Howard Moss

The upkeep of the castle is The downfall of the cottages Where fishermen and peasants live Or used to live. The young men leave In homemade boats in which they drown, In makeshift planes that burn and crash, Or die of boredom on the train That starts each month for Cold Cash, Only to find when they arrive That that’s not where the castle is. The women left live in the sticks, And when they do the weekly wash Or mend the nets to catch the fish, They sing this song: “We work for weeks For nothing. Now the men have gone, We’d like to be where money talks, For all the rest is gibberish.” They pack their bags and take the train And travel through a strange terrain, But not to where the castle is. When there’s no one left but children And the very old, the young And lame survivors play a game Invariable in its details In which they take the daily trash Down to the dump and sing a song About ash heaps and burials Whose burden always is the same: “If we were old, if we were young, We’d find out where the caste is.” At Cold Cash, where the castle is, Or where it is supposed to be, Nobody ever dies, it seems; They just go on—from first to last A series of monotonies— And they play bridge, mah-jongg, and gin The while they sing their tribal song, Which has no verse but a refrain: “We’re here. And if we’re here, of course, This must be where the castle is.” But even kings get sick and bank Accounts go bad and miracles Occur, though sometimes in reverse; Elaborate discrepancies Narrow down from bad to worse; Abysses open in a wink Below the shining pinnacles— “We do not know the place,” they sing, “That once we thought the castle was. Do you know where the castle is?” They travel near, they travel far To seek out where the castle is, And come upon the cottages, Which lie in smoking ruins, and there’s No man alive, no woman now To point the way, and though they sift Through the debris and pan the clay, Searching for the smallest clues, They haven’t found out to this day Just where the castle was, or is.

To the memory of a friend, drowned off Water Island, April, 1960 Finally, from your house, there is no view; The bay’s blind mirror shattered over you And Patchogue took your body like a log The wind rolled up to shore. The senseless drowned Have faces nobody would care to see, But water loves those gradual erasures Of flesh and shoreline, greenery and glass, And you belonged to water, it to you, Having built, on a hillock, above the bay, Your house, the bay giving you reason to, Where now, if seasons still are running straight, The horseshoe crabs clank armor night and day, Their couplings far more ancient than the eyes That watched them from your porch. I saw one once Whose back was a history of how we live; Grown onto every inch of plate, except Where the hinges let it move, were living things, Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time: The origins of art. It carried them With pride, it seemed, as if endurance only Matters in the end. Or so I thought. Skimming traffic lights, starboard and port, Steer through planted poles that mark the way, And other lights, across the bay, faint stars Lining the border of Long Island’s shore, Come on at night, they still come on at night, Though who can see them now I do not know. Wild roses, at your back porch, break their blood, And bud to test surprises of sea air, And the birds fly over, gliding down to feed At the two feeding stations you set out with seed, Or splash themselves in a big bowl of rain You used to fill with water. Going across That night, too fast, too dark, no one will know, Maybe you heard, the last you’ll ever hear, The cry of the savage and endemic gull Which shakes the blood and always brings to mind The thought that death, the scavenger, is blind, Blunders and is stupid, and the end Comes with ironies so fine the seed Falters in the marsh and the heron stops Hunting in the weeds below your landing stairs, Standing in a stillness that now is yours.

It seems to have traveled at night, Supremely ironic, lighting fires, Laying golden eggs in the midst of squalor, Its outer garments, in the latest version, Sumptuous, its linens more than shoddy, Drunk, moreover, at a seedy party The discriminating shunned, and, later, bawdy In a run-down neighborhood, with whores and sailors Chosen as companions while the queen went needy. Now that everything about it is known, Why does it come up purple or threadbare, Thrashing all its sunsets in a fit of pique, Or stripped, in the seamiest hayloft, ready To repeat dull anecdotes the millionth time, Its poise unquestionable, its voice unsteady? It is brilliant, androgynous, and stultifying With its threats and tears, dissembling always Its mad obsession with the blurred distinction. And yet who else Is so elementary and badly needed That fifty cultures rise at the merest rumor Of its presence, and, finally, punctually fall Whenever it departs, as if on schedule? Interviewed, Monday, in the city dump, Which turned, by magic, into a hotel tower, Shedding poems and paintings for its bath (It takes ten centuries of running water To wash it clean), it then emerged, all dirty Again, in a costume of ferocious splendor, A hat some milliner in old Vienna Sweated over, its pumps exchanged for sneakers, And raced across the city, breaking records, Just to prove its powers of endurance. It lies down anywhere, and loves the country, But is so unassuming it can even flourish Beneath electric signs and in railroad stations It goes to for the summer, estivating, It says, near fountains that escape our notice, And comes back in the fall, its ribbons flying, Wheeling through the leaves, singing all the voices Of every opera in the repertoire Plus one no one has ever dreamed of writing. Going about its gigantic business, It masks itself as any shape or hope, Appearing as a vicious telephone call, Or a flat, disturbing message in an envelope. It praises calmness but adores upheaval, Is most to be desired when it apes composure, And much to be distrusted when it boasts it has The only fingerprint that can be changed at will.

That sea we see of surfaces Turned upside down would be another world: A bone shop, soaked in pearl, a dumping- Ground for rarities, the sea-maws pumping Grecian garbage Roman cities hurled Seaward westward toward our faces. That sea would yield up secret farms, Gray-rotted by itself, encrusted thick With unimaginable wealth, the spoil Of deaf-mute drownings, the immemorial Dead, floating in a blue-green bailiwick Of nun-like plants waving arms. That sea will not turn over. See In its deepest keep, far from its shallow, The formal, hidden iceberg, slant, oblique With pregnancy below, thrust up its peak— Like ourselves in the water-beasted wallow, Caught in a cellular ecstasy. In the same vein, all flesh conceals Articulation’s fishnet, whose thread-bones (A metaphysic harp from sky to heel) Hang in the flesh that dangles from the creel Depending from the weedy Hand that owns All fishnets and all fishing reels. His answers breed a further question: The fingernails of scale a snake will shed In spring, coil after coil, on moistened clay, Though similar to the serpent wriggling away, Are but facsimiles, though not quite dead. Testing this, see how the rest shun Drying memorials to that race That mined our viewpoint in the Garden, Whose inching tape maneuvered in the sun To measure every guilty length of Eden. Man is an animal that needs a warden To frighten off the Master’s face, For even an idiot sees a world No tree or dog would dream of, finds a name For pain or absence of it, marries love Of one kind of another. In his grove, Insensible fruit trees and wild game Grow naturally, though he lies curled, The spit and image of our wish, Smoking a pipe, with an ice-cold Cola Clutched in one hand, and the Sundy funnies spread On both his knees. He’ll leave his lurching bed To throw hot jazz on an old victrola— A far cry from the primal fish Whose fine-boned spine our back remembers: The river bottoms, and the sea-silt soft As soup, the mudflats where night crawlers came, Tempted by the water tops to change the lame Arrangements, making of the air a loft Fitted to our brackish members, And out we clambered, eyeing land, Our moist eyes focused on the moron green, Hot on our backs abnormal dryness, shadow Forming in the seanets, seaweed into meadow, Finally landing at the foot of pine, Heavy with salty contraband While the birds beautifully beat blue On erect wings, as magically they soared, Feathered and efficient, from tallest trees to stake A claim so ravishing that now we undertake To map an area we once ignored, Still exiles from that upper view, For, mummers of the ocean’s Word, Our dry translations tidied from the deep, Bespeak its ancient languages. The salt Our tears and blood must harbor from its vault Is shed on every beach-head where we creep, Part man, dry fish, and wingless bird.

You watch the night like a material Slowly being crammed into a tube of rooms; It showers into gunshot, pepper, dew, As if a hand had squeezed it at one end, Is blank as innocence when daylight comes Projecting sunlit patches on the wall That fade. Too much is going on, too much Of life, you say, for you to live alone On top of an old tenement, on a train That might start off sometime, but never does. Your view is gone. Turn around, and boom!, A park appears between two fixed ideas Whose narrow aperture of sky in time Will house the slums of 1989 . . . Now New York is feigning its gray dark London winter. Invisible uptown Is out there somewhere, raining on its own. Palmed in the dusty pane, a circle bares A scene that seems reprinted from the past: A man with a dog is walking very fast Along a path among the stunted trees Of the little square below. He disappears.

For Frances Dillon Hayward 1 Such splendid icecaps and hard rills, such weights And counter-weights, I think I scale the heights When pentatonic Chinese crewmen start Up in a cold sweat from the bottom of the keyboard Only to arrive at some snow-stormed valley To dissolve in steam-holes and vanish out of sight. 2 The left hand’s library is dull, the books All read, though sometimes, going under velvet, An old upholsterer will spit out tacks, Turn them into sparks and smartly hurl them Up and down the loudest bowling alley— His pressure of effects can last all night. 3 Two bird notes endlessly repeat themselves. Or are they fish scales—iridescent, hard? Mica into marble back to mica? No images in trills. They’re formal. Take Your foot off the pedal. You’re in a wood Near the sea. And every tree and wave is fake. 4 An underwater haircut by Debussy? Oh, that’s too easy. Astringent lotions Let the swimmer down by easy stages Down among the flashy soda fountains Down to the bottom where the light bulbs waver Down where all the mirrors eat their hearts out. 5 Grammar becoming poetry is what You’re after—say, a rational derangement Requiring that you forget technique And concentrate on what is harder like A fireplace that burns pine needles only, Before which spills the gore of Persian rugs. 6 A vial of antiseptic meant for Schubert, One modest, flat meticulous translation Of Chopin’s lightning undercurrent Spanish— These are the mere necessities of travel. Someone you must meet is Dr. Czerny. Then, through him, Domenico Scarlatti. 7 Seizure are occurring. Despite snow-lightning, The black keys are bent on mountain climbing— All of it against a doctor’s warning. Soon they’re descending like the black dots of A wirephoto in transmission. An Erotic black wing hovers up above. 8 Bach is more like opening an ember And digging hard into the heart of fire. The heart of fire is another fire. When it comes to Mozart, just say nothing. Think of it as milk, and drink it slowly. Slowly you will taste the cream of angels. 9 This black and white’s deceptive. Underneath The spectrum rages. Did you ever see The calmest waters quickly come to life Because a minnow’s tinfoil flash in sun Had rent them suddenly? It came. And went. We take two thousand takes before we print. 10 Don’t try to catch that lion by Rousseau. Before you wake, he’ll eat you up. If you Should meet the sleeping gypsy, let her sleep. Tomorrow they’ll be gone without a trace, Half fact and half enigma. Now your hands Are on the mysteries of the commonplace.

Whether it was a particular beauty Stirred the tearfall from the eyelid’s rim, Rinsing the world once more with self, Was it not there the general peered, Thousand-eyed, down from the peak In the last of all imaginary sunsets? The light divided in half, the half Divided again in half, the way Zeno’s paradox makes nothing move Because an infinity of points between Target and arrow, though never seen, Exists. And there is snow in a capsule, A solid floor of individual Flakes that, shaken, settle in a field— Parachutists growing where the grass, One moment before, was only natural. I am speaking now of the diminishment Or enhancement of enchanted objects, Of how they turn into nothingness Or burnish the imagination: A fire at the bottom of the sea, For instance, or a mind in space Thinking its way into science fiction, Or, inside the skull, a little world Clinging, about to be thrown away— Miraculous lint under a bell.

“Painting a wave requires no system,” The painter said, painting a wave. “Systems may get you flotsam and jetsam, Seaweed and so forth. But never a wave.” There was a scroll or fine-lined curve On the canvas first, and then what looked Like hair flying or grayish nerves, Which began to move as the painter worked. “Painting the sea is a lot of trouble; It never stops still for a moment, so I try to make it internal, mental, As though I stopped it, then let it go.” Something began to pulse and tumble Out of the brushes, the ink, the chalk; A long black line commenced to tremble, Then, like a fishline, started to jerk . . . With what at the end? “I think I’ve caught it.” A drop of water hung by a hair. “If I could only stop it a minute!” The drop began to race somewhere, Spreading out in every direction, A bird of thread, caught in a storm, Trying to say, “Connection! Action!” But in the end it was very calm. Soon there was water under water, And over the sand a sun . . . a moon? Who could have seen that wave of water One night ago? Or a thousand and one? Who could have seen the lid of water With its thin mascara of buoys and corks, With its lined horizon’s distant glimmer Of maybe a skyline like New York’s? Now there will be that morning evening Tide dyeing the water’s pulse, The wave drying in ink.The Wave. Moving, momentous, motionless.

The sunlight was not our concern or even The pane it shone through, and no one was going Down for the mail, and the four lettuces The gardener brought as a gift seemed to be A calculated bounty, so that early on We knew we were going to be stuck with ourselves The rest of the day, the vicissitudes Marching in rows from the forest, the balms Not arriving till nightfall. On the prowl Since morning, the wind had a touch too much Of motivation, an annoying way Of exactly ruffling the same oak leaf As if it were practicing a piano trill; All day, repetitive birds, far off, Were either boring themselves to death Or, drunk on instinct, doing their thing: Ritual dances, territorial rites— The whole imperial egg. What nests Ambition is weaving in us is hard To say: after the flat occasion, The unshared sphere, each childish wish Grows hopeless finding this is what the world is. For this, the recommended cures are useless: A cheery hello to the disaffected At breakfast? A soupful of tears at dinner? You could spill the whole silly story out To one more demanding, ill-tempered beauty You happened to meet at the A. & P., And still every greedy shopping cart, First overstuffed and then abandoned In the parking lot, would leave in its wake Some human need, ignored, half-starved . . . Torn between having nothing to say And saying it, whole diaries get down: How terrible to have dressed beautifully for the rain! . . . I was launched on New York’s bisexual muddle . . .

1 When the loons cry, The night seems blacker, The water deeper. Across the shore: An eyelash-charcoal Fringe of pine trees. 2 The lake reflects Indefinite pewter, And intermittent thunder Lets us know The gods are arriving, One valley over. 3 After the long Melancholy of the fall, One longs for the crisp Brass shout of winter— The blaze of firewood, The window’s spill Of parlor lamplight Across the snow. 4 Flaring like a match Dropped in a dry patch, One sunset tells The spectrum’s story. See the last hunter’s Flashlight dim As he hurries home To his lighted window.