1269 Arts and sciences poems

The threewomen who all walked In the same dress And it had falling ferns on it Skipped parallel To the progress Of Giovanni Franchi Giovanni Franchi’s wrists flicked Flickeringly as he flacked them His wrists explained things Infectiously by way of his adolescence His adolescence was all there was of him Whatever was left was rather awkward His adolescence tuned to the tops of trees Descended to the fallacious nobility Of his first pair of trousers They were tubular      flapped friezily The color of coppered mustard What matter Were they not the first No others could ever be the first again The ferns on the flounces of the threewomen Began fading as she thought of it Tea table problems for insane asylyms Are démodé Démodé Allow us to rely on our instincts The threewomen was composed of three instincts Each sniffing divergently directed draughts The first instinct    first again    (may Renascent gods save us from the enigmatic Penetralia of Firstness) Was to be faithful to a man       first The second       to be loyal to herself first She would have to find which self first The third which might as well have been first Was to find out how many toes the Philosopher Giovanni Bapini had       first Giovanni Franchi hooligan-faced and latin-born You imagine what he looked like Looked as nearly as he could as the Philosopher looked His articulations were excellent Still    where Giovanni Bapini was cymophanous Giovanni Franchi was merely pale He scuttled winsomely To its distribution from a puffer For the declaration of War His acolytian sincerity The sensitive down among his freckles Fell in with the patriotic souls of flags Red white and green flags      fillipping piazzas When the “National Idea” arrived on the Milan Express Continually cutting off an angle from Paschkowski’s Through plate-glass swingings To look as busy bodily As the philosopher’s brain was As Giovanni Bapini importuned mobs From monumental gums To the sparky detritus From the hurried cigarette Of his disciple Whose papa and mama kept a trattoria Audaciously squatting right opposite the Pitti Palace The Pitti Palace however stolid      could hardly help noticing Being an aristocrat it went on looking As plainly piled up as ever The Pitti Palace has never been known to mention the trattoria Or mention Giovanni Franchi Sitting in it At a book It could not see from that distance Giovanni watching the munchers supporting his parents With an eye On assuring himself Of their sufficient impression By erudition He was so young That explains so much No book ever explained what to be young is But they look so much more important for that Giovanni was in continuous ecstacy Induced by the imposing look of them When Giovanni Bapini spoke of them He could not tell How completely more precious Would be such knowledge As how many toes the philosopher Giovanni Bapini had Now the threewomen For pity’s sake Let us think of her as she    to save time Seeing the minor Giovanni Sitting at the major Giovanni’s feet Made sure he must be counting his toes All to the contrary    he was picking the philosopher’s brains Happy in the security that when he had done He would still be youthful enough to sort out his own He listened at the elder’s lips That taught him of earthquakes and Of women— His manners were abominable He would kill a woman Quite inconspicuously it is true And neglect to attend her funeral I mean the older man And what he told Giovanni Franchi About these pernicious persons Was so extremely good for him It entirely spoilt his first love-affair To such an extent          it never came off We have read of Trattoria    meaning eating house. Piazzas    or squares The Pitti Palace    enormous And Paschkowski’s      for beer All are in Firenze Firenze is Florence Some think it is a woman with flowers in her hair But NO       it is a city with stones on the streets Giovanni Bapini often said Everybody in Firenze knows me And everybody did Excepting—That is      she didn’t She never knew what he was Or how he was himself Yet she uniquely was the one To speculate      upon the number of his toes The days growing longer Fulfilling her of curiousity She made a moth’s net Of metaphor and miracles And on the incandescent breath of civilizations She chased by moon-and-morn light Philosopher’s toes As virginal      as had he never worn them Clear of ‘white marks means money’ All quicks and cores They fluttered to her fantasy Fell into her lap While she gathered her ferny flounces about them They inappropriately passed But Giovanni Franchi was there He almost winked it at her That he was there His eyes were intrepid with phantom secrets The Philosopher had flung to him And as she tripped by him She guessed      these all All    but the number of those toes She made diurnal pilgrimage To the trattoria To eat Trout    that might have been trained for circuses If minarets    grew in miniature whirlpools And mayonnaise       that helped her to forget That what is underneath       need never matter She put all minor riddles out of her Such as What was the under-cover of Franchi’s book Telling to the plaid pattern of the tablecloth Too shy to interrogate She sent ambassadors To the disciple They returned Oh rats Quite manifest    that Giovanni Franchi Some semieffigy Damned by scholiums Knew no more      how many toes— Than      Giovanni Bapini knew himself

“ . . . But my mind, gone out in tenderness, Shrinks from its object . . .” —Randall Jarrell I want to find my way back to her, to help her, to grab her hand, pull her up from the wooden floor of the stacks where she’s reading accounts of the hatchet murders of Lizzie Borden’s harsh parents as if she could learn something about life if she knew all the cuts and slashes; her essay on Wordsworth or Keats only a knot in her belly, a faint pressure at her temples. She’s pale, it’s five years before the first migraine, but the dreamy flush has already drained from her face. I want to lead her out of the library, to sit with her on a bench under a still living elm tree,be one who understands, but even today I don’t understand, I want to shake her and want to assure her, to hold her—but love’s not safe for her, although she craves what she knows of it, love’s a snare, a closed door, a dank cell. Maybe she should just leave the campus, take a train to Fall River, inspect Lizzie’s room, the rigid corsets and buttoned shoes, the horsehair sofas, the kitchen’s rank stew. Hell. Bleak loyal judgmental journals of a next-door neighbor—not a friend, Lizzie had no friend. If only she could follow one trajectory of thought, a plan, invent a journey out of this place, a vocation— but without me to guide her, where would she go? And what did I ever offer, what stiffening of spine? What goal? Rather, stiffening of soul, her soul cocooned in the library’s trivia. Soul circling its lessons. What can I say before she walks like a ghost in white lace carrying her bouquet of stephanotis, her father beaming innocently at her side, a boy waiting, trembling, to shape her? He’s innocent, too, we are all innocent, even Lizzie Borden who surely did take the axe. It was so hot that summer morning. The hard-hearted stepmother, heavy hand of the father. There was another daughter they favored, and Lizzie, stewing at home, heavy smell of mutton in the pores of history. But this girl, her story’s still a mystery—I tell myself she’s a quick study, a survivor. There’s still time. Soon she’ll close the bloody book, slink past the lit carrels, through the library’s heavy door to the world. Is it too late to try to touch her, kneel beside her on the dusty floor where we’re avoiding her assignment?

Give it back—I made it all up That alcove where surplus glowed under dust Unfinished, an attic space with nails poking down Khaki of sheet metal, orange flickering in tubes Ephemeral as the smells, which were plywood, solder, and Kents Color words, smell words—I put them in a book Everything there is still missing Two lies of remembrance: it was always winter Things could speak

The man with the red hat And the polar bear, is he here too? The window giving on shade, Is that here too? And all the little helps, My initials in the sky, The hay of an arctic summer night? The bear Drops dead in sight of the window. Lovely tribes have just moved to the north. In the flickering evening the martins grow denser. Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.

Pindar, poet of the victories, fitted names And legends into verses for the chorus to sing: Names recalled now only in the poems of Pindar: O nearly unpronounceable immortals, In the dash, Oionos was champion: Oionos, Likmynios's son, who came from Midea. In wrestling, Echemos won—the name Of his home city, Tegea, proclaimed to the crowds. Doryklos of Tiryns won the prize in boxing, And the record for a four-horse team was set By Samos from Mantinea, Halirothios's son. And Pindar, poet of the Olympian and Isthmian And Pythian games, wrote also of the boundless And forgetful savannas of time.What is someone? The chorus sing in a victory ode—What is a nobody? Creatures of a day, they chant in answer,Creatures Of a day

Now I begin to know at last, These nights when I sit down to rhyme, The form and measure of that vast God we call Poetry, he who stoops And leaps me through his paper hoops A little higher every time. Tempts me to think I’ll grow a proper Singing cricket or grass-hopper Making prodigious jumps in air While shaken crowds about me stare Aghast, and I sing, growing bolder To fly up on my master’s shoulder Rustling the thick stands of his hair. He is older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun’s hot wheel on these. He wakes the gale that tears your trees, He sings to you from window sills. At you he roars, or he will coo, He shouts and screams when hell is hot, Riding on the shell and shot. He smites you down, he succours you, And where you seek him, he is not. To-day I see he has two heads Like Janus—calm, benignant, this; That, grim and scowling: his beard spreads From chin to chin: this god has power Immeasurable at every hour: He first taight lovers how to kiss, He brings down sunshine after shower, Thunder and hate are his also, He is YES and he is NO. The black beard spoke and said to me, ‘Human fraility though you be, Yet shout and crack your whip, be harsh! They’ll obey you in the end: Hill and field, river and marsh Shall obey you, hop and skip At the terrour of your whip, To your gales of anger bend.’ The pale beard spoke and said in turn ‘True: a prize goes to the stern, But sing and laugh and easily run Through the wide airs of my plain, Bathe in my waters, drink my sun, And draw my creatures with soft song; They shall follow you along Graciously with no doubt or pain.’ Then speaking from his double head The glorious fearful monster said ‘I am YES and I am NO, Black as pitch and white as snow, Love me, hate me, reconcile Hate with love, perfect with vile, So equal justice shall be done And life shared between moon and sun. Nature for you shall curse or smile: A poet you shall be, my son.’

I could almost hear their soft collisions on the cold air today, but when I came in, shed my layers and stood alone by the fire, I felt them float toward me like spores flung far from their source, having crossed miles of oceans and fields unknown to most just to keep my body fixed to its place on the earth. Call them God if you must, these messengers that bring hard evidence of what I once was and where I have been— filling me with bits of stardust, whaleskin, goosedown from the pillow where Einstein once slept, tucked in his cottage in New Jersey, dreaming of things I know I’ll never see.

1. A canvas with less turpentine, more hard edges, less bleeding, that was good for beauty, Frankenthaler in Art News in the dining car crammed with parkas and laptops micro-waved cellophane, plastic plates and canvas bags, and the valley under fog as the cows disappeared and when the green came back into view I could see the SUVs floating on the Thruway, the cows oblivious to the revved engines of trucks. The river glistened all the way to Albany, and I could see flags on Baptist churches and resurrection trailers, “God Bless America” on pick-ups— “United We Stand” laminated to billboards as the fog settled then lifted, and when I woke a flag the size of a football field hung from the gray tower of the GW, where the tractor-trailers jammed beneath its hem as something sifted down on the silver-plated Hudson. And then the lights went out. 2. The faces on 7th Avenue blurred in the chaos of vendors and liberty scarves, freedom ties, glowing plastic torches, dollars and polyester— and inside Macy ’ s I was hit by cool air as “Stars and Stripes Forever” floated down from women's fashions into the quiet aisles of Aramis and silk scarves. I wanted to buy the Frankenthaler, a modest, early print, minimal, monochromatic; surface and perspective in dialogue; on 24th off 10th—the gallery still smelled like wood and plaster— but I didn't stop, and when the train reached the Stock Exchange the Yom Kippur streets were quiet, and the bronze statue of Washington was camouflaged by national guard. I was walking my old mail route now like a drunk knocking into people, almost hit by a cab until the roped-off streets cut me at the arm. At Broadway and Liberty the fences wound around the bursts of dust rising over the cranes and bulldozers, over the punched-out windows— I stared through a piece of rusted grid that stood like a gate to the crystal river. I was sweating in my sweatshirt now, the hood filling with soot, as I watched with others drinking Cokes and eating their pizza of disbelief. Zero began with the Sumerians who made circles with hollow reeds in wet clay and baked them for  posterity. At Broadway and Liberty. At 20 floors charred and standing. At miasma people weeping. Anna's Nail Salon, Daikichi Sushi, the vacant shops, stripped clean in the graffiti of dust-coated windows. Something blasted from a boom box in a music store, something, in the ineffable clips of light, disappeared over the river.

It will be a while before recollections in tranquility set in, as time in its adversary mode of darker days ticks on transfixing you in newsprint. It will be a while before those sudden winds descend upon the Po. A while before the laughter echoes in the dark; before the sounds of seagulls and accordions, harmonicas mix in those parting shots of long-forgotten flicks with names like La notte brava, I Pugni in tasca, L’oro di Napoli. Your show-offy had intelligence; not the “unconscious” your friend Calvino claims you lacked. Ha-ha. It will be a while before the tranquility comes round again. A while before you’re able to get up and move about; stare out from your Swallow’s Nest on those dappled waters of Salerno’s Gulf, almost fable-like. “Didn’t it go by awfully fast?” your buddy Howard once sweetly asked. It will be a while and sometimes more and not your last.

Goya drew a pig on a wall. The five-year-old hairdresser’s son Saw, graved on a silver tray, The lion; and sunsets were begun. Goya smelt the bull-fight blood. The pupil of the Carmelite Gave his hands to a goldsmith, learned To gild an aureole aright. Goya saw the Puzzel’s eyes: Sang in the street (with a guitar) And climbed the balcony; but Keats (Under the halyards) wrote ‘Bright star.’ Goya saw the Great Slut pick The chirping human puppets up, And laugh, with pendulous mountain lip, And drown them in a coffee cup; Or squeeze their little juices out In arid hands, insensitive, To make them gibber . . . Goya went Among the catacombs to live. He saw gross Ronyons of the air, Harelipped and goitered, raped in flight By hairless pimps, umbrella-winged: Tumult above Madrid at night. He heard the seconds in his clock Crack like seeds, divulge, and pour Abysmal filth of Nothingness Between the pendulum and the floor: Torrents of dead veins, rotted cells, Tonsils decayed, and fingernails: Dead hair, dead fur, dead claws, dead skin: Nostrils and lids; and cauls and veils; And eyes that still, in death, remained (Unlidded and unlashed) aware Of the foul core, and, fouler yet, The region worm that ravins there. Stench flowed out of the second’s tick. And Goya swam with it through Space, Sweating the fetor from his limbs, And stared upon the unfeatured face That did not see, and sheltered naught, But was, and is. The second gone, Goya returned, and drew the face; And scrawled beneath it, ‘This I have known’ . . . And drew four slatterns, in an attic, Heavy, with heads on arms, asleep: And underscribed it, ‘Let them slumber, Who, if they woke, could only weep’ . . .