1269 Arts and sciences poems

They have set aside their black tin boxes, scratched and dented, spattered with drops of pink and blue; and their dried-up, rolled-up tubes of alizarin crimson, chrome green, zinc white, and ultramarine; their vials half full of gold powder; stubs of wax pencils; frayed brushes with tooth-bitten shafts; and have gone in fashion and with grace into the clouds of loose, lush roses, narcissus, pansies, columbine, on teapots, chocolate pots, saucers and cups, the good Haviland dishes spread like a garden on the white lace Sunday cloth, as if their souls were bees and the world had been nothing but flowers.

To make a Chinese poem in English we must allow the silence to creep in around the edges, to define the words the way the sky’s negative space in a painting defines the mountains. —Tony Barnstone, “The Poem Behind the Poem” To make a Japanese poem in English we must allow the silence to creep up upon us the way the ninja stalks and strangles his unsuspecting victim. To make an Indian poem in English we must allow the waters of language to rise and drown us like the Ganges until we are reborn in a more accessible form. To make a French poem in English we must impale ourselves upon the Tour Eiffel until our bloodcurdling screams evoke that sublime je ne sais quoi. To make a Spanish poem in English we must let ourselves be gored by the charging bull of poesy as we run like idiots through the streets waving to our friends' cameras. To make an American poem in English we must level the mountains of language with dynamite and in the rubble build an ethnic theme park of charming accents and seething quiet. To make an American poem Chinese we must silence its creepy edges and raise an iron-built mountain that mirrors our own negation to us as if it were gold.

In the film that doesn’t begin and never ends, a man wakes, drives to a country farmhouse where he finds the guests he knows from his recurring dream, each telling their own strange tale to him, the architect called in to pitch his new design—a fratricidal son, that ventriloquist whose dummy mouths his life— progressive horror, till from his nightmare the man wakes, drives to a country farmhouse where he finds the guests he knows from his recurring dream. . . . So with Dead of Night, Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle wake to their design, the universe a Steady State, a cloud that never moves from its mountaintop, one droplet added for every one lost. Or like our own bodies freshened cell by cell, creation continuous, God-less, and atoms bred from atoms from alchemical stars. You drive with Hoyle in the hills above Montalcino, the cloth merchant’s son, outspoken, caustic, truant, who would label you comically “The Big Bang Man,” arguing the probabilities: “What matter, Fred, creates itself?” “Nothing, my dear Georges, then in an instant a universe?” All that is, is, is spinning on a pencil point. And you in his dinner portrait of you, a Friday fast, coveting his steak, the enormous, undesired fish appearing to stay the same size however much you eat.

So much I thought was only personal, like poetry, like caring nothing for Caillebotte the man, like arriving in Chicago by bus one gray morning and having no place to go, going to the Art Institute and the rain outside became nothing next to the glorious gray of Paris, life-size. The artist dead and all my life, I thought, I've liked right things for wrong reasons. My sojourn among meticulous dreams continued. One summer I spent among smart children taking lessons and abuse from the famous mathematician who taught old words new:point, line, between. And the long nights of teaching each other other words, our fortunate failures. And the furious wind blew down from time to time among us, hurricanes which turned live oaks inside out like little minds, mine, for instance, finding its fervent mode. Remember that you, too, could live where men spit while watching you and your mother pass. That you want her for yourself alone. Remember that those men are tall as God at such moments, more mean. So walk among them, the afternoon cooling within its limits, the mosquitoes taking equally from black and white, true and false. But there was a peninsula of time I lived on when our family poverty left me the couch to sleep on, the great clock ticking terror through the night. Who can love through his childhood insomnia? Only rain could save me–those blessed gray nights of noise, when sleep, like Ali Baba's quartered brother, was sewn back together.

I mean, who isn’t heating up for the next life on the order of Antoine Doinel, or a pot of unsweetened chocolate. Beginning with a single window and the sense that what we know outgrows everything except a headache or the desk dreaming on its own. It doesn’t matter if being upright brings living beings closer to the lives they lead (one’s 26-year-old self smokes a cigar but isn’t a desperado) nor is beginning a poem with someone’s wrath a means of stepping outside the Self as though volume equalled flesh tones — any more than the Epic of the Roast Chicken with Lyonnaise Potatoes and Greens takes over the above-ground, colors and smells aside.

Whenever I have a day off, I write a new poem. Does this mean you shouldn’t work, or that you write best on your day off? For example, this is the poem I wrote today. * When he was 20, he understood some of the secrets of life, and undertook to write them down so simply that even an idiot could understand. “For,” he reasoned, “if I can’t do that, I don’t understand it myself.” He proved himself right. When he was 50, he didn’t understand it himself. * “Why is it,” he said, “that no matter what you say, a woman always takes it personally?” “I never do,” she said. * John said, “Then I met that short fat guy with the neat little beard, with a name like dawn.” “You mean George Abend?” “Yeah.” “Abend means evening.” *

I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last being but a broken man I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show, Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. II What can I but enumerate old themes, First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams, Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose, Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems, That might adorn old songs or courtly shows; But what cared I that set him on to ride, I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride. And then a counter-truth filled out its play, `The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it, She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it. I thought my dear must her own soul destroy So did fanaticism and hate enslave it, And this brought forth a dream and soon enough This dream itself had all my thought and love. And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea; Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said It was the dream itself enchanted me: Character isolated by a deed To engross the present and dominate memory. Players and painted stage took all my love And not those things that they were emblems of. III Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

I remember when I wrote The Circus I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else? Fernand Léger lived in our building Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall Of our apartment I don’t know why there was a hole there Shut up! And the voice came back to me saying something I don’t know what. Once I saw Léger walk out of the building I think. Stanley Kunitz came to dinner. I wrote The Circus In two tries, the first getting most of the first stanza; That fall I also wrote an opera libretto called Louisa or Matilda. Jean-Claude came to dinner. He said (about “cocktail sauce”) It should be good on something but not on these (oysters). By that time I think I had already written The Circus When I came back, having been annoyed to have to go I forget what I went there about You were back in the apartment what a dump actually we liked it I think with your hair and your writing and the pans Moving strummingly about the kitchen and I wrote The Circus It was a summer night no it was an autumn one summer when I remember it but actually no autumn that black dusk toward the post office And I wrote many other poems then but The Circus was the best Maybe not by far the best Geography was also wonderful And the Airplane Betty poems (inspired by you) but The Circus was the best. Sometimes I feel I actually am the person Who did this, who wrote that, including that poem The Circus But sometimes on the other hand I don’t. There are so many factors engaging our attention! At every moment the happiness of others, the health of those we know and our own! And the millions upon millions of people we don’t know and their well-being to think about So it seems strange I found time to write The Circus And even spent two evenings on it, and that I have also the time To remember that I did it, and remember you and me then, and write this poem about it At the beginning of The Circus The Circus girls are rushing through the night In the circus wagons and tulips and other flowers will be picked A long time from now this poem wants to get off on its own Someplace like a painting not held to a depiction of composing The Circus. Noel Lee was in Paris then but usually out of it In Germany or Denmark giving a concert As part of an endless activity Which was either his career or his happiness or a combination of both Or neither I remember his dark eyes looking he was nervous With me perhaps because of our days at Harvard. It is understandable enough to be nervous with anybody! How softly and easily one feels when alone Love of one’s friends when one is commanding the time and space syndrome If that’s the right word which I doubt but together how come one is so nervous? One is not always but what was I then and what am I now attempting to create If create is the right word Out of this combination of experience and aloneness And who are you telling me it is or is not a poem (not you?) Go back with me though To those nights I was writing The Circus. Do you like that poem? have you read it? It is in my book Thank You Which Grove just reprinted. I wonder how long I am going to live And what the rest will be like I mean the rest of my life. John Cage said to me the other night How old are you? and I told him forty-six (Since then I’ve become forty-seven) he said Oh that’s a great age I remember. John Cage once told me he didn’t charge much for his mushroom identification course (at the New School) Because he didn’t want to make a profit from nature He was ahead of his time I was behind my time we were both in time Brilliant go to the head of the class and “time is a river” It doesn’t seem like a river to me it seems like an unformed plan Days go by and still nothing is decided about What to do until you know it never will be and then you say “time” But you really don’t care much about it any more Time means something when you have the major part of yours ahead of you As I did in Aix-en-Provence that was three years before I wrote The Circus That year I wrote Bricks and The Great Atlantic Rainway I felt time surround me like a blanket endless and soft I could go to sleep endlessly and wake up and still be in it But I treasured secretly the part of me that was individually changing Like Noel Lee I was interested in my career And still am but now it is like a town I don’t want to leave Not a tower I am climbing opposed by ferocious enemies I never mentioned my friends in my poems at the time I wrote The Circus Although they meant almost more than anything to me Of this now for some time I’ve felt an attenuation So I’m mentioning them maybe this will bring them back to me Not them perhaps but what I felt about them John Ashbery Jane Freilicher Larry Rivers Frank O’Hara Their names alone bring tears to my eyes As seeing Polly did last night It is beautiful at any time but the paradox is leaving it In order to feel it when you’ve come back the sun has declined And the people are merrier or else they’ve gone home altogether And you are left alone well you put up with that your sureness is like the sun While you have it but when you don’t its lack’s a black and icy night. I came home And wrote The Circus that night, Janice. I didn’t come and speak to you And put my arm around you and ask you if you’d like to take a walk Or go to the Cirque Medrano though that’s what I wrote poems about And am writing about that now, and now I’m alone And this is not as good a poem as The Circus And I wonder if any good will come of either of them all the same.

I don’t have any sentiments would somebodything thirst my quench how about about my mediocrity of character? I dance with the dead divinely in my dreams I’m stricken deaf when I mention it my babies cry they want everything quick! here. un- mentioned as character should be like the purpurine it needs must be carved in, please Have you heard of the roguess elephant with the brilliant diamond eyes? She is the puppet of the dictionary where is her beautiful orange juice? puppy foot! When your father dies he doesn’t let you swoon into aventurine or spray of lily (pearls) of the valley you do not bifurcate you may supplicate play yourself to your camp heroine self—play it Lady play It but delete no matter thank you for breakfast today we will visit with the ear syringe be the current density honey flower ice egg I love you as a fan loves air. oops it’s I vice-versa I told you about that character She is a bezel awaiting the plop of a ruby she must grow chronically and I can’t end and I can’t lie here He held him in his own heart then may I in my eye now me

a rooftop has an enemy an owl a cone of confusion scansion of acoustics or before sound a crematorium visually unresolved (before)           remains leaves that only look like the birds between them physiology limits visual memory ash or     bodies in glass