Poems 1962-2012 (18 page)

how will it look to you I wonder

once your exile begins? I think your eyes will seek out

its light as opposed to the moon.

Apparently, after so many years, you need

distance to make plain its intensity.

Your hands on the chair, stroking

my body and the wood in exactly the same way.

Like a man who wants to feel longing again,

who prizes longing above all other emotion.

On the beach, voices of the Greek farmers,

impatient for sunrise.

As though dawn will change them

from farmers into heroes.

And before that, you are holding me because you are going away—

these are statements you are making,

not questions needing answers.

How can I know you love me

unless I see you grieve over me?

ITHACA

The beloved doesn't

need to live. The beloved

lives in the head. The loom

is for the suitors, strung up

like a harp with white shroud-thread.

He was two people.

He was the body and voice, the easy

magnetism of a living man, and then

the unfolding dream or image

shaped by the woman working the loom,

sitting there in a hall filled

with literal-minded men.

As you pity

the deceived sea that tried

to take him away forever

and took only the first,

the actual husband, you must

pity these men: they don't know

what they're looking at;

they don't know that when one loves this way

the shroud becomes a wedding dress.

TELEMACHUS' DETACHMENT

When I was a child looking

at my parents' lives, you know

what I thought? I thought

heartbreaking. Now I think

heartbreaking, but also

insane. Also

very funny.

PARABLE OF THE HOSTAGES

The Greeks are sitting on the beach

wondering what to do when the war ends. No one

wants to go home, back

to that bony island; everyone wants a little more

of what there is in Troy, more

life on the edge, that sense of every day as being

packed with surprises. But how to explain this

to the ones at home to whom

fighting a war is a plausible

excuse for absence, whereas

exploring one's capacity for diversion

is not. Well, this can be faced

later; these

are men of action, ready to leave

insight to the women and children.

Thinking things over in the hot sun, pleased

by a new strength in their forearms, which seem

more golden than they did at home, some

begin to miss their families a little,

to miss their wives, to want to see

if the war has aged them. And a few grow

slightly uneasy: what if war

is just a male version of dressing up,

a game devised to avoid

profound spiritual questions? Ah,

but it wasn't only the war. The world had begun

calling them, an opera beginning with the war's

loud chords and ending with the floating aria of the sirens.

There on the beach, discussing the various

timetables for getting home, no one believed

it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca;

no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas—oh unanswerable

affliction of the human heart: how to divide

the world's beauty into acceptable

and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,

how could the Greeks know

they were hostage already: who once

delays the journey is

already enthralled; how could they know

that of their small number

some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,

some by sleep, some by music?

RAINY MORNING

You don't love the world.

If you loved the world you'd have

images in your poems.

John loves the world. He has

a motto: judge not

lest ye be judged. Don't

argue this point

on the theory it isn't possible

to love what one refuses

to know: to refuse

speech is not

to suppress perception.

Look at John, out in the world,

running even on a miserable day

like today. Your

staying dry is like the cat's pathetic

preference for hunting dead birds: completely

consistent with your tame spiritual themes,

autumn, loss, darkness, etc.

We can all write about suffering

with our eyes closed. You should show people

more of yourself; show them your clandestine

passion for red meat.

PARABLE OF THE TRELLIS

A clematis grew at the foot of a great trellis.

Despite being

modeled on a tree, the trellis

was a human invention; every year, in May,

the green wires of the struggling vine

climbed the straightforward

trellis, and after many years

white flowers burst from the brittle wood, like

a star shower from the heart of the garden.

Enough of that ruse. We both know

how the vine grows without

the trellis, how it sneaks

along the ground; we have both seen it

flower there, the white blossoms

like headlights growing out of a snake.

This isn't what the vine wants.

Remember, to the vine, the trellis

was never an image of confinement:

this is not

diminishment or tragedy.

The vine has a dream of light:

what is life in the dirt

with its dark freedoms

compared to supported ascent?

And for a time,

every summer we could see the vine

relive this decision, thus

obscuring the wood, structure

beautiful in itself, like

a harbor or willow tree.

TELEMACHUS' GUILT

Patience of the sort my mother

practiced on my father

(which in his self-

absorption he mistook

for tribute though it was in fact

a species of rage—didn't he

ever wonder why he was

so blocked in expressing

his native abandon?): it infected

my childhood. Patiently

she fed me; patiently

she supervised the kindly

slaves who attended me, regardless

of my behavior, an assumption

I tested with increasing

violence. It seemed clear to me

that from her perspective

I didn't exist, since

my actions had

no power to disturb her: I was

the envy of my playmates.

In the decades that followed

I was proud of my father

for staying away

even if he stayed away for

the wrong reasons;

I used to smile

when my mother wept.

I hope now she could

forgive that cruelty; I hope

she understood how like

her own coldness it was,

a means of remaining

separate from what

one loves deeply.

ANNIVERSARY

I said you could snuggle. That doesn't mean

your cold feet all over my dick.

Someone should teach you how to act in bed.

What I think is you should

keep your extremities to yourself.

Look what you did—

you made the cat move.

           But I didn't want your hand there.

           I wanted your hand here.

           You should pay attention to my feet.

           You should picture them

           the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.

           Because there's a lot more where those feet come from.

MEADOWLANDS
1

I wish we went on walks

like Steven and Kathy; then

we'd be happy. You can even see it

in the dog.

           We don't have a dog.

           We have a hostile cat.

           I think Sam's

           intelligent; he

           resents being a pet.

           Why is it always family with you?

           Can't we ever be two adults?

Look how happy Captain is, how

at peace in the world. Don't you love

how he sits on the lawn, staring up at the birds? He thinks

because he's white they can't see him.

You know why they're happy? They take

the children. And you know why they can go

on walks with children? Because

they
have
children.

           They're nothing like us; they don't

           travel. That's why they have a dog.

Have you noticed how Alissa always comes back from the walks

holding something, bringing nature

into the house? Flowers in spring,

sticks in winter.

           I bet they're still taking the dog

           when the children are grown up.

           He's a young dog, practically

           a puppy.

           If we don't expect

           Sam to follow, couldn't we

           take him along?

           You could hold him.

TELEMACHUS' KINDNESS

When I was younger I felt

sorry for myself

compulsively; in practical terms,

I had no father; my mother

lived at her loom hypothesizing

her husband's erotic life; gradually

I realized no child on that island had

a different story; my trials

were the general rule, common

to all of us, a bond

among us, therefore

with humanity: what

a life my mother had, without

compassion for my father's

suffering, for a soul

ardent by nature, thus

ravaged by choice, nor had my father

any sense of her courage, subtly

expressed as inaction, being

himself prone to dramatizing,

to acting out: I found

I could share these perceptions

with my closest friends, as they shared

theirs with me, to test them,

to refine them: as a grown man

I can look at my parents

impartially and pity them both: I hope

always to be able to pity them.

PARABLE OF THE BEAST

The cat circles the kitchen

with the dead bird,

its new possession.

Someone should discuss

ethics with the cat as it

inquires into the limp bird:

in this house

we do not experience

will in this manner.

Tell that to the animal,

its teeth already

deep in the flesh of another animal.

MIDNIGHT

Speak to me, aching heart: what

ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself

weeping in the dark garage

with your sack of garbage: it is not your job

to take out the garbage, it is your job

to empty the dishwasher. You are showing off again,

exactly as you did in childhood—where

is your sporting side, your famous

ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits

the broken window, a little summer moonlight, tender

murmurs from the earth with its ready sweetnesses—

is this the way you communicate

with your husband, not answering

when he calls, or is this the way the heart

behaves when it grieves: it wants to be

alone with the garbage? If I were you,

I'd think ahead. After fifteen years,

his voice could be getting tired; some night

if you don't answer, someone else will answer.

SIREN

I became a criminal when I fell in love.

Before that I was a waitress.

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.

I wanted to marry you, I wanted

your wife to suffer.

I wanted her life to be like a play

in which all the parts are sad parts.

Does a good person

think this way? I deserve

credit for my courage—

I sat in the dark on your front porch.

Everything was clear to me:

if your wife wouldn't let you go

that proved she didn't love you.

If she loved you

wouldn't she want you happy?

I think now

if I felt less I would be

a better person. I was

a good waitress,

I could carry eight drinks.

I used to tell you my dreams.

Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus—

in the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on

is moving away. With one hand

she's waving; the other strokes

an egg carton full of babies.

The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.

MEADOWLANDS 2

Alissa isn't bringing back

sticks for the house; the sticks

belong to the dog.

MARINA

My heart was a stone wall

you broke through anyway.

My heart was an island garden

about to be trampled by you.

You didn't want my heart;

you were on your way to my body.

None of it was my fault.

You were everything to me,

not just beauty and money.

When we made love

the cat went to another bedroom.

Then you forgot me.

Not for no reason

did the stones

tremble around the walled garden:

there's nothing there now