home they crouch for hours in my bushes.
I watch them lie in wait on their big tushes!
Don’t they have any shame?
I won a Golden Globe (OK, a nomination)—
but they were asking, was my stomach flat?
Did I look pregnant? Who might be the father?
Is he a rock star—if not, why bother?
How shallow, to care about that!
I’m really shy, I am a private person.
Nobody knows how deep I am inside!
Yes, I love Gaultier, I’m wearing Prada,
but I’m happy in jeans, or nada.
Where can a simple girl hide?
I wish I could escape the paparazzi!
If I could wave a magic wand today,
I would get rid of them in such a hurry!
I ought to sue them, then again I worry—
what if they went away?
HERE I AM
Here I am, making my grand tour
the summer after graduation.
What is this? Must be the Rome train station.
We never noticed we were poor.
Backpacks and low-rise jeans—
we never lived beyond our means.
(Back then there were no ATMs.)
Here we are,
my friends and me.
We’re napping on a bank of the Thames,
when love was free.
Here I am with that girl I met
on the trip to Brussels or Bruges.
(My God, her duffel bag is huge!)
What was her name? Yvonne? Yvette?
She ditched me; I’m forgetting why.
Oh yeah—when I slept with that Swedish guy.
His sleeping bag was full of fleas.
Here we are,
with our bread and cheese,
on a park bench in the Tuileries,
when love was free.
Here I am,
a woman in the middle
of her life,
and her life
is an endless riddle.
In all of Europe
I couldn’t stir up
a memory more un-
likely and foreign
than me at twenty-two.
I can’t help gazing
at her bright young eyes,
at her nice firm thighs.
Was I ever twenty-two?
Look at her skin, it’s amazing.
Can you be me? Am I you?
Here I am at the Berlin Wall.
They tore it down, but it’s still there
in this picture, like my long dark hair.
But there’s a wall between her and me
that, like me, won’t be getting thinner.
Here we are,
myself and me,
thinking, Ich bin ein Berliner,
but who is free?
Here I am,
looking at this kernel
of myself,
and I feel
so strangely maternal.
Do I have a choice?
I can’t believe I’m hearing
my own mother’s voice
giving me advice:
Did you pack your passport?
Sign your traveler’s checks?
Don’t talk to men,
they only want sex;
keep a ladylike appearance
and when was the last time you sent
a postcard to your parents?
Here it is.
Here’s my postcard to me.
I’ve become my own mother;
never thought I’d be.
But here I am…
here I am.
I’VE GOT YOUR PICTURE
HE: I’ve got your picture,
it’s all I’ve got,
and all I’ve got is remembering
where I’m not.
You’re in that sunhat—
I can hardly see
your face in the shade, but I think
you’re smiling at me.
SHE: I’ve got your picture,
it’s all I’ve got
and all I’ve got is remembering
where I’m not.
In your black T-shirt
you look so wise.
The flash made you blink, but who
could forget those eyes?
SHE: I took only one shot of only you—
HE: I took only one shot of only you—
SHE and HE: And now we’re through.
HE: Why did we never ask some innocent
passerby to take our picture arm in arm?
SHE: We meant to—
HE: Oh, there were so many things we meant, but
SHE and HE: I never meant to do you any harm.
SHE: I’ve got your picture,
it’s in a drawer,
I don’t let myself look at it
anymore.
HE: No fingerprints,
it’s in a frame.
I wouldn’t let you
touch it if you came—
SHE and HE: If you only came.
SHE: I’ve got your picture,
I don’t know why
but I hope you stare at mine
and really cry.
HE: I’ve got your picture,
it’s deaf and dumb.
It never calls to tell me
why you never come.
SHE: It never calls to say why you had to go
HE: I think it’s because—
SHE and HE: Because neither of us know.
HE: Hey, I was worth it—
SHE: And so was I—
HE: I’ve got your picture and—
SHE: I think I understand—
SHE and HE: I love it because it never
says goodbye.
DARK ROOMS
My best friend came back
from his tour of Iraq
a different way than me.
He was lifted off a plane
in a flag-draped coffin
that nobody else could see.
They’ve got a law to ban
all photos by the press—
to soften all our pain, I guess.
There are dark rooms in my head
like coffins in a row
that nobody will show
’cause nobody wants to know.
Dark rooms like the box
he’s buried in. He’s dead.
It could have been me instead.
He was just a kid of twenty—
he’s not the only one.
Oh, plenty of them to see
in the dark rooms in my head
where I don’t want to go.
Why let my feelings show
when nobody wants to know?
He’ll never get the chance
to develop or grow
in his dark room in the ground.
There’s a governmental ban
on the image of his coffin.
But my buddy was a living man.
Why should he be forgotten?
There are dark rooms in the ground
that no photograph will show,
where soldiers lay their heads.
And nobody wants to know—
Nobody else must know.
A VANITY TABLE
Mary Jeanne Cassell Cooke, 1929–2014
A few old snapshots, precious, original,
lie scattered artfully for perusal
away from the luncheon table set
along the span of the plate-glass window
in a private room, reserved for its view
across a gorge. The lush and generous
greenness out there seems too primitive
yet to be peopled.
Pictured here, though, from long ago,
is a bride seated at a vanity table.
The forgotten hired photographer
likely asked her to pose like this,
with her silver brush raised stagily
to correct the back of a coiffure
already pinned and sprayed in position.
And the wedding gown was worn by Iris,
her older sister, first.
Still, everything bespeaks her freshness.
Her very slimness seems a form
of the innocence smiling back at her,
the quiet excitement caught in reflection.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,
today of all days we should feel it
who have stood by the green plot marked for her
forever; but if truth is what is framed
in a mirror, here was not vanity—
neither in the sense of preening
nor in that of unavailing hope.
Here was simply a glass that faced
an eager, bright unknowingness.
Nothing at all to be confirmed there,
had she sought to learn what awaited her
once she was stepping down the aisle
of years—first the daughter, then a son,
then another, and another one;
their marriages; the grandchildren;
the illnesses, the hurts; the talents
and fulfillments not to be spoken of
too often, or without the soft
laugh she is now remembered for.
No prophecy to be offered either
for the life of her husband, who rises
like a groom now from his central position
at the long, hushed table to speak of her
briefly, modestly. Her final circle
looks up to hear him; looks away and back,
while behind his head a hawk appears
high in the distance, banking its wings
and coasting as it considers something