Flow Chart: A Poem (15 page)

In riper times of trial we stayed together. But in this kind of bleached-out crisis-

feeling, the best one can do is remain polite while dreaming of revenge in another key, even

with a different cast of characters who know nothing of the life you came from,

that neat trajectory that gradually became confused and later submerged in th’encroaching

gloom of everybody’s opinion of what you should do to prevent it.

I suppose it does congeal slowly, like those footprints a primate

made one morning zillions of years ago, and that says
something
about spontaneity

as well as one’s right to privacy. It’s not like it was fused in a furnace;

it slowly ebbed into its permanent state just by appearing every so often

unchallenged; its absences too were seldom commented on, even as they grew less infrequent,

so that it became one’s privileged daily routine without anyone’s being the wiser.

The man told us that first-off. No one can plead ignorance, therefore,

and any other plea-bargain seems out of the question, though my

backers will tell you otherwise. And I can see no outcome but further fractioning

as precious time elapses, and a totally unexpected split decision that benefits no one

except perhaps those it lulls to sleep with promises of “good times”

long after its half-truths have been assimilated by the rabble it now seeks to contain

with only partial success. Our love, that we didn’t know about, mitigated

our reception at the outset; the misunderstanding could only grow, so that it seems

desolation and solitude were the point we had set out for, the times of mirth

forgotten now, recorded in disappearing ink that doesn’t outlast winter

and its holidays, its occasions. If I said to you now, let’s go out somewhere, you know

what you would think; it’s hardly worth disturbing even the sour calm of whatever fell

from day to day, like a croquet ball tentatively negotiating a stair, all cakes and notions

of pleasure screened by the past, the evergreens that shot up

in the twenty years you were away. Does it look like

I care now, that it matters still? Or is it the calm

of a moment of eternity, not something one lives in, fusses over, but only builds?

I must ask you to leave now. It seems we are fresh out of turnips.

The big spider of the day is broken. Who could repair it?

“Whatever things men are doing shall germ

the motley subject of my page.” And that shall leave a great deal after it

in the way of trails. Besides, as trails go, we are pretty incompetent

except to watch the sun slide away, and the trellis of clouds

with it, while the city’s modest spires stay put, again, as usual.

The madhouse statuary seemed to dispel the pre-life we gave it

in sleep, to become the one bauble rescued from that hoard, whose shapes

no one now will know. It cannot be said they existed. Yet

surely there was life once in those seams, life the daughters of the iron teeth

of time gave it, and swallows flew over it. One might say, casually,

that there was variation in it, that there was texture. More, though,

one still couldn’t say. Yet one day the sanitation department decreed

it was coming through, a nice day in May with the usual blossoms, though these

were only accessories, having no bearing on the tale or

its context, petal-like, in fact, like a cat’s nose, but the judge

happened by just then and told them to stop it. They went away and someone,

a bushy-haired man, came back and said it was OK, they could keep on doing it

if they wanted to, but not to say he said so, but that it was OK.

I long meanwhile for the confines of any other principality, but can’t abandon

working even if I wanted to, it’s like play to me though I get no pleasure from it

except pausing at odd moments to watch the rill for a few seconds,

and then it’s back to work again, more work, lots of it, and the pollution

attendant on it, like Hebe to the rainbow’s gauzy showers, or web, and I

can’t stand on tradition nor beside it. Here it suits me, boys, to turn

over a new leaf like a chunk of recalcitrant granite. I know no other gadfly

who berates me so much; I love it; the woman came back to say she was in the way

and would we go away please it was four o’clock. Not on your life thundered the

hangman, and so it became a kind of ritual, then a game, and every day

someone came to ask after the stone, and someone would stand up to say

it has gone away, go lose yourself in studies or the wilderness;

more none can say. He just came up that day,

had a look round, and left. We aren’t even sure

we saw him. It could have been wildflowers in the wallpaper

or stray ashes in the grate, no more. Then the bird came back and shat

on the stone, and that proved it was there for a while, but somehow

that got forgotten and we were thrust out of doors to play in the rain

and sleet, and somebody got hold of the key, we entered, and presto, no one

was there, it was a different room, another empty one too, and had

obviously been vacated pretty recently. A smell of kippers

hung in the front hall. OK, I said, we must press on to the last house

they were seen in in the next block. The green cement one. But my

companions whispered why, let’s ditch him at the first opportunity, no

let’s not even wait that long, which is why I came across the lawn bruised

and moist, and trembling with pity to be let in, and you came

and let me in. Nowhere did I have anything to say again, but that

was not noticed until yesterday, too late to have us do anything about it.

One source said it was the tulips, against the nice gesture to be led and fed

and have others shut up about it. But one said, you can’t have that

and not condone the listless others who don’t know yet they’re walking

in your tracks and will be sorry when they find out, but another man joined

the woman and said you could too talk about it, it was just a subject

and therefore forgotten, i.e. dead. And Joan she said

too it was like being dead only she didn’t care, she might as well be anyway, for all

she cared, and then someone came back with beef. And said here

put a rose on this, you’re not afraid, you do it, and someone said, O if the law

decree it he must do it. So the one went in and the others stayed out and waited.

And if you’re not going to do it, and if it’s none of your business, why are

you going to do it, the first one said, to which that one said: begone. You are my

business in any case and it behooves me not to be in the shadow of you

while I wait. And then one who came from a great distance said, why does it suit you

to be ornery, if others cannot join the general purgative exodus, to which that one inside

said, and so it becomes you, if it become you. And then in the shade they put their heads

together, and one comes back, the others being a little way off, and says, who

do you think taught you to disobey in the first place? And he says, my father.

And at that they were all struck dumb

and left that place falling all over each other

in their haste to get away, and it was all over for that day.

But another day came and the rice was still laying

on the ground, next to the dust ball. And one took it up, saying,

this is all that shall be till I get back from my trip.

And the others were amused because he had never mentioned a trip before,

but he spat at them, saying, you are too powerful now for my injunction to take hold,

but just wait till the others see you in my chamois costume, because if you think it’s too late

now what will you think when it has gotten really out of hand

like a vine that grows and grows and cannot stop growing, or a fire

deep in a coal mine that burns for centuries before anyone can do anything

about it. So he stepped down at last. And the others, charred

and unrecognizable, concurred that something extraordinary had taken place and that there

was nothing to be done about it. And so he went away.

Love that lasts a minute like a filter

on a faucet, love that is always like headlights in the glistening dark, heed

the pen’s screech. Do not read what is written. In time

it too shall become incoherent but for the time being it is good

just to tamper with it and be off, lest someone see you. And when this veil

of twisted creeper is parted, and the listing tundra is revealed

behind it, say why you had come to say it: the divorce. The no reason, as

the plane dives up into the sky and is lost. All that one had so carefully polished

and preserved, arranged in rows, boasted modestly to the neighbors about,

is gone and there is nothing, repeat nothing, to take its place. Only should we

wander a bit and then return without expectations, does some faint impulse twitch at its

base before expiring, and a lesbian truth rise up for a split second, and the faint

material truth dies again, and then flickers like a post-mortem arrangement

until the rabble of the skies cries and all is assumed to be productive.

Get your ass out of here. But it is time

to work again, but a sad, a tragic time, a time of trifles

and vast snowbanks, and so

you put on your hat backwards and decipher it again dutifully; it’s the home stretch

but dare I say more before you think it’s time to go and they think so

but they say only, is no more time to stay
here
, in any case we would have gone

if we knew where to go, but we have a place to go, so we will go there. And behind

the barn it behooves us again to take up the principle, so like the art

of tragedy and so unlike, and so we let it rest carefully, and someone says

he would like to be off, and the others agree, it ignites a general stampede

before the clock closes down. In the old corners of why the situation

was ever allowed to come into existence in the first place, the nasal whining

is first heard, then perturbed groans and idle retreats into shuttered

middle distances and auxiliary alcoves. Aw, shucks, someone

seems to be repeating, we could stay here all night if we wanted to

but that couldn’t bring the child back into being, and I say, I suppose so.

One’s gone for some grants. Be back

when the coal trestle is finished, and idle

against the apricot lamé of the distance here. And boys I know

the distance between your empty bellies and the jobs that will not fill them,

but I still maintain you are better here, but better off far from here

where the choo-choo whistles and a deadly white wind stoops to take a few prisoners,

where we shall be pleasant once the future has had its way with us. And you know,

he said, sure, that’s the way to hell and its conundrums if that’s the way

you want to go, and they all said we know, we are going that way

cautiously approved of in the introduction, only it seems so full of asperities now.

And he said that’s the way it was, it was a tangle and will never be anything

more than a diagram pointing you in a senseless direction toward yourself.

Sure, they come with snacks you have foreseen,

but that doesn’t excuse you for having been caught in this place. And they all said

giddyap, let’s go on to the next

place on the side, for having won, and being here to count up our winnings, which are

surely all right with us. Watch it, he said.

So the initial exuberance departed. But that was fine, because surely

the beginning of a festival is a nice place to be, if it’s Asia, and more hogs

were brought down. But when he saw the hogs, the owner of the grain elevator was angry

and went out. Now, there were two others who were there. And they were

each determined to get what was coming to them. The master returning, said OK boys,

never let it be said you didn’t ask for it. And in that moment a fuzz of bloom

was on them. Each spring the desert comes alive with birds and flowers,

a breathtaking view at the foot of the famed Superstition Mountains,

reported home of the Lost Dutchman Mine with its still undiscovered caches of gold.

And all around it is nice too. The mineral springs I wanted so much to exploit—what

does any of it matter now, now that I have found my home in a narrow cleft

stained with Indian paintbrush and boar’s blood, from which an avenue eventually leads

to the flatter, more civilized places I have no quarrel with either. After all,

we
have
to go in once or twice a month to pick up supplies, the few

articles we don’t grow such as coffee, to which I’m still addicted by the way, and

records too from a local music shop, which are important to have—no man

needs to live by his own law in the wilderness after all, but even if he is going

to try it is best not to let the old world slip too casually. Rather it should come about

naturally, without too much fuss or horn tooting. And then, by and by, if he sees

he likes it, why then there is always time to make such decisions later on as regards

one’s insurance, and such, and peter out from there—trickle accurately

into the sand so that each drop is utilized to the max, and then we’ll see

how the desert is improving—only “improve” is a word I don’t want to use too much

either. For after all everything is good of its kind to start with. It’s all a

question only of finding out what the kind is and letting the thing ferment