Flow Chart: A Poem (22 page)

should be good enough. You get A for effort, but the road to hell is paved

with good intentions. But I’ll take the blight,

thanks. I’m good at working under pressure,

as indeed we all must be
.

Sure, he was still at it by the time the others left. Some protection.

We had just time to get out. I had mislaid the thermometer. And pill. I bet

your sweet life I had to do it, to come up with something, for weren’t we all equals

under the law? And how much should I let that excuse him? Ethical questions

were never my strong suit, but I wished to pass the gravy anyway, and in that

I was successful. Never to come round here again. Listen to politics

or someone filing on the word, and then a gush as from a well

occurs and no one is fit to stretch anymore. The old bomb was

having its say, I didn’t know they allowed that, I thought it was still

that they outmoded it, sometime in the fifties. But to me, the last war

is World War II. I thought youth began then, is still going on, but for printing that

I’d be “libel” to legal action, so I pretend it’s not like my youth anymore,

that things have grown up and gray. One or two friends and I, well we

get together and talk about it no oftener than once a month. You see,

the colors are in here in the dark too, only you can’t see them, just feel them.

Don’t touch. But these are in some way more satisfying than the others,

though also more eclectic. Did I say hectic? Yes, they are that too…

The wheat was the color of old men, the robin…Well these are what I had got

to offer you; I suppose it doesn’t make any difference now because you have something new

that was not in the catalog I have. Something sweet, turning over, something unbuttoned.

But now there is no dose you can tolerate, no

sitting in the sun like a chunk of wood or a large broken fungus; it scarcely

matters which. See, I’m like you, a believer. At the same time I want to believe in things

that are endless, even though we don’t get to see them every day, that are

what color is to a colorless surface, which I believe I have inhabited

once, or once upon a time. My politics shouldn’t matter. It’s my finger

that should—it’s here I’ll take my stand. I want over and over

to tell you what we are is
digital
, that no other form exists, at least if it does it

is as a function to the other great, existing forms, and they are already published,

it seems, in places. I have no desire other than to survive the endless extremes

of heat and cold. For a dollar I could put it in the mail to you,

my little tract, but so many others wanted it and spurned it. But I’m

thinking of you anyway, shall not go away, lest another be duller

than I’m, and I’m not trusting myself to get away

except on a lawn roller moving one to two miles per hour, and that

means we shall have to change when we get there, if we’re tired, or be hired

by some straw boss and be sent to the rockpile for our pains, our talents

in getting lively others to talk about ourselves, how

they came down from Canaan in a wood car, and all was a frozen dump.

Why don’t any of you want to come back with me,

where I see, from nesting, where the tree is? Long I’ve labored…

But others come along and do the job so much quicker, I’m almost

out of breath, and arranged to go home with them for the night.

I’d like more children around,

but that’s it, not everything can be right, there must be a small hole

near the base, and all must get along, and not try to cover it

with anything. A shawl or turban would of course help.

But what does it matter if no one sees,

if there is no one to take attendance, and meanwhile the dam is overflowed

by some water, even as it comes rolling even to your feet. And what do you say

about it then, what ask for? If there are ideals in this society, let them speak

or afterward hold their peace since no job is going to get done until whoever

is here has explained the technical language in ways that I

and a chambermaid can understand. We’ve had so little help,

of late, been so understaffed, that even quite important logs

have rolled into the fireplace unbidden, and I

was never going to screw again, though there may have been error there, until the time

inscribed in colored crayons, upon the wall. And a distant

sister comes to take over, nurse you back to health and heresy

of your time, put one interest ahead of all others: staying still! Not talking! Pretty soon

it’s everyone’s job, the obligation to have a work-force be here

at times when no one else’s is. Peace, and a thread of breath: that’s all

they want; there’s no reason to be excited

by their shout. And the poor little ones get some attention; it’s as well,

you might think, and are sent off to the hills

once they have recuperated a bit from the noise and accident; oh what

disaster is closer to us today, and how do some others cope

in the meantime, until the vice-president can be here? And what cops

are talking together outside? Under the grape-arbor? Ah well it’s no more of a season

now than it ever was; this year has got to be flooded out, and then it’s

up to who can play. The morris-dances

are superseded, and others, who wish to join in, cannot. That is all what our rime is about,

we who are running, falling, reacting. In case the coat of burrs got overstated

we can sing operetta, or resurrect pliant golfers,

trying one’s hand too at vanity in order to catch everything else.

Meanwhile the meat has been prepared and divided.

It was time to climb up, to pull the ladder up, having construed pith in the latest verbal

assaults from onlookers who wished to be crowned too. And that was really all it was about:

why, then, did it get blown out of context? In another decade there’d be no duel,

no stony silence in the media, only a little sunlight and frowning

before standing up again, past true forgetting. But in the meantime

its warped head wanders; there can never be a peaceful settlement, only further

reprisals and squeamishness, each day a curdled dawn, and no one remembers

why we were angry, only that a strict vengeance must be enacted. Even those

on the deck of a steamer departing for new free ports whose stone breakwaters will not have learned

of the mystery before are like sleepwalkers amid the gaiety, the greetings: did we say

it was to end here? And the sky of late spring and promising summer, deeply

saturated as always during times of war and occupation, promises no quick unraveling

of the skein of secret misery lobbed from generation to generation, though it does promise

much in the way of atmospheres and easy repose, and so may lighten the

burden for future cliff-dwellers, when it shall be seen and printed that all our care

is quaint anachronisms or prompt-scripts for retro chic. Yet they too, followers,

become lost in ever-narrowing canyons as day wanes, unwilling

to relinquish the post of court-historian to a younger and grubbier clientele,

and so history constantly dwindles, although one can still feel remarkably fit and well-adjusted

to life in an era more decadent than anything that has preceded it. These stylized

floral motifs the world offers aren’t meant to be consumed, mindlessly,

before the waltz ends and fashion begins again; neither

is it a comment on one to have lost them, to arrive without memory at twilight,

which in any case spares no one. Blips from the maritime

provinces made it all disturbingly real: that anyone should have to die

so that we may stay on here, sodden but alive, fortunate

to be able to contemplate our mortality from a distance amid kindness

and late imperial emblems, golden dregs of another civilization

than the one we gulped down just a short time ago.

Its vanity pardons no one though, and there are other cudgels for defending

one’s secret inclination than wisps of hope, transplanted, never acclimated,

that betray you at the end. How fast the children have grown this year!

No lovers undefeated? No time to return to the technical college? Then

you should have made a promise not to seek redress. The charm can’t contain you now.

Apologies to all and sundry, and for the green that impedes

whatever I do in my writing, like a bias.
Why
hold that tiger? Or perform six other

acts before lunch, when all writing is putting aside something

in one’s lap, like a sandwich, juggling priorities? But at least in this case it went well

until the long, late-afternoon-solemn street led first

to a shiver beyond it and next to a ship absurdly bedded in the snow, like a guidepost.

And then, finally, the year’s shifting gears got to me, though I know

enough to be prepared for whatever explodes in your face. Still,

nobody amuses me anymore. I think now that in another time less would have been made

of all this. Formerly I was of a different opinion. But we moderns have to “leave our mark”

on whatever we say and do; we can let nothing pass without a comment

of some kind. Even rural lapses like water provoke us

to exquisite nitpicking, and then we don’t know where we are when we stop

for the night. It could be one of the United States, it could be a European country.

But we are so riled at what has come secretly to possess us that it can’t make any difference

to the maggot in one’s sight, the flea in one’s ear: all is basically kindling for the late

greater conflagration in which we think we shall see our destiny: our fate and death

as one. And when a shining thing approaches, rush out to meet it half-cocked

and laughing hysterically with worry. “This is my psychopomp; I ordered it!” But all that

is writing at the margin where daddy-long-legs tend to congregate. When we need

wackier prescriptions, we’ll let you know. Meanwhile, be one of those

on whom nothing is lost. Organize your thoughts in random lines and, later on

down the road, paginate them. You’ll see bluebells and cowslips on every hill; even

dragonflies will have become a thing of wonder, as long

as you don’t get too close, and let water run through it all. What the hell! We’re

in here having a fine time, our satisfaction pierces heaven’s summit, and there are only

a few more who need to be drugged or convinced. As long as we’re on this planet

the thrill never ceases. Even a garage can be a propitious place; a mechanic’s

whistle from under a car can add to the spectrum of consternation suspended, and

making faces in the weeds. As long as we are never who we are ever going to be

the bind obtains and life on the edge of a knife has its own kind of remuneration,

so tenuous is the balance that keeps one foot caught in a misunderstanding

of someone’s making. On the other

hand to walk away from it is the grave good face to austerity and fundamental

decisions that were reached long ago in the childhood of ambassadors in the nursery

of stars, and we can’t avoid our reflection in these. It’s come to get us, to take us

to the ceremony.

To the “newness” then, all subscribe, albeit with a few reservations. We have been living

in Herkimer for some time. The quiet plenitude exuded by fat, lettuce-colored stalks

is one thing, a haven, yet always in the imagination a hasp is loose,

something catches. One might, it is true, have preferred isles edged for miles and miles

with seabirds’ feathers, and a smart-looking interior. But to give up what

has been offered is not a man’s way. Similarly, when a drunken interlocutor

gets you and your best friend mixed up, the question is not whether to proceed into

the misunderstanding, but how to extend the frame

more or less grouping us as we sat before.

There was no luster then. But the suggestiveness

of both, blowhard and gawker, made it seem that a real element of choice

were sequestered, down there, near the root, as the shadow of an elegy fanned out

over the slag, enormous to this day. And just as one can remember a foreign

word but not the synonym for it in one’s own language, it became a misleading

index of one’s intelligence, just a little too imposing to be taken home

and placed on exhibit there. I talked to the governor’s men

but though I could make myself understood in any language, it was without the foundation

that hope supplies when something is going well. Further negotiations were useless.

Besides, it seemed that the cinnabar headlands were not now a convergence;

that trophies other than this one would be talked about when the time came for that,

that no more daunting voyage could have shaken the recruit’s resolve; meanwhile the press-gang

cheered on the puny efforts at repeal that I and my wimpish cohorts advocated, then

resolved to push through the ratification process. And, unfortunately, we all looked alike; hence,

no one took us seriously or thrust chicken sandwiches on us. It was all a sad day,

though a merry one insofar as we were going home, albeit unwillingly. “Unwillingly,

O queen, I left your shore.” Yet she saw that none of us left empty-handed; I still have

that souvenir, and therefore cannot decry the fate that brought me to this pass, alone,

untended, with still some forty miles to go before I can call my journey ended.