The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems Page 3

  but the long whistling through the dark—

  no basement, no boy,

  no everlasting summer afternoon.

  Building with Its Face Blown Off

  How suddenly the private

  is revealed in a bombed-out city,

  how the blue and white striped wallpaper

  of a second story bedroom is now

  exposed to the lightly falling snow

  as if the room had answered the explosion

  wearing only its striped pajamas.

  Some neighbors and soldiers

  poke around in the rubble below

  and stare up at the hanging staircase,

  the portrait of a grandfather,

  a door dangling from a single hinge.

  And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed

  by its uncovered ochre walls,

  the twisted mess of its plumbing,

  the sink sinking to its knees,

  the ripped shower curtain,

  the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

  It’s like a dollhouse view

  as if a child on its knees could reach in

  and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

  Or it might be a room on a stage

  in a play with no characters,

  no dialogue or audience,

  no beginning, middle and end—

  just the broken furniture in the street,

  a shoe among the cinder blocks,

  a light snow still falling

  on a distant steeple, and people

  crossing a bridge that still stands.

  And beyond that—crows in a tree,

  the statue of a leader on a horse,

  and clouds that look like smoke,

  and even farther on, in another country

  on a blanket under a shade tree,

  a man pouring wine into two glasses

  and a woman sliding out

  the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper

  filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

  Special Glasses

  I had to send away for them

  because they are not available in any store.

  They look the same as any sunglasses

  with a light tint and silvery frames,

  but instead of filtering out the harmful

  rays of the sun,

  they filter out the harmful sight of you—

  you on the approach,

  you waiting at my bus stop,

  you, face in the evening window.

  Every morning I put them on

  and step out the side door

  whistling a melody of thanks to my nose

  and my ears for holding them in place, just so,

  singing a song of gratitude

  to the lens grinder at his heavy bench

  and to the very lenses themselves

  because they allow it all to come in, all but you.

  How they know the difference

  between the green hedges, the stone walls,

  and you is beyond me,

  yet the schoolbuses flashing in the rain

  do come in, as well as the postman waving

  and the mother and daughter dogs next door,

  and then there is the tea kettle

  about to play its chord—

  everything sailing right in but you, girl.

  Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,

  but not the mosquito,

  and as water swirls down the drain,

  but not the eggshell,

  so the flowering trellis and the moon

  pass through my special glasses, but not you.

  Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,

  as I lay my special glasses on the night table,

  pull the chain on the lamp,

  and say a prayer—unlike the song—

  that I will not see you in my dreams.

  THREE

  The Lanyard

  The other day as I was ricocheting slowly

  off the pale blue walls of this room,

  bouncing from typewriter to piano,

  from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

  I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

  where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

  No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

  could send one more suddenly into the past—

  a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

  by a deep Adirondack lake

  learning how to braid thin plastic strips

  into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

  I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

  or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

  but that did not keep me from crossing

  strand over strand again and again

  until I had made a boxy

  red and white lanyard for my mother.

  She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

  and I gave her a lanyard.

  She nursed me in many a sickroom,

  lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,

  set cold face-cloths on my forehead,

  and then led me out into the airy light

  and taught me to walk and swim,

  and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

  Here are thousands of meals, she said,

  and here is clothing and a good education.

  And here is your lanyard, I replied,

  which I made with a little help from a counselor.

  Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

  strong legs, bones and teeth,

  and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

  and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

  And here, I wish to say to her now,

  is a smaller gift—not the archaic truth

  that you can never repay your mother,

  but the rueful admission that when she took

  the two-tone lanyard from my hands,

  I was as sure as a boy could be

  that this useless, worthless thing I wove

  out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

  Boy Shooting at a Statue

  It was late afternoon,

  the beginning of winter, a light snow,

  and I was the only one in the small park

  to witness the lone boy running

  in circles around the base of a bronze statue.

  I could not read the carved name

  of the statesman who loomed above,

  one hand on his cold hip,

  but as the boy ran, head down,

  he would point a finger at the statue

  and pull an imaginary trigger

  imitating the sounds of rapid gunfire.

  Evening thickened, the mercury sank,

  but the boy kept running in the circle

  of his footprints in the snow

  shooting blindly into the air.

  History will never find a way to end,

  I thought, as I left the park by the north gate

  and walked slowly home

  returning to the station of my desk

  where the sheets of paper I wrote on

  were like pieces of glass

  through which I could see

  hundreds of dark birds circling in the sky below.

  Genius

  was what they called you in high school

  if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall

  and all your books went flying.

  Or if you walked into an open locker door,

  you would be known as Einstein,

  who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.

  Later, genius became someone

  who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi

  a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,

  or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,

  or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,

  or spinning out a little
night music.

  But earlier this week on a wooded path,

  I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir

  were the true geniuses,

  the ones who had figured out how to fly,

  how to be both beautiful and brutal,

  and how to mate for life.

  Twenty-four geniuses in all,

  for I numbered them as Yeats had done,

  deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—

  forty-eight if we count their white reflections,

  or an even fifty if you want to throw in me

  and the dog running up ahead,

  who were at least smart enough to be out

  that day—she sniffing the ground,

  me with my head up in the bright morning air.

  The Student

  My poetry instruction book,

  which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river,

  contains many rules

  about what to avoid and what to follow.

  More than two people in a poem

  is a crowd, is one.

  Mention what clothes you are wearing

  as you compose, is another.

  Avoid the word vortex,

  the word velvety, and the word cicada.

  When at a loss for an ending,

  have some brown hens standing in the rain.

  Never admit that you revise.

  And—always keep your poem in one season.

  I try to be mindful,

  but in these last days of summer

  whenever I look up from my page

  and see a burn-mark of yellow leaves,

  I think of the icy winds

  that will soon be knifing through my jacket.

  Reaper

  As I drove north along a country road

  on a bright spring morning

  I caught the look of a man on the roadside

  who was carrying an enormous scythe on his shoulder.

  He was not wearing a long black cloak

  with a hood to conceal his skull—

  rather a torn white tee-shirt

  and a pair of loose khaki trousers.

  But still, as I flew past him,

  he turned and met my glance

  as if I had an appointment in Samarra,

  not just the usual lunch at the Raccoon Lodge.

  There was no sign I could give him

  in that instant—no casual wave,

  or thumbs-up, no two-fingered V

  that would ease the jolt of fear

  whose voltage ran from my ankles

  to my scalp—just the glimpse,

  the split-second lock of the pupils

  like catching the eye of a stranger on a passing train.

  And there was nothing to do

  but keep driving, turn off the radio,

  and notice how white the houses were,

  how red the barns, and green the sloping fields.

  The Order of the Day

  A morning after a week of rain

  and the sun shot down through the branches

  into the tall, bare windows.

  The brindled cat rolled over on his back,

  and I could hear you in the kitchen

  grinding coffee beans into a powder.

  Everything seemed especially vivid

  because I knew we were all going to die,

  first the cat, then you, then me,

  then somewhat later the liquefied sun

  was the order I was envisioning.

  But then again, you never really know.

  The cat had a fiercely healthy look,

  his coat so bristling and electric

  I wondered what you had been feeding him

  and what you had been feeding me

  as I turned a corner

  and beheld you out there on the sunny deck

  lost in exercise, running in place,

  knees lifted high, skin glistening—

  and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours.

  Constellations

  Yes, that’s Orion over there,

  the three studs of the belt

  clearly lined up just off the horizon.

  And if you turn around you can see

  Gemini, very visible tonight,

  the twins looking off into space as usual.

  That cluster a little higher in the sky

  is Cassiopeia sitting in her astral chair

  if I’m not mistaken.

  And directly overhead,

  isn’t that Virginia Woolf

  slipping along the River Ouse

  in her inflatable canoe?

  See the wide-brimmed hat and there,

  the outline of the paddle, raised and dripping stars?

  The Drive

  There were four of us in the car

  early that summer evening,

  short-hopping from one place to another,

  thrown together by a light toss of circumstance.

  I was in the backseat

  directly behind the driver who was talking

  about one thing and another

  while his wife smiled quietly at the windshield.

  I was happy to be paying attention

  to the rows of tall hedges

  and the gravel driveways we were passing

  and then the yellow signs on the roadside stores.

  It was only when he began to belittle you

  that I found myself shifting my focus

  to the back of his head,

  a head that was large and expansively bald.

  As he continued talking

  and the car continued along the highway,

  I began to divide his head into sections

  by means of dotted lines,

  the kind you see on the diagram of a steer.

  Only here, I was not interested in short loin,

  rump, shank, or sirloin tip,

  but curious about what region of his cranium

  housed the hard nugget of his malice.

  Tom, my friend, you would have enjoyed the sight—

  the car turning this way and that,

  the sunlight low in the trees,

  the man going on about your many failings,

  and me sitting quietly behind him

  wearing my white butcher’s apron

  and my small, regulation butcher’s hat.

  On Not Finding You at Home

  Usually you appear at the front door

  when you hear my steps on the gravel,

  but today the door was closed,

  not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney.

  I peered into a window

  but there was nothing but a table with a comb,

  some yellow flowers in a glass of water

  and dark shadows in the corners of the room.

  I stood for a while under the big tree

  and listened to the wind and the birds,

  your wind and your birds,

  your dark green woods beyond the clearing.

  This is not what it is like to be you,

  I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds

  flew over the rooftop.

  It is just me thinking about being you.

  And before I headed back down the hill,

  I walked in a circle around your house,

  making an invisible line

  which you would have to cross before dark.

  The Centrifuge

  It is difficult to describe what we felt

  after we paid the admission,

  entered the aluminum dome,

  and stood there with our mouths open

  before the machine itself,

  what we had only read about in the papers.

  Huge and glistening it was

  but bolted down and giving nothing away.

  What did it mean?

  we all openly wondered,

  and did another machine exist somewhere else—

  an even might
ier one—

  that was designed to be its exact opposite?

  These were not new questions,

  but we asked them earnestly and repeatedly.

  Later, when we were home again—

  a family of six having tea—

  we raised these questions once more,

  knowing that this made us part

  of a great historical discussion

  that included science

  as well as literature and the weather

  not to mention the lodger downstairs,

  who, someone said,

  had been seen earlier leaving the house

  with a suitcase and a tightly furled umbrella.