Sailing Alone Around the Room Read online

  And I like the first couple of stanzas,

  the way they establish this mode of self-pointing

  that runs through the whole poem

  and tells us that words are food thrown down

  on the ground for other words to eat.

  I can almost taste the tail of the snake

  in its own mouth,

  if you know what I mean.

  But what I’m not sure about is the voice,

  which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,

  but other times seems standoffish,

  professorial in the worst sense of the word

  like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.

  But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

  What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,

  especially the fourth one.

  I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges

  which gives me a very clear picture.

  And I really like how this drawbridge operator

  just appears out of the blue

  with his feet up on the iron railing

  and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—

  a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

  I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.

  Maybe it’s just me,

  but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.

  I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?

  And what’s an obbligato of snow?

  Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

  At that point I’m lost. I need help.

  The other thing that throws me off,

  and maybe this is just me,

  is the way the scene keeps shifting around.

  First, we’re in this big aerodrome

  and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,

  which makes me think this could be a dream.

  Then he takes us into his garden,

  the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,

  though that’s nice, the coiling hose,

  but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.

  The rain and the mint green light,

  that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?

  Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?

  There’s something about death going on here.

  In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here

  is really two poems, or three, or four,

  or possibly none.

  But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.

  This is where the poem wins me back,

  especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.

  I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,

  but I still love the details he uses

  when he’s describing where he lives.

  The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,

  the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,

  the spool of thread for a table.

  I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work

  night after night collecting all these things

  while the people in the house were fast asleep,

  and that gives me a very strong feeling,

  a very powerful sense of something.

  But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.

  Maybe that was just me.

  Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

  My Heart

  It has a bronze covering inlaid with silver,

  originally gilt;

  the sides are decorated with openwork zoomorphic

  panels depicting events in the history

  of an unknown religion.

  The convoluted top-piece shows a high

  level of relief articulation

  as do the interworked spirals at the edges.

  It was presumably carried in the house-shaped

  reliquary alongside it, an object of exceptional

  ornament, one of the few such pieces extant.

  The handle, worn smooth, indicates its use

  in long-forgotten rituals, perhaps

  of a sacrificial nature.

  It is engirdled with an inventive example

  of gold interlacing, no doubt of Celtic influence.

  Previously thought to be a pre-Carolingian work,

  it is now considered to be of more recent provenance,

  probably the early 1940s.

  The ball at the center, visible

  through the interstices of the lead webbing

  and the elaborate copper grillwork,

  is composed possibly of jelly

  or an early version of water,

  certainly a liquid, remarkably suspended

  within the intricate craftsmanship of its encasement.

  Budapest

  My pen moves along the page

  like the snout of a strange animal

  shaped like a human arm

  and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweater.

  I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly,

  intent as any forager that has nothing

  on its mind but the grubs and insects

  that will allow it to live another day.

  It wants only to be here tomorrow,

  dressed perhaps in the sleeve of a plaid shirt,

  nose pressed against the page,

  writing a few more dutiful lines

  while I gaze out the window and imagine Budapest

  or some other city where I have never been.

  Dancing Toward Bethlehem

  If there is only enough time in the final

  minutes of the twentieth century for one last dance

  I would like to be dancing it slowly with you,

  say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel.

  My palm would press into the small of your back

  as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile

  of mirrors or buttons or frivolous shoes,

  just as the floor of the nineteenth century gave way

  and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust.

  There will be no time to order another drink

  or worry about what was never said,

  not with the orchestra sliding into the sea

  and all our attention devoted to humming

  whatever it was they were playing.

  Monday Morning

  The complacency of this student, late

  for the final, who chews her pen for an hour,

  who sits in her sunny chair,

  with a container of coffee and an orange,

  a cockatoo swinging freely in her green mind

  as if on some drug dissolved,

  mingling to give her a wholly ancient rush.

  She dreams a little and she fears the mark

  she might well get—a catastrophe—

  as a frown darkens the hauteur of her light brow.

  The orange peels and her bright senior ring

  make her think of some procession of classmates,

  walking across the wide campus, without a sound,

  stalled for the passing of her sneakered feet

  over the lawn, to silent pals and steins,

  dorm of nobody who would bother to pull an A or care.

  Center

  At the first chink of sunrise,

  the windows on one side of the house

  are frosted with stark orange light,

  and in every pale blue window

  on the other side

  a full moon hangs, a round, white blaze.

  I look out one side, then the other,

  moving from room to room

  as if between countries or parts of my life.

  Then I stop and stand in the middle,

  extend both arms

  like Leonardo’s man, naked in a perfect circle.

  And when I begin to turn slowly

  I can feel the whole house turning with me,


  rotating free of the earth.

  The sun and moon in all the windows

  move, too, with the tips of my fingers,

  the solar system turning by degrees

  with me, morning’s egomaniac,

  turning on the hallway carpet in my slippers,

  taking the cold orange, blue, and white

  for a quiet, unhurried spin,

  all wheel and compass, axis and reel,

  as wide awake as I will ever be.

  Design

  I pour a coating of salt on the table

  and make a circle in it with my finger.

  This is the cycle of life

  I say to no one.

  This is the wheel of fortune,

  the Arctic Circle.

  This is the ring of Kerry

  and the white rose of Tralee

  I say to the ghosts of my family,

  the dead fathers,

  the aunt who drowned,

  my unborn brothers and sisters,

  my unborn children.

  This is the sun with its glittering spokes

  and the bitter moon.

  This is the absolute circle of geometry

  I say to the crack in the wall,

  to the birds who cross the window.

  This is the wheel I just invented

  to roll through the rest of my life

  I say

  touching my finger to my tongue.

  Pinup

  The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense

  that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup

  drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.

  Your ears are ringing with the sound of

  the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,

  and as you look closer you notice that this month’s

  is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing

  a straw hat and very short blue shorts,

  her shirt tied in a knot just below her breasts.

  Nor is it the one in the admiral’s cap, bending

  forward, resting her hands on a wharf piling,

  glancing over the tiny anchors on her shoulders.

  No, this is March, the month of great winds,

  so appropriately it is the one walking her dog

  along a city sidewalk on a very blustery day.

  One hand is busy keeping her hat down on her head

  and the other is grasping the little dog’s leash,

  so of course there is no hand left to push down

  her dress which is billowing up around her waist

  exposing her long stockinged legs and yes the secret

  apparatus of her garter belt. Needless to say,

  in the confusion of wind and excited dog

  the leash has wrapped itself around her ankles

  several times giving her a rather bridled

  and helpless appearance which is added to

  by the impossibly high heels she is teetering on.

  You would like to come to her rescue,

  gather up the little dog in your arms,

  untangle the leash, lead her to safety,

  and receive her bottomless gratitude, but

  the mechanic is calling you over to look

  at something under your car. It seems that he has

  run into a problem and the job is going

  to cost more than he had said and take

  much longer than he had thought.

  Well, it can’t be helped, you hear yourself say

  as you return to your place by the workbench,

  knowing that as soon as the hammering resumes

  you will slowly lift the bottom of the calendar

  just enough to reveal a glimpse of what

  the future holds in store: ah,

  the red polka-dot umbrella of April and her

  upturned palm extended coyly into the rain.

  Piano Lessons

  1

  My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back

  off to the side of the piano.

  I sit up straight on the stool.

  He begins by telling me that every key

  is like a different room

  and I am a blind man who must learn

  to walk through all twelve of them

  without hitting the furniture.

  I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.

  2

  He tells me that every scale has a shape

  and I have to learn how to hold

  each one in my hands.

  At home I practice with my eyes closed.

  C is an open book.

  D is a vase with two handles.

  G flat is a black boot.

  E has the legs of a bird.

  3

  He says the scale is the mother of the chords.

  I can see her pacing the bedroom floor

  waiting for her children to come home.

  They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting

  all the songs while couples dance slowly

  or stare at one another across tables.

  This is the way it must be. After all,

  just the right chord can bring you to tears

  but no one listens to the scales,

  no one listens to their mother.

  4

  I am doing my scales,

  the familiar anthems of childhood.

  My fingers climb the ladder of notes

  and come back down without turning around.

  Anyone walking under this open window

  would picture a girl of about ten

  sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture,

  not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled,

  like a white Horace Silver.

  5

  I am learning to play

  “It Might As Well Be Spring”

  but my left hand would rather be jingling

  the change in the darkness of my pocket

  or taking a nap on an armrest.

  I have to drag him into the music

  like a difficult and neglected child.

  This is the revenge of the one who never gets

  to hold the pen or wave good-bye,

  and now, who never gets to play the melody.

  6

  Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.

  It is the largest, heaviest,

  and most beautiful object in this house.

  I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.

  And late at night I picture it downstairs,

  this hallucination standing on three legs,

  this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

  The Blues

  Much of what is said here

  must be said twice,

  a reminder that no one

  takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

  Nobody will listen, it would seem,

  if you simply admit

  your baby left you early this morning

  she didn’t even stop to say good-bye.

  But if you sing it again

  with the help of the band

  which will now lift you to a higher,

  more ardent and beseeching key,

  people will not only listen;

  they will shift to the sympathetic

  edges of their chairs,

  moved to such acute anticipation

  by that chord and the delay that follows,

  they will not be able to sleep

  unless you release with one finger

  a scream from the throat of your guitar

  and turn your head back to the microphone

  to let them know

  you’re a hard-hearted man

  but that woman’s sure going to make you cry.

  Man in Space

  All you have to do is listen to the way a man

  sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people

  and notice how intent he is on making his point<
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  even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

  and you will know why the women in science

  fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own

  are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine

  when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

  why they are always standing in a semicircle

  with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,

  their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

  Nightclub

  You are so beautiful and I am a fool

  to be in love with you

  is a theme that keeps coming up

  in songs and poems.

  There seems to be no room for variation.

  I have never heard anyone sing

  I am so beautiful

  and you are a fool to be in love with me,

  even though this notion has surely

  crossed the minds of women and men alike.

  You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

  is another one you don’t hear.

  Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.

  That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

  For no particular reason this afternoon

  I am listening to Johnny Hartman

  whose dark voice can curl around

  the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness

  like no one else’s can.

  It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette

  someone left burning on a baby grand piano

  around three o’clock in the morning;

  smoke that billows up into the bright lights

  while out there in the darkness

  some of the beautiful fools have gathered

  around little tables to listen,

  some with their eyes closed,

  others leaning forward into the music

  as if it were holding them up,

  or twirling the loose ice in a glass,

  slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

  Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,

  borne beyond midnight,

  that has no desire to go home,

  especially now when everyone in the room

  is watching the large man with the tenor sax

  that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.

  He moves forward to the edge of the stage

  and hands the instrument down to me