New and Selected Poems (19 page)

 

A blur of disrobed bodies
In the moment of sweet indolence
That follows lovemaking,
When the meanest of hearts
Comes to believe
Happiness can last forever.

The butchery of the innocent
Never stops. That's about all
We can ever be sure of, love,
Even more sure than of the roast
You are bringing out of the oven.

 

It's Sunday. The congregation
Files slowly out of the church
Across the street. A good many
Carry Bibles in their hands.
It's the vague desire for truth
And the mighty fear of it
That make them turn up
Despite the glorious spring weather.

 

In the hallway, the old mutt
Just now had the honesty
To growl at his own image in the mirror,
Before lumbering off to the kitchen
Where the lamb roast sat
In your outstretched hands
Smelling of garlic and rosemary.

Gray sewage bubbling up out of street sewers
After the spring rain with the clear view
Of hawkers of quack remedies and their customers
Swarming on the Capitol steps.

 

At the National Gallery the saints' tormented faces
Suddenly made sense.
Several turned their eyes on me
As I stepped over the shiny parquetry.

 

And who and what was I, if you please?
A minor provincial grumbler on a holiday,
With hands clasped behind his back
Nodding to every stranger he meets

 

As if this were a 1950 s Fall of the Roman Empire movie set,
And we the bewildered,
Absurdly costumed, milling extras
Among the pink cherry blossoms.

And thinking with each mouthful,
Or so it appears, seated as they are
At the coffee shop counter, biting
Into thick sandwiches, chewing
And deliberating carefully before taking
Another small sip of their sodas.

 

The gray-haired counterman
Taking an order has stopped to think
With a pencil paused over his pad,
The fellow in a blue baseball cap
And the woman wearing dark glasses
Are both thoroughly baffled
As they stir and stir their coffees.

 

If they should look up, they may see
Socrates himself bending over the grill
In a stained white apron and a hat
Made out of yesterday's newspaper,
Tossing an omelet philosophically,
In a small frying pan blackened with fire.

I failed miserably at imagining nothing.
Something always came to keep me company:
A small nameless bug crossing the table,
The memory of my mother, the ringing in my ear.
I was distracted and perplexed.
A hole is invariably a hole in something.

 

About seven this morning, a lone beggar
Waited for me with his small, sickly dog
Whose eyes grew bigger on seeing me.
There goes, the eyes said, that nice man
To whom (appearances to the contrary)
Nothing in this whole wide world is sacred.

 

I was still a trifle upset entering the bakery
When an unknown woman stepped out
Of the back to wait on me dressed for a night
On the town in a low-cut, tight-fitting black dress.
Her face was solemn, her eyes averted,
While she placed a muffin in my hand,
As if all along she knew what I was thinking.

There may be words left
On the blackboard
In that gray schoolhouse
Shut for the winter break.

 

Someone was called upon
To wipe them off
And then the bell rang,
The eraser stayed where it was
Next to the chalk.

 

None of them knew
You'd be passing by this morning
With your eyes raised
As if recollecting
With a thrill of apprehension

 

Something improbable
That alone makes us possible
As it makes you possible
In this fleeting moment
Before the lights change.

for Derek Walcott

 

For surely, there's no difficulty in understanding
The unreality of an occasional customer
Such as ourselves seated at one of the many tables
As pale as the cloth that covers them.

 

Time in its augmentations and diminutions,
Does not concern these two in the least.
They stand side by side facing the street,
Wearing identical white jackets and fixed smiles,

 

Ready to incline their heads in welcome
Should one of us come through the door
After reading the high-priced menu on this street
Of many hunched figures and raised collars.

The plastic statue of the Virgin
On top of a bedroom dresser
With a blackened mirror
From a bad-dream grooming salon.

 

Two pebbles from the grave of a rock star,
A small, grinning wind-up monkey,
A bronze Egyptian coin
And a red movie-ticket stub.

 

A splotch of sunlight on the framed
Communion photograph of a boy
With the eyes of someone
Who will drown in a lake real soon.

 

An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.

I'm just a storefront dentist
Extracting a blackened tooth at midnight.

 

I chewed on many bitter truths, Doc,
My patient says after he spits the blood out

 

Still slumped over, gray-haired
And smelling of carrion like me.

 

Of course, I may be the only one here,
And this is a mirror trick I'm performing.

 

Even the few small crumpled bills
He leaves on the way out, I don't believe in.

 

I may pluck them with a pair of wet pincers
And count them, and then I may not.

Then there's aesthetic paradox
Which notes that someone else's tragedy
Often strikes the casual viewer
With the feeling of happiness.

 

There was the sight of squatters' shacks,
Naked children and lean dogs running
On what looked like a town dump,
The smallest one hopping after them on crutches.

 

All of a sudden we were in a tunnel.
The wheels ground our thoughts
Back and forth as if they were gravel.
Before long we found ourselves on a beach,
The water blue, the sky cloudless.

 

Seaside villas, palm trees, white sand;
A woman in a red bikini waved to us
As if she knew each one of us
Individually and was sorry to see us
Heading so quickly into another tunnel.

He let the whole world know
What he thought of his master's stunt.
People threw rocks at him,
But he went on barking.

 

A hot day's listlessness
Spread over the sea and the sky.
Not even a single gull
To commemorate the event.

 

Finally, he called it quits and went
To sniff around some bushes,
Vanishing for a moment,
Then reappearing somewhere else,

 

Wagging his tail happily as he went
Down the long, sandy beach,
Now and then stopping to pee
And take one more look at the sky.

Munching on pages edged in gold
In dust-covered Gideon Bibles
With their tales of God's wrath
And punishment for the wicked
In musty drawers of slummy motels,

 

While the thin-legged suicide
Draws a steaming bath with a razor in hand,
And the gray-haired car thief
Presses his face on the windowpane
Pockmarked with evening rain.

This one kept its dignity
Despite being kicked
And smudged with hands.

 

Now the whole neighborhood
Can see what went on last night.
Someone wanted to get in

 

Real bad and kept pounding
With clenched fists,
Asking God to be his witness.

 

•

 

This door's hinges
Give off a nasty squeak
To alert the neighbors.

 

Some fellow with an
It-pays-to-be-cagey look on his face
Just snuck out.

 

Yelps of a kicked dog
And wild laughter
Followed after him.

 

I heard a screen door
Creak open at daybreak
And what sounded like stage whisper
While someone let the cat in

 

Where it rubbed itself
Against two bare legs
And then went and took its first lick
From a saucer of milk.

At the close of a sweltering night,
I found him at the entrance
Of a bank building made of blue glass,
Crumpled on his side, naked,
Shielding his crotch with both hands,

 

The missing one, missed by no one,
As all the truly destitute are,
His rags rolled up into a pillow,
His mouth open as if he were dead,
Or recalling some debauchery.

 

Insomnia and the heat drove me out early,
Made me turn down one street
Instead of another and saw him
Stretched there, crusted with dirt,
His feet bruised and swollen.

 

The lone yellow cab idled at the light
With windows down, the sleepy driver
Threw him a glance, shook his head
And drove down the deserted avenue
The rising sun had made beautiful.

This is where all our joyrides ended:
Our fathers at the wheel, our mothers
With picnic baskets on their knees
As we sat in the back with our mouths open.

 

We were driving straight into the sunrise.
The country was flat. A city rose before us,
Its windows burning with the setting sun.
All that vanished as we quit the highway
And rolled down a dusky meadow
Strewn with beer cans and candy wrappers,
Till we came to a stop right here.

 

First the radio preacher lost his voice,
Then our four tires went flat.
The springs popped out of the upholstery
Like a nest of rattlesnakes
As we tried to remain calm.
Later that night we heard giggles
Out of a junked hearse—then, not a peep
Till the day of the Resurrection.

It's just a boarded-up shack with a steeple
Under the blazing summer sky
On a back road seldom traveled
Where the shadows of tall trees
Graze peacefully like a row of gallows,
And crows with no carrion in sight
Caw to each other of better days.

 

The congregation may still be at prayer.
Farm folk from flyspecked photos
Standing in rows with their heads bowed
As if listening to your approaching steps.
So slow they are, they must be asking themselves
How come we are here one minute
And in the very next gone forever?

 

Try the locked door, then knock once.
The crows will stay out of sight.
High above you, there is the leaning spire
Still feeling the blow of the last storm.
And then the silence of the afternoon . . .
Even the unbeliever must feel its force.

I only have faith in you, Mr. Worm.
You are efficient and dependable
As you go about your grim business.
There's a carcass of a dead cat
Waiting for you in a roadside ditch,

 

And cries from an outdoor birthday party
As one young girl spins and falls
With a blindfold over her eyes
Underneath some trees festooned
With pennants and Chinese lanterns.

 

A stroke of lightning and a few raindrops
Is all it took to make them run indoors
And restore the peace in their yard,
So you could take cover under a leaf
And go over your appointment book,

 

Cross out a name here and there,
Ponder an address or two and set out
In your slow way to pay someone a visit
Among the rich scents of summer night
And the sky brimming with stars.

The great labor was always to efface oneself,
Reappear as something entirely different:
The pillow of a young woman in love,
A ball of lint pretending to be a spider.

 

Black boredoms of rainy country nights
Thumbing the writings of illustrious adepts
Offering advice on how to proceed with the transmutation
Of a figment of time into eternity.
The true master, one of them counseled,
Needs a hundred years to perfect his art.

 

In the meantime, the small arcana of the frying pan,
The smell of olive oil and garlic wafting
From room to empty room, the black cat
Rubbing herself against your bare leg
While you shuffle toward the distant light
And the tinkle of glasses in the kitchen.