Mark Levine

Out of cash, out of well-fitting trousers, Out of soap and apples, Out of pencils, out of my keeper’s Reach. I wish to set myself afire But may not. This morning (Last night) in the common room I watched the administration Of oxygen to one who had none And I would not sit down, demanding To do so. Later I happened on a man At the piano, and though I have happened five or six times On men at the piano, None moved his hand like this Within the keys. I sat beside him, looking for a sound A chest sound. Not listening; I don’t listen Anymore. I make music But I don’t listen.

Another day come, add it To the list, the Not to do list. Son of mine, I was rambling across the undercarpeting Strewn with imperceptible tacks In one shapeless slip-on When a pain rang out in my flank And I fell to, Braying, But who should answer but no one. I lost good cause that day, don’t ask, Let us sit a bit in this ill-starred Suit in the form-filling Chamber of subtraction, Listing. I haven’t another trip around the sun Left in me. Speak to me Son, vague one. For this is where it thickens, Me here and it there and me there and them here And you with the soul. I’ll cross that gravid boneyard All the day poking Radishes for remembrance. For this is a private matter Between a man and his scaffolding And it shall remain so Privation permitting.

I had a calling. I took the call. It was all I could do to follow the voice streaming into me Like traffic on the runway where I lay Down to gather. I had a calling. I heard the geese bleat In the firmament as they migrated Into the jet’s jets. And could I have foreseen that falling I could have fallen too Rather than being sutured to the bottomless Freeze-out lake. For it is fine to lie within one’s borrowed blankets Looking up at the Dropped ceiling coming down. For at the moment I am employed counting the holes In the sound absorbing tiles Keeping a running record of the interlocutor’s Chides. I feel at one with extinction By my own hand (Inner hand) Though once there were many of my kind Flocking inland, or perhaps It felt that way.

I was in Asia Minor in pursuit of distant honor in a suit of finest armor in a forest of pine or planks. I was not lost. Regina (my sextant) stared into the refiner’s flare as evening grew maligner. I was in Kazakhstan collecting rarest poppies. My capstan gave out. I could no more withstand the tides than fall to the rattan mat like Tristan sailing emptily to his mutant island. I was in greater Ghana harvesting marijuana with soul-strafing Tatiana, the local swan—a mortal one, a prize among the fauna. (There should have been a lawn a- gainst her.) You see, I was in Corinth fabricating synth- etic absinthe. I was adamant. The trophy I chased for the ninth night of days was Cynth -ia, succumbing at the plinth. Then to Argentina I set forth with Ekaterina a diminishing ballerina. She pled for fina- steride, having seen a parrot turn bright green u- pon my mythic ocarina. I was in Tel Aviv. Viv- ian (my pigeon) and I were feve -rish from bouts of griev- ous liv- er malaise. We must have been naive -r than a hibernal beave -r, for soon I was in Canada as ever. Had no plan; not a home to hide in, nothing human. Ada (vulgar bird) went wan, bade a screeching goodnight to her one God, a soapstone strap-on. Alone, I ran a do- zen tests: None truer, none sadder.

I was a traveler in my day a business traveler, territorial in the grassy gaps. I sold bonds to clients hungry for bonds in the boundless sales call door to door among “folks.” It was a job I was born with. I had a heavy sample bag, rubber- banded stack of calling cards and leather binder (embossed) opening upon a vista of lamination, obligation rumination. I furnished a nation to the chemical engineers and wives of Schenectady, New York over coffee, over roast beef and piano, a kingdom, a nation, a principality, landlocked state, aspirational acreage spiritual fallout hideout. I showed a picture of my boy cross-legged in front of a backdrop of a glaciated hanging valley deep in the transaction among handshakes and signatures if it came to it This is my boy, I said Come to me. I was a traveler. Later I inspected the nickel mines near Sudbury telling my boy about the endless sheer black subterranean drop in the cage. I was telling the truth when I knew how to, as I had to as sales required, as stewardship permitted, long before disembodiment. I kept a picture of my boy in front of a cardboard tree and treehouse platform tacked to the upholstered partition above my desk. Once I brought him to the office. He stared at himself. “I had a treehouse then,” he said.

There is a brand of play called muteness Beneath the play yard’s interlacing branches. It appeals to children born Entre deux guerres, whose specialty it is. It is mutiny; that is, a tongue Of foreign origin ending in grunts. One such child uses his tongue On a frozen fence for the embrace of it For the mutating appendage makes of speech A combat; an internment. There is a brand of child assisted to the play yard By his keeper fussing with his zipper. Yes, it is cold in the high hemisphere And nothing will be the death of him As he sets hard sweets on his tongue He neither chews nor swallows. Such children can never swing too freely From the elm’s loping barkless arm. It is mutual. There is smoke on the air, tarry, Commuting the industry on high As the children simmer within Their word-cloud. And someone or something is calling them home A familiar voice, if they have one.

Money changed hands. It’s how we came to be Came to be planted here in the mortar In the miniature cash forest Aster greenwood ficus hemlock Taproot stipe calyx anther in the Mortal hereafter Hearing hands making money change. Speak up. I can’t hear you. There’s something wrong with your voice. You’re speaking too fast. Slow up. Speak into the currency. It wants to bone you. It wants to receive Your warmth in its coffers. Listen up. I’ve a fee to see to A toll-man a drawbridge. Open up. Close up. You have a cross bite In your crown, palate-ax. Bite down. Bite my ball Bearing interest. I’m a businessman. I own a plant. I bid for it, bought it, soiled it, drowned it Tilled it, scolded it, heaved into it, stole from it Wept unto it A token in its behalf, suffered a stem To rise in it To market, to market In my dirty jumpsuit Worthlessness.

I suppose I shan’t go fishing Pa, for fear of finding We’re no fishers, Our folk, for all our bent For fish scraps and our Tolerance for muck dwellers and the like. This creek is like no other, Pa, Inky cold and familiar, Don’t drink from it, it Commands, don’t kneel, don’t stare down Or wash in it, don't pry your shoes from off Your battered stubs, not yet, no jay Flashes past and asks how you mean To ask a shit creek to provide. You exist. It would, too. It falls through These viney half-corrupted patches of nettled hickory and oak Into a muddy slough Into a culvert, splitting Around the treatment plant Then joining itself back in a ramrod concrete Channel beneath pavement; Then into the lake, sludge, great Lake. Do you follow? It’s taking you somewhere, it matters Not where, Pa, it’s a trip At your command, inaudible. It’s the postponed one We would have scheduled in these winding down days Together had we not been What we made of us. In the stagnant north woods. In the pale thick end-of-knowing daylight.

You may know me, watchful one, by my alias Old Man, Buccaneer, Water Strider, Bilious Busted Monometer of Planetary Celsius. No? Go fuck yourself. I’m listening to Delius, “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring,” envious Of ovenbirds, swallows, swifts, clamorous canaries; furious At the soft-bedded shale and its gaseous Nonlethal vapors. I’m not laughing. I’m hilarious. I have a problem,it does,they do, you, him, I, us, All creatures craven and judicious Having departed in kayaks and fuming Kias. Has it not been foretold, Leviticus, lascivious One? — The way you bade us kneel, twisted like a Möbius Belt, before insinuating your noxious Nectar — omnivorous, odoriferous, officious Orifice-filler, you. In a previous Proxy you descended, empty charioteer, to query us About our outerwear’s whereabouts. Think on it, Rufous- Headed woodpecker, use your barbed brain, be suspicious Of high motives as you crown yourself on the dead tree as Who comes to your rescue? Not I. Unconscious Tremors, climbing the coils of the virtuous Time-worn wooden flesh, leave me be. “Witty Is As Witty Does,” sings the sorry fellow atop his eggs. Hush. He’ll sit through anything. As in days of yore, he is Blooming, blazing, withering with his prize zinnias.

I took my boy to hear an echo. He wanted to hear one. I wanted him to. We wended through a half-formed unintelligible brushy wood to a place I knew called “cave.” It had openings at both ends and could be seen through, not into. Nor was it a tunnel, strictly, though it passed through the ground, though it went somewhere. It was like stepping into a telescope unseen, into the dark distorted center. The walls were arched and laid with glazed tiles, orange, aqua, muddy green and so streaked with nervous lines where water had run down, where water must have trellised down still. It was not clean. It smelled of piss. Chicken bones, empties, old rubbers, mold. Echo, I called. So did my boy. But his voice was small—birdscratch—it got all lost inside the echo my voice made; pale echo, barely one. That was when I had a boy. I’m quite sure I did. I wanted one, back then, when I had something to offer, when I wasn’t in this place, where light passes through me, when I wasn’t like this, which is what, when I wanted one, as he, poor boy, wanted me.