space furls and unfurls,
spreads and shrinks.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
Just guess who I ran into
in Canada, of all places,
after all these years.
I thought he was dead,
and there he was, in a Mercedes.
On the plane to Athens.
At a stadium in Tokyo.
Happenstance twirls a kaleidoscope in its hands.
A billion bits of colored glass glitter.
And suddenly Jack’s glass
bumps into Jill’s.
Just imagine, in this very same hotel.
I turn around and see—
it’s really she!
Face to face in an elevator.
In a toy store.
At the corner of Maple and Pine.
Happenstance is shrouded in a cloak.
Things get lost in it and then are found again.
I stumbled on it accidentally.
I bent down and picked it up.
One look and I knew it,
a spoon from that stolen service.
If it hadn’t been for that bracelet,
I would never have known Alexandra.
The clock? It turned up in Potterville.
Happenstance looks deep into our eyes.
Our head grows heavy.
Our eyelids drop.
We want to laugh and cry,
it’s so incredible.
From fourth-grade homeroom to that ocean liner.
It has to mean something.
To hell and back,
and here we meet halfway home.
We want to shout:
Small world!
You could almost hug it!
And for a moment we are filled with joy,
radiant and deceptive.
Love at First Sight
They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?
I want to ask them
if they don’t remember—
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.
They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?
There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.
May 16, 1973
One of those many dates
that no longer ring a bell.
Where I was going that day,
what I was doing—I don’t know.
Whom I met, what we talked about,
I can’t recall.
If a crime had been committed nearby,
I wouldn’t have had an alibi.
The sun flared and died
beyond my horizons.
The earth rotated
unnoted in my notebooks.
I’d rather think
that I’d temporarily died
than that I kept on living
and can’t remember a thing.
I wasn’t a ghost, after all.
I breathed, I ate,
I walked.
My steps were audible,
my fingers surely left
their prints on doorknobs.
Mirrors caught my reflection.
I wore something or other in such-and-such a color.
Somebody must have seen me.
Maybe I found something that day
that had been lost.
Maybe I lost something that turned up later.
I was filled with feelings and sensations.
Now all that’s like
a line of dots in parentheses.
Where was I hiding out,
where did I bury myself?
Not a bad trick
to vanish before my own eyes.
I shake my memory.
Maybe something in its branches
that has been asleep for years
will start up with a flutter.
No.
Clearly I’m asking too much.
Nothing less than one whole second.
Maybe All This
Maybe all this
is happening in some lab?
Under one lamp by day
and billions by night?
Maybe we’re experimental generations?
Poured from one vial to the next,
shaken in test tubes,
not scrutinized by eyes alone,
each of us separately
plucked up by tweezers in the end?
Or maybe it’s more like this:
No interference?
The changes occur on their own
according to plan?
The graph’s needle slowly etches
its predictable zigzags?
Maybe thus far we aren’t of much interest?
The control monitors aren’t usually plugged in?
Only for wars, preferably large ones,
for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth,
for major migrations from point A to B?
Maybe just the opposite:
They’ve got a taste for trivia up there?
Look! on the big screen a little girl
is sewing a button on her sleeve.
The radar shrieks,
the staff comes at a run.
What a darling little being
How sweet, its solemn
threading of the needle!
Someone cries enraptured:
Get the Boss,
tell him he’s got to see this for himself!
Slapstick
If there are angels,
I doubt they read
our novels
concerning thwarted hopes.
I’m afraid, alas,
they never touch the poems
that bear our grudges against the world.
The rantings and railings
of our plays
must drive them, I suspect,
to distraction.
Off duty, between angelic—
i.e., inhuman—occupations,
they watch instead
our slapstick
from the age of silent film.
To our dirge wailers,
garment renders,
and teeth gnashers,
they prefer, I suppose,
that poor devil
who grabs the drowning man by his toupee
or, s
tarving, devours his own shoelaces
with gusto.
From the waist up, starch and aspirations;
below, a startled mouse
runs down his trousers.
I’m sure
that’s what they call real entertainment.
A crazy chase in circles
ends up pursuing the pursuer.
The light at the end of the tunnel
turns out to be a tiger’s eye.
A hundred disasters
mean a hundred comic somersaults
turned over a hundred abysses.
If there are angels,
they must, I hope,
find this convincing,
this merriment dangling from terror,
not even crying Save me Save me
since all of this takes place in silence.
I can even imagine
that they clap their wings
and tears run from their eyes
from laughter, if nothing else.
Nothing’s a Gift
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.
Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.
I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
Some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.
Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.
The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.
We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.
One Version of Events
If we’d been allowed to choose,
we’d probably have gone on forever.
The bodies that were offered didn’t fit,
and wore out horribly.
The ways of sating hunger
made us sick.
We were repelled
by blind heredity
and the tyranny of glands.
The world that was meant to embrace us
decayed without end
and the effects of causes raged over it.
Individual fates
were presented for our inspection:
appalled and grieved,
we rejected most of them.
Questions naturally arose, e.g.,
who needs the painful birth
of a dead child,
and what’s in it for a sailor
who will never reach the shore.
We agreed to death,
but not to every kind.
Love attracted us,
of course, but only love
that keeps its word.
Both fickle standards
and the impermanence of artworks
kept us wary of the Muses’ service.
Each of us wished to have a homeland
free of neighbors
and to live his entire life
in the intervals between wars.
No one wished to seize power
or to be subject to it.
No one wanted to fall victim
to his own or others’ delusions.
No one volunteered
for crowd scenes and processions,
to say nothing of dying tribes—
although without all these
history couldn’t run its charted course
through centuries to come.
Meanwhile, a fair number
of stars lit earlier
had died out and grown cold.
It was high time for a decision.
Voicing numerous reservations,
candidates finally emerged
for a number of roles as healers and explorers,
a few obscure philosophers,
one or two nameless gardeners,
artists and virtuosos—
though even these livings
couldn’t all be filled
for lack of other kinds of applications.
It was time to think
the whole thing over.
We’d been offered a trip
from which we’d surely be returning soon,
wouldn’t we.
A trip outside eternity—
monotonous, no matter what they say,
and foreign to time’s flow.
The chance may never come our way again.
We were besieged by doubts.
Does knowing everything beforehand
really mean knowing everything.
Is a decision made in advance