Poems 1962-2012 (10 page)

set on a table. I was not to hear

the one say to the other

how best to arouse me,

with what words, what gestures,

nor to hear the description of my body,

how it responded, what

it would not do. My back was turned.

I studied the voices, soon distinguishing

the first, which was deeper, closer,

from that of the replacement.

For all I know, this happens

every night: somebody waking me, then

the first teaching the second.

What happens afterward

occurs far from the world, at a depth

where only the dream matters

and the bond with any one soul

is meaningless; you throw it away.

SUMMER

Remember the days of our first happiness,

how strong we were, how dazed by passion,

lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,

sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,

it seemed everything had ripened

at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.

Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that?

The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting

far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing.

First the sun, then the moon, in fragments,

shone through the willow.

Things anyone could see.

Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool;

the pendant leaves of the willow

yellowed and fell. And in each of us began

a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this,

of the absence of regret.

We were artists again, my husband.

We could resume the journey.

III

THE REPROACH

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

On a high hill you made

his clear gaze;

my heart was not

so hard as your arrow.

What is a poet

without dreams?

I lie awake; I feel

actual flesh upon me,

meaning to silence me—

Outside, in the blackness

over the olive trees,

a few stars.

I think this is a bitter insult:

that I prefer to walk

the coiled paths of the garden,

to walk beside the river

glittering with drops

of mercury. I like to lie

in the wet grass beside the river,

running away, Eros,

not openly, with other men,

but discreetly, coldly—

All my life

I have worshiped the wrong gods.

When I watch the trees

on the other side,

the arrow in my heart

is like one of them,

swaying and quivering.

THE END OF THE WORLD

1.
Terra Nova

A place without associations—

Where, in the other country, there were mountains

so the mind was made to discover

words for containment, and so on,

here there was water, an extension of the brilliant city.

As for detail: where there had been, before,

nurturing slopes of grass on which, at evening or before rain,

the Charolais would lie, their many eyes

affixed to the traveler, here

there was clay. And yet it blossomed astoundingly:

beside the house, camellia, periwinkle, rosemary in crushing profusion—

in his heart, he was a lover again,

calling
now, now,
not restricted

to
once
or
in the old days.
He lay on his back in the wild fennel.

But in fact he was an old man.

Sixty years ago, he took his mother's hand. It was May, his birthday.

They were walking in the orchard, in the continuous present,

gathering apple blossoms. Then she wanted him to watch the sun;

they had to stand together as it sank in the possessive earth.

How short it seemed, that lifetime of waiting—

this red star blazing over the bay

was all the light of his childhood

that had followed him here.

2.
The Tribute

In that period of strange calm

he wandered down stone steps to the wide harbor:

he was moved; the lights of the city moved him deeply

and it seemed the earth was being offered to him

as a source of awe—he had no wish to change.

He had written, he had built his temple.

So he justified a need to sacrifice.

He leaned against the railing: in the dark bay, he saw the city waver;

cells of light floated on the water, they rocked gently, held by white threads.

Behind him, on the steps, he heard a man and woman

arguing with great intensity.

In a poem, he could bring them together

like two pieces of a broken toy that could be joined again—

Then the voices ceased, replaced by sighs, rustlings, the little sounds

of which he had no knowledge

though the wind persisted

in conveying them to where he stood,

and with them all the odors of summer.

3.
The End of the World

It is difficult to describe, coming as it still does

to each person at a different time.

Unique, terrible—and in the sky, uncanny brilliance

substituting for the humanizing sun.

So the blessed kneel, the lucky who expect nothing,

while those who loved the world

are returned by suffering

to what precedes attachment, namely

hatred of pain. Now the bitter are confirmed

in loneliness: they watch the winter sun

mockingly lower itself over the bare earth,

making nothing live—in this light

god approaches the dying.

Not the true god, of course. There is no god

who will save one man.

THE MOUNTAIN

My students look at me expectantly.

I explain to them that the life of art is a life

of endless labor. Their expressions

hardly change; they need to know

a little more about endless labor.

So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,

how he was doomed to push

a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing

would come of this effort

but that he would repeat it

indefinitely. I tell them

there is joy in this, in the artist's life,

that one eludes

judgment, and as I speak

I am secretly pushing a rock myself,

slyly pushing it up the steep

face of a mountain. Why do I lie

to these children? They aren't listening,

they aren't deceived, their fingers

tapping at the wooden desks—

So I retract

the myth; I tell them it occurs

in hell, and that the artist lies

because he is obsessed with attainment,

that he perceives the summit

as that place where he will live forever,

a place about to be

transformed by his burden: with every breath,

I am standing at the top of the mountain.

Both my hands are free. And the rock has added

height to the mountain.

A PARABLE

It was an epoch of heroes.

So this young boy, this nobody,

making his way from one plain to another,

picks up a small stone among the cold, unspecified

rocks of the hillside. It is a pleasant day.

At his feet, normal vegetation, the few white flowers

like stars, the leaves woolly, sage-green:

at the bottom of the hill are corpses.

Who is the enemy? Who has distributed

the compact bodies of the Jews

in this unprecedented silence? Disguised in dirt,

the scattered army sees the beast, Goliath,

towering above the childish shepherd.

They shut their eyes. And all the level earth

becomes the shattered surface of a sea, so disruptive

is that fall. In the ensuing dust, David

lifts his hand: then it is his, the hushed,

completed kingdom—

Fellow Jews, to plot a hero's journey

is to trace a mountain: hero to god, god to ruler.

At the precipice, the moment we don't want to hear about—

the stone is gone; now

the hand is the weapon.

On the palace roof, King David stares across

the shining city of Jerusalem

into the face of Bathsheba and perceives

his own amplified desire. At heart, he feels nothing.

She is like a flower in a tub of water. Above his head,

the clouds move. And it comes to him he has attained

all he is capable of dreaming.

DAY WITHOUT NIGHT

The angel of god pushed the child's hand

away from the jewels, toward the burning coal.

 

1.

The image

of truth is fire: it mounts

the fortress of heaven.

Have you never felt

its obvious power?

Even a child

is capable of this joy.

Apparently,

a like sun

burns in hell. It
is
hell,

day without night.

2.

It was as though Pharaoh's daughter

had brought home a lion cub

and for a few weeks

passed it off as a cat.

You did not press this woman.

She said she came upon

a child in the rushes;

each time she told the story,

her handmaidens recreated

their interminable chorus of sighs.

It had to be:

A little prince. A little lion cub.

3.

And then with almost no encouragement

a sign came: for awhile

the child is like

a grandson to Pharaoh.

Then he squirms; on Pharaoh's lap

he reaches for the crown of Egypt—

4.

So Pharaoh set before the child

two trays, one of rubies, one of burning embers:

Light of my heart, the world

is set before you:

fire on either side, fire

without alternative—

5.

It was like a magic act: all you saw

was the child move; the same hand that took

such active interest in

the wealth of Egypt showed

this sudden preference for a pile of coal.

You never saw the actual angel.

And to complete the act,

the child maimed himself—

And a cry arose,

almost as though a person

were in hell,

where there is nothing to do

but see—

6.

Moses

lay in the rushes:

he could see

only in one direction,

his perspective being

narrowed by the basket.

What he saw

was great light, like

a wing hovering.

And god said to him,

“You can be the favored one,

the one who tastes fire

and cannot speak,

or you can die now

and let the others

stay in Egypt: tell them

it was better to die in Egypt,

better to litter the river

with your corpse, than face

a new world.”

7.

It was as though a soul emerged,

independent of the angel,

a conscious being choosing

not to enter paradise—

at the same time, the true

sun was setting.

As it touched the water

by necessity the mirrored sun rose

to meet it from

the depths of the river:

Then the cry ended.

Or was hidden

in the stammering

of the redeemer—

8.

The context

of truth is darkness: it sweeps

the deserts of Israel.

Are you taken in

by lights, by illusions?

Here is your path to god,

who has no name, whose hand

is invisible: a trick

of moonlight on the dark water.

ELMS

All day I tried to distinguish

need from desire. Now, in the dark,

I feel only bitter sadness for us,

the builders, the planers of wood,

because I have been looking

steadily at these elms

and seen the process that creates

the writhing, stationary tree

is torment, and have understood

it will make no forms but twisted forms.

ADULT GRIEF

—
for E. V.

Because you were foolish enough to love one place,

now you are homeless, an orphan

in a succession of shelters.

You did not prepare yourself sufficiently.

Before your eyes, two people were becoming old;

I could have told you two deaths were coming.

There has never been a parent

kept alive by a child's love.

Now, of course, it's too late—

you were trapped in the romance of fidelity.

You kept going back, clinging

to two people you hardly recognized

after what they'd endured.

If once you could have saved yourself,

now that time's past: you were obstinate, pathetically

blind to change. Now you have nothing:

for you, home is a cemetery.

I've seen you press your face against the granite markers—

you are the lichen, trying to grow there.

But you will not grow,

you will not let yourself

obliterate anything.

HAWK'S SHADOW

Embracing in the road

for some reason I no longer remember

and then drawing apart, seeing

that shape ahead—how close was it?

We looked up to where the hawk

hovered with its kill; I watched them

veering toward West Hill, casting

their one shadow in the dirt, the all-inclusive