Randall Jarrell

The saris go by me from the embassies. Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet. They look back at the leopard like the leopard. And I.... this print of mine, that has kept its color Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so To my bed, so to my grave, with no Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief, The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief— Only I complain.... this serviceable Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns, Wavy beneath fountains—small, far-off, shining In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap, Aging, but without knowledge of their age, Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death— Oh, bars of my own body, open, open! The world goes by my cage and never sees me. And there come not to me, as come to these, The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas’ grain, Pigeons settling on the bears’ bread, buzzards Tearing the meat the flies have clouded.... Vulture, When you come for the white rat that the foxes left, Take off the red helmet of your head, the black Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man: The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn, To whose hand of power the great lioness Stalks, purring.... You know what I was, You see what I am: change me, change me!

It sat between my husband and my children. A place was set for it—a plate of greens. It had been there: I had seen it But not somehow—but this was like a dream— Not seen it so that I knew I saw it. It was as if I could not know I saw it Because I had never once in all my life Not seen it. It was an eland. An eland!That is why the children Would ask my husband, for a joke, at Christmas: “Father, is it Donner?” He would say, “No, Blitzen.” It had been there always. Now we put silver At its place at meals, fed it the same food We ourselves ate, and said nothing. Many times When it breathed heavily (when it had tried A long useless time to speak) and reached to me So that I touched it—of a different size And order of being, like the live hard side Of a horse’s neck when you pat the horse— And looked with its great melting tearless eyes Fringed with a few coarse wire-like lashes Into my eyes, and whispered to me So that my eyes turned backward in their sockets And they said nothing— many times I have known, when they said nothing, That it did not exist. If they had heard They could not have been silent. And yet they heard; Heard many times what I have spoken When it could no longer speak, but only breathe— When I could no longer speak, but only breathe. And, after some years, the others came And took it from me—it was ill, they told me— And cured it, they wrote me: my whole city Sent me cards lilac-branches, mourning As I had mourned— and I was standing By a grave in flowers, by dyed rolls of turf, And a canvas marquee the last brown of earth. It is over. It is over so long that I begin to think That it did not exist, that I have never— And my son says, one morning, from the paper: “An eland. Look, an eland!” —It was so. Today, in a German dictionary, I saw elend And the heart in my breast turned over, it was— It was a word one translates wretched. It is as if someone remembered saying: “This is an antimacassar that I grew from seed,” And this were true. And, truly, One could not wish for anything more strange— For anything more. And yet it wasn’t interesting.  .  . —It was worse than impossible, it was a joke. And yet when it was, I was— Even to think that I once thought That I could see it to feel the sweat Like needles at my hair-roots, I am blind —It was not even a joke, not even a joke. Yet how can I believe it? Or believe that I Owned it, a husband, children? Is my voice the voice Of that skin of being—of what owns, is owned In honor or dishonor, that is borne and bears— Or of that raw thing, the being inside it That has neither a wife, a husband, nor a child But goes at last as naked from this world As it was born into it— And the eland comes and grazes on its grave. This is senseless? Shall I make sense or shall I tell the truth? Choose either—I cannot do both. I tell myself that. And yet it is not so, And what I say afterwards will not be so: To be at all is to be wrong. Being is being old And saying, almost comfortably, across a table From— from what I don’t know— in a voice Rich with a kind of longing satisfaction: “To own an eland! That’s what I call life!”

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes. When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water— It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work—I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old. And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her and I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Under the separated leaves of shade Of the gingko, that old tree That has existed essentially unchanged Longer than any other living tree, I walk behind a woman. Her hair's coarse gold Is spun from the sunlight that it rides upon. Women were paid to knit from sweet champagne Her second skin: it winds and unwinds, winds Up her long legs, delectable haunches, As she sways, in sunlight, up the gazing aisle. The shade of the tree that is called maidenhair, That is not positively known To exist in a wild state, spots her fair or almost fair Hair twisted in a French twist; tall or almost tall, She walks through the air the rain has washed, a clear thing Moving easily on its high heels, seeming to men Miraculous . . . Since I can call her, as Swann couldn't A woman who is my type, I follow with the warmth Of familiarity, of novelty, this new Example of the type, Reminded of how Lorenz's just-hatched goslings Shook off the last remnants of the egg And, looking at Lorenz, realized that Lorenz Was their mother. Quaking, his little family Followed him everywhere; and when they met a goose, Their mother, they ran to him afraid. Imprinted upon me Is the shape I run to, the sweet strange Breath-taking contours that breathe to me: "I am yours, Be mine!" Following this new Body, somehow familiar, this young shape, somehow old, For a moment I'm younger, the century is younger. The living Strauss, his moustache just getting gray, Is shouting to the players: "Louder! Louder! I can still hear Madame Schumann-Heink-" Or else, white, bald, the old man's joyfully Telling conductors they must play Elektra Like A Midsummer Night's Dream-like a fairy music; Proust, dying, is swallowing his iced beer And changing in proof the death of Bergotte According to his own experience; Garbo, A commissar in Paris, is listening attentively To the voice telling how McGillicuddy me McGillivray, And McGillivray said to McGillicuddy-no, McGillicuddy Said to McGillivray-that is, McGillivray...Garbo Says seriously: "I vish dey'd never met." As I walk behind this woman I remember That before I flew here-waked in the forest At dawn, by the piece called Birds Beginning Day That, each day, birds play to begin the day- I wished as men wish: "May this day be different!" The birds were wishing, as birds wish-over and over, With a last firmness, intensity, reality- "May this day be the same!" Ah, turn to me And look into my eyes, say: "I am yours, Be mine!" My wish will have come true. And yet When your eyes meet my eyes, they'll bring into The weightlessness of my pure wish the weight Of a human being: someone to help or hurt, Someone to be good to me, to be good to, Someone to cry when I am angry that she doesn't like Elektra, someone to start on Proust with. A wish, come true, is life. I have my life. When you turn just slide your eyes across my eyes And show in a look flickering across your face As lightly as a leaf's shade, a bird's wing, That there is no one in the world quite like me, That if only...If only... That will be enough. But I've pretended long enough: I walk faster And come close, touch with the tip of my finger The nape of her neck, just where the gold Hair stops, and the champagne-colored dress begins. My finger touches her as the gingko's shadow Touches her. Because, after all, it is my wife In a new dress from Bergdorf's, walking toward the park. She cries out, we kiss each other, and walk arm in arm Through the sunlight that's much too good for New York, The sunlight of our own house in the forest. Still, though, the poor things need it...We've no need To start out on Proust, to ask each other about Strauss. We first helped each other, hurt each other, years ago. After so many changes made and joys repeated, Our first bewildered, transcending recognition Is pure acceptance.   We can't tell our life From our wish. Really I began the day Not with a man's wish: "May this day be different," But with the birds' wish: "May this day Be the same day, the day of my life."

I. Children's Arms On my way home I pass a cameraman On a platform on the bumper of a car Inside which, rolling and plunging, a comedian Is working; on one white lot I see a star Stumble to her igloo through the howling gale Of the wind machines. On Melrose a dinosaur And pterodactyl, with their immense pale Papier-mâché smiles, look over the fence Of The Lost World. Whispering to myself the tale These shout—done with my schoolwork, I commence My real life: my arsenal, my workshop Opens, and in impotent omnipotence I put on the helmet and the breastplate Pop Cut out and soldered for me. Here is the shield I sawed from beaver board and painted; here on top The bow that only Odysseus can wield And eleven vermilion-ringed, goose-feathered arrows. (The twelfth was broken on the battlefield When, searching among snap beans and potatoes, I stepped on it.) Some dry weeds, a dead cane Are my spears. The knife on the bureau's My throwing-knife; the small unpainted biplane Without wheels—that so often, helped by human hands, Has taken off from, landed on, the counterpane— Is my Spad. O dead list, that misunderstands And laughs at and lies about the new live wild Loves it lists! that sets upright, in the sands Of age in which nothing grows, where all our friends are old, A few dried leaves marked THIS IS THE GREENWOOD— O arms that arm, for a child's wars, the child! And yet they are good, if anything is good, Against his enemies . . . Across the seas At the bottom of the world, where Childhood Sits on its desert island with Achilles And Pitamakan, the White Blackfoot: In the black auditorium, my heart at ease, I watch the furred castaways (the seniors put A play on every spring) tame their wild beasts, Erect their tree house. Chatting over their fruit, Their coconuts, they relish their stately feasts. The family's servant, their magnanimous Master now, rules them by right. Nature's priests, They worship at Nature's altar; when with decorous Affection the Admirable Crichton Kisses a girl like a big Wendy, all of us Squirm or sit up in our seats . . . Undone When an English sail is sighted, the prisoners Escape from their Eden to the world: the real one Where servants are servants, masters masters, And no one's magnanimous. The lights go on And we go off, robbed of our fruit, our furs— The island that the children ran is gone. The island sang to me:Believe! Believe! And didn't I know a lady with a lion? Each evening, as the sun sank, didn't I grieve To leave my tree house for reality? There was nothing there for me to disbelieve. At peace among my weapons, I sit in my tree And feel:Friday night, then Saturday, then Sunday! I'm dreaming of a wolf, as Mama wakes me, And a tall girl who is–outside it's gray, I can't remember, I jump up and dress. We eat in the lighted kitchen. And what is play For me, for them is habit. Happiness Is a quiet presence, breathless and familiar: My grandfather and I sit there in oneness As the Sunset bus, lit by the lavender And rose of sunrise, takes us to the dark Echoing cavern where Pop, a worker, Works for our living. As he rules a mark, A short square pencil in his short square hand, On a great sheet of copper, I make some remark He doesn't hear. In that hard maze—in that land That grown men live in—in the world of work, He measures, shears, solders; and I stand Empty-handed, watching him. I wander into the murk The naked light bulbs pierce: the workmen, making something, Say something to the boy in his white shirt. I jerk As the sparks fly at me. The man hammering As acid hisses, and the solder turns to silver, Seems to me a dwarf hammering out the Ring In the world under the world. The hours blur; Bored and not bored, I bend things out of lead. I wash my smudged hands, as my grandfather Washes his black ones, with their gritty soap: ahead, Past their time clock, their pay window, is the blue And gold and white of noon. The sooty thread Up which the laborers feel their way into Their wives and houses, is money; the fact of life, The secret the grown-ups share, is what to do To make money. The husband Adam, Eve his wife Have learned how not to have to do without Till Santa Claus brings them their Boy Scout knife— Nor do they find things in dreams, carry a paper route, Sell Christmas seals . . . Starting his Saturday, his Sunday, Pop tells me what I love to hear about, His boyhood in Shelbyville. I play What he plays, hunt what he hunts, remember What he remembers: it seems to me I could stay In that dark forest, lit by one fading ember Of his campfire, forever . . . But we're home. I run in love to each familiar member Of this little state, clustered about the Dome Of St. Nicholas—this city in which my rabbit Depends on me, and I on everyone—this first Rome Of childhood, so absolute in every habit That when we hear the world our jailor say: "Tell me, art thou a Roman ?" the time we inhabit Drops from our shoulders, and we answer: "Yea. I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, I appeal Unto Caesar." I wash my hands, Pop gives his pay Envelope to Mama; we sit down to our meal. The phone rings: Mrs. Mercer wonders if I'd care To go to the library. That would be ideal, I say when Mama lets me. I comb my hair And find the four books I have out:The Food Of the Gods was best. Liking that world where The children eat, and grow giant and good, I swear as I've often sworn: "I'll never forget What it's like, when I've grown up." A prelude By Chopin, hammered note by note, like alphabet Blocks, comes from next door. It's played with real feeling, The feeling of being indoors practicing. "And yet It's not as if—" a gray electric, stealing To the curb on silent wheels, has come; and I See on the back seat (sight more appealing Than any human sight!) my own friend Lucky, Half wolf, half police-dog. And he can play the piano— Play that he does, that is—and jump so high For a ball that he turns a somersault. "Hello," I say to the lady, and hug Lucky . . . In my Talk with the world, in which it tells me what I know And I tell it, "I know—" how strange that I Know nothing, and yet it tells me what I know!— I appreciate the animals, who stand by Purring. Or else they sit and pant. It's so— So agreeable. If only people purred and panted! So, now, Lucky and I sit in our row, Mrs. Mercer in hers. I take for granted The tiller by which she steers, the yellow roses In the bud vases, the whole enchanted Drawing room of our progress. The glass encloses As glass does, a womanish and childish And doggish universe. We press our noses To the glass and wish: the angel- and devilfish Floating by on Vine, on Sunset, shut their eyes And press their noses to their glass and wish. II. A Night with Lions When I was twelve we'd visit my aunt's friend Who owned a lion, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion. I'd play with him, and he'd pretend To play with me. I was the real player But he'd trot back and forth inside his cage Till he got bored. I put Tawny in the prayer I didn't believe in, not at my age, But said still; just as I did everything in fours And gave to Something, on the average, One cookie out of three. And by my quartz, my ores, My wood with the bark on it, from the Petrified Forest, I put his dewclaw . . . Now the lion roars His slow comfortable roars; I lie beside My young, tall, brown aunt, out there in the past Or future, and I sleepily confide My dream-discovery: my breath comes fast Whenever I see someone with your skin, Hear someone with your voice. The lion's steadfast Roar goes on in the darkness. I have been Asleep a while when I remember: you Are—you, and Tawny was the lion in— In Tarzan. In Tarzan! Just as we used to, I talk to you, you talk to me or pretend To talk to me as grown-up people do, Of Jurgen and Rupert Hughes, till in the end I think as a child thinks: "You're my real friend." III. A Street off Sunset Sometimes as I drive by the factory That manufactures, after so long, Vicks VapoRub Ointment, there rises over me A eucalyptus tree. I feel its stair-sticks Impressed on my palms, my insteps, as I climb To my tree house. The gray leaves make me mix My coughing chest, anointed at bedtime, With the smell of the sap trickling from the tan Trunk, where the nails go in. My lifetime Got rid of, I sit in a dark blue sedan Beside my great-grandmother, in Hollywood. We pass a windmill, a pink sphinx, an Allbran Billboard; thinking of Salâmmbo, Robin Hood, The old prospector with his flapjack in the air, I sit with my hands folded: I am good. That night as I lie crossways in an armchair Reading Amazing Stories(just as, long before, I'd lie by my rich uncle's polar bear On his domed library's reflecting floor In the last year of the first World War, and see A poor two-seater being attacked by four Triplanes, on the cover of the Literary Digest, and a Camel coming to its aid; I'd feel the bear's fur warm and rough against me, The colors of the afternoon would fade, I'd reach into the bear's mouth and hold tight To its front tooth and think, "I'm not afraid") There off Sunset, in the lamplit starlight, A scientist is getting ready to destroy The world. "It's time for you to say good night," Mama tells me; I go on in breathless joy. "Remember, tomorrow is a school day," Mama tells me; I go on in breathless joy. At last I go to Mama in her gray Silk, to Pop, to Dandeen in her black Silk. I put my arms around them, they Put their arms around me. Then I go back To my bedroom; I read as I undress. The scientist is ready to attack. Mama calls, "Is your light out?" I call back, "Yes," And turn the light out. Forced out of life into Bed, for a moment I lie comfortless In the blank darkness; then as I always do, I put on the earphones of the crystal set— Each bed has its earphones—and the uneasy tissue Of their far-off star-sound, of the blue-violet Of space, surrounds the sweet voice from the Tabernacle Of the Four-Square Gospel. A vague marionette, Tall, auburn, holds her arms out, to unshackle The bonds of sin, of sleep—as, next instant, the sun Holds its arms out through the fig, the lemon tree, In the back yard the clucking hens all cackle As Mama brings their chicken feed. I see My magazine. My magazine! Dressing for school, I read how the good world wins its victory Over that bad man. Books; book strap; jump the footstool You made in Manual Training . . . Then we three Sit down, and one says grace; and then, by rule, By that habit that moves the stars, some coffee— One spoonful—is poured out into my milk And the milk, transubstantiated, is coffee. And Mama's weekday wash-dress, Dandeen's soft black silk Are ways that habit itself makes holy Just as, on Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, His will Comes in their ways—of Church, of Prayer Meeting—to set free The spirit from the flesh it questions. So, So unquestioned, my own habit moves me To and through and from school, like a domino, Till, home, I wake to find that I am playing Dominoes with Dandeen. Her old face is slow In pleasure, slow in doubt, as she sits weighing Strategies: patient, equable, and humble, She hears what this last child of hers is saying In pride or bewilderment; and she will grumble Like a child or animal when, indifferent To the reasons of my better self, I mumble: "I'd better stop now—the rabbit . . ." I relent And play her one more game. It is miraculous To have a great-grandmother: I feel different From others as, between moves, we discuss The War Between the States. The cheerful troops Ride up to our farmhouse, steal from us The spoons, the horses—when their captain stoops To Dandeen and puts Dandeen on his horse, She cries . . . As I run by the chicken coops With lettuce for my rabbit, real remorse Hurts me, here, now: the little girl is crying Because I didn't write. Because— of course, I was a child, I missed them so. But justifying Hurts too: if only I could play you one more game, See you all one more time! I think of you dying Forgiving me—or not, it is all the same To the forgiven . . . My rabbit's glad to see me; He scrambles to me, gives me little tame Bites before he eats the lettuce. His furry Long warm soft floppy ears, his crinkling nose Are reassuring to a child. They guarantee, As so much here does, that the child knows Who takes care of him, whom he takes care of. Mama comes out and takes in the clothes From the clothesline. She looks with righteous love At all of us, her spare face half a girl's. She enters a chicken coop, and the hens shove And flap and squawk, in fear; the whole flock whirls Into the farthest corner. She chooses one, Comes out, and wrings its neck. The body hurls Itself out—lunging, reeling, it begins to run Away from Something, to fly away from Something In great flopping circles. Mama stands like a nun In the center of each awful, anguished ring. The thudding and scrambling go on, go on—then they fade, I open my eyes, it's over . . . Could such a thing Happen to anything ? It could to a rabbit, I'm afraid; It could to— "Mama, you won't kill Reddy ever, You won't ever, will you?" The farm woman tries to persuade The little boy, her grandson, that she'd never Kill the boy's rabbit, never even think of it. He would like to believe her . . . And whenever I see her, there in that dark infinite, Standing like Judith, with the hen's head in her hand, I explain it away, in vain—a hypocrite, Like all who love. Into the blue wonderland Of Hollywood, the sun sinks, past the eucalyptus, The sphinx, the windmill, and I watch and read and Hold my story tight. And when the bus Stops at the corner and Pop—Pop!—steps down And I run out to meet him, a blurred nimbus, Half-red, half-gold, enchants his sober brown Face, his stooped shoulders, into the All-Father's. He tells me about the work he's done downtown, We sit there on the steps. My universe Mended almost, I tell him about the scientist. I say, "He couldn't really, could he, Pop ?" My comforter's Eyes light up, and he laughs. "No, that's just play, Just make-believe," he says. The sky is gray, We sit there, at the end of our good day.

If, in an odd angle of the hutment, A puppy laps the water from a can Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving Whistles O Paradiso!—shall I say that man Is not as men have said: a wolf to man? The other murderers troop in yawning; Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one Lies counting missions, lies there sweating Till even his heart beats: One; One; One. O murderers!... Still, this is how it’s done: This is a war.... But since these play, before they die, Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man, I did as these have done, but did not die— I will content the people as I can And give up these to them: Behold the man! I have suffered, in a dream, because of him, Many things; for this last saviour, man, I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying? Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can: I find no fault in this just man.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe, I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard, My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole. There in the childish night my companions lay frozen, The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat, And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling, Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest. —Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence Of the unbroken ice. I stand here, The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare At the North Pole . . . And now what? Why, go back. Turn as I please, my step is to the south. The world—my world spins on this final point Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds End in this whirlpool I at last discover. And it is meaningless. In the child's bed After the night's voyage, in that warm world Where people work and suffer for the end That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land I reached my North and it had meaning. Here at the actual pole of my existence, Where all that I have done is meaningless, Where I die or live by accident alone— Where, living or dying, I am still alone; Here where North, the night, the berg of death Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness, I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me— Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.