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FOR B. Somewhere ahead I see you watching something out your window, what I don’t know. You’re tall, not on your tiptoes, green, no longer yellow, no longer little, little one, but the changeless changing seasons are still with us. Summer’s back, so beautiful it always reeks of ending, and now its breeze is stirring in your room commanding the lawn, trying to wake you to say the day is wasting, but you’re north of childhood now and out of here, and I’ve gone south.

It’s midnight in a drizzling fog on Sunset Avenue and we are walking through the scent of orange blossoms and past a white camellia blown down or flung by someone onto rainblack asphalt waiting for the gray Mercedes sedan to run over and smash its petals and leave us walking in the smell of Diesel exhaust with orange-blossom bouquet. Where the next blue morning and the gray Pacific meet as the Palisades fall away two sparrowhawks are beating their tapered wings in place, watching for jay or chewink to stray too far from their thorny scrub to get back— and the female suddenly towers, her wings half-close and she stoops like a dropping dagger, but down the steep slope she rockets past them and turns again into updraft to the clifftops to hover— as the jay peers out through thorns, and the lines of white surf whisper in.

I In these I find my calling: In the shower, in the mirror, in unconscious Hours spent staring at a screen At artifacts complete unto themselves. I think of them as self-sufficient worlds Where I can sojourn for a while, Then wake to find the clouds dispersing And the sidewalks steaming with the Rain that must have fallen while I stayed inside. The sun is shining, and the quiet Doubts are answered with more doubts, For as the years begin to mirror one another And the diary in the brain implodes, What filters through the theories on the page Is a kind of settledness, an equilibrium Between the life I have and what time seemed to hold— These rooms, these poems, these ordinary streets That spring to life each summer in an intricate construction Blending failed hopes and present happiness— Which from the outside seems like self-deception. There is no end to these reflections, To their measured music with its dying fall Wherein the heart and what it seeks are reconciled. I live them, and as though in gratitude They shape my days, from morning with its sweetest smile Until the hour when sleep blows out the candle. Between, the present falls away, And for a while the old romance resumes, Familiar but unrecognized, an undiscovered place Concealed within the confines of this room, That seems at once a form of feeling and a state of grace Prepared for me, written in my name Against the time when time has finally merged These commonplace surroundings with what lies behind the veil— Leaving behind at least a version of the truth Composed of what I felt and what I saw outside my window On a summer morning; melding sound and sense, A music and a mood, together in a hesitant embrace That makes them equal at the end. II There may be nothing for a poem to change But an atmosphere: conventional or strange, Its meaning is enclosed by the perception —Better, by the misperception— Of what time held and what the future knew; Which is to say this very moment. And yet the promise of a distant Purpose is what makes each moment new. There may be nothing for the soul to say In its defense, except to describe the way It came to find itself at the impasse Morning reveals in the glass— The road that led away from home to here, That began in wonderment and hope, But that ended in the long slope Down to loneliness and the fear of fear. The casuistry is all in the event, Contingent on what someone might have meant Or might still mean. What feels most frightening Is the thought that when the lightning Has subsided, and the clearing sky Appears at last above the stage To mark the only end of age, That God, that distant and unseeing eye, Would see that none of this had ever been: That none of it, apparent or unseen, Was ever real, and all the private words, Which seemed to fill the air like birds Exploding from the brush, were merely sounds Without significance or sense, Inert and dead beneath the dense Expanse of the earth in its impassive rounds. There may be no rejoinder to that thought. There may be nothing that one could have sought That might have lent the search significance, Or even a kind of coherence. Perhaps. Yet closer to me than the grandeur Of the vast and the uncreated Is the calm of this belated Moment in its transitory splendor. III Someone asked about the aura of regret And disappointment that surrounds these poems, About the private facts those feelings might conceal, And what their source was in my life. I said that none of it was personal, That as lives go my own life was a settled one, Comprising both successes and misfortunes, the successes Not especially striking, the misfortunes small. And yet the question is a real one, And not for me alone, though certainly for me. For even if, as Wittgenstein once claimed, That while the facts may stay the same And what is true of one is true of both, The happy and unhappy man inhabit different worlds, One still would want to know which world this is, And how that other one could seem so close. So much of how life feels lies in the phrasing, In the way a thought starts, then turns back upon itself Until its question hangs unanswered in the breeze. Perhaps the sadness is a way of seeming free, Of denying what can change or disappear, Of tearing free from circumstance, As though the soul could only speak out from the Safety of some private chamber in the air. Let me try once more. I think the saddest moments Are the ones that also seem most beautiful, For the nature of a moment is to fade, Leaving everything unaltered, and the landscape Where the light fell as it was before. And time makes poetry from what it takes away, And the measure of experience Is not that it be real, but that it last, And what one knows is simply what one knew, And what I want is simply what I had. These are the premises that structure what I feel, The axioms that govern my imagination, And beneath them lies the fear— Not the fear of the unknown, but the fear of growing old Unchanged, of looking in the mirror At a future that repeats itself ad infinitum. It could be otherwise so easily. The transience that lectures so insistently of loss Could speak as clearly of an openness renewed, A life made sweeter by its changing; And the shadows of the past Could seem a shade where one could linger for a while Before returning to the world, and moving on. The way would be the same in either case, Extending for an unknown span of years Experienced from two perspectives, a familiar course Accessible to all, yet narrowing, As the journey nears its end, to one. The difference isn’t in the details Or the destination, but in how things feel along the road: The secret of the quest lies all around me, While what lurks below the surface is another story, One of no more consequence or import than the last. What matters isn’t what one chances to believe, But the force of one’s attachments, And instead of looking for an answer in a dream Set aside the question, let the songs continue Going through the motions of the days And waking every morning to this single world, Whether in regret, or in celebration. IV Each day begins as yesterday began: A cat in silhouette in the dim light Of what the morning holds— Breakfast and The New York Times, a man Taking a shower, a poem taking flight As a state of mind unfolds So unpredictably. Through the hot summer air I walk to a building where I give a lecture on philosophy In the strict sense; then go home to the cat. A narrow life; or put another way, A life whose facts can all Be written on a page, the narrow format Of this tiny novel of a day, Ulysses written small, A diary so deep Its rhythms seem unreal: A solitary meal. Some records or a movie. And then sleep. V At the ending of the remake of The Thing Kurt Russell and one other guy Are all that’s left of what had been the crew Of an Antarctic outpost. Some horrifying presence —Some protean thing—establishes itself Inside the person of an ordinary man And then, without a warning, erupts in devastation. The two survivors eye each other slowly, Neither knowing whether one of them Still holds the horror. “What do we do now?” The second asks, and Russell says, “Let’s see what happens,” and the movie ends. “Horror” is too strong, but substitute the fear I spoke about before, and the scene is apt. I don’t know, as no one really knows, What might lie waiting in the years to come, But sometimes when the question touches me I feel afraid— Not of age, but an age that seems a prolongation of this afternoon, That looks ahead, and looks instead into itself. This is the fear that draws me back inside: That this is all there is, that what I hold so easily Will vanish soon, and nothing like it will be given me again. The days will linger and the nights rehearse themselves Until the secret of my life has finally emerged— Not in devastation, but in a long decline That leads at least as surely to a single end. And then I turn away and see the sky That soars above the streets of North Point North, Reducing everyone to anonymity, an anonymity In which I find a kind of possibility, a kind of freedom As the world—the only world—rolls on its way, Oblivious to anything I might say, or that might happen in a poem. A poem can seize and hold a moment fast, yet it can Limit what there is to feel, and stake a distance from the world. The neighborhood around me wakes each day to lives No different than my own, lives harboring the same ambitions And regrets, but living on the humbler stuff of happiness. The disappointments come and go; what stays Is part of an abiding presence, human and serene. The houses wait unquestioning in the light Of an approaching summer evening, while a vast Contentment answers from the air. I think I know where this is going to end, But still my pleasure is to wait— Not wait, perhaps, for anything within, But for what lies outside. Let’s see what happens.

The north wind whips through, in the streets papers and leaves are chased with resentment. Houses moan, dogs curl into balls. There is something in the afternoon’s finger, a catfish spine, a rusty nail. Someone unthinkingly smoked cigarettes in heaven, left it overcast, listless. Here, at ground level, no one could take their shadow for a walk, sheltered in their houses, people are surprised to discover their misery. Someone didn’t show, their host was insulted. Today the world agreed to open her thighs, suddenly the village comprehends that it is sometimes necessary to close their doors. Who can tell me why I meditate on this afternoon? Why is it birthed in me to knife the heart of whoever uncovered the mouth of the now whipping wind, to jam corncobs in the nose of the ghost that pants outside? The trees roar with laughter, they split their sides, they celebrate that you haven’t arrived at your appointment. Now bring me the birds that you find in the trees, so I can tell them if the devil’s eyelashes are curled.

Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer Northampton-style, on the porch out back. Its voice touches and parts the air of summer, as if  it swam to time us down a river where we dive and leave a single track as evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer that lets us wash our mix of dreams together. Delicate, tacit, we engage in our act; its voice touches and parts the air of summer. When we disentangle you are not with her I am not with him. Redress calls for tact. Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer still. A small breeze rises and the leaves stir as uneasy as we, while the woods go black; its voice touches and parts the air of summer and lets darkness enter us; our strings go slack though the player keeps up his plangent attack. Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer; its voice touches and parts the air of summer.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations The bar in the commuter station The Title: "The Northeast Corridor" In his book The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye(2007), Revell called it “a title taken from newspeak and describing that cindery ganglion of railways between Boston to the north and D.C. to the southern end.” The term is used today by Amtrak. steams like a ruin, its fourth wall open to the crowd and the fluttering timetables. In the farthest corner, the television crackles a torch song torch song A sad or sentimental love song and a beaded gown. She is my favorite singer, dead when I was born. And I have been waiting for hours for a train, exhausted between connections to small cities, awake only in my eyes finding shelter in the fluttering ribbon of shadow around the dead woman singing on the screen. Exhaustion is a last line of defense where time either stops dead or kills you. It teaches you to see what your eyes see without questions, without the politics of living in one city, dying in another. How badly I would like to sleep now in the shadows beside real things or beside things that were real once, like the beaded gown on the television, like the debut of a song in New York in black and white when my parents were there. I feel sometimes my life was used up before I was born. My eyes sear sear To burn, to whither, or to dry up backwards into my head to the makeshift of what I have already seen or heard described or dreamed about, too weary not to envy the world its useless outlines. Books of photographs of New York in the forties. The dark rhombus rhombus A four-sided shape, like a parallelogram. The window is shaped like a diamond on its side. See Wikipedia . of a window of a train rushing past my train. The dark halo around the body of a woman I love from something much farther than a distance. The world is insatiable. It takes your legs off It takes your legs off Donald Revell wrote in his book The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye(2007), “One of my favorite euphemisms is ‘legless,’ meaning drunk” , it takes your arms and parades in front of you such wonderful things, such pictures of warm houses trellised trellised An architectural term, meaning enclosed or supported. In many cases, a trellis is a kind of open latticework on which vines can grow. along the sides with green so deep it is like black air, only transparent, of women singing, of trains of lithium trains of lithium Lithium (lithium carbonate) has been used as a psychiatric medication to treat bipolar disorder and manic depression. A play on “train of thought”; as the third lightest element, “lithium” may be used to describe a lightness or airiness, complementing “transparent.” on the awakening body of a landscape or across the backdrop of an old city steaming and high-shouldered as the nineteen-forties. The world exhausts exhausts Used here in both senses: to tire and to expel exhaust everything except my eyes because it is a long walk to the world begun before I was born. In the far corner the dead woman bows off stage. The television crumples into a white dot crumples into a white dot Older tube televisions, when turned off, would have its picture quickly dissolve into a small white dot in the center of the screen as the last train of the evening, my train, is announced. I lived in one place. I want to die in another.

for Richard Hugo You hear the roadhouse before you see it, Its four-beat country tunes Amplified like surf through the woods, Silencing bullfrog and red-tailed hawk, Setting beards of moss dancing On dim, indeterminate trees That border two-lane blacktop. Docked tonight, you reveal the badge Of the farmer, that blanched expanse of skin Where cap shades face, babyhood Pallor above the sun-blackened jaw Bulging uneasy with a concrete grin And some inevitable need to weep. Don’t you think we live and breathe In the meantime, in lockstep With dawn, sunset, brawling dawn? Even now, you await secrets worse Than the few known ways a seized sky Will come to survive your pity. But on another far field, celebrated For its arrivals and evictions, you learn To be beautiful, never leading A sensible life, playing ball in the early dark, Fighting for a taste of the sweet spot, In this uncut land, this straight-edged air. Whadya want to know that isn’t yet a mystery Somewhere, a confidential stumble, heat Lightning, a first-rate backseat turndown? So it is that later you track high above Familiar tamarack and ash, beginning The next inaccuracy alone, and again, Remembering that everything east of you Has already happened, on the same cold ground, In a swarm of time, finally spiked home To your surprise, nails flung to the air. And us all thumbs to the hot hammer-licks You hear from the roadhouse before you see it.

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy. Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns: Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns. Woä—theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam; yon 's parson's 'ouse— Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse? Time to think on it then; for thou'll be twenty to weeäk. Proputty, proputty—woä then, woä—let ma 'ear mysén speäk. Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as been a'talkin' o' thee; Thou's beän talkin' to muther, an' she beän a tellin' it me. Thou'll not marry for munny—thou's sweet upo' parson's lass— Noä—thou 'll marry for luvv—an' we boäth of us thinks tha an ass. Seeä'd her todaäy goä by—Saäint's-daäy—they was ringing the bells. She's a beauty, thou thinks—an' soä is scoors o' gells, Them as 'as munny an' all—wot's a beauty?—the flower as blaws. But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws. Do'ant be stunt; taäke time. I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad. Warn't I craäzed fur the lasses mysén when I wur a lad? But I knaw'd a Quaäker feller as often 'as towd ma this: "Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!" An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy muther coom to 'and, Wi' lots o' munny laaïd by, an' a nicetish bit o' land. Maäybe she warn't a beauty—I niver giv it a thowt— But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt? Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weänt 'a nowt when 'e 's deäd, Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her breäd. Why? for 'e 's nobbut a curate, an' weänt niver get hissén clear, An' 'e maäde the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere. An' thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt, Stook to his taäil thy did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet. An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noän to lend 'im a shuvv, Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe: fur, Sammy, 'e married for luvv. Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too, Maäkin' 'em goä togither, as they've good right to do. Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause 'o 'er munny laaïd by? Naäy—fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it: reäson why. Ay, an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass, Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass. Woä then, proputty, wiltha?—an ass as near as mays nowt— Woä then, wiltha? dangtha!—the bees is as fell as owt. Breäk me a bit o' the esh for his 'eäd, lad, out o' the fence! Gentleman burn! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence? Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest If it isn't the saäme oop yonder, fur them as 'as it 's the best. Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steäls, Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taäkes their regular meäls, Noä, but it 's them as niver knaws wheer a meäl's to be 'ad. Taäke my word for it Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad. Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a beän a laäzy lot, Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got. Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id. But 'e tued an' moil'd issén dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did. Looök thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill! Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill; An' I 'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou 'll live to see; And if thou marries a good un I 'll leäve the land to thee. Thim's my noätions, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick; But if thou marries a bad un, I 'll leäve the land to Dick.— Coom oop, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'im saäy— Proputty, proputty, proputty—canter an' canter awaäy.

Wheer 'asta beän saw long and meä liggin' 'ere aloän? Noorse? thoort nowt o' a noorse: whoy, Doctor's abeän an' agoän; Says that I moänt 'a naw moor aäle; but I beänt a fool; Git ma my aäle, fur I beänt a-gawin' to breäk my rule. Doctors, they knaws nowt, fur a says what 's nawways true; Naw soort o' koind o' use to saäy the things that a do. I 've 'ed my point o' aäle ivry noight sin' I beän 'ere. An' I 've 'ed my quart ivry market-noight for foorty year. Parson 's a beän loikewoise, an' a sittin' ere o' my bed. "The amoighty 's a taäkin o' you to 'isén, my friend," a said, An' a towd ma my sins, an' s toithe were due, an' I gied it in hond; I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond. Larn'd a ma' beä. I reckons I 'annot sa mooch to larn. But a cast oop, thot a did, 'bout Bessy Marris's barne. Thaw a knaws I hallus voäted wi' Squoire an' choorch an' staäte, An' i' the woost o' toimes I wur niver agin the raäte. An' I hallus coom'd to 's choorch afoor moy Sally wur deäd, An' 'eard 'um a bummin' awaäy loike a buzzard-clock ower me 'eäd, An' I niver knaw'd whot a meän'd but a thowt ä 'ad summut to saäy. An' I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I coom'd awaäy. Bessy Marris's barne! tha knaws she laäid it to meä. Mowt a beän, mayhap, for she wur a bad un, sheä. 'Siver, I kep 'um, I kep 'um, my lass, tha mun understond; I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond. But Parson a cooms an' a goäs, an' a says it easy an' freeä: "The amoighty 's taäkin o' you to 'issén, my friend," says 'eä. I weänt saäy men be loiars, thaw summun said it in 'aäste; But 'e reäds wonn sarmin a weeäk, an' I 'a stubb'd Thurnaby waäste. D' ya moind the waäste, my lass? naw, naw, tha was not born then; Theer wur a boggle in it, I often 'eärd 'um mysén; Moäst loike a butter-bump, fur I 'eärd 'um about an' about, But I stubb'd 'um oop wi' the lot, an' raäved an' rembled 'um out. Keäper's it wur; fo' they fun 'um theer a-laäid of is' faäce Down i' the woild 'enemies afoor I coom'd to the plaäce. Noäks or Thimbleby—toäner 'ed shot 'um as dead as a naäil. Noäks wur 'ang'd for it opp at 'soize—but git ma my aäle. Dubbut looök at the waäaste; theer warn't not feeäd for a cow; Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' looök at it now— Warn't worth nowt a haäcre, an' now theer 's lots o' feeäd, Fourscoor yows upon it, an' some on it down i' seeäd. Nobbut a bit on it 's left, an' I meän'd to 'a stubb'd it at fall, Done it ta-year I meän'd, an' runn'd plow thruff it an' all, If godamoighty an' parson 'ud nobbut let ma aloän,— Meä, wi haäte hoonderd haäcre o' Squoire's, an' lond o' my oän. Do godamoighty knaw what a's doing a-taäkin' o' meä? I beänt wonn as saws 'ere a beän an yonder a peä; An' Squoire 'ull be sa mad an' all—a' dear, a' dear! And I 'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas thutty year. A mowt 'a taäen owd Joänes, as 'ant not a 'aäpoth o' sense, Or a mowt a' taäen young Robins—a niver mended a fence: But godamoighty a moost taäke meä an' taäke ma now, Wi' aäf the cows to cauve an' Thurnaby hoälms to plow! Looök 'ow quoloty smoiles when they seeäs ma a passin' boy, Says to thessén, naw doubt, "What a man a beä sewer-loy!" Fur they knaws what I beän to Squoire sin' fust a coom'd to the 'All; I done moy duty by Squoire an' I done moy duty boy hall. Squoire 's i' Lunnon, an' summun I reckons 'ull 'a to wroite, For whoa 's to howd the lond ater meä that muddles ma quoit; Sartin-sewer I beä, thot a weänt niver give it to Joänes, Naw, nor a moänt to Robins—a niver rembles the stoäns. But summun 'ull come ater meä mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steäm Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed feälds wi' the Divil's oän teäm. Sin' I mun doy I mun doy, thaw loife they says is sweet, But sin' I mun doy I mun doy, for I couldn abeär to see it. What atta stannin' theer fur, an' doesn bring me the aäle? Doctor 's a 'toättler, lass, an a's hallus i' the owd taäle; I weänt breäk rules fur Doctor, a knaws naw moor nor a floy; Git ma my aäle, I tell tha, an' if I mun doy I mun doy.

I was always a thoughtful youngster, Said the lady on the omnibus, I remember Father used to say, You are more thoughtful than us. I was sensitive too, the least thing Upset me so much, I used to cry if a fly Stuck in the hatch. Mother always said, Elsie is too good, There’ll never be another like Elsie, Touch wood. I liked to be alone, Sitting on the garden path, My brother said he’d never seen a Picture more like Faith in the Arena. They were kindly people, my people, I could not help being different, And I think it was good for me Mixing in a different element. The poor lady now burst out crying And I saw her friend was not a friend but a nurse For she said, Cheer up duckie the next stop is ours, They got off at Northumberland House. This great House of the Percies Is now a lunatic asylum, But over the gate there still stands The great Northumberland Lion. This family animal’s tail Is peculiar in that it is absolutely straight, And straight as a bar it stood out to drop after them As they went through the gate. November 1964