1269 Arts and sciences poems

Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane’s been drinking and has no idea who this curious Andalusian is, unable even to speak the language of poetry. The young man who brought them together knows both Spanish and English, but he has a headache from jumping back and forth from one language to another. For a moment’s relief he goes to the window to look down on the East River, darkening below as the early night comes on. Something flashes across his sight, a double vision of such horror he has to slap both his hands across his mouth to keep from screaming. Let’s not be frivolous, let’s not pretend the two poets gave each other wisdom or love or even a good time, let’s not invent a dialogue of such eloquence that even the ants in your own house won’t forget it. The two greatest poetic geniuses alive meet, and what happens? A vision comes to an ordinary man staring at a filthy river. Have you ever had a vision? Have you ever shaken your head to pieces and jerked back at the image of your young son falling through open space, not from the stern of a ship bound from Vera Cruz to New York but from the roof of the building he works on? Have you risen from bed to pace until dawn to beg a merciless God to take these pictures away? Oh, yes, let’s bless the imagination. It gives us the myths we live by. Let’s bless the visionary power of the human— the only animal that’s got it—, bless the exact image of your father dead and mine dead, bless the images that stalk the corners of our sights and will not let go. The young man was my cousin, Arthur Lierberman, then a language student at Columbia, who told me all this before he died quietly in his sleep in 1983 in a hotel in Perugia. A good man, Arthur, he survived graduate school, later came home to Detroit and sold pianos right through the Depression. He loaned my brother a used one to compose hideous songs on, which Arthur thought were genius. What an imagination Arthur had!

A page, a huntsman and a priest of God Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety Equally claiming the sole parenthood Of him the perfect crown of their variety. Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell: That always was her fate, she loved too well. “But many-fathered little one,” she said, “Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough, Here is your mother whom you brought to bed; Acknowledge only me; be this enough; For such as worship after shall be told A white dove sired you or a rain of gold.”

At San Raffaele Arcangelo One angel got it all wrong. She plopped into this sad century feet first in her dark clothes. There wasn't much water that winter—just a few puddles really— to break her fall. Mud-splattered, she rose and shook like a canine. It didn't take long to see her soaked wings as a backdrop to all the nonmagic to which we were accustomed, or to see what passed for history as a forgetting of sorts. (Was that one or two wars?) Strange how, as she limped down a dim vicolo , some willful disc hovered above her more florid than a sky—how the putrid puddles with their last reflections could neither correct nor register that light.

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya) In a poem, one line may hide another line, As at a crossing, one train may hide another train. That is, if you are waiting to cross The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading. In a family one sister may conceal another, So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another. One father or one brother may hide the man, If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love. So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas. One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe; One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another, One small complaint may hide a great one. One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another, One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath may hide another bath As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain. One idea may hide another: Life is simple Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows. One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here. A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it. In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts" Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that" And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve. Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem. When you come to something, stop to let it pass So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where, Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about, The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A Sentimental Journey look around When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see If it is standing there, it should be, stronger And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree With one and when you get up to leave there is another Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher, One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass. You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

The straight neck held up out of the lace is bound with a black velvet band. She holds her mouth the way she chooses, the full underlip constrained by a small muscle. She doesn’t blink or look aside, although her left eye is considering a slant. She would smile if she had time, but right now there is composure to be invented. She stares at the photographer. The black crepe settles. Emerging from the sleeve, a shapely hand holds out a white, translucent blossom. “They always say things which embarrass my dog,” she tells the photographer. She is amused, but not as much as he’d like.

She had the jitters She had the flu She showed up late She missed her cue She kicked the director She screamed at the crew And tripped on a prop And fell in some goo And ripped her costume A place or two Then she forgot A line she knew And went “Meow” Instead of “Moo” She heard ‘em giggle She heard ‘em boo The programs sailed The popcorn flew As she stomped offstage With a boo-hoo-hoo The fringe of the curtain Got caught in her shoe The set crashed down The lights did too Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to do An interview.

A creamy tear descended here when Cupid squeezed the teat of Venus. Dripping down the Milky Way it puddled beneath old oak, new pine. Love’s selfish thirst did pluck a cosmic note, set every entombed entangled bit of me in roots both new and old to singing. I was become in earth and by harmony a million bits of tongue and ear, sound funnels upwhorled in song conducting cones. Fresh music from old flesh corrected my (most melancholy) record of this last go round the planet. Now I was first things: elementals, vegetable and mineral in form, dust to kick it on the breeze, loam to feed old oak, new pine, Eros-greedy energy on hunt for nourishment, cream to suck, breast to squeeze.

I really fucked up. My E-flat key was loose. I only got a few hours of sleep the night before because Robyn and I were on the phone. They gave me the wrong repertoire list. How was I to know that high altitude affects clarinet reeds? I ran out of beta blockers. I forgot to bring a water bottle. I was worried that they’d hire that asshole who they don’t like because he threatened to blackball them at the union meeting. The acoustics were terrible. The second violinist used a new rosin and that threw her off, which unnerved me. My tinnitus roared the whole time. Robyn auditioned right before me. Just as I blew the first note, it dawned on me that Robyn might be sleeping with the conductor. Someone backstage slammed a door and I had to start all over again. The concertmaster doesn’t know a trumpet from a trombone, but since he’s powerful in a certain tiny corner of the music world everyone feels forced to curry favor with him. I forgot to eat. The audition committee talked the whole time. A clang in the heating system was near deafening. My carpal tunnel flared up. My neck twinges flared up. My arthritis flared up. I only got a few hours of sleep. I would have won the last competition, except that the concertmaster’s student was appointed with no audition, so I kept wondering if the same thing would happen again. I forgot I wasn’t playing the flute. I only got a few hours of sleep because Robyn and I were on the phone all night and decided to end our marriage. I really fucked up.

To my friends Each hair is a poem I gave my son Each hair is my allowance from the universe Each hair is a sunspot on someone's broken heart The secrets that emerge from the psyche have no floor They will get off on any floor when you least expect them to They wear shadows that look like my mother She could stop God but could not make it snow She said the weather was a work of art Like the last streak of wonder In Medea's heart You don't have to watch human Sacrifice on television Shut your window Lock the door Wait for yourself In the corner In the night In the little house That holds your tears There is no piano Just your green velvet And the years you spent in Russia As a little box in your mother's womb With all her curses and her dreams of men When I write poetry I hear voices: KennethKoch rubbing his forehead DavidShapiro swatting words FrankOHara blowing his noise PhilipBryant smiling upon me Neruda drinking red wine Lorca hailing a cab in New York Vallejo walking in Paris RonPadgett calming the world TedBerrigan dignifying wise-guy poetry JoeCeravolo on the radio with Melanoma in the milky sky Are you asleep? No Chopin is asleep on our new sofa He is wasting his life away His health looks like a dirty window His heart has a broken leg His breathing will go to the grave with him I'm not one to part I'm not one to hide my feelings I'm the end of the corridor in your hands This is a song of war Because love is music And its ferocious notes Are oars that pull us apart Death is incredible It is man made We change the names of the dead When we bury them In time they look back at us And see us The living Like old doors in the wind In the beginning there were small islands Floating on poetry These islands belonged to Joe Ceravolo Joe's words are the body parts of poetry Like the little children of the fireflies Who set songs on fire when we cry There is work to do on top of the forest There are too many words on top of the forest They are obscuring our conversation If the trees aren't pruned our words will never reach Their destination: The telephones that hate love And protect the dead from living Will my daughter dress like Venus Wrapped in exaggerated hopes? Will the pill invent love for her? Will her life take place on a Mental and spiritual planet? Yes No My daughter is a seed full of steam Leaving me behind like a bad marriage Helen Helen My Helen of Troy Once I placed a kiss on a spider's web Because there is no evil in nature The spider laughed Now the kiss is as free as an insect And the better part of our love My other marriages were like the four seasons That come and go They have left me small stones That spend their nights on the balcony of life Watching Pathos and Comedy celebrate their wedding Tonight I will write poetry I will pile the world on my pillow Like a paramilitary sous chef Toss an avalanche of flowers With sunlight and olive oil. (David Shapiro) 4.25.94

George Sandys (1578–1644), translator of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in Figures, and resident treasurer of the Virginia Company for its settlement at Jamestown (1621–1624). i. a long voyage , 1621 I left you where you are: A humming late summer afternoon & mottled by shade a man reading a letter Becomes the image of a man reading That I am forgetting. This page is small yet stout enough To bear me whole upon it to you All the way in London. I may expand Myself at leisure then fold it tight, A sanctuary; Like our vessel christened The George, My letter is another ark to preserve me: George. No midnight is so private as the sea’s: Timbers breathe, a loose rope snaps,& as the wind Shoves you behind then slaps your face, Seeing nothing, nothing to be seen, you feel Unhoused, evicted from time. But tonight, my love, my lamp is feathered, shy, Herald of the next ransack & assail. Behold the storm petrel! gray wick-threaded throat Burning the oil secreted, an amber musk Of uncompassed seas & the solitary hunt, Of error & sign,& That delirium—which turned Our ship’s boy to mowing fields of Atlantic salt. Like windrows he dropped the waves. Until gaffed, pulled like a sleeve Through himself, He will live, tongue-bit, torn. To return likely to a stool set on the shale Where he can mend nets skirted by braggarts Who have never traveled farther Than the smoke dribbling from their chimneys. I try never to imagine drowning. Noisy urgent inefficiencies above, waves Pummeling, sky shredding,& the body Anchored only in its just longing for air. The tighter death’s embrace, the more languorous The moment. So this boy suffered Some vast charity of sight. He was what he saw, an adam. Now he may be adamant & stain & distance; & also that small satin interruption Of terror—the instant breath’s Orphaned by self’s perishing through poetry. Like Daphne his voice is forfeit for the song, But we do not grieve for Daphne. My bird-light gutters. Its call had sounded Like dry wood giving up a nail. What is this your wound that you must follow it? For you I had no answer; consider only the reveries Of the carpet navigator in his room. Listening To collisions of wave & star outside his tower, Rock-rapt, icebound, with a mind by dread & ceremony & the dozen arts of courtesy Girded, he invented those ideal earths in latitudes Unstrung that I now trespass— After I had translated two books To the pouring of seas & clamor of sailors I began to brood long on landlessness, Coming to believe it my sovereign, my home, When on the flat horizon of weeks at noon the flaw: A color merely, private, ethereal, collecting Heft in the warp of time. Days Before we quailed at the barbed illegible pelt Of forest, I wrecked, forlorn upon its savor, Sweet damage of apples Fermenting in rain-soaked hay, Giving way to something ranker— I tasted it at dinner lying on my tongue. I am His Majesty’s servant as my god made me; I am also my damps & exaltations; I am afraid. Heaven & hell enlisted their geographers, A map has opened the soul’s five hinges,& Persian With expectance how often have I feasted On departure. London, Naples, Marriage, Damascus, now your dear person. So much flowing through me My sight has silted dark my mouth. I beg All the many tongues your wonder cabinet holds —Dolphin, mockingbird, Muscovy bear—to tell This arrival, so unforeseen, disorderly As my hope you will not forget who I was,& am, Unwildered, unwestered, constant, returning. Bless you where you are,& where you would be When you are there,& bring you thither. My love, What may never not be strange? What, This morning, will wake & make me new. ii. winter 1621 It begins like a legend told to a fretful child: It was, it was, and it was not. It begins As if with symptoms of that sweat I hear, so late (oh not Thank God too late), you were spared: A little blush along the throat. A restlessness. Then the silkworm’s casement, tapering & pale as the egg of a chimney-swift, Which we will convert to cloth To cover the naked Indian. A bobbin, Which dropped in my tisane would ravel the maelstrom Of silk. Spindle of whirlwind, spoonful Of follow. The thread’s stained scalding mile Pours out my glass tempered in our kiln, As each new settler is also seasoned In this furnace, our new-found land. (As the man drowning believes he digests The mild water, as the damned marry flame & yet blister, so do I know myself Grasped by change at the stroke of change.) Hold this glass up to your eye & through Its pebbled horizon you may spy your room, See its ire of surfaces sore with chairs. Green grass green grace... Would that I could account this world one Where nothing is lost only exchanged. Without coppice, park, romancely glade, Or commanding vantage, Woods press on us; they fester, & they watch. To the northeast white spruce, Phalanxes of fledging pinions, clamp Root to granite & hoard What they glean off salt-fog, sea-spray,& stone. From ewers of willow-oaks darkness steams. At breakfast I have pinched the plantlets Insinuated by a maple’s winged seed overnight; It unclasps twin leaves, pale hands Loosening the soil of my rest, They never empty of their solicitations. I find no empires here, no apostles or emeralds. Instead, all things a-broil with an awful begetting & my hours unsettled by some new show Of riotous & mystical imagination. Though we might wish to wedge us barnacle-tight To shore’s edge, our foundation raised On marshland recalls this irritable fact— The estuary, a nursery of strange devices, Throws off new forms so promiscuously I wonder how the world holds any more shape Than a dream? From my hand at night (my light A little oil in a dish or a rush taper smoking Not so different from his), flower Ovid’s fantastic shapes, shadows Of an old empire’s former splendor Now perjured by Virginia’s clay & leaf & sand Turned to the king’s profit as iron, silk,& glass. Belief is possible at night, solitary, firelit. Then, I can believe in Ovid’s centaurs, Or at death that he was met by a three-headed dog. I can believe in your letters, which never come. It is for you that I persist In translating fresh birdsong, like this bunting’s Comecomecome wherewherewhere All together      down the hill. (Where did they go, who went before us? Starved trove: scatter of blue beads & a name Grafted to that bald acre. Roanoke. There is my terror & my tale: to go west Under this eternity of nameless trees.) And what will you make of this Humble hieroglyphic of nature I forward to you? Nocturnal, double-wombed, variously called Monkey Fox; Frosted, Or Short-headed, or Indolent. Let this Leafy-Eared Rat-Tailed Shuffler The naturals call Possoun Join your zoo’s other fantasies & with the Little Military Learnéd Horse Enjoy its dish of ale. Its fur is durable; Its flesh wholesome, white,& pleasant. With one hand I can reach for A medicine man’s last breath caught in a vial Or a hummingbird, stuffed With arsenic & leaves & looking Like a fine jeweled dagger aimed at my heart, With the other hand I brush away The web spun in a fox skull’s whitened socket While a wild turkey glowers from its corner Like a small dyspeptic dragon. My cullings do not quite master my closet. When I imagine myself returned to the smells & noise of London, from my stiff knee Sands grinding as I walk, no marvels Except those which the mirror surprises in all of us, The swan-white wing at my temple, I do not know what to hope for: That you do not see me, or that you do, But as though I were pinned under glass. At my windowsill a quince widens A jaundiced eye into the dark where are Real nettles beneath the words & invincible red Root of the madder. As long as any image of this world Sticks in my soul, I remain— iii. spring 1622