Robert Pinsky

“He does not come to coo.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins Insomniac monkey-mind ponders the Dove, Symbol not only of Peace but sexual Love, the couple nestled and brooding. After coupling, the human animal needs The woman safe for nine months and more. But the man after his turbulent minute or two Is expendable. Usefully rash, reckless For defense, in his void of redundancy Willing to death and destruction. Monkey-mind envies the male Dove Who equally with the female secretes Pigeon milk for the young from his throat. For peace, send all human males between Fourteen and twenty-five to school On the Moon, or better yet Mars. But women too are capable of Unpeace, Yes, and we older men too, venom-throats. Here’s a great comic who says on our journey We choose one of two tributaries: the River Of Peace, or the River of Productivity. The current of Art he says runs not between Banks with birdsong in the fragrant shadows— No, an artist must follow the stinks and rapids Of the branch that drives the millstones and dynamos. Is peace merely a vacuum, the negative Of creation, or the absence of war? The teaching says Peace is a positive energy. Still something in me resists that sweet milk, My mind resembles my restless, inferior cousin Who fires his shit in handfuls from his cage.

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes— The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity. A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers— Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.” Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord.   Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader, The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields: George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone, The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

When I had no roof I made Audacity my roof. When I had No supper my eyes dined. When I had no eyes I listened. When I had no ears I thought. When I had no thought I waited. When I had no father I made Care my father. When I had No mother I embraced order. When I had no friend I made Quiet my friend. When I had no Enemy I opposed my body. When I had no temple I made My voice my temple. I have No priest, my tongue is my choir. When I have no means fortune Is my means. When I have Nothing, death will be my fortune. Need is my tactic, detachment Is my strategy. When I had No lover I courted my sleep.

And Summer turns her head with its dark tangle All the way toward us; and the trees are heavy, With little sprays of limp green maple and linden Adhering after a rainstorm to the sidewalk Where yellow pollen dries in pools and runnels. Along the oceanfront, pink neon at dusk: The long, late dusk, a light wind from the water Lifting a girl’s hair forward against her cheek And swaying a chain of bulbs. In luminous booths, The bright, traditional wheel is on its ratchet, And ticking gaily at its little pawl; And the surf revolves; and passing cars and people, Their brilliant colors—all strange and hopeful as Ralegh’s Trophies: the balsam, the prizes of untried virtue, Bananas and armadillos that a Captain Carries his Monarch from another world.

At Robben Island the political prisoners studied. They coined the motto Each one Teach one. In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners Address them always as “Profesor.” Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say. Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination That calls boiled sheep heads “Smileys.” The first year at Guantánamo, Abdul Rahim Dost Incised his Pashto poems into styrofoam cups. “The Sangomo says in our Zulu culture we do not Worship our ancestors:we consult them.” Becky is abandoned in 1902 and Rose dies giving Birth in 1924 and Sylvia falls in 1951. Still falling still dying still abandoned in 2005 Still nothing finished among the descendants. I support the War, says the comic, it’s just the Troops I’m against: can’t stand those Young People. Proud of the fallen, proud of her son the bomber. Ashamed of the government. Skeptical. After the Klansman was found Not Guilty one juror Said she just couldn’t vote to convict a pastor. Who do you write for? I write for dead people: For Emily Dickinson, for my grandfather. “T he Ancestors say the problem with your Knees Began in your Feet.It could move up your Back.” But later the Americans gave Dost not only paper And pen but books. Hemingway, Dickens. Old Aegyptius said Whoever has called this Assembly, For whatever reason—it is a good in itself. O thirsty shades who regard the offering, O stained earth. There are many fake Sangomos. This one is real. Coloured prisoners got different meals and could wear Long pants and underwear, Blacks got only shorts. No he says he cannot regret the three years in prison: Otherwise he would not have written those poems. I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans. Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good. Did he see anything like the prisoner on a leash? Yes, In Afghanistan. In Guantánamo he was isolated. Our enemies “disassemble” says the President. Not that anyone at all couldn’t mis-speak. The profesores created nicknames for torture devices: The Airplane. The Frog. Burping the Baby. Not that those who behead the helpless in the name Of God or tradition don’t also write poetry. Guilts, metaphors, traditions. Hunger strikes. Culture the penalty. Culture the escape. What could your children boast about you? What Will your father say, down among the shades? The Sangomo told Marvin, “You are crushed by some Weight.Only your own Ancestors can help you.”

The jaunty crop-haired graying Women in grocery stores, Their clothes boyish and neat, New mittens or clean sneakers, Clean hands, hips not bad still, Buying ice cream, steaks, soda, Fresh melons and soap—or the big Balding young men in work shoes And green work pants, beer belly And white T-shirt, the porky walk Back to the truck, polite; possible To feel briefly like Jesus, A gust of diffuse tenderness Crossing the dark spaces To where the dry self burrows Or nests, something that stirs, Watching the kinds of people On the street for a while— But how love falters and flags When anyone’s difficult eyes come Into focus, terrible gaze of a unique Soul, its need unlovable: my friend In his divorced schoolteacher Apartment, his own unsuspected Paintings hung everywhere, Which his wife kept in a closet— Not, he says, that she wasn’t Perfectly right; or me, mis-hearing My rock radio sing my self-pity: “The Angels Wished Him Dead”—all The hideous, sudden stare of self, Soul showing through like the lizard Ancestry showing in the frontal gaze Of a robin busy on the lawn. In the movies, when the sensitive Young Jewish soldier nearly drowns Trying to rescue the thrashing Anti-semitic bully, swimming across The river raked by nazi fire, The awful part is the part truth: Hate my whole kind, but me, Love me for myself. The weather Changes in the black of night, And the dream-wind, bowling across The sopping open spaces Of roads, golf courses, parking lots, Flails a commotion In the dripping treetops, Tries a half-rotten shingle Or a down-hung branch, and we All dream it, the dark wind crossing The wide spaces between us.

Easter was the old North Goddess of the dawn. She rises daily in the East And yearly in spring for the great Paschal candle of the sun. Her name lingers like a spot Of gravy in the figured vestment Of the language of the Britains. Her totem the randy bunny. Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays Are stained by syllables of thunder And Woden's frenzy. O my fellow-patriots loyal to this Our modern world of high heels, Vaccination, brain surgery— May they pass over us, the old Jovial raptors, Apollonian flayers, Embodiments. Egg-hunt, Crucifixion. Supper of encrypted Dishes: bitter, unrisen, a platter Compass of martyrdom, Ground-up apples and walnuts In sweet wine to embody mortar Of affliction, babies for bricks. Legible traces of the species That devises the angel of death Sailing over our doorpost Smeared with sacrifice.

My friend was in a coma, so I dove Deep into his brain to word him back. I tried To sing Hallelujah, I Just Love Her So in Ray Charles’s voice. Of course the silence grew. I couldn’t sing the alphabet song. My voice Couldn’t say words I knew:Because I Could Not Stop for Death, He Kindly Stopped for Me

To Robert Hass and in Memory of Elliot Gilbert Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn, Bashō and his friends go out to view the moon; In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter, The secret courtesy that courses like ichor Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke, Impossible to tell in writing. “Bashō” He named himself, “Banana Tree”: banana After the plant some grateful students gave him, Maybe in appreciation of his guidance Threading a long night through the rules and channels Of their collaborative linking-poem Scored in their teacher’s heart: live, rigid, fluid Like passages etched in a microscopic circuit. Elliot had in his memory so many jokes They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture Inside his brain, one so much making another It was impossible to tell them all: In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana. Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother, Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child And her new baby in a squalid apartment Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors. She tells the child she’s going to kill herself. She broods, she rages. Hoping to distract her, The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations Of different people in the building, he jokes, He feels if he keeps her alive until the father Gets home from work, they’ll be okay till morning. It’s laughter versus the bedroom and the pills. What is he in his efforts but a courtier? Impossible to tell his whole delusion. In the first months when I had moved back East From California and had to leave a message On Bob’s machine, I used to make a habit Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through, I would pretend that I forgot the punchline, Or make believe that I was interrupted— As though he’d be so eager to hear the end He‘d have to call me back. The joke was Elliot’s, More often than not. The doctors made the blunder That killed him some time later that same year. One day when I got home I found a message On my machine from Bob. He had a story About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short, One day while walking along the street together They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them, And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest. Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy, Impossible to tell—a dead-end challenge. But here it is, as Elliot told it to me: The dead man’s widow came to the rabbis weeping, Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him. Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not. But the short rabbi told her to bring the body Into the study house, and ordered the shutters Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed Over the body, chanting a secret blessing Out of Kabala. “Arise and breathe,” he shouted; But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles And danced around the body, chanting and praying In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man’s face. Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture And said, “Arise and breathe!” And still the body Lay as before. Impossible to tell In words how Elliot’s eyebrows flailed and snorted Like shaggy mammoths as—the Chinese widow Granting permission—the little rabbi sang The blessing for performing a circumcision And removed the dead man’s foreskin, chanting blessings In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse From head to foot, and with a final prayer In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion, He seized the dead man’s head and kissed the lips And dropped it again and leaping back commanded, “Arise and breathe!” The corpse lay still as ever. At this, as when Bashō’s disciples wind Along the curving spine that links the renga Across the different voices, each one adding A transformation according to the rules Of stasis and repetition, all in order And yet impossible to tell beforehand, Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer, Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching, A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: “Hoo boy!” he says, “Now that’s what I call really dead.” O mortal Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal Lords of the underground and afterlife, Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto, What has a brilliant, living soul to do with Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers, Our languages don’t touch you, you’re like that mother Whose small child entertained her to beg her life. Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi, The one who washed his hands of all those capers Right at the outset. Or maybe he became The author of these lines, a one-man renga The one for whom it seems to be impossible To tell a story straight. It was a routine Procedure. When it was finished the physicians Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded, But Elliot wouldn’t wake up for maybe an hour, They should go eat. The two of them loved to bicker In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish, On Sandra’s to some Sicilian dialect. He used to scold her endlessly for smoking. When she got back from dinner with their children The doctors had to tell them about the mistake. Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book. Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent, Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer. But the Universal is the goal of jokes, Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There’s one A journalist told me. He heard it while a hero Of the South African freedom movement was speaking To elderly Jews. The speaker’s own right arm Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers. He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots For the ANC—a group the old Jews feared As “in with the Arabs.” But they started weeping As the old one-armed fighter told them their country Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote Could make a country their children could return to From London and Chicago. The moved old people Applauded wildly, and the speaker’s friend Whispered to the journalist, “It’s the Belgian Army Joke come to life.” I wish that I could tell it To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious, So out of hand the army could barely function. Finally one commander assembled his men In one great room, to deal with things directly. They stood before him at attention. “All Flemings,” He ordered, “to the left wall.” Half the men Clustered to the left. “Now all Walloons,” he ordered, “Move to the right.” An equal number crowded Against the right wall. Only one man remained At attention in the middle: “What are you, soldier?” Saluting, the man said, “Sir, I am a Belgian.” “Why, that’s astonishing, Corporal—what’s your name?” Saluting again, “Rabinowitz,” he answered: A joke that seems at first to be a story About the Jews. But as the renga describes Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl, So in the joke, just under the raucous music Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow, Over the banana tree the moon in autumn— Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.

One Christmastime Fats Waller in a fur coat Rolled beaming from a taxicab with two pretty girls Each at an arm as he led them in a thick downy snowfall Across Thirty-Fourth Street into the busy crowd Shopping at Macy’s: perfume, holly, snowflake displays. Chimes rang for change. In Toys, where my mother worked Over her school vacation, the crowd swelled and stood Filling the aisles, whispered at the fringes, listening To the sounds of the large, gorgeously dressed man, His smile bemused and exalted, lips boom-booming a bold Bass line as he improvised on an expensive, tinkly Piano the size of a lady’s jewel box or a wedding cake. She put into my heart this scene from the romance of Joy, Co-authored by her and the movies, like her others– My father making the winning basket at the buzzer And punching the enraged gambler who came onto the court– The brilliant black and white of the movies, texture Of wet snowy fur, the taxi’s windshield, piano keys, Reflections that slid over the thick brass baton That worked the elevator. Happiness needs a setting: Shepherds and shepherdesses in the grass, kids in a store, The back room of Carly’s parents’ shop, record-player And paper streamers twisted in two colors: what I felt Dancing close one afternoon with a thin blonde girl Was my amazing good luck, the pleased erection Stretching and stretching at the idea She likes me, She likes it