They call it: space.
It’s easy to define with that one word,
much harder with many.
Empty and full of everything at once?
Shut tight in spite of being open,
since nothing
can escape from it?
Inflated beyond all limits?
And if it has a limit,
what the devil does it border on?
Well, all fine and good. But go to sleep now.
It’s night, tomorrow you’ve got more pressing matters
made to measure for you:
touching objects placed close at hand,
casting glances at the intended distance.
Listening to voices within earshot.
Then that journey from point A to point B.
Departure at 12:40 local time,
and flight above the puffs of local clouds
through whichever infinitely
fleeting strip of sky.
Divorce
For the kids the first ending of the world.
For the cat a new master.
For the dog a new mistress.
For the furniture stairs, thuds, my way or the highway.
For the walls bright squares where pictures once hung.
For the neighbors new subjects, a break in the boredom.
For the car better if there were two.
For the novels, the poems—fine, take what you want.
Worse with encyclopedias and VCRs,
not to mention the guide to proper usage,
which doubtless holds pointers on two names—
are they still linked with the conjunction “and”
or does a period divide them.
Assassins
They think for days on end,
how to kill so as to kill,
and how many killed will be many.
Apart from this they eat their meals with gusto,
pray, wash their feet, feed the birds,
make phone calls while scratching their armpits,
stanch blood when they cut a finger,
if they’re women they buy sanitary napkins,
eye shadow, flowers for vases,
they make jokes on their good days,
drink citrus juice from the fridge,
watch the moon and stars at night,
place headphones with soft music on their ears
and sleep sweetly till the crack of dawn
—unless what they’re thinking needs doing at night.
Example
A gale
stripped all the leaves from the trees last night
except for one leaf
left
to sway solo on a naked branch.
With this example
Violence demonstrates
that yes of course—
it likes its little joke from time to time.
Identification
It’s good you came—she says.
You heard a plane crashed on Thursday?
Well, so they came to see me
about it.
The story is he was on the passenger list.
So what, he might have changed his mind.
They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart.
Then they showed me I don’t know who.
All black, burned except one hand.
A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring.
I got furious, that can’t be him.
He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that.
The stores are bursting with those shirts.
And our names on that ring,
they’re only the most ordinary names.
It’s good you came. Sit here beside me.
He really was supposed to get back Thursday.
But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year.
I’ll put the kettle on for tea.
I’ll wash my hair, then what,
try to wake up from all this.
It’s good you came, since it was cold there,
and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,
him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.
I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary—
Nonreading
Bookstores don’t provide
a remote control for Proust,
you can’t switch
to a soccer match,
or a quiz show, win a Cadillac.
We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences.
We travel faster, farther, more often,
but bring back slides instead of memories.
Here I am with some guy.
There I guess that’s my ex.
Here everyone’s naked
so this must be a beach.
Seven volumes—mercy.
Couldn’t it be cut or summarized,
or better yet put into pictures.
There was that series called “The Doll”
but my sister-in-law says that’s some other P.*
And by the way, who was he anyway.
They say he wrote in bed for years on end.
Page after page
at a snail’s pace.
But we’re still going in fifth gear
and, knock on wood, never better.
Portrait from Memory
Everything seems to agree.
The head’s shape, the features, the silhouette, the height.
But there’s no resemblance.
Maybe not in that position?
A different color scheme?
Maybe more in profile,
as if looking at something?
What about something in his hands?
His own book? Someone else’s?
A map? Binoculars? A fishing reel?
And should he be wearing something different?
A soldier’s uniform in ’39? Camp stripes?
A windbreaker from that closet?
Or—as if passing to the other shore—
up to his ankles, his knees, his waist, his neck,
deluged? Naked?
And maybe a backdrop should be added?
For example, a meadow still uncut?
Rushes? Birches? A lovely cloudy sky?
Maybe someone should be next to him?
Arguing with him? Joking?
Drinking? Playing cards?
A relative? A chum?
Several women? One?
Maybe standing in a window?
Going out the door?
With a stray dog at his feet?
In a friendly crowd?
No, no, all wrong.
He should be alone,
that suits some best.
And not so familiar, so close up?
Farther? Even farther?
In the furthermost depths of the image?
even if he called?
And what in the foreground?
Oh, anything.
As long as it’s a bird
just flying by.
Dreams
Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft,
mocking magnets, graphs and maps—
in a split second the dream
piles before us mountains as stony
as real life.
And if mountains, then valleys, plains
with perfect infrastructures.
Without engineers, contractors, workers,
bulldozers, diggers, or supplies—
raging highways, instant bridges,
thickly populated pop-up cities.
Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen—
crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us
and when to vanish.
Without architects deft in their craft,
without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers—
&nbs
p; on the path a sudden house just like a toy,
and in it vast halls that echo with our steps
and walls constructed out of solid air.
Not only the scale, it’s also the precision—
a specific watch, an entire fly,
on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers,
a bitten apple with teeth marks.
And we—unlike circus acrobats,
conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists—
can fly unfledged,
we light dark tunnels with our eyes,
we wax eloquent in unknown tongues,
talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.
And as a bonus, despite our own freedom,
the choices of our heart, our tastes,
we’re swept away
by amorous yearnings for—
and the alarm clock rings.
So what can they tell us, the writers of dreambooks,
the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,
the doctors with couches for analyses—
if anything fits,
it’s accidental,
and for one reason only,
that in our dreamings,
in their shadowings and gleamings,
in their multiplings, inconceivablings,
in their haphazardings and widescatterings
at times even a clear-cut meaning
may slip through.
In a Mail Coach
My imagination sentenced me to this journey.
Boxes and packages get drenched on the mail coach roof.
Inside crush, hubbub, stuffiness.
There’s a stout sweaty hausfrau,
a hunter swathed in pipe smoke with a dead hare,
l’abbé snores, a demijohn of wine clasped in his arms,
a nursemaid holds an infant red from bawling,
a tipsy merchant with relentless hiccups,
a lady irritated for all the reasons above,
furthermore a boy with a trumpet,
a large fleabitten dog,
and a caged parrot.
And also the person I got on for,
almost invisible amid the others’ bundles,
but he’s there, and he’s called Juliusz Słowacki.*
He’s clearly none too eager for a chat.
He draws a letter from a crumpled envelope,
it’s doubtless been read many times before,
since the pages fray along the edges.
When a dried violet drops from the sheets
ah! we both sigh and seize it in flight.
Perhaps it’s a good time to tell him
what I’ve planned long ago in my thoughts.
Excuse me, sir, but it’s urgent and important.
I’ve come from the Future and I know how it turns out.
Your poems are loved and admired
and you lie with kings in Wawel Castle.
Alas my imagination lacks the power
to make him hear or at least see me.
He doesn’t even feel me tug his sleeve.
He calmly slips the violet between the sheets,
which go back into the envelope, and then into a trunk,
glances through the rain-streaked window,
rises, pins his cloak, squeezes to the door,
and what else? Gets off at the next station.
I keep him in my sight a few more minutes.
He walks off, so slight with that trunk of his,
plows on, head down,
like one who knows
no one is waiting.
Now only the extras remain.
An extended clan beneath umbrellas,
a corporal with a whistle, breathless recruits in tow,
a wagon full of piglets,
and two fresh horses waiting to be hitched.
Ella in Heaven
She prayed to God
with all her heart
to make her
a happy white girl.
And if it’s too late for such changes,
then at least, Lord God, see what I weigh,
subtract at least half of me.
But the good God answered No.
He just put his hand on her heart,
checked her throat, stroked her head.
But when everything is over—He added—
you’ll give me joy by coming to me,
my black comfort, my well-sung stump.
Vermeer
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.
Metaphysics
It’s been and gone.
It’s been, so it’s gone.
In the same irreversible order,
for such is the rule of this foregone game.
A trite conclusion, not worth writing
if it weren’t an unquestionable fact,
a fact for ever and ever,
for the whole cosmos, as it is and will be,
that something really was
until it was gone,
even the fact
that today you had a side of fries.
ENOUGH
2011
Someone I’ve Been Watching for a While
He doesn’t arrive en masse.
Doesn’t gather gregariously.
Doesn’t convene communally.
Doesn’t celebrate congenially.
Doesn’t wrest from himself
a choral voice.
Doesn’t declare to all concerned.
Doesn’t affirm in the name.
Investigations aren’t conducted
in his presence—
who’s for, and who’s against,
thank you, none opposed.