Kenneth Koch

1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting. 2 We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing. 3 I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold. 4 Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy, and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut That will solve a murder case unsolved for years Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window Through which he saw her head, connecting with Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years; For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us; I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields Always, to be near you, even in my heart When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to The place where I again think of you, a new Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow Of a ship which sails From Hartford to Miami, and I love you Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

Leo bends over his desk Gazing at a memorandum While Stuart stands beside him With a smile, saying, "Leo, the order for those desks Came in today From Youngstown Needle and Thread!" C. Loth Inc., there you are Like Balboa the conqueror Of those who want to buy office furniture Or bar fixtures In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio! Secretaries pound out Invoices on antique typewriters— Dactyllographs And fingernail biters. I am sitting on a desk Looking at my daddy Who is proud of but feels unsure about Some aspects of his little laddie. I will go on to explore Deep and/or nonsensical themes While my father's on the dark hardwood floor Hit by a couple of Ohio sunbeams. Kenny, he says, some day you'll work in the store. But I felt "never more" or "never ever" Harvard was far away World War Two was distant Psychoanalysis was extremely expensive All of these saved me from you. C. Loth you made my father happy I saw his face shining He laughed a lot, working in you He said to Miss Ritter His secretary "Ritt, this is my boy, Kenny!" "Hello there Kenny," she said My heart in an uproar I loved you but couldn't think Of staying with you I can see the virtues now That could come from being in you A sense of balance Compromise and acceptance— Not isolated moments of brilliance Like a girl without a shoe, But someone that you Care for every day— Need for customers and the economy Don't go away. There were little pamphlets Distributed in you About success in business Each about eight to twelve pages long One whole series of them All ended with the words "P.S. He got the job" One a story about a boy who said, "I swept up the street, Sir, Before you got up." Or "There were five hundred extra    catalogues So I took them to people in the city who have a dog"— P.S. He got the job. I didn't get the job I didn't think that I could do the job I thought I might go crazy in the job Staying in you You whom I could love But not be part of The secretaries clicked Their Smith Coronas closed at five p.m. And took the streetcars to Kentucky then And I left too.

Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green, the years’ quick focus of faces I do not remember . . . The palm trees stalking like deliberate giants for my birthday, and all the hot adolescent memories seen through a screen of water . . . For my birthday thrust into the adult and actual: expected to perform the action, not to ponder the reality beyond the fact, the man standing upright in the dream.

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya) In a poem, one line may hide another line, As at a crossing, one train may hide another train. That is, if you are waiting to cross The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading. In a family one sister may conceal another, So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another. One father or one brother may hide the man, If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love. So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas. One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe; One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another, One small complaint may hide a great one. One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another, One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath may hide another bath As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain. One idea may hide another: Life is simple Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows. One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here. A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it. In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts" Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that" And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve. Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem. When you come to something, stop to let it pass So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where, Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about, The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A Sentimental Journey look around When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see If it is standing there, it should be, stronger And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree With one and when you get up to leave there is another Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher, One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass. You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

I set forth one misted white day of June Beneath the great Atlantic rainway, and heard: “Honestly you smite worlds of truth, but Lose your own trains of thought, like a pigeon. Did you once ride in Kenneth’s machine?” “Yes, I rode there, an old man in shorts, blind, Who had lost his way in the filling station; Kenneth was kind.” “Did he fill your motionless ears with resonance and stain?” “No, he spoke not as a critic, but as a man.” “Tell me, what did he say?” “He said, ‘My eyes are the white sky, the gravel on the groundway my sad lament.’” “And yet he drives between the two. . . .” “Exactly, Jane, And that is the modern idea of fittingness, To, always in motion, lose nothing, although beneath the Rainway they move in threes and twos completely Ruined for themselves, like moving pictures.” “But how other?” “Formulalessness, to go from the sun Into love’s sweet disrepair. He would fondly express ‘Rain trees’—which is not a poem, ‘rain trees. . . .’” “Still, it is mysterious to have an engine That floats bouquets! and one day in the rear-vision Mirror of his car we vowed delight, The insufficiency of the silverware in the sunlight, The dreams he steals from and smiles, losing gain.” “Yet always beneath the rainway unsyntactical Beauty might leap up!” “That we might sing From smiles’ ravines, ‘Rose, the reverse of everything, May be profaned or talked at like a hat.’” “Oh that was sweet and short, like the minuet Of stars, which would permit us to seem our best friends By silver’s eminent lights! For nature is so small, ends Falsely reign, distending the time we did Behind our hope for body-work, riding with Kenneth.” Their voicing ceased, then started again, to complain That we are offered nothing when it starts to rain In the same way, though we are dying for the truth.

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat Saying to me as we walked across the Yard Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said You are not wearing overcoat. He said, You should do as I say not do as I do. Just how American it was and how late Forties it was Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me In his New York apartment sitting on chair Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering. Look at this photograph said of his mother and father. Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out. Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture. Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said. Why don't you ask him? Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not. Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph. Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs. Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true. Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

The Magic of Numbers—1 How strange it was to hear the furniture being moved around in the apartment upstairs! I was twenty-six, and you were twenty-two. The Magic of Numbers—2 You asked me if I wanted to run, but I said no and walked on. I was nineteen, and you were seven. The Magic of Numbers—3 Yes, but does X really like us? We were both twenty-seven. The Magic of Numbers—4 You look like Jerry Lewis (1950). The Magic of Numbers—5 Grandfather and grandmother want you to go over to their house for dinner. They were sixty-nine, and I was two and a half. The Magic of Numbers—6 One day when I was twenty-nine years old I met you and nothing happened. The Magic of Numbers—7 No, of course it wasn’t I who came to the library! Brown eyes, flushed cheeks, brown hair. I was twenty-nine, and you were sixteen. The Magic of Numbers—8 After we made love one night in Rockport I went outside and kissed the road I felt so carried away. I was twenty-three, and you were nineteen. The Magic of Numbers—9 I was twenty-nine, and so were you. We had a very passionate time. Everything I read turned into a story about you and me, and everything I did was turned into a poem.

I O what a physical effect it has on me To dive forever into the light blue sea Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends, Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still, It is beautiful, when October Is over, and February is over, To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then Reply (to no one), “Let’s go five or six blocks.” Isn’t the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian? Aren’t my eyes bigger than love? Isn’t this history, and aren’t we a couple of ruins? Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight! Is love what we are, Or has happiness come to me in a private car That’s so very small I’m amazed to see it there? 2 We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you. I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism. 3 Inside the symposium of your sweetest look’s Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain raspberries, when China’s Still a country! Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that’s Exactly when. If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill, I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking-water, as baskets Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor! O benches of nothing Appear and reappear—electricity! I’d love to be how You are, as if The world were new, and the selves were blue Which we don Until it’s dawn, Until evening puts on The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of . . . Water! your tear-colored nail polish Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new As a calm On the sea, where, like pigeons, I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated— Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

I The leaves of blue came drifting down. In the corner Madeleine Reierbacher was reading Lorna Doone. The bay’s water helped to implement the structuring of the garden hose. The envelope fell. Was it pink or was it red? Consult Lorna Doone. There, voyager, you will find your answer. The savant grapeade stands Remember Madeleine Reierbacher. Madeleine Reierbacher says, “If you are happy, there is no one to keep you from being happy; Don’t let them!” Madeleine Reierbacher went into the racing car. The racing car was orange and red. Madeleine Reierbacher drove to Beale Street. There Maddy doffed her garments to get into some more comfortable clothes. Jazz was already playing in Beale Street when Madeleine Reierbacher arrived there. Madeleine Reierbacher picked up the yellow horn and began to play. No one had ever heard anything comparable to the playing of Madeleine Reierbacher. What a jazz musician! The pianist missed his beats because he was so excited. The drummer stared out the window in ecstasy at the yellow wooden trees. The orchestra played “September in the Rain,” “Mugging,” and “I’m Full of Love.” Madeleine Reierbacher rolled up her sleeves; she picked up her horn; she played “Blues in the Rain.” It was the best jazz anyone had ever heard. It was mentioned in the newspapers. St. Louis! Madeleine Reierbacher became a celebrity. She played with Pesky Summerton and Muggsy Pierce. Madeleine cut numerous disks. Her best waxings are “Alpha Beta and Gamma” And “Wing Song.” One day Madeleine was riding on a donkey When she came to a yellow light; the yellow light did not change. Madeleine kept hoping it would change to green or red. She said, “As long as you have confidence, You need be afraid of nothing.” Madeleine saw the red smokestacks, she looked at the thin trees, And she regarded the railroad tracks. The yellow light was unchanging. Madeleine’s donkey dropped dead From his mortal load. Madeleine Reierbacher, when she fell to earth, Picked up a blade of grass and began to play. “The Blues!” cried the workmen of the vicinity, And they ran and came in great numbers to where Madeleine Reierbacher was. They saw her standing in that simple field beside the railroad track Playing, and they saw that light changing to green and red, and they saw that donkey stand up And rise into the sky; and Madeleine Reierbacher was like a clot of blue In the midst of the blue of all that sky, and the young farmers screamed In excitement, and the workmen dropped their heavy boards and stones in their excitement, And they cried, “O Madeleine Reierbacher, play us the ‘Lead Flint Blues’ once again!” O railroad stations, pennants, evenings, and lumberyards! When will you ever bring us such a beautiful soloist again? An argent strain shows on the reddish face of the sun. Madeleine Reierbacher stands up and screams, “I am getting wet! You are all egotists!” Her brain floats up into the lyric atmosphere of the sky. We must figure out a way to keep our best musicians with us. The finest we have always melt in the light blue sky! In the middle of a concert, sometimes, they disappear, like anvils. (The music comes down to us with sweet white hands on our shoulders.) We stare up in surprise; and we hear Madeleine’s best-known tune once again, “If you ain’t afraid of life, life can’t be afraid for you.” Madeleine! Come back and sing to us! 2 Dick looked up from his blackboard. Had he really written a history of the jazz age? He stared at his television set; the technicolor jazz program was coming on. The program that day was devoted to pictures of Madeleine Reierbacher Playing her saxophone in the golden age of jazz. Dick looked at his blackboard. It was a mass of green and orange lines. Here and there a red chalk line interlaced with the others. He stared attentively at the program. It was a clear and blue white day. Amos said, “The calibration is finished. Now there need be no more jazz.” In his mountain home old Lucas Dog laughed when he heard what Amos had said. He smilingly picked up his yellow horn to play, but all that came out of it was steam.