Flow Chart: A Poem (19 page)

obsequious to a fault. The ham-handed rendition made a botch of the layers

of meaning and the layers of bread, satisfying neither reporters nor hierophants.

We all returned home anxious

to get the night over with.

And end it did, yet scarcely

in the ways one had imagined, but with a finality as

inexplicable as its itinerant birth some years back down the creek. First,

there was a lot of hammering. Then a blonde woman got out of the car to take pictures.

H’mm, this must be
the
night, a lot of people mistakenly assumed. Then the thunder

again—I can’t possibly tell you what was in it for me, so rounded

were its periods, like an architecture erupting from the earth;

like a repertory of trees, from which emerged cries,

or so it seemed. That these were the damned of the earth

in whose look colorful arcs beat the meaning down

to size, proud of being duly noted, was acknowledged by no one of rank.

Feathers first, then dust, then flourishes

in a signature, with the bad taste to insist on the letter of personality lessons

taken at some charm school in hell, were the note struck, and that you

were a few years older than me, and that sufficed to bring the argument

to a graceful dead-end near where the coats were. Yet sometimes in the quietism

I miss your cracked precision, knowing it could have taken us this far

in the storm’s well-oiled chariot without making a production number

of it and we should have been well equally, only now

what does it matter? I mean, whose shortcomings are we talking about,

except it’s better to go over at the last

moment and make your peace, whatever that can be.

There was something I liked in the way of beginning

and something also in the way of returning, though it made us sad.

Next spree though, try to find us a different decade: this one’s already full.

The twaddle dispensary’s reopened. The French still say “hailstones big as pigeon’s

eggs,” and poets are retreating into—or is it out of?—academia, beset by the

usual pit-bulls and well-meaning little old ladies in tennis shoes. And discovering

and assimilating new bastions of indifference and comprehension. What else?

That was some storm we had last week. The webs intersect at certain points where baubles

are glued to them; readers think this is nice. What else? Oh, stop badgering—

where were
you
in the fifties?

Indeed. Alvin and the chipmunks made nice ambient music for what

I was fussing over, or masticating, and I had to find a way out of the woods.

Now, in some cases, this is easy—you just walk straight along a road and pretty soon

you’re out of the woods and there are suburban backlots. In my case,

though, it wasn’t that simple, though it wasn’t extraordinarily demanding either—I

just lay down in a boat and slept, Lady-of-Shalott style. Soon I was gliding among you,

taking notes on your conversations and otherwise making a pest of myself.

I pretended to be angry when onlookers jeered and cows mooed and even the heralds told me to shut up,

yet at bottom I was indifferent. I knew my oracles

for what they were—right about 50% of the time—and I also knew their accuracy wasn’t

an issue. It was the repeating of them that interested me. Repetition makes reputation.

Besides, it’s something you can build with. You need no longer inspect the materials

when you buy them in bulk; they are as a territory. What gets built happens

to be in that territory, though beside it. Your reputation as a builder

is the one interesting thing.

In the sixties new dresses were newer.

The humbler children were clad in dimity, and bird-cheerful. Airlines seldom

overbooked. My imagination was trying to get its act together, I mean really see

itself. But like the site of Carthage, which was circumscribed by strips of some

animal’s hide, it could not really accept itself for all it was because of the

possibility that a trick was involved. And yet, shaking its hair

and staring at its crystal reflection in some drop of dew, it also knew it wasn’t

nothing, and something had to account for this. I think the constant costume changes

caused it to mistrust itself, yet there was a game to be played, and rules to abide by—

so what? It’s true in other walks of life…But it all led rapidly to the crunch

of where the fuck do you think you’re going?
This
is the frontier.

Beyond lies civility, a paradise of choices—maybe. But it wasn’t made to be tested

by such primitive assaying tools as you, and only you, come equipped with.

I saw your face on some bookjacket. It looked beautiful. May I write to you?

I wouldn’t really swallow poison if I was you. Meanwhile I have the rain

to experience with the others, each of us finding it uncomfortable though seldom

talking about it, as there are more important subjects. Fishing, for example.

I have to get home before the music disappears. I love you.

I thought I said never to come in this café?

Finally all will survive because of fierce determination. I mean,

they’re tough, people are. Hey guys,

what accounts for losses along the way? The house is built,

the beds made, and see how it comes undone, but then an enormous ray of sunlight,

like a minor flood, imbues the room, and once again we are saved from ourselves

as something rings down the curtain on us gloriously. One lived principally by one’s wits

and therefore was not surprised by this sudden reversal: it always has something

of us in it, so I signed it. It wasn’t long in coming, but was just my hope,

ironed and carefully hung on a hanger in a closet, and it was endearing, but that wasn’t

why I loved it. All loves are quite pleasant, and this one, being for myself,

was especially so. Now that so much has simply dropped out of life, more

than one can take the pulse of, one isn’t sure, in this rout, this retreat

from a great city, how much of it is left in there. It seems only yesterday

that one could find cheap walkup apartments in the East 50s, and modest restaurants

such as the Cloisters, with $1.95 complete lunches, or luncheons. When was the last

time you had luncheon? The atmosphere was thinner, but more abundant, and well worth

the few extra cents. Besides, I had begun working on something like

my autobiography, I was going to distill whatever happened to me, not taking into account

the terrific things that didn’t, which were the vast majority, and maybe if I reduced it

all sufficiently, somebody would find it worth his while, i.e., exemplary. And then in the rush

to evacuate I left the precious notebook behind; there simply wasn’t time to look for it;

but I could have reconstructed it, drop by drop, from what I remembered, having

kept close watch over what went in, yet this would in some way have falsified

everything, one of the points being that one makes a show of what one rejects,

the better to flaunt what one enshrines, but that

can only happen once in the way of things happening. Yet that was more than a generation ago,

or more, depending on how you define a generation now. What are you saving it for?

And a horn screeched. Particles turn nasty. The other

is there, besides. We cannot move. The fullness in the house at night

is only a diagram (but cling to it, anyway) of where things were, and though

we can remember what things, they are gone now; only their relation

to one another subsists, and I am as a dog. It seems I can’t think. I remember once under trees

receiving the warm but peculiar and complicated presence, like Leda her swan;

I smiled convulsively and in an instant was left

somehow darkened, though the pressure

was relieved and since then has never been a problem. But I, as the other (as I now

see myself to have been), was no wiser and certainly no better

for the terrible irruption into my life. It has made everything I’ve said since

sound silly, yet I won’t debate the point, which after all is

nothing more than that a light, and some warmth, stood in my life for five minutes once

and ever afterward has remained unto me, though I often

forget it for decades at a time, yet am forgiven

when it turns up again, like a smile. These seem like facts

to me; no politics attaches to it; yet in the stalemate of centuries it could

turn once to me and utter my name. That’s all I ask. I’d be forgiven

then, and focus my energies on something more important like rebuilding our wall,

expecting nothing in return but the verdict, and then I’d go down

into the vicarious city expecting nothing but vibrations, the verdict: the one

you always said you couldn’t stay to see me get, it would be too confusing

and painful to our house, too unexpected: inexcusable. (That word.)

Last night you weren’t so sure. And it goes on:

There was once a shopping mall

at my place. Kids went to it. Mottled houseplants were sold to alert

home-makers, in that light. You could buy quantities of them

and leave them in your yard. Or mix them with others; try to get the most out of

the variety, as it sifts down to you: the great speckled hen

on the lookout, or the hyena I dreamed of last night, or salmon leaping in their beds:

all are abrupt elements in the sum listening leads to, cannot renege on

unless
you
backtrack, become the slightly less valuable person of a few minutes ago

with the feathered headdress and baubles. That one. But the sum will get lost anyway

in the crowd, unless drastic measures are taken. And who is to take them?

Because you, walking around comparison-shopping, are its infrastructure

and the only one who will bring it to the edge of a cross-section of the people’s imaginings.

See, there might be already a little canopy over the pier

but more likely not; it’s still early in the season; the river’s rank winter smell

still pierces the air’s musky crevices; the grass isn’t right and

there’s too much pre-freshness. The real thing won’t be around

for days, even weeks. And we’re supposed to get on with the project, somehow,

settle down in the logic these lines always left space for, between them, but which

was rarely visited by any save sandwich men and vagrants, more’s the pity when you see how

idle folk get well off and we stand hands clasped to breasts still worrying about the

back taxes that were never paid one year, because this isn’t forgotten by anybody

but becomes one of those rust-colored lots thieves and innocent children hang out in,

like the one where Mercury slew Argus for vulgar reasons,

reasons of his own imagining. Now that the moon’s up

they say there won’t be any rutabagas

till next year. But go on, I have to go out and fight

about it with everybody, even my superiors

in my place of employment

which is dry and casually tidy as the next person’s. Only I do so out of a great fear

the man I entered may not be enough, may thoughtlessly

send me back to the end of the line that meanders

from here to the desolate, reedy horizon. What did I ever do to resent you, open your calm

caresses like oysters? And then is it right to save them? Might I be

reading a magazine when it all happens to me, this time, and now I stand up

baffled by the sandstorm, because how did I know it was zeroing to this

ungainly end, not see any danger signs, not shut off the hose, though I am gifted

with a suit of eyes and can foretell the near future and recall the recent past? Is it

that I’m a sort of jerk?

No, oceans were hiding, waiting

on your bald spot; pencils with chewed points told us all we’d need to know

until the twenty-first century, whereupon we’d all come out of our lairs, mew

and make up. And now that doesn’t seem such a good idea, that stronghold

has got to last. Otherwise midnight and the fires

jabbering, like we were taught, will ruin all chances of an application

before it’s forwarded. And stones come down from trees. No kidding it’s a splendid

series; no way would you want to miss out on it. I have to grow though.

I must go back in time. It’s not the way you heard it

in the alley or over the transom. For though hard work is indeed

a key ingredient, no one can know the outcome until all are banished by ill will

or saved and the mongrel idiot takes the credit for it

and then sleeps, it too, for the path is what you call freckled with blemishes.

No ape nor man stands alone who knows it,

who can recite it backwards. In the orchard, and that’s the least

of my worries. I have to put you on hold again.

But what do we know? We’re not authentic crime-busters,

only pals of the accused from school. When he wrote those

seemingly contradictory rules, he never dreamed we’d end up

following them, and him, into the oblivion he decreed for us.

Now it all seems an antique space in which they talked

much as we do, feared God, forgave

each other the endless trouble someone was always causing—not that

it wasn’t justified in some instances by the confusion of late spring and early summer.

We heard each case. Then, if punishment was in order it was meted out

impartially and the whole business quickly forgotten, in the interests

of the children. Wait, there were arguments on both sides—