Norman Dubie

The first morning after anyone’s death, is it important To know that fields are wet, that the governess is Naked but with a scarf still covering her head, that She’s sitting on a gardener who’s wearing Just a blue shirt, or that he’s sitting on a chair in the kitchen. They look like they are rowing while instead outside in the mist Two boats are passing on the river, the gardener’s mouth Is opening: A white, screaming bird lifts off the river into the trees, Flies a short distance and is joined By a second bird, but then as if to destroy everything The two white birds are met by a third.The night Always fails.

Chekhov, at Yalta A winter evening at the cottage by the bay, And I sat in the black and gold of the dead garden Wrapped in blankets, eating my sister’s suet pudding. The fountain was wrapped in dirty straw and Just below my property in the old Tartar cemetery There was a small funeral in progress: the widow Is wearing a purple shawl, the children are bare around The shoulders and the girls are wearing orange petals At their throats. The ashen white beards of the men Are like immaculate vests from this distance. There is nothing more intolerable than suet pudding, Unless it is the visitors. The drunken visitors laughing In my kitchen, eating my duck and venison, while I hide From them here in the dark garden. The daughter of one of these gentlemen is pretty. I saw her through the window drinking Champagne from a clay mug—just under her thin blouse I saw the blue points of her breasts that turn, In opposition, both out and up like the azure slippers Of the priest who is now singing in the cemetery below my house. Once the family has gone off with its torches I’ll Climb down to the fresh grave and drop some coins For flowers, even wooden teeth for the widow so she can Attract a new husband? The black, turned soil Or our garden reminds me Of the common grave given to the children Of the Godunov Orphanage after that horrible fire: A charred horse was thrown in with them, Bags of lime, and what I understood to be a large ham That the authorities, nevertheless, declared The torso of a male child of nine or ten. The Czar, In their memory, placed a tiny trout pond over them And this inscription:A blue blanket for my little ones. My wife goes nearly naked to parties in Moscow. My sister here, at Yalta, goes sea bathing with a rope Around her that runs back to the beach where it is Attached to a donkey who is commanded by a servant With a long switch. The sea tows her out and then the donkey is whipped Sorrowfully until he has dragged her back to them. I named the donkey, Moon, after the mystery of his service To my sister. This winter He has been an excellent friend. I read to this poor beast from Three Sisters. He is a better Critic and audience than I could find in the cities. I have won an Award that will save me from arrest anywhere Inside Russia. I am going to refuse it! And then travel To Nice or Paris. My tuberculosis is worse. Tolstoi reads my stories To his family after supper. And reads them badly, I suppose! I did walk that evening all the way down to the cemetery Only to discover that my pockets were empty. I screamed up to the house for coins, for plenty Of coins! The visitors, laughing and singing, ran down To me without coats and with a lantern swinging— My sister trailed behind them On her donkey. Her square black hat Bobbing like a steamer way out in the bay. And when they reached me— I said, “Sister, pack the trunks! You hurt me! I will write that we have departed for France, for Italy.”

for Laura The island, you mustn’t say, had only rocks and scrub pine; Was on a blue, bright day like a blemish in this landscape. And Charlotte who is frail and the youngest of us collects Sticks and branches to start our fires, cries as they burn Because they resemble most what she has lost Or has little of: long fingers, her toes, And a left arm gone past the elbow, soon clear to her shoulder. She has the mouth of sea perch. Five of our sisters wear Green hoods. You are touched by all of this,but not by us. To be touched by us, to be kissed! Sometimes We see couples rowing in the distance in yellow coats. Sometimes they fish with handlines; we offend Everyone who is offended most And by everything and everyone. The five goats love us, though, And live in our dark houses. When they are Full with milk they climb the steps and beg that They be milked. Their teats brush the steps and leave thick Yellow trails of fresh milk. We are all females here. Even the ghosts. We must wash, of course, in salt water, But it smarts or maybe even hurts us. Often with a rope Around her waist Anne is lowered entirely into the water. She splashes around and screams in pain. Her screams Sometimes carry clear to the beaches on the Cape. For us I say so often. For us we say.For us! We are Human and not individual, we hold everything in common. We are individual, you could pick us out in a crowd. You did. This island is not our prison. We are not kept In; not even by our skin. Once Anne said she would love to be a Negro or a trout. We live without you. Father, I don’t know why I have written You all this; but be proud for I am living, and yet each day I am less and less your flesh. Someday, eventually, you Should only think of me as being a lightning bug on the lawn, Or the Negro fishing at the pond, or the fat trout he wraps In leaves that he is showing to someone. I’ll be Most everything for you. And I’ll be gone.

A horse is shivering flies off its ribs, grazing Through the stench of a sodden leachfield. On the broken stairs of a trailer A laughing fat girl in a T-shirt is pumping Milk from her swollen breasts, cats Lapping at the trails. There's a sheen of rhubarb On her dead fingernail. It's a humid morning. Tonight, with the moon washing some stars away, She'll go searching for an old bicycle in the shed; She'll find his father's treasures: Jars full of bent nails, a lacquered bass, And the scythe with spiders Nesting in the emptiness of the blade And in the bow of its pine shaft. Milling junk in the dark, She'll forget the bicycle, her getaway, And rescue A color photograph of an old matinee idol. Leaving the shed, she'll startle An owl out on the marsh. By November It will be nailed through the breast to the barn. In a year the owl will go on a shelf in the shed Where in thirty years there will be a music box Containing a lock of hair, her rosaries, Her birth certificate, And an impossibly sheer, salmon-pink scarf. What I want to know of my government is Doesn't poverty just fucking break your heart?

I’m a frogman. Naked by the water Under a lean of canvas she’d sewn With a thick paraffin thread, She gestured.When we pulled him From the river His left leg was meal. Crayfish in the hair. The river bottom left his shoulder Layered and crocheted— My sister’s pearl knitting needles Clicking in my head. I told The sheriff I wouldn’t do it again. I knew him once. His Chevy threw a rod. I made it with him On the hood of the old truck. It was out at the dump beyond Yuma. It felt like I had bread crumbs All over my mouth. Wacky with the sun, I sure did it with him enough That afternoon. I didn’t Know it was him who’d drowned. They said it was his cousin. He had a three-cornered scar At the small of his back. And a deposit Of calcium on the tailbone. We’re not much, you know? He was tangled in yellow tree roots, He spun in the currents, A fishhook and line running From his thumb. A whole new ball of wax, I thought. I wanted to be an astronaut. But failed the mathematics Twice in one summer. So I raise Nubian goats. My favorite has a purple manure That comes out like steaming packets Of tobacco mulch. He sprays The shack with his seed— It hasn’t needed paint in three years. I just took my shorts off When you two came down the hill. It’s that rubber suit I wear When I dive into the chute and cave. Sometimes I just feel Like old air in a patched tire. Then, I get my Seagram’s and come out here. You two look married. Not that I care. You wouldn’t believe what I was just thinking— Your husband’s the only living man Left in this country Who knows that I bleach my hair.

for Dave Smith Our clothes are still wet from wading The Chickamunga last evening. There is heavy frost. We have Walked on the dead all night. Now in the firelight We are exchanging shells and grapeshot. I can still hear our loud huzzah When late in the day The enemy fell into full retreat Along the pine ridge to the east. . . We chased them until we were weary. Each night this week There’s been something To keep me from sleep. Just an hour ago I saw A dead sharpshooter sitting Against a rock with a scallop Of biscuit still lodged in his mouth. He wore one silk sock. Snedikerhas returned from Chattanooga With five thousand convalescents For the left wing of their musketry. We have roasted a deer With a molasses sauce and pepper. Magrill and zandt have returned From horse hunting with a sack of sugar. By morning we will have buried our dead And fed the prisoners: Joe Cotton Will hang all seven of them in one tree When he sees they’re done Licking their fingers. . . I shot a Rebel yesterday In high water just for cursing me. Just six months ago For that alone it would have meant Three days in stockade. We can see now that cannonading Has set the hillside on fire. The wounded Grays Will be burned Beyond their Christian names. . . Joe Cotton says he’d ask God For rain, but he’s got no tent And river water Has chilled him straight through To the very quick of his being.

Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser In the hothouse Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are Glass and my privacy comes from the apple-geraniums, Violets, ferns, marigolds, and white mayflags. I get my meals With the janitor and his wife and all of the books are mine To use. I scour, sweep, and dust. I hope you don’t think of me As a runaway? I remember your kindness, Your lessons in reading and writing on the piazza. My journey was unusual. I saw some of the war And it was terrible even far up into the North. My first fright was at a train depot outside Memphis Where some soldiers found me eating not yet ripened Quinces and grapes, they took me prisoner: first I helped some children carry tree limbs to the woodbox Of the locomotive, then, I was shown to a gentleman In the passenger car who was searching for his runaway Negress in a purple dress; he wouldn’t identify me, And I was thrown in with about forty stray blacks into An open boxcar and soon we were moving, next to me A man was sucking on the small breasts of a girl Maybe twelve years of age, across from them A sad old woman smiled as she puffed on an old cigar end, By afternoon she was dead, her two friends Just kicked her out so that she rolled down into pasture Frightening some hogs that ran off into a thicket. The girl next to me whimpered and shook. Those quinces Just ran straight through me and all I could do was Squat in one corner that was supplied with ammonia-waters And hay. We were given that night Confederate uniforms To mend and when the others slept I dressed in three Shirts and trousers and leapt from the moving train, The padding helped some but I couldn’t walk the next day. I hid in a shack that seemed lonely but for a flock Of turkeys, some young hens, and a corncrib with tall Split palings. The next morning from a hill I watched field-workers on a tobacco plantation, it took Two men to carry a single leaf like a corpse from A battle scene. That night I found a horse with a bit In its mouth made of telegraph wire. He carried me up all The way to Youngstown.Chloe, you must Learn to swim in the pond and to ride the old sorrel.

My father had several times expressed a fear of being buried alive. I insisted that the doctor should do whatever was necessary. The doctor asked me to leave the room. When I came back, he was able to assure me that Renoir was dead! jean renoir It is not 1937 for long. A clump of ash trees and a walk Down the the boathouse: inside linen is tacked up In a long blank mural; the children sit on the wings Of the dry dock, and then, over the water in a circle Of rowboats, the aunts and uncles wait while At their center the projectionist, Jean Renoir, On a cedar raft, casts silhouettes of rabbits, birds, And turtles for the sleepy children. Corks Come out of old bottles, it is a few minutes past sunset And, now, a swimmer beside the raft looks Into the boathouse to the linens:at last, it is 1915! A bird screams over the lake, two bats Flitter back and forth through the beam of the lamp, Interrupting the images, the grand illusion, cast over Water the the acceptance of white tablecloths On the darkening shore of the lake. A torch is lit For its kerosene smoke is repugnant to the swarming insects. This film and its prisoners exist between extreme borders, Not music and algebra but A war and, then, yet another war. . . But we begin with the captured officers digging A tunnel that will soon be outside the garden wall. The Boches observe the Frenchmen working With their hoes as from the trousers of a boy Dirt from the tunnel secretly spills onto horse manure! The prisoners dream of crossing a meadow filled With snow, in the moonlight it is jade-green snow While Germans with rifles on a hill Are unable to kill them, for they have escaped Into Switzerland with its feather-brushed trees And patina of copper rooftops along a hillside village. Isn’t this the ending of the film? No! I’m sorry but There is a single blossom On the geranium, and when it falls, Captain de Boeldieu Dies, discovering his afterlife along a November road— He does not know that two men are hiding in the marsh Beside him; nevertheless, it is at this moment that the film Suffers its true conclusion. The two men hiding In the marsh will escape across the border, only To be returned to the continuing war. This is why there Is no importance to your version of the story. And there Will be another war. And more horror for the geranium! So, to pass the time, the imprisoned soldiers receive A steamer trunk filled with women’s clothing, They will all perform in a revue: a chorus Of boys and men, rouge and talcum, black stockings, Garters, the tonneau dresses, false breasts and Large paper carnations riding up like epaulets On their broad shoulders. These poignant inversions Are not ridiculous: the third boy from the right Has delicate milky thighs, these women are not ridiculous Until they begin to stiffen into men as they sing, In this comedy, their national anthem! The Russian Prisoners have been given a trunk, also, from their Mysterious Czarina; the men open it expecting vodka And sausages. The box is filled with straw And books on cooking, painting, and algebra. In disgust They burn these books—kiss good-bye the frontier Of algebra and the desire for wedding tripe! Now, these officers who are escape artists are moved As an elite corps and north to Wintersborn. Later, They are taken to a damp limestone castle From which no one will escape. The Commandant Is the stoic aristocrat, Rauffenstein, his head is in A brace like a white egg in a silver teaspoon. I mean no disrespect, but the balding Rauffenstein is An abject picture of suffering. His villa has but one Flower, a tall laden geranium. Rauffenstein and the other aristocrat, Boeldieu, Are friends. Both would know that to clear a monocle One uses spirits of vinegar. They stand confirmed In manner beside a squirrel cage. Rauffenstein feels Superior to the other two principals, the rich Jew, Rosenthal, and the charming emotional Marechal. These two hide in the marsh while Boeldieu dies Of a bullet wound. Only a king may kill a king! And Rauffenstein did it with his pistol; taking aim But missing the leg; he severed in three places Boeldieu’s intestine! The Captain is given a room in the turret that holds The flowering geranium. Now comes the oratio obliqua Of the marksman, Rauffenstein; the disfigured Commandant Is sincerely saddened At having killed the noble Captain. But before The shooting and escape we sensed the Captain’s Sacrifice was not sacrifice, or suicide, but The grand escape—a country road into another landscape. . . There are bells tolling down in the village. Rosenthal and Marechal with ropes have dropped Past the castle’s battlements to the ground. They run away across snowy farmland. Marechal’s teeth Are stained from chewing licorice-flavored tobacco. Rosenthal and Marechal are extremes who have Strong feelings for each other. They are befriended By a German widow, Ulsa, and her daughter, Lotte; Ulsa sleeps with the tall handsome Jew. He promises To return for her when the war is over. He Will lose both his legs at Mégéglise. This is not known within the story, but he’ll bleed To death beside a little bridge. He lived his illusion In the Orient of Delacroix, his servants were Syrians And Negroes. He loved the little ivory spoons that Chinese women in the open markets use to bathe And freshen the exotic tiny fish they sell out Of huge clay bowls. . . In the boathouse the children sleep, while Jean’s Oldest cousin, drunken, falls out of a rowboat. The lone swimmer has joined Renior on the raft. The film now reveals the first diversion As all of the prisoners of the fortress begin playing Several hundred wooden flutes, the noise is like women Crying over the fresh mounds at Verdun. This diversion Is not illusion And as the Boches collect the flutes, the drunken cousin Tries to join Renior on the raft. Boeldieu flees To the heights of the castle, the second diversion! We hear:Halt! Halt! Halt! A gunshot, and chowder with blood falls from Boeldieu’s Opened stomach all the way down to the courtyard. There are small fish bones in the viscera on the cobbled Courtyard floor. Scissors cut the blue blossom From the geranium. Boeldieu will die. . . dead, He awakens on a country road where, now a peasant, He walks a white horse under the looming, bare trees. Rosenthal and Marechal are watching As they hide in the dead marsh flowers of An early November. They are alive. They do not Recognize their friend. Renoir’s cousin, asking for More wine, climbing onto the raft, spills Everything, and the projector with its crude lamp Sinks slowly to the bottom of the lake— Its dusky lighted windows like a bathysphere Lost off a cable that frayed, whoever is alive Inside the iron bell is experiencing An eternal falling through water without the promise Of a bottom. . . it’s 1937, the children Asleep in the boathouse are being aroused, they wake To a bat caught in the wall of linen, they think it’s Their uncle still casting images of animals for them. . .

for Stephen A blind girl steps over the red staves Of a tub. Steam rising from her shoulders and hair, She walks across a dirt floor to you. I think you are not her grandfather. You watch with her a pink man Who has avoided taxes for two winters— He is being judged by roosters And has been chased this far into the countryside. Above him Burning sacks of bat dung are arranged In the purple branches of the thistle trees. The river is indifferent to him. And so are we. You tell your mistress the burning bags of shit Are like inert buddhas Dissolving in a field of merit. She giggles. A front tooth is loose. With the river bottom clear as the night air, The bargeman sings through the hungry vapors Rising now like white snakes behind him. You told his wife that Lord Buddha made wasps From yellow stalks of tobacco with a dark spit. Down in the cold bamboo a starving woman Has opened a small pig— The old moons climb from its blue glistening stomach, Or is it light From the infinitely receding sacks of shit? Master, where is the difference?

The bears are kept by hundreds within fences, are fed cracked Eggs; the weakest are Slaughtered and fed to the others after being scented With the blood of deer brought to the pastures by Elizabeth’s Men—the blood spills from deep pails with bottoms of slate. The balding Queen had bear gardens in London and in the country. The bear is baited: the nostrils Are blown full with pepper, the Irish wolf dogs Are starved, then, emptied, made crazy with fermented barley: And the bear’s hind leg is chained to a stake, the bear Is blinded and whipped, kneeling in his own blood and slaver, he is Almost instantly worried by the dogs. At the very moment that Elizabeth took Essex’s head, a giant brown bear Stood in the gardens with dogs hanging from his fur. . . He took away the sun, took A wolfhound in his mouth, and tossed it into The white lap of Elizabeth I—arrows and staves rained On his chest, and standing, he, then, stood even taller, seeing Into the Queen’s private boxes—he grinned Into her battered eggshell face. Another volley of arrows and poles, and opening his mouth He showered Blood all over Elizabeth and her Privy Council. The very next evening, a cool evening, the Queen demanded Thirteen bears and the justice of 113 dogs: she slept All that Sunday night and much of the next morning. Some said she was guilty of this and that. The Protestant Queen gave the defeated bear A grave in a Catholic cemetery. The marker said: Peter, a Solstice Bear, a gift of the Tsarevitch to Elizabeth. After a long winter she had the grave opened. The bear’s skeleton Was cleared with lye, she placed it at her bedside, Put a candle inside behind the sockets of the eyes, and, then She spoke to it: You were a Christmas bear—behind your eyes I see the walls of a snow cave where you are a cub still smelling Of your mother’s blood which has dried in your hair; you have Troubled a Queen who was afraid When seated in shade which, standing, You had created! A Queen who often wakes with a dream Of you at night— Now, you’ll stand by my bed in your long white bones; alone, you Will frighten away at night all visions of bear, and all day You will be in this cold room—your constant grin, You’ll stand in the long, white prodigy of your bones, and you are, Every inch of you, a terrible vision, not bear, but virgin!