Gerard Malanga

Stefan Zweig, come back, come back. Do not be afraid. Do not look the other way, but on all sides. Come take the road with me into those dark woods where eerie sounds of nature coalesce, where fledglings kiss you on the head and talk to you. Come fly with me, come be my friend in those darkest hours, in those darkest woods where even dreams are not permitted, but they move in nonetheless, because their darkest hours share with yours and mine to light the light, where our angels lead us on with whisperings . . . and they look on. Stefan, it’s safe now. Come hold my hand. We circle home. The light is in the window. The dance is picking up. The dance is done. Can’t you feel it now? Can’t you . . . can’t you . . . ?

Perhaps it was just another break-in some years back. Or the charm that suddenly seduces out of nowhere, long rehearsed till you’ve realized too late that half your living life went walking straightway out the door into the noonday glare of some Sunday godforsaken place — somewhere down in central Florida, the so-called Widow State you thought was safe — which at the time still remained obscure, so obscure, in fact, it was almost dark when you awoke, and so unlike yourself as in a manic haze rifling through those drawers for letters, tchotchkes, so much else. So you’d suddenly been had. There are times when the human frailties let down their guard. There is a ring of fire Dante so numbered, named for those who prey upon the old. The kids all grown up and living somewhere else, and you’re left alone stumbling down the hall. It could’ve been a friendly call at first. A friendly knock. A slight accent adding to the charm. A friend of a friend of a so-called friend no time to trace. That noonday glare of sunlight as a halo for that added touch. Have you forgotten anything? Anything?

I never really knew if Johanna Hirshhorn was actually Joe’s only daughter. Jim Brodey made the match and claimed as much, and then he left. It was my last weekend in Labor Day New York before boarding a one-way Milan Alitalia flight where I disembarked with less than 10 bucks to my name and this sense of wonder what would unfold and take me far. It was a blinding day, September, almost still, when Flavio Lucchini came to fetch me. It would be Giangiacomo, Montale, the irascible Nanda, Ettore Sottsass when he was still taking pictures, when he hugged me when he could. In Olga Hirshhorn’s obit in the Times, no mention of Johanna. Where art thou?Dove? Dove? Perhaps she wasn’t Joe’s daughter after all. Perhaps I’d been mistaken, misheard, misremembered. Perhaps she was a long-lost grandchild dangling on that family tree. Perhaps Jim misled me. Perhaps, perhaps my memory is faulty after all, as when I woke to the abrupt jolting of the Rome Express. All else is but a blur, a flight from memory, a future without one, far from home.

I would imagine underneath those warming bear hugs was a kinda kind of soul as your many poems attest. Those summer breezes. Those many hazy sunsets nature’s voices echoing afar. A life continually fulfilled bordering on the empty and those inexplicable tragedies, those bad timings unreconciled, then reconciled with time. You had no answer that would satisfy your curiosity and the why, the wherewithal just round the bend. The morning mists descending in an angled quietude. A birdcall here and there. A rising wind unfurled and furling at the top-most branches of a conifer. Those wetlands mysterioso. A last-known address unknown at last.

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.

Is she still Faith Franckenstein? Is she still the past somewhere between Frankfort, Kansas, and LA? Le Moulin du Soleil Ermenonville; her mom’s haunt with Harry Crosby, winter ’29, also haunted, still haunted. Those open fields haunted. The Faubourg Saint-Germain. The Faubourg darknesses and weeping willows, the drizzled cul-de-sacs. Is she still of memories thus deleted, giving her a certain absent aura, tall-shouldered? An uncertain world of make-believe made more believable, I wanna say. Those whims and glossy chance encounters, tossing caution to the wind. As such, a darkened moonless night, down by South Beach sans the Verrazzano, c. ’61. We plunged headlong, skinny-dipping in the languid surf with dreams of no tomorrows, no eternities. None but those decades lessened, disappeared. Those moments becoming one less and less. The near-to-next impossibility. The careless and carefree. The half-remembered face. The voice also half-remembered. Her hair way past shoulder-length, soft, satiny. Wordsworth’s “emotions recollected in tranquility”tout passé. The midnight skinny-dip.

NYTimes headline for September 4th 2012: Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy As Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits They return to the site whence they came with eyes tearful, with psalms trumpeting the air. They stand ever so watchful; guarding the graves of their ghosts and their kind. They shall not forget.  They shall not want. They lie down in green silky pastures and finding their way to the still waters. They restore and nourish their soul. They walk through the dark valleys; always the shadows of death lurking behind them. Always striding till they reach the comforting light. They fear no evil.  Man fears. They forage for food and they eat amongst their enemies because they fear not.  They are the happiest. The honey is under their tongue. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. Their hearts awaken.  They know no violence. Even in the waning light they tower over all else. They are the landscape.  They are the trees. They throw up the dust in their dance.  The skies become misty. They rise up and lead each other away into the dusk.

I am as guilty as many. No one speaks of David Ignatow anymore. No one speaks of  your lonesome time in the New York boonies, those outer reaches of Jamaica, where the Z & J Lines go no more. No one speaks of your sparsely furnished rooms, the low-slung Danish sofa where you sit and muse and daydream out the grimed window on rainy days. Even in the warmth of spring, there is no spring. You don’t go out much, I would imagine. I imagine much for the both of us. All those darknesses at noon. Those woodlands filled with songbirds twittering. Even scribblings on the morning Times are but a momentary respite. Words we’ve been blessed with, still blessed, even in our nightly dreams unfinished. Where art thou now, dear David? Where is the love for my desperation that I may fight your fears?

How tired are you? How benevolent the cause for those slim, aching moments of blinding obscurity, and the blinds drawn and the sunlight louvered until even the knickknacks cling to their dust as to Time passing passing, if even that. The yearning to be not bothered, to be passed on the street, the rehab, the food mart, the many shoppe window reflections. So many times, the eyes averted in fear, so many times you remain obscure, even to your more obscured self. A silence charting your whereabouts at the many roundabouts, the Tenderloins forever unnamed. Even the sounds of the half-painted trams remain silent in passing. Their wheels grinding yet silent. The rain silent. The accusations even more silent, or the “friends” who never talk back, clouded in darkness. The landscapes drifting. The equestrian trots drifting. All the genres mixed up or simply misplaced. The memories gone blank. The mundane measured in hours, minutes, or decades, intervening, descending.