Flow Chart: A Poem (11 page)

life it’s permissible not to point the finger, and if we are cautionary, then to hell with it.

I’d like some more too yet don’t feel I’ll get any, and that’s OK because I wasn’t the only one

engaged in tearing down the gnarled structure, exposing the pores of the evidence

for all to see and I won’t be the most unsurprised when it rattles and will have evidently all

taken place on the sly, at once, and no beekeepers mourn the autumnal splendor of our robes

or come to visit when snow stains them with its truth, a truth like another, yet it’s

all strangeness, into solitude, and woebegone one sees so little

of what is passing that it’s like a show of truth, merely an ad, that spoke volumes

however and would let no one off the hook, even if one were on special assignment: that probably

triggered it all anyway. So grouches reform, the day shakes cracked emeralds out of its lap

into grooves at the edge of the pavement. Probably this is a true story of how we were united.

If so we shouldn’t resent ourselves, not until the new moon

has bent its playful bow at least, and this moment too passes with a special suddenness, for showing

us what it’s like. And other cares will unravel while one is dressing so that the differences

more or less cancel each other at the moment of presentation: it’s like candy, like a star

that doesn’t matter, like one’s feet bouncing to a joyful rhythm, a warning next time to any who might think of writing.

No one has to re-invent himself at each new encounter with something different or slightly new.

Nowhere does it say that results will issue from a recent overhauling.

We don’t know what hamlets lie in our path, or how much grumbling will occur

when we knock over something metallic and it makes a loud clang, audible on the stairs below,

or whether there will be a comic ending to this. We can see into the future

as into a dimple, and nothing says not to proceed, to go on planning,

though we know this cannot be taken as an authorization, even less as approval of the morass

of projects like half-assembled watches, that surrounds us. No but there is a logic

to be used in such situations, and only then: a curl of smoke or fuzziness in distant trees

that tempts one down the slope, and sure enough, there is a village, festive preparations,

a votive smile on the face of each inhabitant that lets you pass through

unquestioned. And we thought we were lucky back there in the silence! Here, civilization takes over,

at its highest, a new trope that dazzles without intimidating, like a scroll, is ready for us

and however many more of us it takes to change moods, build the palace of reason our

inconsequence has promised for so long now, out of trued granite blocks fired with chips of mica,

and so get over feeling oppressed, so as to be able to construct the small song, our prayer

at the center of whatever void we may be living in: a romantic, nocturnal place

that must sooner or later go away. At that point we’ll have lived, and the having done so would

be a passport to a permanent, adjacent future, the adult equivalent of innocence

in a child, or lost sweetness in a remembered fruit: something to tell time by.

By then we’ll know, as surely as if parents catechized us, the empty drum that offers itself

to any yearning, the daily quotient, the resolution, but also bare facts scattered on a plain

of fires, data that cannot be checked, dictates to live by, unlikely as it now seems.

And scattered over these, the dust of heavens that incorporates some of the good things and others

you’ll most likely want to avoid, if you can, otherwise torpor builds up in plumes

on the horizon, and when you go

to convert your notes into hard currency, something will be lacking though the columns

of figures add up correctly, and there seems to be no mystery

to it, beyond a pleasant, slightly numbed sense of wonderment which was in any case

on your original want list. Although we mattered as children, as adults we’re somehow counterfeit

and not briefed as to what happened in the intervals to which this longing led us,

which turns out to be not so tragic after all, but merely baroque, almost functional.

Yet there can be no safety in numbers: each of us wants and wants to be

in the same way, so that in the end none of us matters, and in different ways

we cannot understand, as though each spoke a different language with enough cognates

to make us believe in deafness—
their
deafness—as well as in our own reluctance

to dramatize, leaving our speech just sitting there, unrinsed, untasted, not knowing us,

or caring to. Each day the ball is in our court, and worse,

this is probably unromantic and proper procedure,
fons et origo, nemine dissentiente.

Hours, years later, we were together.

The moon unbarred its hold, the thickness of brambles was compacted

just in time to prevent the closing of the door as if by magic—“It always

happens that way, and then no one can find it. Pretty please,

not in the terrarium, but outdoors, that vague nest,

and others will conspire to push the lawnmower, make coffee, as long as these

and ours are spared and stand along the walk in rows. We might never

get out alive otherwise. Besides, there’s all that to see,

all that and more, you see, not including

the glint in someone’s eye when you tell them that, and afterwards, well, it’s back to

your tunnel or whatever you care to call where it is you stay

in the afternoons, then morning, if all goes well. And if we two inhabit

a daffy teacup, are adept at crowd-pleasing, then what about the rest,

star-gazers in their midst, who make up the electorate? Say it was long ago,

say nothing further need be said, that even a memory will traipse

across the crossed hairs and be shot down, only the comfort in it

will be, will not have been

for many years, and though these die

with a sheen on them there is not very much to mark

of that past, no stones to leave on the trail, which isn’t the same

as having an alderman in your living room and cats wherever you look,

fond George.”

Then it said it was supposed to come back

to an eyrie or some sort of enclosed space, it wasn’t too clear

about that, but definitely would walk to meet us

whether we were here, or far. It would meet us. And so on. If living

was going to be like that, give me back my clothes, my crown

of gold, and just let me out before I have had a chance to put them on,

regal when partially naked, and you can bet the next one that comes along

will have his say, and then we are gay, and be under a mushroom

the livelong day, because no one wants to play

any more. The mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck one, and it all lurched

into motion again like an ancient conveyor belt an unseen hand flicks on. And trials,

pumpkin-colored ships in the street, disturb the busman’s accident long ago,

having no sense of humor, or just barely. The frightened sleep in parks,

though motionless palm fronds announce a quiet evening. You can get over

bouts of humor best by not going indoors

when the moon is full. The lion stood by the bridge

so long it might have been a sculpture, but in the end loped sheepishly away.

And we have to figure out what these coins mean, not knowing the language.

It might be—still, there’s no point in being greedy

before one means to—has to—but if it was a game in the beginning

it must be still, despite inertia. It’s getting to be the end of a dance marathon

and though people keep cutting in, they do so with an air of resignation.

No point in taking further lessons, just at the moment anyway.

An enormous sense of release hushes the impatience

in the grass, the wayward chirruping about something. One can still stand up,

and that’s plenty, under the circumstances. Besides, we’ll not leave you alone yet;

the bench you warmed for us looks inviting; soon stars will be out

and you can walk home peering into the distance, hoping

someone will pick us up. Easy now, the stair treads

have come along again, and soon, soon

the bed will drench us with sleep and the surprising leap into the middle of a dream,

striking pennants, pavilions, bringing all natural activity to a halt as it wonders

about this, tests the current, supposes everything

must be OK or we’d have heard. In the next town there’s a grist mill and a blacksmith,

or was that part of a dream, or did it really exist in a past

one can focus on, extracting its kernel until, like a ship, the shell turns round,

advances on us and speculation is undone for today. And we sobbed into those sails

sometimes, yet the gryphon never wavered until the third blast of a trombone

soothed it and it fell asleep. Now the dangers were tiny ones, but everywhere;

it would have been a good time to stay home, but alas that was a concept

foreign to these steep, peripheral times, these crags like sandpaper

dividing a no-good, swamp-green sky, and all the while

you were just a bit younger, enough to complain and not understand

why all the women stifled sobs and I was appointed to meet you

and bring you to this place, locus of many diagonals

without beginning or end except for the sense of them a place of confluence

provides. So, as is the custom here, I pulled the hood down to cover most of my face.

In a twinkling the mood had changed. The hiatus in the manuscript

buttoned itself up.

And there were many sets of fraternal twins on earth

to share in a new sense of disparity and reward everyone for what they would have

done anyway, inasmuch as there always comes a time when congratulations fall

just short of the doormat, loved ones are sorely tried, and associates

go blindly about their business, some business at any rate, all to keep the shelving

from imminent collapse by destroying relationships

that were good in the past but have now come to naught

as we see each day in the papers. And if one swoons, another will follow suit

until the entire populace is restive. And surely no one can locate the good in that

except by poring over miles of yellowing folios, which seems unlikely, so it’s back

into bed with us again, and that’s the way it has to keep happening

for any of us to remain unaware very long of secret provisions and codicils

in the charter it is imperative not to mention—not, you understand, out of a spirit

of fair play but in the ultimate interests of a deeper yet darker strain of being

we have to live toward if anyone is to get any good out of the colossal, foundering

experiment, the braintrust of fiends and werewolves who lie perched just out of

the reach of sleep, ready to reclaim territories surrendered in a moment

of temporary insanity, and others as well that were never in question

until they became bones of contention just seconds ago in the new climate

of sharpened political awareness that hungers always for new victims

like a minotaur, and whose mad thirst for the blood of innocent bystanders can never

be slaked, least of all by tepid gestures toward understanding

seen in a mirror and wrongly interpreted, or lives entirely given over to sacrifice

and austerity, for it is there, cautions the tome, that the greatest losses, the worst

atrocities will be instigated and immediately tallied. For such is the life of a young man

these days; there is still time to leave the boat, which at last report

was committed to its moorings, but of course to quit now

would be to miss the whole spectacle, and that, after all, is what

we came for, and shall insist on staying for, once the dirt has settled

and the bats flown back into the trees. And the cicadas stopped stuttering.

As dead wood floats, the expanding afternoon exhales

its mousy fragrance, battening on the memory of countless similar

ones it thinks are in the heads of those going about in this one,

and so the structure stands, without any apparent support. Doors are left open

as in spring, and beyond them float tunnel-vision landscapes

brought from somewhere else, and none recognizes the clever substitution.

Here a man carries bags

out to his truck, and makes the same trip over and over. There, windows shine.

And on a far-off hilltop someplace a living sacrifice gleams, red

in the puddled haze, and all eyes are cast downward, defrocked,

speechless. And though one can hear the traffic’s swish

as it cuts from one side of the island to the other, one is transfixed,

facing an army of necessary revisions. “How would it be if I said it this way,

or would so-and-so’s way be better, easy on the adjectives?” And if I told you

this was your life, not some short story for a contest, how would you react?

Chances are you’d tell me to buzz off and continue writing, except

it’s so difficult; we barely begin and paralysis takes over, forcing us out

for a breath of fresh air. Meanwhile the vengeful deity whose acts

are being recorded has all the time in the world. “OK, that’s it for today,” as if

one weren’t busy on other fronts too, such as writing letters

to friends in Panama and Hawaii. Not to mention keeping track of expenses

in a ledger acquired for just this purpose. But though reams of work do get done,