Marvin Bell

As simply as a self-effacing bar of soap escaping by indiscernible degrees in the wash water is how a man may change and still hour by hour continue in his job. There in the mirror he appears to be on fire but here at the office he is dust. So long as there remains a little moisture in the stains, he stands easily on the pavement and moves fluidly through the corridors. If only one cloud can be seen, it is enough to know of others, and life stands on the brink. It rains or it doesn’t, or it rains and it rains again. But let it go on raining for forty days and nights or let the sun bake the ground for as long, and it isn’t life, just life, anymore, it’s living. In the meantime, in the regular weather of ordinary days, it sometimes happens that a man has changed so slowly that he slips away before anyone notices and lives and dies before anyone can find out.

The Israeli Navy, sailing to the end of the world, stocked with grain and books black with God’s verse, turned back, rather than sail on the Sabbath. Six days, was the consensus, was enough for anyone. So the world, it was concluded, was three days wide in each direction, allowing three days back. And Saturdays were given over to keeping close, while Sundays the Navy, all decked out in white and many-colored skullcaps, would sail furiously, trying to go off the deep end. Yo-ho-ho, would say the sailors, for six days. While on the shore their women moaned. For years, their boats were slow, and all show. And they turned into families on the only land they knew.

Such a book must contain— it always does!—a disclaimer. I make no such. For here I have collected all the best— the lily from the field among them, forget-me-nots and mint weed, a rose for whoever expected it, and a buttercup for the children to make their noses yellow. Here is clover for the lucky to roll in, and milkweed to clatter, a daisy for one judgment, and a violet for when he loves you or if he loves you not and why not. Those who sniff and say no, These are the wrong ones (and there always are such people!)— let them go elsewhere, and quickly! For you and I, who have made it this far, are made happy by occasions requiring orchids, or queenly arrangements and even a bird-of-paradise, but happier still by the flowers of circumstance, cattails of our youth, field grass and bulrush. I have included the devil’s paintbrush but only as a peacock among barn fowl.

1. About the Beginnings of the Dead Man When the dead man throws up, he thinks he sees his inner life. Seeing his vomit, he thinks he sees his inner life. Now he can pick himself apart, weigh the ingredients, research his makeup. He wants to study things outside himself if he can find them. Moving, the dead man makes the sound of bone on bone. He bends a knee that doesn’t wish to bend, he raises an arm that argues with a shoulder, he turns his head by throwing it wildly to the side. He envies the lobster the protective sleeves of its limbs. He believes the jellyfish has it easy, floating, letting everything pass through it. He would like to be a starfish, admired for its shape long after. Everything the dead man said, he now takes back. Not as a lively young man demonstrates sincerity or regret. A young dead man and an old dead man are two different things. A young dead man is oil, an old dead man is water. A young dead man is bread and butter, an old dead man is bread and water—it’s a difference in construction, also architecture. The dead man was there in the beginning: to the dead man, the sky is a crucible. In the dead man’s lifetime, the planet has changed from lava to ash to cement. But the dead man flops his feathers, he brings his wings up over his head and has them touch, he bends over with his beak to the floor, he folds and unfolds at the line where his armor creases. The dead man is open to change and has deep pockets. The dead man is the only one who will live forever. 2. More About the Beginnings of the Dead Man One day the dead man looked up into the crucible and saw the sun. The dead man in those days held the sky like a small globe, like a patchwork ball, like an ultramarine bowl. The dead man softened it, kneaded it, turned it and gave it volume. He thrust a hand deep into it and shaped it from the inside out. He blew into it and pulled it and stretched it until it became full- sized, a work of art created by a dead man. The excellence of it, the quality, its character, its fundamental nature, its raison d‘être, its “it” were all indebted to the dead man. The dead man is the flywheel of the spinning planet. The dead man thinks he can keep things the same by not moving. By not moving, the dead man maintains the status quo at the center of change. The dead man, by not moving, is an explorer: he follows his nose. When it’s not personal, not profound, he can make a new world anytime. The dead man is the future, was always the future, can never be the past. Like God, the dead man existed before the beginning, a time marked by galactic static. Now nothing remains of the first static that isn’t music, fashioned into melody by the accidents of interval. Now nothing more remains of silence that isn’t sound. The dead man has both feet in the past and his head in the clouds.

1. About the Dead Man and Rigor Mortis The dead man thinks his resolve has stiffened when the ground dries. Feeling the upward flow of moisture, the dead man thinks his resolve has stiffened. The dead man’s will, will be done. The dead man’s backbone stretches from rung to rung, from here to tomorrow, from a fabricated twinge to virtual agony. The dead man’s disks along his spine are like stepping-stones across a lake, the doctor told him “jelly doughnuts” when they ruptured, this is better. The dead man’s hernial groin is like a canvas bridge across a chasm, the doctor said “balloon” when they operated, this is better. The dead man’s toes are like sanded free forms and his heels are as smooth as the backs of new shoes, the doctor said “corns” when they ached, this is better. The dead man’s eyes are like tiny globes in water, continental geographies in microcosm, all the canyons are visible, now washed of random hairs that rooted, now free of the strangulated optics of retinal sense, this is better. All the dead man’s organs, his skin, muscles, tendons, arteries, veins, valves, networks, relays—the whole shebang hums like a quickly deserted hardware store. To the dead man, a head of cabbage is a forerunner of nutrients. The dead man’s garden foreshadows the day it is to be plowed under, agriculture being one of the ancient Roman methods for burying the Classics, the other was war. No one can argue with the dead man, he brooks no interference between the lightning and ground, his determination is legendary. 2. More About the Dead Man and Rigor Mortis You think it’s funny, the dead man being stiff? You think it’s an anatomically correct sexual joke? You think it’s easy, being petrified? You think it’s just one of those things, being turned to stone? Who do you think turns the dead man to stone anyway? Who do you think got the idea first? You think it’s got a future, this being dead? You think it’s in the cards, you think the thunder spoke? You think he thought he was dead, or thought he fancied he was dead, or imagined he could think himself dead, or really knew he was dead? You think he knew he knew? You think it was predetermined? You think when he stepped out of character he was different? What the hell, what do you think? You think it’s funny, the way the dead man is like lightning, going straight into the ground? You think it’s hilarious, comedy upstanding, crackers to make sense of?