Aimless Love (8 page)

What always stopped me in my tracks was

the middle toe—this little piggy ate roast beef.

I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich

with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,

but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here—

I am even wondering why it’s called “horseradish.”

I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense

of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.

After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don’t want to be the one to ruin the children’s party

by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots

or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.

By the way, I am completely down with going

“Wee wee wee” all the way home,

having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

I am glad I resisted the temptation,

if it was a temptation when I was young,

to write a poem about an old man

eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong

thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world

and with only a book for a companion.

He’ll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades

to record how hot and sour the hot and sour soup is

here at Chang’s this afternoon

and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book—José Saramago’s
Blindness

as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up

from its escalating horrors only

when I am stunned by one of its arresting sentences.

And I should mention the light

which falls through the big windows this time of day

italicizing everything it touches—

the plates and tea pots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress

in the white blouse and short black skirt,

the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice

and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

Not only in church

and nightly by their bedsides

do young girls pray these days.

Wherever they go,

prayer is woven into their talk

like a bright thread of awe.

Even at the pedestrian mall

outbursts of praise

spring unbidden from their glossy lips.

When I finally arrive there—

and it will take many days and nights—

I would like to believe others will be waiting

and might even want to know how it was.

So I will reminisce about a particular sky

or a woman in a white bathrobe

or the time I visited a narrow strait

where a famous naval battle had taken place.

Then I will spread out on a table

a large map of my world

and explain to the people of the future

in their pale garments what it was like—

how mountains rose between the valleys

and this was called geography,

how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers

and this was known as commerce,

how the people from this pink area

crossed over into this light-green area

and set fires and killed whoever they found

and this was called history—

and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,

as more of them arrive to join the circle,

like ripples moving toward,

not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.

Go, little book,

out of this house and into the world,

carriage made of paper rolling toward town

bearing a single passenger

beyond the reach of this jittery pen

and far from the desk and the nosy gooseneck lamp.

It is time to decamp,

put on a jacket and venture outside,

time to be regarded by other eyes,

bound to be held in foreign hands.

So off you go, infants of the brain,

with a wave and some bits of fatherly advice:

stay out as late as you like,

don’t bother to call or write,

and talk to as many strangers as you can.

What do you think of my new glasses

I asked as I stood under a shade tree

before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence

that descended on the rows of the dead

and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence

according to the Chinese belief,

each one distinct from the others,

and the differences being so faint

that only a few special monks

were able to tell them all apart.

They make you look very scholarly,

I heard my mother say

once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.

Then I rolled over and pressed

my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,

but he would say nothing,

and I could not find a silence

among the 100 Chinese silences

that would fit the one that he created

even though I was the one

who had just made up the business

of the 100 Chinese silences—

the Silence of the Night Boat,

and the Silence of the Lotus,

cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell

only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

It was foolish of us to leave our room.

The empty plaza was shimmering.

The clock looked ready to melt.

The heat was a mallet striking a ball

and sending it bouncing into the nettles of summer.

Even the bees had knocked off for the day.

The only thing moving besides us

(and we had since stopped under an awning)

was a squirrel who was darting this way and that

as if he were having second thoughts

about crossing the street,

his head and tail twitching with indecision.

You were looking in a shop window

but I was watching the squirrel

who now rose up on his hind legs,

and after pausing to look in all directions,

began to sing in a beautiful voice

a melancholy aria about life and death,

his forepaws clutched against his chest,

his face full of longing and hope,

as the sun beat down

on the roofs and awnings of the city,

and the earth continued to turn

and hold in position the moon

which would appear later that night

as we sat in a café

and I stood up on the table

with the encouragement of the owner

and sang for you and the others

the song the squirrel had taught me how to sing.

It doesn’t take much to remind me

what a mayfly I am,

what a soap bubble floating over the children’s party.

Standing under the bones of a dinosaur

in a museum does the trick every time

or confronting in a vitrine a rock from the moon.

Even the Church of St. Anne will do,

a structure I just noticed in a magazine—

built in 1722 of sandstone and limestone in the city of Cork.

And the realization that no one

who ever breasted the waters of time

has figured out a way to avoid dying

always pulls me up by the reins and settles me down

by a roadside, grateful for the sweet weeds

and the mouthfuls of colorful wildflowers.

So many reminders of my mortality

here, there, and elsewhere, visible at every hour,

pretty much everything I can think of except you,

sign over the door of this bar in Cocoa Beach

proclaiming that it was established—

though
established
does not sound right—in 1996.

I know the reason you placed nine white tulips

in a glass vase with water

here in this room a few days ago

was not to mark the passage of time

as a fish would have if nailed by the tail

to the wall above the bed of a guest.

But early this morning I did notice

their lowered heads

in the gray light,

two of them even touching the glass

table top near the window,

the blossoms falling open

as they lost their grip on themselves,

and my suitcase only half unpacked by the door.

I don’t want to make too much of this,

but because the bedroom faces east

across a lake here in Florida,

when the sun begins to rise

and reflects off the water,

the whole room is suffused with the kind

of golden light that might travel

at dawn on the summer solstice

the length of a passageway in a megalithic tomb.

Again, I don’t want to exaggerate,

but it reminds me of a brand of light

that could illuminate the walls

of a hidden chamber full of treasure,

pearls and gold coins overflowing the silver platters.

I feel like comparing it to the fire

that Aphrodite lit in the human eye

so as to make it possible for us to perceive

the other three elements,

but the last thing I want to do

is risk losing your confidence

by appearing to lay it on too thick.

Let’s just say that the morning light here

would bring to any person’s mind

the rings of light that Dante

deploys in the final cantos of the
Paradiso

to convey the presence of God,

while bringing the
Divine Comedy

to a stunning climax and leave it at that.

It was late, of course,

just the two of us still at the table

working on a second bottle of wine

when you speculated that maybe Eve came first

and Adam began as a rib

that leaped out of her side one paradisal afternoon.

Could be, I remember saying,

because much was possible back then,

and I mentioned the talking snake

and the giraffes sticking their necks out of the ark,

their noses up in the pouring Old Testament rain.

I like a man with a flexible mind, you said then,

lifting your candle-lit glass to me

and I raised mine to you and began to wonder

what life would be like as one of your ribs—

to be with you all the time,

riding under your blouse and skin,

caged under the soft weight of your breasts,

your favorite rib, I am assuming,

if you ever bothered to stop and count them

which is just what I did later that night

after you had fallen asleep

and we were fitted tightly back to front,

your long legs against the length of mine,

my fingers doing the crazy numbering that comes of love.

Every morning since you disappeared for good,

I read about you in the newspaper

along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.

Some days I am reminded that today

will not be a wildly romantic time for you,

nor will you be challenged by educational goals,

nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you should not miss

an opportunity to travel and make new friends

though you never cared much about either.

I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem

with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not

be doing that, or anything like that, on this weekday in March.

And the same goes for the fun

you might have gotten from group activities,

a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason

to treat yourself, but that would apply

more to all the Pisces who are still alive,

still swimming up and down the stream of life

or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But you will be relieved to learn

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting

nor do you have to think more of others,

and never again will creative work take a back seat

to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don’t worry today or any day

about problems caused by your unwillingness

to interact rationally with your many associates.

No more goals for you, no more romance,

no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,

but then again, you were never thus encumbered.

So leave it up to me now

to plan carefully for success and the wealth it may bring,

to value the dear ones close to my heart,

and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way

though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.