The Last Night of the Earth Poems (3 page)

 

tonight

drinking Singha

malt liquor from

Thailand

and listening to

Wagner

 

I can’t believe that

he is not in

the other

room

or around the

corner

or alive

someplace

tonight

 

and he is

of course

as I am taken

by the sound of

him

 

and little goosebumps

run along

both of my

arms

 

then a

chill

 

he’s here

 

now.

 

when Wagner was an

old man

a birthday party was given

in his

honor

and a couple of

youthful

incidental compositions

were played.

 

afterwards

he asked,

“who wrote those?”

 

“you did,” he was

told.

 

“ah,” he responded,

“it’s as I have always

suspected: death

then

does have some

virtue.”

 

will bring you people

with its ring,

people who do not know what to do with

their time

and they will ache to

infect you with

this

from a distance

(although they would prefer

to actually be in the same room

to better project their nullity upon

you).

 

the telephone is needed for

emergency purposes only.

 

these people are not

emergencies, they are

calamities.

 

I have never welcomed the ring of a

telephone.

 

“hello,” I will answer

guardedly.

 

“this is Dwight.”

 

already you can feel their imbecile

yearning to invade.

they are the people-fleas that

crawl the

psyche.

 

“yes, what is it?”

“well, I’m in town tonight and

I thought…”

 

“listen, Dwight, I’m tied up, I

can’t…”

 

“well, maybe another

time?”

 

“maybe not…”

 

each person is only given so many

evenings

and each wasted evening is

a gross violation against the

natural course of

your only

life;

besides, it leaves an aftertaste

which often lasts two or three days

depending upon the

visitor.

 

the telephone is only for

emergency purposes.

 

it has taken me

decades

but I have finally found out

how to say

“no.”

 

now

don’t be concerned for them,

please:

they will simply dial another

number.

 

it could be

yours.

“hello,” you will

say.

 

and they will say,

“this is Dwight.”

 

and then

you

be

the kind

understanding

soul.

 

like most of you, I’ve had so many jobs that

I feel as if I were gutted and my insides

thrown to the winds.

I’ve met some good people along the

way and also the

other kind.

yet when I think of all those

I have worked with—

even though decades have passed—

Karl

comes to mind

first.

 

I remember Karl: our jobs required we

both wear aprons

tied from behind and around

the neck with string.

 

I was Karl’s underling.

“we got an easy job,” he

told me.

 

each day as one by one our superiors arrived

Karl would make a slight bend at the waist,

smile, and with a nod of the head

greet each: “good morning Dr. Stein,”

or, “good morning Mr. Day” or

Mrs. Knight or if the lady was unattached

“good morning, Lilly” or Betty or Fran.

 

I never

spoke.

 

Karl seemed concerned at this and

one day he took me aside: “hey,

where the fuck else you going to get a

two hour lunch like we

do?”

 

“nowhere, I guess…”

 

“well, o.k., look, for guys like you and me,

this is as good as it can get, this is all

there is.”

 

I waited.

 

“so look, it’s hard to suck up to them at first, it

didn’t come easy for me

but after a while I realized that it

didn’t matter.

I just grew a shell.

now I’ve got my shell, got

it?”

 

I looked at him and sure enough he did look like he had

a shell, there was a mask-like look to his

face and the eyes were null, void and

undisturbed; I was looking at a weathered and

beaten conch.

 

some weeks went by.

nothing changed: Karl bowed and scraped and smiled

undaunted, perfect in his

role.

that we were
perishable,
perhaps didn’t occur to

him

or

that greater gods might be

watching.

 

I did my

work.

then, one day, Karl took me

aside again.

 

“listen, Dr. Morely spoke to me

about you.”

 

“yes?”

 

“he asked me what was wrong with

you.”

 

“what did you tell

him?”

 

“I told him that you were

young.”

 

“thanks.”

 

upon receiving my next check, I

quit

 

but

 

still

had to

eventually settle for another similar

job

and

viewing the

new Karls

I finally forgave them all

but not myself:

 

being perishable sometimes makes a

man

strange

almost

unemployable

most

obnoxious—

no servant of

free

enterprise.

 

A. Huxley died at 69,

much too early for such a

fierce talent,

and I read all his

works

but actually

Point Counter Point

did help a bit

in carrying me through

the factories and the

drunk tanks and the

unsavory

ladies.

that

book

along with Hamsun’s

Hunger

they helped a

bit.

great books are

the ones we

need.

 

I was astonished at

myself for liking the

Huxley book

but it did come from

such a rabid

beautiful

pessimistic

intellectualism,

and when I first

read
P.C.P
.

I was living in a

hotel room

with a wild and

crazy

alcoholic woman

who once threw

Pound’s
Cantos

at me

and missed,

as they did

with me.

 

I was working

as a packer

in a light fixture

plant

and once

during a drinking

bout

I told the lady,

“here, read this!”

(referring to

Point Counter

Point
.)

 

“ah, jam it up

your ass!” she

screamed at

me.

 

anyhow, 69 seemed

too early for Aldous

Huxley to

die.

but I guess it’s

just as fair

as the death of a

scrubwoman

at the same

age.

 

it’s just that

with those who

help us

get on through,

then

all that light

dying, it works the

gut a bit—

scrubwomen, cab drivers,

cops, nurses, bank

robbers, priests,

fishermen, fry cooks,

jockeys and the

like

be

damned.

 

he’s getting fatter and fatter,

almost bald

he has a wisp of hair

in the back

which he twists

and holds

with a rubber band.

 

he’s got a place in the hills

and he’s got a place in the

islands

and few people ever see

him.

some consider him the greatest

actor of our

day.

 

he has few friends, a

very few.

with them, his favorite

pastime is

eating.

 

at rare times he is reached

by telephone

usually

with an offer to act

in an exceptional (he’s

told)

motion picture.

 

he answers in a very soft

voice:

 

“oh, no, I don’t want to

make any more movies…”

“can we send you the

screenplay?”

 

“all right…”

 

then

he’s not heard from

again.

 

usually

what he and his few friends

do

after eating

(if the night is cold)

is to have a few drinks

and watch the screenplays

burn

in the fireplace.

 

or

after eating (on

warm evenings)

after a few

drinks

the screenplays

are taken

frozen

out of cold

storage.

he hands some

to his friends

keeps some

then

together

from the veranda

they toss them

like flying saucers

far out

into the spacious

canyon

below.

 

then

they all go

back in

knowing

instinctively

that the screenplays

were

bad. (at least,

he
senses it and

they

accept

that.)

 

it’s a real good

world

up there:

well-earned, self-sufficient

and

hardly

dependent

upon the

variables.

 

there’s

all that time

to eat

drink

and

wait on death

like

everybody

else.