1269 Arts and sciences poems

For Kenneth Koch You don't need a pony to connect you to the unseeable or an airplane to connect you to the sky. Necessary it is to love to live and there are many manuals but in all important ways one is on one's own. You need not cut off your hand. No need to eat a bouquet. Your head becomes a peach pit. Your tongue a honeycomb. Necessary it is to live to love, to charge into the burning tower then charge back out and necessary it is to die. Even for the trees, even for the pony connecting you to what can't be grasped. The injured gazelle falls behind the herd. One last wild enjambment. Because of the sores in his mouth, the great poet struggles with a dumpling. His work has enlarged the world but the world is about to stop including him. He is the tower the world runs out of. When something becomes ash, there's nothing you can do to turn it back. About this, even diamonds do not lie.

Can we not force from widow'd poetry, Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust, Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour, Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day? Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense Through all our language, both the words and sense? 'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain And sober Christian precepts still retain, Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, Committed holy rapes upon our will, Did through the eye the melting heart distil, And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) Must be desir'd forever. So the fire That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death. The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage A mimic fury, when our souls must be Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line Of masculine expression, which had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore. Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim From so great disadvantage greater fame, Since to the awe of thy imperious wit Our stubborn language bends, made only fit With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout For their soft melting phrases. As in time They had the start, so did they cull the prime Buds of invention many a hundred year, And left the rifled fields, besides the fear To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands Of what is purely thine, thy only hands, (And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more Than all those times and tongues could reap before. But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be Too hard for libertines in poetry; They will repeal the goodly exil'd train Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these, The silenc'd tales o' th'Metamorphoses Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be Ador'd again, with new apostasy. Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee, More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence The death of all the arts; whose influence, Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies. So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, But some small time maintain a faint weak course, By virtue of the first impulsive force; And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile, And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. I will not draw the envy to engross All thy perfections, or weep all our loss; Those are too numerous for an elegy, And this too great to be express'd by me. Though every pen should share a distinct part, Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art; Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice I on thy tomb this epitaph incise: Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best, Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.

Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard Compose the dark, compose The illiterate summer sky & its stars as they appear One by one, above the schoolyard. If the soul had a written history, nothing would have happened: A bird would still be riding the back of a horse, And the horse would go on grazing in a field, & the gleaners, At one with the land, the wind, the sun examining Their faces, would go on working, Each moment forgotten in the swipe of a scythe. But the walls of the labyrinth have already acquired Their rose tint from the blood of slaves Crushed into the stone used to build them, & the windows Of stained glass are held in place by the shriek And sighing body of a falling chimneysweep through The baked & blackened air. This ash was once a village, That snowflake, time itself. But until the day it is permitted to curl up in a doorway, And try to sleep, the snow falling just beyond it, There’s nothing for it to do: The soul rests its head in its hands & stares out From its desk at the trash-littered schoolyard, It stays where it was left. When the window fills with pain, the soul bears witness, But it doesn’t write. Nor does it write home Having no need to, having no home. In this way, & in no other Was the soul gradually replaced by the tens of thousands Of things meant to represent it— All of which proclaimed, or else lamented, its absence. Until, in the drone of auditoriums & lecture halls, it became No more than the scraping of a branch Against the side of a house, no more than the wincing Of a patient on a couch, or the pinched, nasal tenor Of the strung-out addict’s voice, While this sound of scratching, this tapping all night, Enlarging the quiet instead of making a music within it, Is just a way of joining one thing to another, Myself to whoever it is—sitting there in the schoolroom, Sitting there while also being led through the schoolyard Where prisoners are exercising in the cold light— A way of joining or trying to join one thing to another, So that the stillness of the clouds & the sky Opening beneath the blindfold of the prisoner, & the cop Who leads him toward it, toward the blank Sail of the sky at the end of the world, are bewildered So that everything, in this moment, bewilders Them: the odd gentleness each feels in the hand Of the other, & how they don’t stop walking, not now Not for anything.

What sacramental hurt that brings The terror of the truth of things Had changed thee? Secret be it yet. ’T was thine, upon a headland set, To view no isles of man’s delight, With lyric foam in rainbow flight, But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar, Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore.

Gertrude Stein. We could end there. But we won’t. Because we want to make meaning. Of something. to say something. Of value. In order that. It’s absolutely. The professor said. Wiggling his ears. In a satisfied way. And the students all said, Amen. That’s the way with critical acclaim. Absolutely. There are rooms. There are builders. There is a clock. There is a cake. There is a rope. There is a sounding to depths. But when she dies, what then? Who knew what it all meant? And when all the modernists are dead? The critics will babble and frenzy forever to find the nouns she never wrote between the crowded verbs and adverbs.

a face stares back. across the hostile centuries. add a twist — delicious. and never feel a thing. commercial — added stretch to every gesture. how it is made. I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise. I’d be all give. Let me put it like this== in the nocturnal, recessed bed== of nettles. resembles the bird it will fly into. Right now I’m trying to open wide. she turns to a tree. she would be neither-nor. smoky field. that is space. the bride. the exdream — the world gone into god again? the night. the white between the ink. the white navel — I notice — in the O. their harsh done crust. then some inbetween? to a nuptial lace. to ever dwell again. to mask the screen in dumb expanse. touch in linen walls. Turn — her — loose — What — does not console? who could bear to save her. yes, god her saurian voice into the ground.

Since the stern art of poetry calls for words, I, morose, deaf, and balding ambassador of a more or less insignificant nation that’s stuck in this super power, wishing to spare my old brain, hand myself my own topcoat and head for the main street: to purchase the evening paper. Wind disperses the foliage. The dimness of old bulbs in these sorry quarters, whose motto’s “The mirror will please,” gives a sense of abundance supported by puddles. Even thieves here steal apples by scratching the amalgam first. Yet the feeling one gets, from one’s own sweet reflection—this feeling I’ve lost. That’s what really puzzles. Everything in these parts is geared for winter: long dreams, prison walls, overcoats, bridal dresses of whiteness that seems snowlike. Drinks. Kinds of soap matching dirt in dark corners. Sparrow vests, second hand of the watch round your wrist, puritanical mores, underwear. And, tucked in the violinists’ palms, old redwood hand warmers. This whole realm is just static. Imagining the output of lead and cast iron, and shaking your stupefied head, you recall bayonets, Cossack whips of old power. Yet the eagles land like good lodestones on the scraps. Even wicker chairs here are built mostly with bolts and with nuts, one is bound to discover. Only fish in the sea seem to know freedom’s price. Still, their muteness compels us to sit and devise cashier booths of our own. And space rises like some bill of fare. Time’s invented by death. In its search for the objects, it deals with raw vegetables first That’s why cocks are so keen on the bells chiming deafly somewhere. To exist in the Era of Deeds and to stay elevated, alert ain’t so easy, alas. Having raised a long skirt, you will find not new wonders but what you expected. And it’s not that they play Lobachevsky’s ideas by ear, but the widened horizons should narrow somewhere, and here— here’s the end of perspective. Either old Europe’s map has been swiped by the gents in plain clothes, or the famous five-sixths of remaining landmass has just lost its poor infamous colleague, or a fairy casts spells over shabby me, who knows—but I cannot escape from this place; I pour wine for myself (service here’s a disgrace), sip, and rub my old tabby. Thus the brain earned a slug, as a spot where an error occurred earns a good pointing finger. Or should I hit waterways, sort of like Christ? Anyway, in these laudable quarters, eyes dumbfounded by ice and by booze will reproach you alike for whatever you choose: traceless rails, traceless waters. Now let’s see what they say in the papers about lawsuits. “The condemned has been dealt with.” Having read this, a denizen puts on his metal-rimmed glasses that help to relate it to a man lying flat, his face down, by the wall; though he isn’t asleep. Since dreams spurn a skull that has been perforated. The keen-sightedness of our era takes root in the times which were short, in their blindness, of drawing clear lines twixt those fallen from cradles and fallen from saddles. Though there are plenty of saucers, there is no one to turn tables with to subject you, poor Rurik, to a sensible quiz; that’s what really saddens. The keen-sightedness of our days is the sort that befits the dead end whose concrete begs for spittle and not for a witty comment. Wake up a dinosaur, not a prince, to recite you the moral! Birds have feathers for penning last words, though it’s better to ask. All the innocent head has in store for itself is an ax plus the evergreen laurel. [December] 1969 Leningrad

This is not fantasy, this is our life. We are the characters who have invaded the moon, who cannot stop their computers. We are the gods who can unmake the world in seven days. Both hands are stopped at noon. We are beginning to live forever, in lightweight, aluminum bodies with numbers stamped on our backs. We dial our words like Muzak. We hear each other through water. The genre is dead. Invent something new. Invent a man and a woman naked in a garden, invent a child that will save the world, a man who carries his father out of a burning city. Invent a spool of thread that leads a hero to safety, invent an island on which he abandons the woman who saved his life with no loss of sleep over his betrayal. Invent us as we were before our bodies glittered and we stopped bleeding: invent a shepherd who kills a giant, a girl who grows into a tree, a woman who refuses to turn her back on the past and is changed to salt, a boy who steals his brother’s birthright and becomes the head of a nation. Invent real tears, hard love, slow-spoken, ancient words, difficult as a child’s first steps across a room.

Eleven o’clock, and the curtain falls. The cold wind tears the strands of illusion; The delicate music is lost In the blare of home-going crowds And a midnight paper. The night has grown martial; It meets us with blows and disaster. Even the stars have turned shrapnel, Fixed in silent explosions. And here at our door The moonlight is laid Like a drawn sword.

There, garland dandelions round that idol with a corn husk face &  beard patched with rat stubble from a barber’s dust pan, parade float driven by a carriage pulled by a pig. Two sticks knotted together, cake frost on that crude wood to make it gilt. There, spider cranks &  iron gyres, blueberry stain glass sprout like wings from coal burn cars, a trumpet toots the sorrow of another boy dead, there he is, limp on a gurney wrapped in gingham scrap, there, he’s blast. There, roofless houses, sarong utopias balloon, balloon toward the sky, while women beat, beat their skulls. I trail behind, mop in hand, sloshing scum water over memorials. There he stares at my tic-torn cankered face, &  begs for alms, his face horse rudder red. A son, he huffs, it is a son I want. I spit into them corned mitt hands.