Poemunity — your poem community

“Talking only makes me feel more alone,” you said once in the car outside the clinic. Two years later, you spoke the same sentence word for word one night after friends had gone. Within a month, you’d erased yourself    . . . Erased? “To absent oneself,” I found scribbled on a wrapper a year later    . . . Now sunlight and tree shadow rush over the windshield of  the car: I’m talking with my new wife — then gone,absented. “Sometimes I feel almost too much joy,” you wrote from the balcony of  your cheap hotel in Paris. “What are you thinking?” she asks. Light shutters across us. Wherever you are in me I’m there, though it’s not what you wanted.

You have not conquered me—it is the surge Of love itself that beats against my will; It is the sting of conflict, the old urge That calls me still. It is not you I love—it is the form And shadow of all lovers who have died That gives you all the freshness of a warm And unfamiliar bride. It is your name I breathe, your hands I seek; It will be you when you are gone. And yet the dream, the name I never speak, Is that that lures me on. It is the golden summons, the bright wave Of banners calling me anew; It is all beauty, perilous and grave— It is not you.

Take this: for nothing here’s chiming, vibrating and all this vainglory and self-deprecating just goads at the tender parts, gets irritating. You’ll make no advance advocating monopoly on any vocabulary; even cacophony needs the needle to make its point properly. It’s true that you find yourself fey and bewitching, yet always you feel that the itch that you’re scratching’s soothed better by far by bravadoes of bitching. The off-pat flyting, back-biting and threnody you render and throw up, at will, won’t remedy the rot of your serenading, lute-laden wannabe. You can’t see a barrier without pushing through it; it’s a poor pearl of pathos you don’t disintuit and you now give a doing when once you’d just do it. You want my advice? Here it is: try removing the self from your argument - gluts of self-loving just pudding the gut of whatever you’re proving. That’s it on the chin and I’m sure you can take it, but that shadow you’re boxing is me, so please break it gently. Best wishes, I hope that you make it.

For Hasna Henna and the Rohingya Lice? My aunt once drew a comb through my hair steady; she wouldn’t let what feeds on blood eat my inner tree. Where now is the word for such intimacy? I know it still, but all I see are jungles burnt of our rarest trees. My point is: it takes a while to say, “I am a fire hazard,” or, “a household of rare birds” is another way to say tree. I wrote one draft of this poem, then she died. Will I forget her name, Hasna Henna? Let’s smell a tree; night-blooming jasmine, o-so-heavenly! A sapling succeeds by flourishing from a tree’s seed. How else to perfume these needs we breathe? A sapling of course = a small and soft tree (i.e. baby tree). I grieve the rice she fed me off a palm leaf. Only now can I fully marvel: how finely formed is a tree! Someone I loved said to stop with the oceans in my poems — well, oceans + oceans + oceans! We drown so many trees. (Night blooming tree = baby tree = once and future tree.) Lately, all I think about are trees. Read this again to replace tree with refugee. Tarfia = joy in the margins + one who lies to protect trees.

An end is always punishment for a beginning. If you’re Catholic, sadness is punishment for happiness, you become the bug you squash if you’re Hindu, a flinty space opens in your head after a long night of laughter and wine. For waking there are dreams, from French poetry, English poetry, for light fire although sometimes fire must be punished by light which is why psychotherapy had to be invented. A father may say nothing to a son for years. A wife may keep something small folded deep in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in resembling the terrible things we believe about ourselves, a rock comes loose from a ledge, the baby just cries and cries. Doll in a chair, windshield wipers, staring off into the city lights. For years you may be unable to hear the word monkey without a stab in the heart because she called you that the summer she thought she loved you and you thought you loved someone else and everyone loved your salad dressing. And the daffodils come up in the spring and the snow covers the road in winter and the water covers the deep trenches in the sea where all the time the inner stuff of this earth surges up which is how the continents are made and broken.

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion! not in vain, By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul; Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man; But with high objects, with enduring things, With life and nature; purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying by such discipline Both pain and fear,—until we recognise A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapours rolling down the valleys made A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When, by the margin of the trembling lake, Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went In solitude, such intercourse was mine: Mine was it in the fields both day and night, And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile, The cottage-windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons: happy time It was indeed for all of us; for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud The village-clock tolled six—I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home.—All shod with steel We hissed along the polished ice, in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures,—the resounding horn, The pack loud-chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while far-distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars, Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away. Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a star; Image, that, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes, When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me—even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round! Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

The poets are going home now, After the years of exile, After the northern climates Where they worked, lectured, remembered, Where they shivered at night In an indifferent world. Where God was the god of business, And men would violate the poets’ moon, And even the heavens become zones of war. The poets are going home To the blood-haunted villages, To the crumbling walls, still pocked With a spray of bullets; To the ravine, marked with a new cross, Where their brother died. No one knows the precise spot where they shot him, But there is a place now to gather, to lay wreaths. The poets will bring flowers. The poets are coming home To the cafés, to the life of the streets at twilight, To slip among the crowds and greet their friends; Thee young poets, old now, limping, who lean on a cane: Or the arm of a grandchild, peer with opaque eyes At the frightening city, the steel and concrete towers Sprung up in their absence. Yet from open doorways comes the odor of grapes Fermented, of fish, of oil, of pimiento… The poets have come home To the melodious language That settles in their heads like moths alighting, This language for which they starved In a world of gutturals, Crude monosyllables barked by strangers. Now their own language enfolds them With its warm vocables. The poets are home. Yes, they have come back To look up at the yellow moon, Cousin of that cold orb that only reflected Their isolation. They have returned to the olives, the light, The sage-scented meadows, The whitewashed steps, the tubs of geraniums, The sere plains, the riverbanks spread with laundry, The poppies, the vineyards, the bones of mountains. Yes, poets, welcome home To your small country Riven by its little war (As the world measures these events), A country that remembers heroes and tears; Where, in your absence, souls kept themselves alive By whispering your words. Now you smile at everything, even the priests, the militia, The patient earth that is waiting to receive you.

One death comes before another. Breath and smoke. And smoke which puts out breath. And silence. But sometimes only a cigarette helps you keep your grip. And keeps its promises more quickly, too. Between yellowed fingers it burns like love becomes ashes like betrayal. Breath and smoke. The three fingers of oath curved around the cigarette: to not forswear. Giordano burns on the Campo de Fiori. The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore are still pealing for the auto-da-fé. Breath and smoke. And smoke which puts out breath. And to write with a burned hand about fire. And the borders of the German language are mined with murderous accidents. One death comes before another. * * * Ein Tod kommt vor dem andern. Atem und Rauch. Und Rauch der Atem löscht. Und Schweigen. Manchmal ist aber eine Zigarette der letzte Halt. Und hält was sie verspricht auch schneller. Zwischen vergilbten Fingern brennts wie Liebe wird Asche wie Verrat. Atem und Rauch. Die Schwurfinger gekrümmt um die Zigarette: um nicht abzuschwören. Giordano brennt auf dem Campo de Fiori. Die Glocken von Santa Maria Maggiore gellen noch immer zum Autodafé. Atem und Rauch. Und Rauch der Atem löscht. Und mit verbrannter Hand über das Feuer schreiben. Und die Grenzen der deutschen Sprache sind mit mörderischen Zufällen vermint. Ein Tod kommt dem andern zuvor.

Know Celia, since thou art so proud, 'Twas I that gave thee thy renown; Thou hadst, in the forgotten crowd Of common beauties, liv'd unknown, Had not my verse exhal'd thy name, And with it imp'd the wings of fame. That killing power is none of thine, I gave it to thy voice, and eyes; Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine; Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies; Then dart not from thy borrow'd sphere Lightning on him that fix'd thee there. Tempt me with such affrights no more, Lest what I made, I uncreate; Let fools thy mystic forms adore, I'll know thee in thy mortal state; Wise poets that wrapp'd Truth in tales, Knew her themselves, through all her veils.

A rectangular Bulova, my Zadie called a dress watch, I wore it for years, and though it gave the wrong time I treasured the sense of community it offered, the beauty of certain numerals — the seven especially, the way it leaned into its subtle work and never changed, and signified exactly what it was and no more. In dreams I learned that only the watch and the circle of ash trees surrounding me, and the grass prodding my bare feet, and of course my nakedness were necessary, though common. Just surrendering my youth, I still believed everything in dreams meant something I could parse to discover who we were. As I write these words in sepia across a lined page I have no idea why they’ve taken the shape I’ve given them, some cursive, some not, some elegantly articulated, others plain, many of no use at all. They go on working as best they can, like the Parker 51 that spent its coming of age stumbling backwards into Yiddish or the Bulova that finally threw up its twin baroque arms in surrender to the infinite and quit without a word. The Parker still works and is never to blame. On good days it works better than I, and when it leaks it leaks only ink, never a word best left unsaid. As a boy I would steal into Zadie’s bedroom, find the watch in a velvet box, wind it, hold it to each ear — back then both worked — to hear its music, the jeweled wheels and axles that kept time alive. There is still such joy in these tokens from back of beyond: the watch, the Parker pen, the tiny pocket knife he used to separate truth from lies, the ivory cigarette holder — a gift, he claimed, from FDR who mistook him for a famous Russian violinist. I could call them “Infinite riches in a little room” or go cosmic and regard them as fragments of a great mystery instead of what they are, amulets against nothing.