1269 Arts and sciences poems

title after Robert Clermont Witt, 1906 Refuse to make eye contact with the subject. He has been following you around the gallery. You are certain that he can see down your shirt. Look at other subjects, but know that they, too, are not of primary interest. Even when they watch you. Try not to consider what happened to the small girl staring furiously, the thin-faced woman wanly looking away. Do not think about what they had for breakfast, if the bread was hard. Certainly do not consider the odors underneath their arms and skirts. Do not allow a breeze into the room they sit in. Do not assume I am talking about any painting: step away from the subject. All subject. Was the painter in love? Do not ask the question. Imagine you are the painter, blocking out everything you don’t want to see. Everything is out of the picture. Stop looking. Stop seeking what isn’t there. Tuck your narratives back in your pocket. Look for perspective, light, shade. Let your eyes wander back to the girl. She is trying to say something but her mouth has been painted deliberately shut. Her lips, thin.

Aristotle was a little man with eyes like a lizard, and he found a streak down the midst of things, a smooth place for his feet much more important than the carved handles on the coffins of the great. He said you should put your hand out at the time and place of need: strength matters little, he said, nor even speed. His pupil, a king's son, died at an early age. That Aristotle spoke of him it is impossible to find—the youth was notorious, a conqueror, a kid with a gang, but even this Aristotle didn't ever say. Around the farthest forest and along all the bed of the sea, Aristotle studied immediate, local ways. Many of which were wrong. So he studied poetry. There, in pity and fear, he found Man. Many thinkers today, who stand low and grin, have little use for anger or power, its palace or its prison— but quite a bit for that little man with eyes like a lizard.

mon semblable, mon frère (1) Our epoch takes a voluptuous satisfaction In that perspective of the action Which pictures us inhabiting the end Of everything with death for only friend. Not that we love death, Not truly, not the fluttering breath, The obscene shudder of the finished act— What the doe feels when the ultimate fact Tears at her bowels with its jaws. Our taste is for the opulent pause Before the end comes. If the end is certain All of us are players at the final curtain: All of us, silence for a time deferred, Find time before us for one sad last word. Victim, rebel, convert, stoic— Every role but the heroic— We turn our tragic faces to the stalls To wince our moment till the curtain falls. (2) A world ends when its metaphor has died. An age becomes an age, all else beside, When sensuous poets in their pride invent Emblems for the soul’s consent That speak the meanings men will never know But man-imagined images can show: It perishes when those images, though seen, No longer mean. (3) A world was ended when the womb Where girl held God became the tomb Where God lies buried in a man: Botticelli’s image neither speaks nor can To our kind. His star-guided stranger Teaches no longer, by the child, the manger, The meaning of the beckoning skies. Sophocles, when his reverent actors rise To play the king with bleeding eyes, No longer shows us on the stage advance God’s purpose in the terrible fatality of chance. No woman living, when the girl and swan Embrace in verses, feels upon Her breast the awful thunder of that breast Where God, made beast, is by the blood confessed. Empty as conch shell by the waters cast The metaphor still sounds but cannot tell, And we, like parasite crabs, put on the shell And drag it at the sea’s edge up and down. This is the destiny we say we own. (4) But are we sure The age that dies upon its metaphor Among these Roman heads, these mediaeval towers, Is ours?— Or ours the ending of that story? The meanings in a man that quarry Images from blinded eyes And white birds and the turning skies To make a world of were not spent with these Abandoned presences. The journey of our history has not ceased: Earth turns us still toward the rising east, The metaphor still struggles in the stone, The allegory of the flesh and bone Still stares into the summer grass That is its glass, The ignorant blood Still knocks at silence to be understood. Poets, deserted by the world before, Turn round into the actual air: Invent the age! Invent the metaphor!

I broke the spell that held me long, The dear, dear witchery of song. I said, the poet’s idle lore Shall waste my prime of years no more, For Poetry, though heavenly born, Consorts with poverty and scorn. I broke the spell–nor deemed its power Could fetter me another hour. Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget Its causes were around me yet? For wheresoe’er I looked, the while, Was Nature’s everlasting smile. Still came and lingered on my sight Of flowers and streams the bloom and light, And glory of the stars and sun; – And these and poetry are one. They, ere the world had held me long, Recalled me to the love of song.

A compendium of words was stored here Just underneath the chimney I’d like to see it that way Fortune won’t stand still for that And pressure of the air flattens paper I’d like to see it that way One comes into the room groomed, a pleasure There’s a patch of glitter in the glamor I’d like to see it that way Each moment opens up sudden as an umbrella On a day storms gather like wool A way I’d really like to see it So you can’t assume a face again Before the non-face puts in its appearance Nor can you push at the door expecting satisfaction on the other side I’d like to see it that way Many’s the time and time for reflection Truer than truth the subject’s interconnections I’d like to see it that way I was born on a day absolutely unique in world history Birds grasp their path in air I’d like to see it that way It’s standard to pack half a dozen at a clip Imagine the red thing yours alone at last I’d like to see it that way The image almost takes shape superimposed As a mist on top of ordinary daily objects I’d like to see it that way Life goes on forever like a dusty road Down which we peer as we drink a glass of water I’d like to see it that way We return again and again born into wombs The shape of inverted ice cream cones I’d like to see it that way So I could relax, put on my enormous suit And ring your doorbell holding my breath and flowers I’d like to see it that way In order to be able to end war but Would war ever end or would my wanting To end it ever end if nothing ever ended I’d like to see it that way Everything is standing up and falling down again Constantly like hair in wind I’d like to see it that way For the good of the nation behind bars For my own good bundled up into piles I’d like to see it that way I blow continuously on this thing the landscape Crumples around me like a felt hat I’d like to see it that way But the problem is I put out my hand And only clutch air wanting to understand I’d like to see it some way Any way so long as I could know it was there And could pull back the covers at will To reveal my heart’s desire and measure it I’d like to see it that way

I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors – Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky – Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –

I mean to say I mean I keep meaning to I mean amending I mean correcting I mean qualifying I mean collecting I mean X + X + X and so forth I mean all possible values I mean adding I mean and also I mean pileups happen when you can’t see where you’re going I mean where you are I mean your hand in front of your face I mean my hand I mean if that’s all I can see I mean if that’s all I’m looking at I mean that’s not all I mean there is no end I mean this isn’t the beginning I mean only means I mean blow the house down with breathlessness I mean a house of breathlessness I mean the walls are braced against themselves I mean brace yourself I mean to take the house down with its own components I mean throw the whole deck at it I mean two-by-fours and oven mitts I mean rocks hucking them at walls of rocks I mean self-healing walls I mean with insipid pocks I mean BB dings in street signs I mean bullet holes in stop signs I mean to riddle I mean all signs point to “yes” I mean eyelids are designed to admit some light I mean sound I mean boom I mean faster than gravity I mean I am not equal to the work I mean I’m over my head I mean hovering I mean levitating I mean light as a feather wide as a plane I mean fight as a feather (infinitesimally) I mean I’m going to talk about it I mean talk about it by talking about talking about it I mean write about it I mean scrape it all towards me with the edge of my hand I mean like a spray of crumbs I mean pile I mean to pile up and get on top of I mean for the prospect I mean for the pea beneath the mattress I mean to feel the ceiling I mean to figure it like a mime I mean just imagine it I mean kiss it I mean I’m already running out of air I mean steam I mean fire I mean fight it I mean feed I mean with fire I mean fire is not finite only fuel I mean light is not finite only illumination I mean things to illuminate I mean to throw shadows I mean I have an important question: is this important?

I thought of   Donne, and how the pride must war — Of  Manley Hopkins, godlier by far, His filial bemusement death and birth Counting the spots of   God on this, God's earth. And then, asleep, I dreamed of  Henry Ford Wandering beardless down orchestral ways Of  factories. A patriarchal lord, Counting his beads of  praise.

Roy Halston Frowick, 1932–1990 He kept his middle name, the pick of   the lot, he thought, and mispronounced himself:Hall-stun. At Bergdorf’s he acquired an accent and referred to himself   in the third person, every bird he flayed wrapped in Ultrasuede. He lit a True with a True, smeared his hirsute muse with sequins. There were air- kisses, Capote’s new-cut face at Studio 54, that Baccarat flute of ejaculate. Never too late, he ordered in meat and potatoes, and a trick. He called it “dial-a-steak, dial-a-dick.” He appeared on The Love Boat, Halstonettes in tow, maybe the high, maybe the low, watermark. When his pupils betrayed him at work, on came the shades. And a well-cut blazer, paranoia. He had signed away the rights to his name, for options. When he tried to reclaim them from the conglomerate, he excused himself to the toilet, just a sec — white dust on a black turtleneck. His block started to look a lot like sickness. Even his beloved orchids, the sickness. Just like that, the eighties were gone. New York, New York, the eighties were no one.

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office before the class on the comma, etc., there was on the desk, among the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up and memos about lack of funding and the quixotic feasibility memos and labyrinthine parking memos and quizzes pecked by red ink and once orange peels, a claw hammer. There when I came and there when I left, it didn’t seem in anyone’s employ. There was no room left to hang anything. It already knew how to structure an argument. It already knew that it was all an illusion that everything hadn’t blown apart because of its proximity to oblivion, having so recently come from oblivion itself. Its epiphyses were already closed. It wasn’t my future that was about to break its wrist or my past that was god knows where. It looked used a number of times not entirely appropriately but its wing was clearly healed. Down the hall was someone with a glove instead of a right hand. A student came by looking for who? Hard to understand then hard to do. I didn’t think much of stealing it, having so many hammers at home. There when I came, there when I left. Ball peen, roofing, framing, sledge, one so small of probably only ornamental use. That was one of my gifts, finding hammers by sides of roads, in snow, inheriting, one given by a stranger for a jump in the rain. It cannot be refused, the hammer. You take the handle, test its balance then lift it over your head.