Poems 1962-2012 (20 page)

to create debt.

Actual people! Actual human beings

sitting on our chairs in our living room!

I'll tell you what: I'll learn

bridge.

Don't think of them as guests, think of them

as extra chickens. You'd like it.

If we had more furniture

you'd have more control.

TELEMACHUS' BURDEN

Nothing

was exactly difficult because

routines develop, compensations

for perceived

absences and omissions. My mother

was the sort of woman

who let you know she was suffering and then

denied that suffering since in her view

suffering was what slaves did; when

I tried to console her,

to relieve her misery, she

rejected me. I now realize

if she'd been capable of honesty

she would have been

a Stoic. Unfortunately

she was a queen, she wanted it understood

at every moment she had chosen

her own destiny. She would have had to be

insane to choose that destiny. Well,

good luck to my father, in my opinion

a stupid man if he expects

his return to diminish

her isolation; perhaps

he came back for that.

PARABLE OF THE SWANS

On a small lake off

the map of the world, two

swans lived. As swans,

they spent eighty percent of the day studying

themselves in the attentive water and

twenty percent ministering to the beloved

other. Thus

their fame as lovers stems

chiefly from narcissism, which leaves

so little leisure for

more general cruising. But

fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit

slimy water; whatever the filth was, it

clung to the male's plumage, which turned

instantly gray; simultaneously,

the true purpose of his neck's

flexible design revealed itself. So much

action on the flat lake, so much

he's missed! Sooner or later in a long

life together, every couple encounters

some emergency like this, some

drama which results

in harm. This

occurs for a reason: to test

love and to demand

fresh articulation of its complex terms.

So it came to light that the male and female

flew under different banners: whereas

the male believed that love

was what one felt in one's heart

the female believed

love was what one did. But this is not

a little story about the male's

inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan's

sleazy definition of purity. It is

a story of guile and innocence. For ten years

the female studied the male; she dallied

when he slept or when he was

conveniently absorbed in the water,

while the spontaneous male

acted casually, on

the whim of the moment. On the muddy water

they bickered awhile, in the fading light,

until the bickering grew

slowly abstract, becoming

part of their song

after a little longer.

PURPLE BATHING SUIT

I like watching you garden

with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:

your back is my favorite part of you,

the part furthest away from your mouth.

You might give some thought to that mouth.

Also to the way you weed, breaking

the grass off at ground level

when you should pull it up by the roots.

How many times do I have to tell you

how the grass spreads, your little

pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which

by smoothing over the surface you have finally

fully obscured? Watching you

stare into space in the tidy

rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly

working hard while actually

doing the worst job possible, I think

you are a small irritating purple thing

and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth

because you are all that's wrong with my life

and I need you and I claim you.

PARABLE OF FAITH

Now, in twilight, on the palace steps

the king asks forgiveness of his lady.

He is not

duplicitous; he has tried to be

true to the moment; is there another way of being

true to the self?

The lady

hides her face, somewhat

assisted by shadows. She weeps

for her past; when one has a secret life,

one's tears are never explained.

Yet gladly would the king bear

the grief of his lady: his

is the generous heart,

in pain as in joy.

Do you know

what forgiveness means? It means

the world has sinned, the world

must be pardoned—

REUNION

When Odysseus has returned at last

unrecognizable to Ithaca and killed

the suitors swarming the throne room,

very delicately he signals to Telemachus

to depart: as he stood twenty years ago,

he stands now before Penelope.

On the palace floor, wide bands of sunlight turning

from gold to red. He tells her

nothing of those years, choosing to speak instead

exclusively of small things, as would be

the habit of a man and woman long together:

once she sees who he is, she will know what he's done.

And as he speaks, ah,

tenderly he touches her forearm.

THE DREAM

           I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed we were married again.

           You talked a lot. You kept saying things like
this is realistic.

           When I woke up, I started reading all my old diaries.

I thought you hated diaries.

           I keep them when I'm miserable. Anyway,

           all those years I thought we were so happy

           I had a lot of diaries.

           Do you ever think about it? Do you ever wonder

           if the whole thing was a mistake? Actually,

           half the guests said that at the wedding.

           I'll tell you something I never told you:

           I took a valium that night.

           I kept thinking of how we used to watch television,

           how I would put my feet in your lap. The cat would sit

           on top of them. Doesn't that still seem

           an image of contentment, of well-being? So

           why couldn't it go on longer?

Because it was a dream.

OTIS

A beautiful morning; nothing

died in the night.

The Lights are putting up their bean tepees.

Rebirth! Renewal! And across the yard,

very quietly, someone is playing Otis Redding.

Now the great themes

come together again: I am twenty-three, riding the subways

in pursuit of Chassler, of my lost love, clutching

my own record, because I have to hear

this exact sound no matter where I land, no matter

whose apartment—whose apartments

did I visit that summer? I have no idea

where I'm going, about to leave New York, to live

in paradise, as I have then

no concept of change, no slightest sense of what would

happen to Chassler, to obsessive need, my one thought being

the only grief that touched mine was Otis' grief.

Look, the tepees

are standing: Steven

has balanced them the first try.

Now the seeds go in, there is Anna

sitting in the dirt with the open packet.

This is the end, isn't it?

And you are here with me again, listening with me:
the sea

no longer torments me; the self

I wished to be is the self I am.

THE WISH

Remember that time you made the wish?

           I make a lot of wishes.

The time I lied to you

about the butterfly. I always wondered

what you wished for.

           What do you think I wished?

I don't know. That I'd come back,

that we'd somehow be together in the end.

           I wished for what I always wish for.

           I wished for another poem.

PARABLE OF THE GIFT

My friend gave me

a fuchsia plant, expecting

much of me, in cold April

judgment not to leave it

overnight in nature, deep

pink in its plastic

basket—I have

killed my gift, exposed

flowers in a mass of leaves,

mistaking it

for part of nature with

its many stems: what

do I do with you now,

former living thing

that last night still

resembled my friend, abundant

leaves like her fluffy hair

although the leaves had

a reddish cast: I see her

climbing the stone steps in spring dusk

holding the quivering

present in her hands, with

Eric and Daphne following

close behind, each

bearing a towel of lettuce leaves:

so much, so much to celebrate

tonight, as though she were saying

here is the world, that should be

enough to make you happy.

HEART'S DESIRE

           I want to do two things:

           I want to order meat from Lobel's

           and I want to have a party.

You hate parties. You hate

any group bigger than four.

           If I hate it

           I'll go upstairs. Also

           I'm only inviting people who can cook.

           Good cooks and all my old lovers.

           Maybe even your ex-girlfriends, except

           the exhibitionists.

If I were you,

I'd start with the meat order.

           We'll have buglights in the garden.

           When you look into people's faces

           you'll see how happy they are.

           Some are dancing, maybe

           Jasmine in her Himalayan anklet.

           When she gets tired, the bells drag.

           It will be spring again; all

           the tulips will be opening.

The point isn't whether or not

the guests are happy.

The point is whether or not

they're dead.

           Trust me: no one's

           going to be hurt again.

           For one night, affection

           will triumph over passion. The passion

           will all be in the music.

           If you can hear the music

           you can imagine the party.

           I have it all planned: first

           violent love, then

           sweetness. First
Norma

           then maybe the Lights will play.

VITA NOVA (1999)

TO

KATHRYN DAVIS

KAREN KENNERLY

and
ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT

TO

TOM
and
VERA KREILKAMP

The master said
You must write what you see.

But what I see does not move me.

The master answered
Change what you see.

VITA NOVA

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.

Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,

laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,

something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.

Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.

And by the lake's edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;

perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial

sounds or gestures like

a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother

holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed

in no detail, the moment

vivid, intact, having never been

exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age

hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green

pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time

not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet

it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

AUBADE

The world was very large. Then

the world was small. O

very small, small enough

to fit in a brain.

It had no color, it was all

interior space: nothing

got in or out. But time

seeped in anyway, that

was the tragic dimension.

I took time very seriously in those years,

if I remember accurately.

A room with a chair, a window.