The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (4 page)

 

I pick up the skirt,

I pick up the sparkling beads

in black,

this thing that moved once

around flesh,

and I call God a liar,

I say anything that moved

like that

or knew

my name

could never die

in the common verity of dying,

and I pick

up her lovely

dress,

all her loveliness gone,

and I speak

to all the gods,

Jewish gods, Christ-gods,

chips of blinking things,

idols, pills, bread,

fathoms, risks,

knowledgeable surrender,

rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad

without a chance,

hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,

I lean upon this,

I lean on all of this

and I know:

her dress upon my arm:

but

they will not

give her back to me.

 

 

it should have been Mexico

she always liked Mexico

and Arizona and New Mexico

and tacos,

but not the flies

and so there I was

standing there—

durable

visible

clothed

waiting.

 

 

the priest was angry:

he had been arguing with the boy

for several days

over his mother’s right to have a

Catholic burial

and they finally settled

that it could not be in

church

but he would say the

thing at the grave.

the priest cared about

technicalities

the son did not care

except about the

bill.

 

 

I was the

lover

and I cared but what I cared for

was dead.

 

 

there were just 3 of

us: son,

landlady,

lover. it was

hot. the priest waved his words

in the air and

then he was

done. I walked to the

priest and thanked him for the

words.

and we walked

off

we got into the car

we drove away.

 

 

it should have been Mexico

or Uruguay or hell.

the son let me out at my

place and said he’d write me about a

stone but I knew he was lying—

that if there was to be a stone

the lover would

put it there.

 

 

I went upstairs and turned on the

radio and pulled down the

shades.

 

 

the swans drown in bilge water,

take down the signs,

test the poisons,

barricade the cow

from the bull,

the peony from the sun,

take the lavender kisses from my night,

put the symphonies out on the streets

like beggars,

get the nails ready,

flog the backs of the saints,

stun frogs and mice for the cat,

burn the enthralling paintings,

piss on the dawn,

my love

is dead.

 

 

225 days under grass

and you know more than I.

 

 

they have long taken your blood,

you are a dry stick in a basket.

 

 

is this how it works?

 

 

in this room

the hours of love

still make shadows.

 

 

when you left

you took almost

everything.

 

 

I kneel in the nights

before tigers

that will not let me be.

 

 

what you were

will not happen again.

 

 

the tigers have found me

and I do not care.

 

 

I could tell by the crouch of the cat,

the way it was flattened,

that it was insane with prey;

and when my car came upon it,

it rose in the twilight

and made off

with bird in mouth,

a very large bird, gray,

the wings down like broken love,

the fangs in,

life still there

but not much,

not very much.

 

 

the broken love-bird

the cat walks in my mind

and I cannot make him out:

the phone rings,

I answer a voice,

but I see him again and again,

and the loose wings

the loose gray wings,

and this thing held

in a head that knows no mercy;

it is the world, it is ours;

I put the phone down

and the cat-sides of the room

come in upon me

and I would scream,

but they have places for people

who scream;

and the cat walks

the cat walks forever

in my brain.

 

 

O ants crawl my drunken arms

and they let Van Gogh sit in a cornfield

and take Life out of the world with a

shotgun,

ants crawl my drunken arms

and they set Rimbaud

to running guns and looking under rocks

for gold,

O ants crawl my drunken arms,

they put Pound in a nuthouse

and made Crane jump into the sea

in his pajamas,

ants, ants crawl my drunken arms

as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays

instead of Bach,

ants crawl my drunken arms

through the drink I reach

for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers

and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack

from the table

or a dead Sunday bull,

and the ants crawl into my mouth

and down my throat,

I wash them down with wine

and pull up the shades

and they are on the screen

and on the streets

climbing church towers

and into tire casings

looking for something else

to eat.

 

 

Markov claims I am trying

to stab his soul

but I’d prefer his wife.

 

 

I put my feet on the coffee table

and he says,

I don’t mind you putting

your feet on the coffee table

except that the legs are wobbly

and the thing

will fall apart

any minute.

 

 

I leave my feet on the table

but I’d prefer his wife.

 

 

I would rather, says Markov,

entertain a ditch-digger

or a newsvendor

because they are kind enough

to observe the decencies

even though

they don’t know

Rimbaud from rat poison.

 

 

my empty beercan

rolls to the floor.

 

 

that I must die

bothers me less than

a straw, says Markov,

my part of the game

is that I must live

the best I can.

 

 

I grab his wife as she walks by,

and then her can is against my belly,

and she has fine knees and breasts

and I kiss her.

 

 

it is not so bad, being old, he says,

a calmness sets in, but here’s the catch:

to keep calmness and deadness

separate; never to look upon youth

as inferior because you are old,

never to look upon age as wisdom

because you have experience. a

man can be old and a fool—

many are, a man can be young

and wise—few are. a—

 

 

for Christ’s all sake, I wailed,

shut up!

 

 

he walked over and got his cane and

walked out.

 

 

you’ve hurt his feelings, she said,

he thinks you are a great poet.

 

 

he’s too slick for me, I said,

he’s too wise.

 

 

I had one of her breasts out.

it was a monstrous

beautiful

thing.

 

 

and the windows opened that night,

a ceiling dripped the sweat

of a tin god,

and I sat eating a watermelon,

all false red,

water like slow running of rusty

tears,

and I spit out seeds

and swallowed seeds,

and I kept thinking

I am a fool

I am a fool

to eat this watermelon,

but I kept eating

anyhow.

 

 

Of all the iron beds in paradise

yours was the most cruel

and I was smoke in your mirror

and you sluiced your hair with jade,

but you were a woman and I was a

boy, but boy enough for an iron bed

and man enough for wine

and you.

 

 

now I am a man,

man enough for all,

and you are, you

are

old

 

 

not now so cruel,

 

 

now your iron bed

is empty.

 

 

Hugo Wolf went mad while eating an onion

and writing his 253rd song; it was rainy

April and the worms came out of the ground

humming Tannhäuser, and he spilled his milk

with his ink, and his blood fell out to the walls

and he howled and he roared and he screamed, and

downstairs

his landlady said, I
knew
it, that rotten son

of a

bitch has dummied up his brain, he’s jacked-off

his last piece

of music and now I’ll never get the rent, and someday

he’ll be famous

and they’ll bury him in the rain, but right now

I wish he’d shut

up that god damned screaming—for my money he’s

a silly pansy jackass

and when they move him out of here, I hope they

move in a good solid fisherman

or a hangman

or a seller of

Biblical tracts.