1269 Arts and sciences poems

Matisse, too, when the fingers ceased to work, Worked larger and bolder, his primary colors celebrating The weddings of innocence and glory, innocence and glory Monet when the cataracts blanketed his eyes Painted swirls of rage, and when his sight recovered Painted water lilies, Picasso claimed I do not seek, I find, and stuck to that story About himself, and made that story stick. Damn the fathers. We are talking about defiance.

On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly, faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate, and that if   I consented to the injected dose, we could all fall asleep. We would stay together for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying desperation. A fifteen-year-old’s desire to live cried out in me: “No!” To which my father stated: “If you want to live, then we too must keep on living, because we can’t leave you by yourself.” My father was the village doctor. I grew up with no siblings. My mother’s sister lived next door, with her husband and two children, Nelly and Gyurika. In the evenings I prayed: “Merciful Lord of mine, My eyes have closed, but thine, yet still are open, father mine, Watch over me as I recline.” Then this: “In one God I believe, in one homeland I believe, in the eternal divine truth I believe, in Hungary’s re- surrection I believe. Amen.” Gyuri could not study in Pest, he went to Brünn. Later, not even there. Then the family sent him to Toulouse. My mind could not comprehend. Then one of uncle Vilmos’s servants murdered him with six ax-blows. He screamed crazed into the courtyard: “That’s what the stinking   Jew deserved!” I found him, his head smashed open. I ran to my father, who didn’t even believe it. And one after the other, the horrors came. Nelly lived in Újvidék with her husband. Uncle Ernő was in the middle of shaving when Hungarians broke into the flat. They were looking for the family. The nanny quickly threw a quilt onto six-month-old Tomika, they didn’t notice him. Peterke was out with Nelly. Uncle Ern ő was executed on the ice of   the Danube. Nelly did not recover. She knitted pullovers, each more beautiful than the next, so as not to feel the pain. She went to Pest to learn a trade, so she could support her children. That’s how it was when nineteen-forty-four came. On March 15, one of my teachers said, “You remain seated,” while the class sang the Anthem, “and be quiet.” On the day of the nineteenth, the Germans invaded. From then on, it was obligatory to wear the star. Through the intervention of the medical officer and the Lord Lieutenant, my father could have stayed out. I had to move to the ghetto with my mother. My father said “The family should stay together.” All up and down our street they stood, to bid farewell. Father acknowledged them, but already he was just waiting for the end. He had aged by decades. Then the injection, the one I already spoke of, turned up on the table with the Matyó embroidery. We sat in the evening underneath the open sky before being loaded onto the freight cars. The doctor from the next village drank mercury chloride with his wife. Despite my father’s stomach lavage, they succumbed by the morning. There were eighty of us in the wagon. An expectant mother gave birth on the way. But with no water, my father could not save them. There were those who went mad in the freight cars. My father taught me always to say “Ich will arbeiten.” On the seventh of   July the train stopped. Father read the plaque, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and said, “We are lost!” Megaphones blared, “Leave your packages in the wagons, they will be brought to you later. Special vehicles are coming for the sick and the elderly, just remain sitting,” they repeated, “everything will be fine. Men exit the wagon to the left, women to the right.” As farewell, my papa said, “Always be my clever, my obedient, my good little girl...    ” That is how we parted for eternity. Tomika and Peterke were squeezing my hand tightly, but my mother said, “Don’t you want to sit down? We can walk. Come...    ” We moved forward in a column of five rows. The bulbs of the searchlights blinded us in the eyes. A German officer, legs wide apart. He stood there somewhere far away. Sent us to the right. Had to get undressed in a room. Then they sent us into another, and the iron door slammed, bolted shut. Screaming, I pounded on it again and again. We truly were lost, as last I understood.... Turning around, the others already shaved bald. I didn’t recognize anyone. They stood there like sheep. Upon their skin, the writing of gooseflesh.

“Say it enough times and it's August.” —Geoffrey G. O'Brien, “Three Years” On a set you need bush rebels, that numbing little chair while passing. If we knock 'em out seven precincts are going to show up. It looks like you don't need oil. I think it'll be fine. Did she think that might be good, or for the man who listens to it, nothing to be done or thought, (section pending)? Or for the man who listens to it, an abrupt yawn, history or the other. Home economics.  Dr. Singalong can't find his way back. I don't know about that, but at her lamps do you still see the awkward ceremony, too serious? Leave it that way, imperfect start beyond where I was going. Prison outside the perpetual sonata, the only anxiety, since you wonder what they don't do, from your red zero heart page waiting to touch your face. Although they know about it and it literally doesn't exist, no, stay up and go to sleep, unless it falls on the right side of the brain positioned for so many forgeries, moon nugget... I don't cut 'em any slack. Assault on a clean front, that's a lot to be turning into. These residents, they start throwing 'em early. Continue to open your door to mud! Take the noon balloon to Rangoon, gutta percha academy, to the place of ice cream, because, really, what difference does it make? When it was time you went home. Tears and flowers, see how dirty your hands are. We had a lovely dime. Soon it will be seven I ask you.

. . . . . tell you? ha! who can tell another how to manage the swimming? he was right: people don’t change. They only stand more revealed. I, likewise 1 the light, there, at the corner (because of the big elm and the reflecting houses) winter or summer stays as it was when they lived there, in the house the street cuts off as though it were a fault, the side’s so sheer they hid, or tried to hide, the fact the cargo their ships brought back was black (the Library, too, possibly so founded). The point is the light does go one way toward the post office, and quite another way down to Main Street. Nor is that all: coming from the sea, up Middle, it is more white, very white as it passes the grey of the Unitarian church. But at Pleasant Street, it is abruptly black (hidden city 2 Or now, when such houses are not built, or such trees planted, it’s the doctor knows what the parents don’t know. Or the wife doesn’t, of the husband, or the husband, of the other. Sins, they still call them, and let pejorocracy thrive. Only the lady has got it straight. She looks as the best of my people look in one direction, her direction, they know it is elements men stand in the midst of, not these names supported by that false future she, precisely she, has her foot upon (He made the coast, and though he lost his feet for it, and the hands he’d purposely allowed to freeze to the oars, I knew him, drank with my elders, in his own bar, a toast to him Or my other, the top of whose head a bollard clean took away. It was four days before they could get him to Chelsea Marine. This spring I listened to him as good as new, as fresh as it’s always been to hear him talk of the sea. He was puttering in his garden when I came up, looking over his Santa Fe rose. And he took off his hat to show me, how it is all skin where his skull was, too much of a hole for even the newest metal to cover Or the quiet one, who’s died since (died as deck-watchman, on his vessel, in port). Years ago I heard from others how he’d pulled two men out of the sea one night off Eastern Point. They’d not been able to shed their jacks when the ship went over, and when he caught them they were going down too. He hauled them into Brace’s Cove, even though the shore wasn’t there, it was such a storm and the sea so big it had turned the Lily Pond into an arm of itself. Last, he with muscle as big as his voice, the strength of him in that blizzard to have pulled the trawl slack from the very bottom and released his mate from the cod-hook had him out, and almost off, into the snow. It wasn’t that there was so much sea. It was the cold, and that white, until over the dory went and the two of them, one still, were in. The wild thing was, he made the vessel, three miles, and fetched her, found that vessel in all that weather, with his fellow dead weight on him. The sort of eye which later knew the Peak of Brown’s as though it were his own garden (as Bowditch brought the Eppie Sawyer spot to her wharf a Christmas morning) 3 Which is the cream of the milk, of course. And the milk also of the matter, the most of it, those who do no more than drink it in a cup of tea alone of such a night, holding (as she) a certain schooner What still is, in other words. And the remarkable part of it, that it still goes on, still is what counts: the lad from the Fort who recently bought the small white house on Lower Middle (the one diagonally across from the handsome brick with the Bullfinch door) He stood with me one Sunday and eyed (with a like eye) a curious ship we’d both come on, tied to the Gas Company wharf. She had raked masts, and they were unstepped, fitted loose in her deck, like a neck in a collar. He was looking idly, as I was, saying nothing. When suddenly, he turned to a Gloucesterman, a big one, berthed alongside this queer one, and said: “I’ll own her, one day” 4 While she stares, out of her painted face, no matter the deathly mu-sick, the demand will arouse some of these men and women

I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties. Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross a wet deck. The sea was not, finally, my trade. But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged from that which was most familiar. Was delayed, and not content with the man’s argument that such postponement is now the nature of obedience, that we are all late in a slow time, that we grow up many And the single is not easily known It could be, though the sharpness (the achiote) I note in others, makes more sense than my own distances. The agilities they show daily who do the world’s businesses And who do nature’s as I have no sense I have done either I have made dialogues, have discussed ancient texts, have thrown what light I could, offered what pleasures doceat allows But the known? This, I have had to be given, a life, love, and from one man the world. Tokens. But sitting here I look out as a wind and water man, testing And missing some proof I know the quarters of the weather, where it comes from, where it goes. But the stem of me, this I took from their welcome, or their rejection, of me And my arrogance was neither diminished nor increased, by the communication 2 It is undone business I speak of, this morning, with the sea stretching out from my feet

One of the objects I've treasured most in my life Is this letter scale which, long ago, you gave me. I was an active correspondent at the time, Even sending lots of letters overseas. While still enjoying the pleasure of going to the post, I now had another: assessing exactly, in advance, At my counter, the cost of packets and envelopes, To which, price list in hand, I stuck my stamps. I use it less these days, this quite simple device Graded with little marks up to a whole pound, For my mailings rarely still exceed the price Of an ordinary stamp. The tray of polished metal's now Covered with dust, without the slightest hint That the red pointer marking the weight on the front Has budged. But in the long run, one would, I think, Discern a difference and see how much the months Were worth in terms of dust, the seasons elapsed Since the previous weighing. But having been seized, Suddenly, just this morning, by a tremendous attack (Annual) of cleaning, from which nothing is released, I restored to the tray's slightly concave stainless steel, That ever so slightly distorted mirror, its polished shine. It reflected all of the sky, through which clouds reeled, And I could confirm that space does not weigh more than time.

1 When you have forgotten (to bring into Play that fragrant morsel of rhetoric, Crisp as autumnal air), when you Have forgotten, say, sunlit corners, brick Full of skyline, rowhomes, smokestacks, Billboards, littered rooftops & wondered What bread wrappers reflect of our hunger, 2 When you have forgotten wide-brimmed hats, Sunday back-seat leather rides & church, The doorlock like a silver cane, the broad backs Swaying or the great moan deep churning, & the shimmer flick of flat sticks, the lurch Forward, skip, hands up Aileyesque drop, When you have forgotten the meaningful bop, 3 Hustlers and their care-what-may, blasé Ballet and flight, when you have forgotten Scruffy yards, miniature escapes, the way Laundry lines strung up sag like shortened Smiles, when you have forgotten the Fish Man Barking his catch in inches up the street “I’ve got porgies. I’ve got trout. Feeesh 4 Man,” or his scoop and chain scale, His belief in shad and amberjack; when You have forgotten Ajax and tin pails, Blue crystals frothing on marble front Steps Saturday mornings, or the garden Of old men playing checkers, the curbs White-washed like two lines out to the burbs, 5 Or the hopscotch squares painted new In the street, the pitter-patter of feet Landing on rhymes. “How do you Like the weather, girls? All in together, girls, January, February, March, April... ” The jump ropes’ portentous looming, Their great, aching love blooming. 6 When you have forgotten packs of grape- Flavored Now & Laters, the squares Of sugar flattening on the tongue, the elation You felt reaching into the corner-store jar, Grasping a handful of Blow Pops, candy bars With names you didn’t recognize but came To learn. All the turf battles. All the war games. 7 When you have forgotten popsicle stick Races along the curb and hydrant fights, Then, retrieve this letter from your stack I’ve sent by clairvoyant post & read by light, For it brought me as much longing and delight. This week’s Father’s Day; I’ve a long ride to Philly. I’ll give this to Gramps, then head to Black Lily.

Esto no es realismo mágico Dear Martín: In Izalco, while Christ waits for Easter in his glass tomb in the cathedral a single long note is blown on a trumpet en el parque central. Los perros flacco forage at the feet of la gente. Los poetas mount the stage in a shower of rose petals thrown by old ladies. The Mayor opens his arms wide. In the audience are campesinos, hijitos, shopkeepers, viejos, the town trauma surgeon, and a generous contigent of la policia con pistolas, escopetas y M16s. Solamente el volcán duerme esta noche. Los perros flaccos jump into the big blue garbage cans. Martín, you will certainly believe this. Each poeta is introduced with a fireworks rocket. Los perros flaccos jump out of the big blue garbage cans. Poetas de Argentina, Taiwan, Guatemala, España, Peru, Nicaragua, France, Costa Rica, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, y Los Estados Unidas open their mouths. Out come pajaros, serpientes, y duendes, hombres, mujeres, y alquimistas with flasks of aether; out come revolutionaries in diapers, ambassadors in limousines of obsidian, the Virgin in a Madonna T-shirt, y los Indios with flutes made of thigh bones and bombs made of skulls; out come the dead dictators chained together by ectoplasm swinging censors that emit the stink of money, priests with rifles, nuns with giant beasts whose names are forgotten hidden in the musk of their habits; out come conquistadores on roller skates, Moros in black on black motorcycles, Mad Max with tattoos de los Maras Salvatruche. When los poetas have finished, there are more fireworks. They are swarmed by hijitos, viejos y otros wanting autographs. Their hands are as soft as their hearts. Death does not hide here but lives among them dressed in white lace with earrings rattling on her skull. Life does not hide here but steps through irony as if it were the vanishing fog.

1 After the Reformation had settled the loamy soil and the lettuce-green fields of dollars, the clouds drifted away, and light fell everywhere. Even the snow bloomed and New Hampshire was a big peony. A red barn shone on a hill with scattered hemlocks and white pines and the gates of all the picket fences were big shut-eyes. 2 Sometime after the Civil War, the bronze wing of liberty took off like the ribboning smoke of a Frick factory, and all the citizens in towns from Stockbridge to Willamette ran wild on the 4th. The sound of piccolos lingered, and the shiny nickel of the sun stood still before it fizzed in the windshield of a Ford. By then you were a lawyer. 3 Charles Ives was a bandmaster in Danbury, and you didn’t give him the time of day. He played shortstop on the piano. He never made it to his tonic home base, and his half-tones were like oak leaves slapping clapboard. 4 How Miltonic are we anyway? 5 In that red glass of the imagination, in that tingling crystal of the chandelier where light freezes in its own prism and the apogee of the green lawns of New Haven wane like Persian carpets in twilight, there you saw a pitcher, perhaps from Delft, next to a plate of mangoes. 6 But still, history is a boomerang, and the aborigines never threw one without a shield. 7 Beyond the porches of Key West, beyond the bougainvillea, your speech skipped on tepid waves, was lapped and lapped by lovers and friends, by scholars who loved romantic nights of the sun. But the fruits and pendants, the colorful cloth, the dry palm fronds, and the fake voodoo wood Cortes brought back as souvenirs were just souvenirs. And the shacks and the cane and the hacked plantain were tableaux, and who saw them from your dark shore? 8 The Protestant dinner plate is a segregated place, where the steak hardens, and the peas sit frightened in their corner while mashed potatoes ossify. Some gin and ice cream, and the terror of loneliness goes for a while. 9 As they say in the sunny climes, un abrazo.

I I hear you are whispering there O stars of heaven, O suns—O grass of graves. . . If you do not say anything how can I say anything?