Christian Wiman

I. Serious smiles a lot. At least that’s what they say, His Mum and Pop Trying to be proud As all the nurses gather round To squint into the cloud Of little Serious on the ultrasound. It’slikely just the way he’s bent, The head nurse finally thunders Into the awe and argument Swirling through the crowd Where someone mutters half-aloud In all my years… Serious never hears. Serious spins and spins With his dumb dolphin grin In the best bed there is, Where there’s no guilt and no sin, No child more inner than this; Nothing to will And nothing to want, No body you both are and haunt; No drug of disappointment Or feeling that there’s never now (Or do these seep in somehow?); No suffering the world’s idiocy Like a saint its pains; No traffic and no planes; No debts, no taxes, No phones and no faxes; No rockslide of information Called the Internet. Serious isn’t. Yet. 2. Serious hears a sound. Not unusual, in itself, nothing to be concerned about. Here and there there’s been a shout, A song he seemed to be inside, The weird whale-calls of her gas. This, too, shall pass. Then it comes again, And with a far-off force Which a shrink less serious than he Will have him dream is a drain That all his impurity Is slowly drifting toward (Down,Serious says,down!) Beyond which he’ll be clean, Feel no pain… Then the dark erupts in a rain Of blood and muck He seems to mostly be, Holding on for all he’s worth, Which isn’t much, finally, Little wizened thing Plopping out to an earth Where cries of agony Dwindle to equivocal joy (It’s, it’s…is it a boy?) And some clear world lies Just beyond the eyes You can’t quite open; And everything is wet, And loud, and broken; And all of life is one huge tit You’re meant to somehow suck. Serious staggers to his feet, Slaps himself harder than the doctor did And says,I’m fucked. 3. Serious is learning silence In the way most children learn to speak. Poshlust! He gasps after his first feeding, Götterdämmerung in his first dusk, His whole body writhing with a kind of violence As if the world had wounded him, Words his bleeding. Anomie, Deus absconditus Drift into the air above his crib; Accursed progenitor, quintessence of dust Dribble with the pap onto his bib; As day by day, and week by week, Serious wrestles with this difficult gift, Forgetting, which, it seems, he is on this earth to do. Boob, ass, oaf, Riving out of him like greatness going off; Ninny, crackpate, clunkhead, gorm, Leaving him gasping and bent; fragments, sheep, rabble, All falling, falling from him Backwards into babble... Finally Serious lies there, spent, Language like some immense ghostly mobile Bobbing just above his bed, All power of movement gone as well: Useless little buglike arms, buglike little fingers, This heavy, heavy head. And now if there’s something Serious can’t quite taste, Or if he feels too acutely his own waste, Or knows too acutely what he can’t tell, He screams and screams Until the world knows what Serious means. 4. Serious goes to school. Justtry it, his Mum says As she lets go his hand And wipes a last glaze Of doughnut from his nose, And Serious, insofar as Serious can, Does give it a good try, Though it’s hard to understand Why they keep taking a break From taking breaks, or why They can’t simply walk In line down the hall, Or what, finally, is at stake In a game of kickball. It’s time to draw a tree. What a relief to work alone, Serious thinks, as he picks a scab For just the right tinge of sky, Breaks his sugar cookie To make a place of stone, And fashions out of bread A man with a huge head And huge, ruined wings, Gasping at all the ruined things To which he’s tumbled. And calls it:Cookie, Crumbled. Oh my, the teacher says When she walks by, Those are interesting trees. Serious closes his eyes and sees As in a vision of doom Himself drowning in schools, A whole ocean of fools Nipping, nipping at him With their tiny, tiny teeth. And Serious sighs With a prophet’s wisdom As he climbs up into his seat, Stares out across the room And like a prophet cries: You’re all going to die! The class is a tomb. Serious, rigid, waits. A girl in pigtails giggles, Then another near the back. And as if along a fuse The giggling goes Up and down the rows Till someone makes a crack About his coat and tie And the laughter detonates. Serious climbs slowly down Into that inferno of sound Which the teacher’s shouts Are only driving higher, Packs up his lunchbox, his dignity, And his copy of Sartre, And strides with a prophet’s gaze Through all that derisive fire. Only once does he turn, Briefly, to look back through the blaze At the iron fact of his art, Smaller from here, but unburned. 5. Serious loves his Mum. And then he doesn’t, quite. It’s that way with everything— Baths and plums, The blessèd silence of night. Would you like to help with this? His mother asks As she rolls out biscuit dough And cuts it with a glass Or folds the clothes Still warm from the sun. But Serious knows He was born with a task, And though he touches the clothes And tastes the dough, Serious says,No. Serious stays in the bath Until his skin is shriveled and cold, Eats himself sick on plums, Feels in the dark The dark he becomes, And cries out in the night for his Mum. 6. Serious is older now. He just is. ThankGod, Serious says, For whom childhood, that stupid carousel that never stops, Always had an element of disingenuousness: The tristesse of lollipops, The sham of naps; Fools dandling you on their laps So you can play horsey, which damn sure isn’t serious; And all that endless business Of pretending to be curious About the most obvious things: What’s night? Where’s Mama-Cat? What’s wrong with Pop? Can God die? Why, why, why? To hell with that, Serious thinks, as he sits incinerating memories One by one, Saying their names as he feeds them Like photographs to a fire: Here he is in a baseball uniform Squinting back the sun; Here in a blue tuxedo with a ruffled front; And here, Lord, with pimples. He pauses a moment. Do memories have names? And what, exactly, are these flames? To hell with that! Done. Serious owns a car, pays taxes, Contemplates a pension, Has a crease of gray along his temples, But he is young, young. He develops headaches, begins sleeping badly, and relaxes, You might say, into the constant tension That he really always was, With far, far too much to do To look anywhere but onward, Or to answer the questions of a child With anything true. 7. Serious isn’t Stupid, Though they go to the same gym. Serious sees him dropping weights Or picking his butt and thinks, At least I’m not him. Nor is he Mean or Vain, Those chiseled twins With matching boots and belts, Nor Smug who notes their sins, Nor Shallow noting something else; He isn’t useless Timid Who no matter what won’t complain, Nor fat-assed Nice sweating honey On all the machines, Nor Self-Loathing who smudges mirrors, Nor Whacked who licks them clean. Serious isn’t Funny. Serious spreads his towel on the bench, Sits down in front of his own image, And Serious strains at a serious weight. And never, not once, when he’s seen In myriad mirrors around the room That everyone else is straining too, Has he caught himself too late And finished with a roar And more strength Than he’s ever had before: I AM NOT YOU! 8. Serious has a date with Doom. It’s not the first, and seems unlikely to be the last, For they get on quite well, Doom and he, Share similar pasts And similar ideas about what life should be. It seems, in fact, that this might just bloom. And what a relief. After Morose and Mad and Neurotic; After almost falling for Grief, Who was so exotic She made all the others seem tame. Then to discover she even lied about her name. And to sleep with another Serious!That was odd, Like wrestling with an angel, Though it was hard to tell from that rough unsated tangle Which one was Serious, and which one God. But how easy it is to be himself with Doom, Serious thinks, as he puts the wine in to chill And sets two glasses on a tray, Who always wants whatever Serious wants And always agrees with what he has to say; Who doesn’t need to hear that whole spiel About “going too fast” or “needing more room”; And who doesn’t probe and pry that long needle into his brain —What do you feel? What do you feel?— Until it’s all Serious can do not to stand up and scream:Pain! Lucky to be alive. And if he still has no clear idea where she lives, And never knows quite when she’ll arrive, Still, something about Doom feels right To Serious, and he looks forward to their dates. He checks himself in the mirror, dims the light, And waits. 9. Serious is a traveler. “Traveling broadens the mind,” The man beside him says, His tray table down and seat reclined Even as they're taking off, And Serious, who has his eyes closed So he can do what Serious does, Begins to cough. What do they say, what do they fear, Is this song joy or grief? This is a man, this is a god. Who are you and why are you here? To leave, to leave. The meal is over, Which Serious declined. In the shell-roar of the cabin He eases somewhat, is surprised to find He could almost drift away. “What line of work are you in?” He hears the man beside him say, And Serious begins coughing wildly again. What is that smell, what was that sound, Isn’t that ice on the wings? This is the air, there is the water, But what do you do on the way down? You scream, you scream. How far they must have gone by now, That old familiar world miles behind, The man eats an orange, And now he eats the rind. He eats his plate, his plastic fork, chews With animal relish his Styrofoam cup, Leans over to eat bittersweet Serious too, Who startles and wakes up. Look at the desert, look at the green, Is there an end to that ice? Here is a place, and here is a place, But what is the space between? It’s life, it’s life. 10. Serious is married. What a weird wind this is, He thinks, so still at times, Then stinging the eyes to tears. And how he seems both more and less Himself, and how it seems at once all of loneliness And something he can hold. Or is it he who's being carried? He shivers, and reaches out for her again. Or is it she who reaches, she who's cold? What is this wind? Where are these years? 11. Serious experiences loss. Just like that. Flat. Serious experiences loss, As if he’d come to some sheer cliff There was no way around, No way to cross, And found, On the other side Of a deep canyon, himself, Experiencing loss. Serious, when the man is gone, Tells himself that he tried, Tells himself that he cried and cried For all he was worth To the man sitting on the other side Experiencing loss, Who one day simply vanished, or moved on, Or slipped off the edge of the earth And died. 12. Serious doesn’t speak French. This embarrasses Serious, Because insofar as he lives anywhere, Serious lives in Paris. He feels the city stare, Feels himself sweat, and shake, as he tries to wrench The little that he’s gleaned Into the lot that he desires; Feels shopkeepers look at him as if he were a liar, Waiters as if he were unclean; And feels, in truth, not at all serious, As if he had a huge balloon for a head And helium squeaks for a voice, As if gravity could be merely a choice He were making, and he might instead Simply stop, let go, and drift away. Finally Serious, opposed to epiphanies, Has one he can’t resist. He is Serious, and to be Serious Is to know something utterly or not at all, And to know, moreover, That as you let your half-knowledge fall From you,it does not exist. Just like that Serious is himself again, Saying weighty things About the flowers in the stalls, Pondering a splendid mirage Called the Seine. And if he wakes saying fromage, Or in some shop feels Right on the verge of translating please, Serious knows it’s a dream, And knows from childhood what to do. Point and scream Until the damn fools give you cheese. 13. Serious has some culture. He knows some things. And if, as he begins to speak, He should feel the immense wings Of ignorance shadowing him, that dirty vulture That squawks in drawl and drips tobacco juice, Serious knows what shelter to seek. Pick a name and Bach is better. Modernism was powerful but diffuse. Life’s drained out of pictures since the Renaissance. Technique! Technique! Technique! And about all that spastic flatulence Called contemporary art, Well, Serious hardly knows where to start. Serious sits through opera without a yawn, Chews up books on which weaker teeth would shatter; He can tell you where one brushstroke lies, List the reasons courtly love is gone, Pluck the speck of subject matter From Henry James. Serious knows some things. He thinks and thinks and thinks Until his ignorance shrinks To the tiniest of flies Alighting somewhere in the Louvre. Carefully, carefully, Serious creeps With his massive swatter, Saying,Don’t move. Don’t move. 14. Serious believes in nothing. It’s a nice day, what should we do? What are you thinking? What’s been bothering you? What’s that you’re drinking? Serious spreads the paper on his lap To confirm what’s new under the sun, Hears a tap, tap, tap Against the windowpane. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Floats up from childhood like a bit of ash, And Serious, pausing, can almost see His old preacher, that atom bomb of idiocy Who every Sunday would explode. Still, Serious thinks, there’s a truth to set you free. But who could survive the blast? Tap, tap, tap. Serious skims the sports pages, Reads about a storm that rages Far out at sea. Some talking dog is taking office, Some country wiping out monuments, expunging its past. Tap, tap, tap. Goddammit, Serious says, midway through a war, And thinks again of that old bore Who talked and talked and talked Until you felt your head loll and sway Like some huge flower on a tiny stalk That one good breeze would break; And how you’d see him afterwards eating chicken fried steak, Chicken fried man, With a tiny transistor radio in his hand So he could listen to the football game; And how his face seethed and writhed with what seemed pain If he saw you coming to his booth, And he stared off as if some great truth Were finally, finally coming clear in that chicken fried brain And like a prophet he was going to stand up and shout— Until what plopped innocuously out Was your own name. Tap, tap, tap. Serious puts aside the news of the day And walks to the only window there is. But there’s no wind, not even the grass stirs. And anyway, there’s no tree. Serious shrugs and turns away. Must just be me. 13. Serious sees a child In the playground across the street, Sees his huge stupid head and huge stupid feet As he tries to keep up with the games, And hears his sonar screams Of delight amid the other children's screams, And hears his timid weeping when they call him names. Serious sees the child standing apart sometimes Driveling to himself in silly rhymes, And sees him pretend to look intently at the sky If Serious walks by, Or sees him simply stop and stare. Gradually Serious starts seeing the child everywhere, In a store standing in an aisle, In the subway while Serious is trying to work on the way home, Or laughing with his family in a restaurant Where Serious eats alone. Serious knows the truth. This child wants something, his whole nature is want. And it begins to be annoying, This novice cringing, all the imbecilic and cloying Tactics of being cute, The whole hangdog way he has of panhandling pity With his freckles and his missing tooth, Sitting all fidgety in his Sunday suit Or babbling happily as he’s leaking snot; And then the air he suddenly puts on of being serious When it’s so obvious he’s not. Serious sees the child in the playground Standing to the side, Sees his face whiten and his eyes go wide As Serious crosses the street and strides Until his shadow swallows the child And leans down close enough for them to kiss. I don’t have time for this, Serious says, I’ve got too much to do. And the child says,Who are you? 16. Serious kills himself. No, no, Shivering out of a dream, Starlight and the hard glitter Under the bridge’s beam, Serious, Serious, Don’t go. Serious crawls out of bed, Feels the cold in the floor And thinks, suddenly, of lovely Mad (Where can she be?) Who’d bolt out of sleep and scream Farmers get up at four! It’s three. Serious makes himself a cup of coffee, Which he doesn’t drink; Tries and fails to read, Tries and fails to think. Serious sits, and holds himself still, Minute by minute; Until the dawn finally comes And he is in it. 17. Serious lives alone. It’s better this way, he tells himself, As he takes a pan from the pan shelf, A spatula from the spatula drawer, And fries two eggs the way he likes them: Yolks of stone. No more gnats of chatter over breakfast. No more breakfast. It’s noon. No one prancing by with only panties on When he’s almost, almost broken through, Or singsonging outside his door Serious, O Serious, where are you? No more! But what, finally,does Serious do? He sits, ignores the ringing phone, Looks at a wall On one of the last warm days of the year, And settles back into the lifelong call Of being serious, Which is to see, within that whiteness, Leaves being gently blown, And to feel their colors as they fall. 18. Serious gives a speech. He sets his papers on the podium, His glass within easy reach, Tap,tap, taps the microphone. How vast this venue is. How absolute this darkness. To be serious is to be alone! Serious cries out with a triumphant look on his face, Waiting for the echoes to end Out there in all that space, Which the words at once define and extend. It takes a while, but they do die. The spotlight lasers in. He blinks hard, starts again. To know in every hand another’s touch, To hear a silence words only intensify, To feel not too little but too much This attenuated world— Serious begins to sweat, Feels the back of his shirt grow wet; Looks down to see his papers swirled And scattered, the glass on the floor, broken. What’s with this fucking light, he thinks, Or was it spoken? He glares out at the dark, impassive crowd And as if by force he could make them wake Hears his voice growing loud: Whatever you most treasure you will break, Whatever you hold closest you will let go, There is no place that you will not leave! But to be serious— Serious says, Quietly now, because he has them, they are his— To be serious, to be truly serious, is to know That what you call your losses you cannot grieve, For it was never quite these things that you wanted —This treasure, this touch, this one place— But by such life to be haunted. Brilliant! No notes, no flaws. Serious stands back and waits for applause. The hall is silent, utterly silent, The heat tropic. Serious looks around, confused, Turns to the man who introduced him Then can’t remember being introduced; And even given his credentials, This suddenly seems a most unlikely topic. Serious tries to get out of the light, But the light goes where Serious goes. He blunders to the edge of the stage, A cliff Breaking off into a dark in which there's no movement, no voices, not one sigh. Serious feels the rage Draining out of him, and feels a chill, and whispers, Where am I? 19. Serious nears an end. It’s cold and getting colder, And Serious, older, Sits outside thinking of his good friend, Who like so much of Serious is gone, And thinking of that godforsaken dawn After the one night of his life he spent outdoors. Tell me, His good friend said When Serious staggered out to the fire, Which form would you say is higher, Tragedy or comedy? And Serious, who had stumbled full-bladdered In the night from a dream of bears, Then dreamed himself the object Of a dozen hungry stares, Who had swiveled, pissed into the tent, And sworn such things it would take a life to repent, Serious, exhausted Serious, Was silent. Because it’s been troubling me, Serious, that the answer can only be tragedy. To be conscious is to be conscious of Losing whatever it is that you most love, And thus an art that's truly great Will always have one deepest truth to tell, Which is, my friend, this life is hell. Serious looks at the sky. It’s late. A small wind blows The trees, and Serious, shivering, knows He should head inside, That he is not well. But sitting here, letting his eyes close, Serious can almost see that lake Aflame with the early sun, and smell The sweet burn of that wood, And feel the way it seemed his heart would surely break Were it not for the strange lightness in his head As his friend smiled and said, Butmaybe earth is the heaven of the good. 20. Serious talks to God. There’s no one else left. His mind is mash, His world is ash, And Serious occasionally forgets himself, Though he is not,not Bereft, That sniveling idiot two doors down Who sits up late With only ashes in the grate And talks to God. See? Serious says.See? Nothing. Serious spreads his arms magnanimously As if to give God the floor. God declines. Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air We wawl and cry, Serious says, louder than before. And then we wawl and cry some more, And then we die, And then we rot! Again he waits in case There’s disagreement. There’s not. Serious scoffs, goes to brush his teeth, Forgets briefly to avert his eye From the mirror’s glare And finds his father there, That gentle baffled man Who, when there was no hope, When he couldn’t even stand, Carved from a piece of soap A silly yellow duck And set it in a little yellow dish. Serious feels a tingling in his hair And mutters something close to a prayer, I wish, I wish... The lights go out. Goddammit, Serious shouts As he trips and falls To his knees on the floor, Banging his head on the door As he tries to rise. GodDAMMIT! Serious cries. The lights come on. His father’s gone, But there, at the edge of the sink, Balances the little duck in the little dish No serious person would ever keep. Serious tries to think, Steadies himself as if at some brink, Decides he needs sleep, That’s what he needs, Crawling fully clothed into his bed And pulling the covers to his chin Because, it seems, there’s some strange wind That’s somehow gotten inside. So unlike Serious, To leave a door unclosed. Yet here it is, gathering strength As it blows his books On the floor and it blows Right through his body and it blows Behind and below and above And out of the whirlwind a voice cries Love What? Serious says, as he tries To sit upright and looks Wildly around him, Raising his fist in the air. The things...Ihave lost— Immediately he is tossed Back against the wall By the force of a storm That has no source, no form, And hears again the call Out of nowhere: Love MyGod! Serious screams, Unable to help himself, What maundering politician, What decerebrated pop star, What stupid puling poet Couldn’ttell me that? Struggling to get out of bed He starts to cough, then choke, A riot in his heart, A riot in his head As he falls off the edge to the floor. Whodo you think you are, He gasps.Isthis... Isthis some sort of JOKE? Suddenly the strange wind is quiet, But no less strange the calm that comes after. I’m serious, the voice says. And Serious dies of laughter. EPILOGUE The dead man’s famous. No one now remembers him alive, Or knows his name, or anything he did. Still, a few stories survive After all this while Of a weird-looking man With a weird-looking smile That had, it’s said, Almost a kind of life to it, Though the man was seriously dead. And some remember how all the flies Vanished for miles; And some say no, no, but the buzzards had weird smiles As if they knew something. And some tell of an old woman Who would come and whisper in the dead man’s ear, And smooth the dead man’s hair, And if the door opened, disappear. There are even stories of that grim mortician Who thought the smile undignified And tugged and tugged so hard He slipped and fell inside Right on top of the dead man, Whose lips, he swore, seemed to soften, Seemed to somehow kiss. And some remember this: Before the lid was sealed on that coffin And the nails driven, There were on that face real tears. And some say he smiled like a man forgiven. The dead man never hears. The dead man spins and spins With his dumb dolphin grin Through all the places where he is When people talk of him again: In classrooms or in planes, In boredom or in pain; In front of screens Or in the spotlight’s glare; In days too mild to bear And in the long nights where The dark grows steep, The wind wild, And a mother rises from her sleep To calm her serious child.

I. O the screech and heat and hate we have for each day's commute, the long wait at the last stop before we go screaming underground, while the pigeons court and shit and rut insolently on the tracks because this train is always late, always aimed at only us, who when it comes with its blunt snout, its thousand mouths, cram and curse and contort into one creature, all claws and eyes, tunneling, tunneling, tunneling toward money. 2. Sometimes a beauty cools through the doors at Grand, glides all the untouchable angles and planes of herself to stand among us like a little skyscraper, so sheer, so spare, gazes going all over her in a craving wincing way like sun on glass. 3. There is a dreamer all good conductors know to look for when the last stop is made and the train is ticking cool, some lover, loner, or fool who has lived so hard he jerks awake in the graveyard, where he sees coming down the aisle a beam of light whose end he is, and what he thinks are chains becoming keys.

No remembering now when the apple sapling was blown almost out of the ground. No telling how, with all the other trees around, it alone was struck. It must have been luck, he thought for years, so close to the house it grew. It must have been night. Change is a thing one sleeps through when young, and he was young. If there was a weakness in the earth, a give he went down on his knees to find and feel the limits of, there is no longer. If there was one random blow from above the way he's come to know from years in this place, the roots were stronger. Whatever the case, he has watched this tree survive wind ripping at his roof for nights on end, heats and blights that left little else alive. No remembering now... A day's changes mean all to him and all days come down to one clear pane through which he sees among all the other trees this leaning, clenched, unyielding one that seems cast in the form of a blast that would have killed it, as if something at the heart of things, and with the heart of things, had willed it.