Flow Chart: A Poem (26 page)

Knowing the rules doesn’t help, in fact it’s better if you don’t. You have to

be
in
on it already. And if you aren’t you can die very quickly, or spend the decades

shattered. Out of touch even with yourself.

How can I tell them that…or that
La Fille mal gardée
is my favorite piece of music?

I’m sorry. Look guys. In the interests of not disturbing my fragile ecological balance

I can tell you a story about something. The expression will be just right, for it will be adjusted

to the demands of the form, and the form itself shall be timeless though

hitherto unsuspected. It will take us down to about now,

though a few beautiful archaisms will be allowed to flutter in it—“complaint,”

for one. You will be amazed at how touched you will be because of it, yet

not tempted to find fault with the author for doing so superlative a job that it leaves

his willing but breathless readers on the sidelines, like people waiting for hours

beside a village street to see the cross-country bicycle riders come zipping through

in their yellow or silver liveries, and it’s all over so fast you’re not sure

you even saw it, and go home and eat a dish of plain vanilla ice cream. Noises that bit me,

would-be fanciers skulking around, after an autograph or a piece of your hair, no doubt.

And indeed there’s no point in worrying about the author’s tender feelings as he streaks along

and sees no shame in it, nor any point in your concern for his injured vanity, not that you don’t

already love him enough, more than any writer deserves. He won’t thank you for it.

But you won’t mind that either, since his literature will have performed its duty

by setting you gently down in a new place and then speeding off before

you have a chance to thank it. We’ve got to find a new name for him. “Writer” seems

totally inadequate; yet it is writing, you read it before you knew it. And besides,

if it weren’t, it wouldn’t have done the unexpected and by doing so proved that it was quite

the thing to do, and if it happened all right for you, but wasn’t the way you

thought it was going to be, why still

that is called fulfilling part of the bargain. And by doing so

he has erased your eternal debt to him. You are free. You can go now.

But the last word is always the author’s so you might want to dwell a bit

more on the perfections of form adjusted to content, and vice versa too, by Jove! The gate

to the corral is open, and he’s in there now, running around and around it

in a paroxysm of arrival that holds the attention of every last member of that little audience.

We’re interested in the language, that you call breath,

if breath is what we are to become, and we think it is, the southpaw said. Throwing her

a bone sometimes, sometimes expressing, sometimes expressing something like mild concern, the way

has been so hollowed out by travelers it has become cavernous. It leads to death.

We know that, yet for a limited time only we wish to pluck the sunflower,

transport it from where it stood, proud, erect, under a bungalow-blue sky, grasping at the sun,

and bring it inside, as all others sink into the common mold. The day

had begun inauspiciously, yet improved as it went along, until at bed-

time it was seen that we had prospered, I and thee.

Our early frustrated attempts at communicating were in any event long since dead.

Yet I had prayed for some civility from the air before setting out, as indeed my ancestors had done

and it hadn’t hurt them any. And I purposely refrained from consulting
me
,

the
culte du moi
being a dead thing, a shambles. That’s what led to me.

Early in the morning, rushing to see what has changed during the night, one stops to catch one’s breath.

The older the presence, we now see, the more it has turned into thee

with a candle at thy side. Were I to proceed as my ancestors had done

we all might be looking around now for a place to escape from death,

for he has grown older and wiser. But if it please God to let me live until my name-day

I shall place bangles at the forehead of her who becomes my poetry, showing her

teeth as she smiles, like sun-stabs through raindrops. Drawing with a finger in my bed,

she explains how it was all necessary, how it was good I didn’t break down on my way

to the showers, and afterwards when many were dead

who were thought to be living, the sun

came out for just a little while, and patted the sunflower

on its grizzled head. It likes me the way I am, thought the sunflower.

Therefore we all ought to concentrate on being more “me,”

for just as nobody could get along without the sun, the sun

would tumble from the heavens if we were to look up, still self-absorbed, and not see death.

It doesn’t matter which day of the week you decide to set out on your journey. The day

will be there. And once you are off and running, it will be there still. The breath

you decide to catch comes at the far end of that day’s slope, when her

vision is not so clear anymore. You say goodbye to her anyway, for the way

gleams up ahead. You don’t need the day to see it by. And though millions are already dead

what matters is that they didn’t break up the fight before I was able to get to thee,

to warn thee what would be done

to thee if more than one were found occupying the same bed.

Which is how we came to spend the night in the famous bed

that James VI of Scotland had once slept in. On its head the imperial sunflower

was inscribed, amid a shower of shooting stars. I say “imperial,” though by day

he was a king like any other, only a little more decent perhaps. And next morning the sun

came slashing through the crimson drapes, and I was like to have died. Although my death

would have encouraged a few, it did not happen then, or now, and still that me

as I like to call him saunters on, caring little for the others, the past a dead

letter as far as he’s concerned. So that I wrote to her

asking if
she
cared anything about the way

he was going about it, and did she know what others had done

to stop him in similar circumstances. Her reply, brought to me late at night, when no breath

of wind stirred in the treetops outside, caught me unawares. “If to thee

he offers neither apology nor protest, then for him it is a good thing. For thee,

on the contrary, it augurs ill. If I were thee I’d stay in bed

from dawn to evening, waiting, at least until the sun

disappears from our heavens and goes to hector those cringing in the house of the dead.

There can be no luck in harvest-time, no tipping of the scales, while yet he draws breath.”

I thanked her emissary and tiptoed out without telling him what I thought of her.

How extraordinary that as soon as one settles on a plan of action, whether it be day

or darkest midnight, someone will always try to discourage you, citing death

as a possible side-effect. Yet I could not, would not, dismiss my beloved boy. No way

would I proceed along the sea with no one to bounce my ideas off of but me.

And so we two rode together. It was almost late afternoon by the time we reached “The Sunflower,”

as the gigantic, decaying apartment complex was named. A noted architect had done

it right once, with open spaces, communal nurseries, walkways. Yet when he had done,

no one liked it. People refused to move in. It was cold and impersonal. To thee,

however, it seemed a paradise. The long, alienating corridors which the sun

sliced through at regular intervals were as confusing as a casbah; the dead

tennis-courts and watchtowers seemed a present sent by death

to distract you while you waited, always for her

touch. That said, there was plenty to do at night, while during the day-

long siesta one dreamed, and brooded not, and felt fairly good. No hog’s breath

stirred the rusting weeds in the little yard in front of the veranda. Like me

you too chose to put a better construction on these things than perhaps the case warranted; at any rate, bed

always solves everything, at least for the time being. I went out and plucked a sunflower

but it was empty, the birds had eaten all the seeds. Surely there’s a way

to avoid feeling lonesome
and
sorry for oneself, but up until today, no way

has opened before me, I’m
both
those things, though one would suffice. What’s done

is done, they say, yet I can’t help wondering whether, on a different day,

you might have turned around and walked back to where I was lying face down in bed

and told me all the love, all the respect you had for me, that was like a shining in you at me,

and we could have gone off to analyze our situation and add up the particulars.
Your
breath

was your own private property, of course, and you cared little for mine, but in the case of her

father being in the news and so many other officials who had turned out to be dead,

perhaps in a few years’ time we would have forgotten all that, to live, sunflower

and sun, in periods of rain and drought, as they do in Africa, and never fear the sun.

It is written, and played on the African thumb-piano, that those who to thee

go, and return, unremembering, are earmarked for a lonely, unpleasant death,

and those to whom thou goest never grumble, even at the prospect of death.

Therefore it is urgent that we all, pursuers and pursued, be moving in the common way,

for that is the only way to outwit death, none-too-clever though he may be. To thee,

I say, stand, as though on a ladder picking apricots; your back should be to the sun,

and all will pass. You’ll be satisfied, you’ll see. No need to shake the sunflower

husk for dried kernels. Indeed, all the grasses are long dead;

the reaching angles of the thorn-tree branches barely jerk erratically in the breath

of the savannah. If I thought for one instant that the day

of the week spelled out protection for me, or that my own misdeed would trickle off me

like water from a duck’s back, sure and I’d have done what any decent-minded preacher would have done:

I’d place bunches of fresh rue and meadowsweet in glass jars filled with water near the bed.

I’d point with my stick not at her sins but to the shy, closed flower of her womanhood, her

puckered glen of swansdown, and there would have been an end to it, unless her

parents had some say in the matter. We two have lasted almost until death,

and still nothing shields us from the aspirations of the sunflower;

even at night you can hear its ever-unquiet breath

that makes of life a station on some suburban railway.

Too bad you did what you did; I, meanwhile, was lying in bed

and caught the rumble of the vans of approaching day.

“This is my day, even though it belong as well to many who are dead.

I say it not in a spirit of possessiveness, only as a fact. Indeed, I pass it to thee

as generations of aspiring lovers and writers before me have done.

Look, this is what was done to me, written on me. Take it from me.”

She stood up and began to do a little dance, then as abruptly stopped, noting the sun

had passed the zenith, and was waiting to be relieved by a replacement-sun.

In all our lives I still continue to try to make headway, and though to her

what I do never makes much sense, I do it anyway, for thee.

Scratching around one is sure to uncover bits of the ancient way;

meanwhile I am reasonably well-fed, clothed and happy and spend nights in a bed

that seems beautiful to me. We used to laugh; with every breath

we’d take, some new funny thing would point a moral and adorn the day,

until at last the earth lay baking in the heat, and the sunflower

had the last laugh. “Be strong, you that are now past your prime! When you are dead

we’ll talk again and see how you understand this thing men call death,

that is in reality but a shadow of what God has done

to others, to the sun and to me.”

I awoke, yet I dreamed still. It seemed that all had been destined for me

all along, and as I had traveled in fear, and alone, always the sun

traveled with me. At night one sleeps in fear of wetting the bed

but he makes amends for that by pointing to our eventual death

as a teacher would point with a wand to the solution of a problem on a blackboard. His way

is as inscrutable as a fox’s. He brings to full bloom the cornflower and the sunflower,

then lets them slip into oblivion. Why? If I knew the answer, I wouldst tell thee,

but since thou sufferest much, I’ll vouchsafe that the way of the dead

is as a lightness to our dreaming, a sense of gaiety, of irresponsibility. She in her

longing realizes much, and would tell it to us, but the breath

is gone. Still, there’ll come a time and not too far off when all we have done

returns to charm us; we can go back, taste, repeat it any day.

So for the moment, although tomorrow is our day,

the sun shines through the meshes. You can have me

for anything I am, or want to be, and I’ll replace you with me, introduce you to the sun.

When summer calls, and people wish they only had a way,

and nights are too thick, and days have barely begun to be spoiled, I’ll riddle thee

about what we heard before we came here, how much is already done.

The moral of the story however is that the ubiquitous sunflower