Richard Hoffman

Boston snowbound, Logan closed, snowplows and salt-trucks flashing yellow, drifts tall as a man some places, visibility poor, I sit by the window and watch the snow blow sideways north-northeast, hot cup in hand, robe over pajamas. You have made me to seek refuge and charged me to care for my brothers. How cruel. That could be You out there howling, cracking the trees, burying everything. What could I possibly want from You that would not undo the whole world as it is?

“The trouble with intellectuals,” Manny, my boss, once told me, “is that they don’t know nothing till they can explain it to themselves.  A guy like that,” he said, “he gets to middle age—and by the way, he gets there late; he’s trying to be a boy until he’s forty, forty-five, and then you give him five more years until that craziness peters out, and now he’s almost fifty—a guy like that at last explains to himself that life is made of time, that time is what it’s all about.  Aha! he says.  And then he either blows his brains out, gets religion, or settles down to some major-league depression. Make yourself useful.  Hand me that three-eights torque wrench—no, you moron, the other one.”

A few days after my mother died the furnace went out, and my father, who had been sitting in his chair across from hers since the funeral, his unshaven chin on his chest, heaved himself up and went down the cold gray cellar stairs to see if he could relight the pilot himself or would have to call for help. I know what it must have been like because I remember him other times on his back down there, cursing match after match, god damning each for burning his fingers, as he reached through the tiny metal door as many times as it took. This time it lit, caught, and roared back to life. When my father sat up he faced the washer, the dryer, the empty laundry basket, the ironing board, and my mother’s radio above the sink, her absence so vivid that climbing the stairs he thought he heard her behind him, and he turned around.

You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead, but I have lived two decades longer now than you and all this time I have carried you in my head so I think I have the right to question what you said, dear teacher. My religious upbringing’s residue, you would have thought it foolish. To speak to the dead, however, is sometimes necessary, especially haunted by all the things I know you hoped I’d do with all this time that I have carried you in my head. In a dream last night I followed where you led until you asked me in a loud voice what I knew. (You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead, but I was dreaming and could not refuse.) I said that you were wrong, that I could see your bitter view (since all this time I have carried you in my head) for what it was, and you for who you were. Instead of dreaming your reply I woke as you withdrew. You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead but all this time I have carried you in my head.

All my undone actions wander naked across the calendar, a band of skinny hunter-gatherers, blown snow scattered here and there, stumbling toward a future folded in the New Year I secure with a pushpin: January’s picture a painting from the 17th century, a still life: Skull and mirror, spilled coin purse and a flower.

Love ’ s language is hyperbole, but whispered, sibilant similes and promises sotto voce. It ’ s easy to imagine you ’ ve misheard, the form and content clash, create this weird distortion like an echo or a tape delay. Love ’ s language is hyperbole, but whispered. On which do you place emphasis: The words? Or the breath? The farfetched or the foreplay? It ’ s easy to imagine you ’ ve misheard when objectivity has disappeared and your lover is getting further carried away. Love ’ s language is hyperbole, but whispered vows? It ’ s hard to take him at his word, or hers: Speak up! Proclaim! you want to say. It ’ s easy to imagine you ’ ve misheard, hard to admit one sharp as you is stirred. You need to back off, cool down, act blasé. Love ’ s language is hyperbole, but whispered. It ’ s easy to imagine you ’ ve misheard.