New and Selected Poems (20 page)

 

 

 

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It never had a name,
Nor do I remember how I found it.
I carried it in my pocket
Like a lost button
Except it wasn't a button.

 

Horror movies,
All-night cafeterias,
Dark barrooms
And poolhalls,
On rain-slicked streets.

 

It led a quiet, unremarkable existence
Like a shadow in a dream,
An angel on a pin,
And then it vanished.
The years passed with their row

 

Of nameless stations,
Till somebody told me
this is it!
And fool that I was,
I got off on an empty platform
With no town in sight.

For imaginary visitors, I had a chair
Made of cane I found in the trash.
There was a hole where its seat was
And its legs were wobbly
But it still gave a dignified appearance.

 

I myself never sat in it, though
With the help of a pillow one could do that
Carefully, with knees drawn together
The way she did once,
Leaning back to laugh at her discomfort.

 

The lamp on the night table
Did what it could to bestow
An air of mystery to the room.
There was a mirror, too, that made
Everything waver as in a fishbowl

 

If I happened to look that way,
Red-nosed, about to sneeze,
With a thick wool cap pulled over my ears,
Reading some Russian in bed,
Worrying about my soul, I'm sure.

I'm still living at all the old addresses,
Wearing dark glasses even indoors,
On the hush-hush sharing my bed
With phantoms, visiting the kitchen

 

After midnight to check the faucet.
I'm late for school, and when I get there
No one seems to recognize me.
I sit disowned, sequestered and withdrawn.

 

These small shops open only at night
Where I make my unobtrusive purchases,
These back-door movie houses in seedy neighborhoods
Still showing grainy films of my life.

 

The hero always full of extravagant hope
Losing it all in the end?—whatever it was—
Then walking out into the cold, disbelieving light
Waiting close-lipped at the exit.

We were never formally introduced.
I had no idea of their number.
It was like a discreet entourage
Of homegrown angels and demons
All of whom I had met before
And had since largely forgotten.

 

In time of danger, they made themselves scarce.
Where did they all vanish to?
I asked some felon one night
While he held a knife to my throat,
But he was spooked too,
Letting me go without a word.

 

It was disconcerting, downright frightening
To be reminded of one's solitude,
Like opening a children's book—
With nothing better to do—reading about stars,
How they can afford to spend centuries
Traveling our way on a glint of light.

A large stock of past lives
To rummage through
For the one that fits you
Cleaned and newly pressed,
Yet frayed at the collar.

 

A dummy dressed in black
Is at the door to serve you.
His eyes won't let you go.
His mustache looks drawn
With a tip of a dead cigar.

 

Towers of pants are tilting,
As you turn to flee,
Dead men's hats are rolling
On the floor, hurrying
To escort you out the door.

I'll go to the island of Cythera
On foot, of course,
I'll set out some May evening,
Light as a feather,
There where the goddess is fabled to have risen
Naked from the sea—

 

I'll jump over a park fence
Right where the lilacs are blooming
And the trees are feverish with new leaves.
The swing I saw in a painting once
Is surely here somewhere?

 

And so is the one in a long white dress,
With eyes blindfolded
Who gropes her way down a winding path
Among her masked companions
Wearing black capes and carrying daggers.

 

This is all a dream, fellows,
I'll say after they empty my pockets.
And so are you, my love,
Carrying a Chinese lantern
And running off with my wallet
In the descending darkness.

Lovers hold hands in never-opened novels.
The page with a recipe for cucumber soup is missing.
A dead man writes of his happy childhood on a farm,
Of riding in a balloon over Lake Erie.

 

A sudden draft shuts his book in my hand,
While a philosopher asks how is it possible
To maintain the theologically orthodox doctrine
Of eternal punishment of the damned?

 

Let's see. There may be sand among the pages
Of a travel guide to Egypt or even a dead flea
That once bit the ass of the mysterious Abigail
Who scribbled her name teasingly with an eye pencil.

Another grim-lipped day coming our way
Like a gray soldier
From the Civil War monument
Footloose on a narrow country road
With few homes lately foreclosed,
Their windows the color of rain puddles
About to freeze, their yards choked
With weeds and rusty cars.

 

Small hills like mounds of ashes
Of your dead cigar, general,
Standing bewhiskered and surveying
What the light is in no hurry
To fall upon, including, of course,
Your wound, red and bubbling
Like an accordion, as you raise your saber
To threaten the clouds in the sky.

As if you had a message for me . . .
Tell me about the grains of dust
On my night table?
Is any one of them worth your trouble?

 

Your burglaries leave no thumbprint.
Mine, too, are silent.
I do my best imagining at night,
And you do yours with the help of shadows.

 

Like conspirators hatching a plot,
They withdrew one by one
Into corners of the room.
Leaving me the sole witness
Of your burning oratory.

 

If you did say something, I'm none the wiser.
The breakfast finished,
The coffee dregs were unenlightening.
Like a lion cage at feeding time—
The floor at my feet had turned red.

My neighbor was telling me
About her blind cat
Who goes out at night—
Goes where? I asked.

 

Just then my dead mother called me in
To wash my hands
Because supper was on the table:
The little mouse the cat caught.

“I was lucky to have a Bible with me.
When the space aliens abducted me . . .”

 

America, I shouted at the radio,
Even at 2
A.M.
you are a loony bin!

 

No, I take it back!
You are a stone angel in the cemetery

 

Listening to the geese in the sky,
Your eyes blinded by snow.

A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,
That's me, dear reader!
They were about to kick me out of the library
But I warned them,
My master is invisible and all-powerful.
Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.

 

In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.
On a bench, I saw an old woman
Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors
While staring into a small pocket mirror.

 

I didn't say anything then,
But that night I lay slumped on the floor,
Chewing on a pencil,
Sighing from time to time,
Growling, too, at something out there
I could not bring myself to name.

The cows are to be slaughtered
And the sheep, too, of course.
The same for the hogs sighing in their pens—
And as for the chickens,

 

Two have been killed for dinner tonight,
While the rest peck side by side
As the shadows lengthen in the yard
And bales of hay turn gold in the fields.

 

One cow has stopped grazing
And has looked up puzzled
Seeing a little white cloud
Trot off like a calf into the sunset.

 

On the porch someone has pressed
A rocking chair into service
But we can't tell who it is—a stranger,
Or that boy of ours who never has anything to say?

The translator is a close reader.
He wears thick glasses
As he peers out the window
At the snowy fields and bushes
That are like a sheet of paper
Covered with quick scribble
In a language he knows well enough,
Without knowing any words in it,

 

Only what the eyes discern,
And the heart intuits of its idiom.
So quiet now, not even a faint
Rustle of a page being turned
In a white and wordless dictionary
For the translator to avail himself
Before whatever words are left
Grow obscure in the coming darkness.

You were always more real to me than God.
Setting up the props for a tragedy,
Hammering the nails in
With only a few close friends invited to watch.

 

Just to be neighborly, you made a pretty girl lame,
Ran over a child with a motorcycle.
I can think of many other examples.
Ditto: How the two of us keep meeting.

 

A fortunetelling gumball machine in Chinatown
May have the answer,
An old creaky door opening in a horror film,
A pack of cards I left on a beach.

 

I can feel you snuggle close to me at night,
With your hot breath, your cold hands—
And me already like an old piano
Dangling out of a window at the end of a rope.

Little candy in death's candy shop,
I gave your sugar a lick
When no one was looking,
Took you for a ride on my tongue
To all the secret places,

 

Trying to appear above suspicion
As I went about inspecting the confectionary,
Greeting the owner with a nod
With you safely tucked away
And melting to nothing in my mouth.

Because few here recall the old wars,
The burning of Atlanta and Dresden,
The great-uncle who lies in Arlington,
Or that Vietnam vet on crutches
Who tries to bum a dime or a cigarette.

 

The lake is still in the early-morning light.
The road winds; I slow down to let
A small, furry animal cross in a hurry.
The few remaining wisps of fog
Are like smoke rising out of cannons.

 

In one little town flags fly over dark houses.
Outside a church made of gray stone,
The statue of the Virgin blesses the day.
Her son is inside afraid to light a candle,
Saying,
Forgive one another, clothe the naked.

 

Niobe and her children may live here.
As for me, I don't know where I am—
And here I'm already leaving in a hurry
Down a stretch of road with little to see,
Dark woods everywhere closing in on me.

Never-yet-equaled, wide-screen blockbuster
That grew more and more muddled
After a spectacular opening shot.
The pace, even for the most patient
Killingly slow despite the promise
Of a show-stopping, eye-popping ending:
The sudden shriveling of the whole
To its teensy starting point, erasing all—
Including this bag of popcorn we are sharing.

 

Yes, an intriguing but finally irritating
Puzzle with no answer forthcoming tonight
From the large cast of stars and galaxies
In what may be called a prodigious
Expenditure of time, money and talent.
“Let's get the fuck out of here,” I said
Just as her upraised eyes grew moist
And she confided to me, much too loudly,
“I have never seen anything so beautiful.”