Poemunity — your poem community

Seeing in crowded restaurants the one you love You wave at the door, tall girl in imperious fur, And make for him, bumping waiters, dropping a glove, Arriving soft with affectionate slur. As ladies half-turn, gazing, and men appraise You heap the linen with purse, scarf, cigarettes, lighter, Laughing some instantaneous droll phrase. As if sudden sun came out, the table is brighter. All moods: at a party everybody’s delight; Intent while brown curls shadow the serious page; When people are stuffy (more correct than right) The stamp and turn on heel of a little girl’s rage. But woman mostly, as winter moonlight sees, Impetuous midnight, and the dune’s dark trees.

Or is it a poor trait I am a parasite I lift off the wings of others

She has no need to fear the fall Of harvest from the laddered reach Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing From the steep beach. Nor hold to pain's effrontery Her body's bulwark, stern and savage, Nor be a glass, where to forsee Another's ravage. What she has gathered, and what lost, She will not find to lose again. She is possessed by time, who once Was loved by men.

The age demanded an image of its accelerated grimace —Ezra Pound Idiot Wind, Blowin' every time you move your teeth —Bob Dylan You were energized by your epoch. The difference between a harmless nut—John Doe, Jane Doe, plain Jane, practically any mediocrity—standing on a beach and the same harmless nut riding a wave of (now) cultural self-righteousness about to tube. A tsunami armed with thunderbolts. Empowered—yea, packing. You played everything to the sympathetic studio theater of your hearers, a chorus-cum-sounding-board. They were your doo-wop boys and girls, your clique and claque and Marshall stack. The church hall chairs scraped, the cheap black crepe backdrop rustled “cutting edge” at you. You paid attention to how they oohed and aahed for you, and then pantomime hissed, and balled their fists and bayed for blood: the half-lustful half-men betraying their half-gender when they weren’t speculating what you were like in bed, the frightened girls who’d never seen anything like you but thought it might be fun (after Goth) to be a Maenad, the Pharisaic mothers going home to their chilly fires, their dim, furtive, put-upon husbands and their neo-feral offspring with a “there but for the grace of God” on their bony lips.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things, Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else. You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind —   with one thought less, each year. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit Hours, where something might have floated up. And now you pay one.   Yes, you richly pay. You are a person of some interest, one comes to you And takes strange gain away: Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion; Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two, Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else That might prove useful and yet never proves, That never fits a corner or shows use, Or finds its hour upon the loom of days: The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work; Idols and ambergris and rare inlays, These are your riches, your great store; and yet For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things, Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff: In the slow float of differing light and deep, No! there is nothing! In the whole and all, Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you.

Three items in an envelope. A photograph of two, four, six, eight, nine boys boarding a bus. Not boys, men. Dressed in the long wool coat of winter. Something “based on the life of.” What can a moment outlast? That question becomes a theory, theorem, mechanism. Three boys, one girl, a tree brushing back air off her forehead. Paper, six clean sheets, a monogrammed envelope. An index. The physical bias to existence becomes some wedge, the inexact value of an empire of ether. Tick-tick. The amphibian emerges from water, walks off stage. It’s as if evolution is embodied in absence. Someone is lying on her back. She turns over. Her breath is in the air. Or in the idea of atmosphere.

When his owner died in 2000 and a new family moved into their Moscow apartment, he went to live with mongrels in the park. In summer there was plenty of food, kids often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff. He didn’t have a big appetite, still missing his old guy. He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him, and he didn’t burn calories chasing them around. Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park. The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him but the minute he started rummaging in the overturned garbage container, a voice in his head said: “No, Rex!” The remnants of a good upbringing lower our natural survival skills. I met him again in the early spring of 2001. He looked terrific. Turning gray became him. His dark shepherd eyes were perfectly bright, like those of a puppy. I asked him how he sustained himself in this new free-market situation when even the human species suffered from malnutrition. In response he told me his story; how at first he thought that life without his man wasn’t worth it, how those who petted him when he was a pet then turned away from him, and how one night he had a revelation. His man came to him in his sleep, tapped him on his skinny neck and said: “Let’s go shopping!” So the next morning he took the subway and went to the street market where they used to go together every Sunday and where vendors recognized him and fed him to his heart’s content. “Perhaps you should move closer to that area?” I ventured.—“No, I’ll stay here,” he sighed, “oldies shouldn’t change their topography. That’s what my man said.” Indeed, he sounded like one himself.

Rebuked, she turned and ran uphill to the barn. Anger, the inner arsonist, held a match to her brain. She observed her life: against her will it survived the unwavering flame. The barn was empty of animals. Only a swallow tilted near the beams, and bats hung from the rafters the roof sagged between. Her breath became steady where, years past, the farmer cooled the big tin amphoræ of milk. The stone trough was still filled with water: she watched it and received its calm. So it is when we retreat in anger: we think we burn alone and there is no balm. Then water enters, though it makes no sound.

Thou hast committed — Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. ( The Jew of Malta ) I Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do— With "I have saved this afternoon for you"; And four wax candles in the darkened room, Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid. We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips. "So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room." —And so the conversation slips Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins Mingled with remote cornets And begins. "You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you — Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!" Among the winding of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." — Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments, Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks. II Now that lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in her fingers while she talks. "Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks) "You let it flow from you, you let it flow, And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see." I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea. "Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful, after all." The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune Of a broken violin on an August afternoon: "I am always sure that you understand My feelings, always sure that you feel, Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand. You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel. You will go on, and when you have prevailed You can say: at this point many a one has failed. But what have I, but what have I, my friend, To give you, what can you receive from me? Only the friendship and the sympathy Of one about to reach her journey's end. I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ...." I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends For what she has said to me? You will see me any morning in the park Reading the comics and the sporting page. Particularly I remark. An English countess goes upon the stage. A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance, Another bank defaulter has confessed. I keep my countenance, I remain self-possessed Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired Reiterates some worn-out common song With the smell of hyacinths across the garden Recalling things that other people have desired. Are these ideas right or wrong? III The October night comes down; returning as before Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees. "And so you are going abroad; and when do you return? But that's a useless question. You hardly know when you are coming back, You will find so much to learn." My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac. "Perhaps you can write to me." My self-possession flares up for a second; This is as I had reckoned. "I have been wondering frequently of late (But our beginnings never know our ends!) Why we have not developed into friends." I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark Suddenly, his expression in a glass. My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark. "For everybody said so, all our friends, They all were sure our feelings would relate So closely! I myself can hardly understand. We must leave it now to fate. You will write, at any rate. Perhaps it is not too late. I shall sit here, serving tea to friends." And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression ... dance, dance Like a dancing bear, Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance— Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose; Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand With the smoke coming down above the housetops; Doubtful, for quite a while Not knowing what to feel or if I understand Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ... Would she not have the advantage, after all? This music is successful with a "dying fall" Now that we talk of dying— And should I have the right to smile?

Oh down at the tavern the children are singing around their round table and around me still. Did you hear what it said? I only said how there is a pewter urn pinned to the tavern wall, as old as old is able to be and be there still. I said, the poets are there I hear them singing and lying around their round table and around me still. Across the room is a wreath made of a corpse’s hair, framed in glass on the wall, as old as old is able to be and be remembered still. Did you hear what it said? I only said how I want to be there and I would sing my songs with the liars and my lies with all the singers. And I would, and I would but it’s my hair in the hair wreath, my cup pinned to the tavern wall, my dusty face they sing beneath. Poets are sitting in my kitchen. Why do these poets lie? Why do children get children and Did you hear what it said? I only said how I want to be there, Oh, down at the tavern where the prophets are singing around their round table until they are still.