74 Friendship poems

One by one they appear in the darkness: a few friends, and a few with historical names. How late they start to shine! but before they fade they stand perfectly embodied, all the past lapping them like a cloak of chaos. They were men who, I thought, lived only to renew the wasteful force they spent with each hot convulsion. They remind me, distant now. True, they are not at rest yet, but now that they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures, they withdraw to an orbit and turn with disinterested hard energy, like the stars.

I was making a new friend, blonde-gray, a living opal, pellucid, also reminding me of a green apple napping underneath its tree, where I have tumbled too, being of an age, “elderly” but undepressed, she tall enough to change the smoke alarm — sharing a ripeness that we liked comparing, bosses who couldn’t see us, perforation by divorce, retirement, and stairs. One lunch that I was looking forward to, the first thing on her mind — “Do you believe in the Occult?” — “Merline! No, I don’t think so.” She was in an auditorium — her older, deader sister sat right down beside her with a message — a large figure not her body but a sum — what did it mean? I’d thought one of us leaned forward at the lectern but a ghost was there, holding sway, or forth. Well, it came true — she’s richer by that sum — and urges making sure to be attentive to my dreams. She knows that it will happen — I’m her friend, as the Occult has been so far. I didn’t want my brother appearing in a dream to bring me news of unexpected income — if only I would pray about it first — to the God who had my brother die after all. And certainly not my sister prophesying ill on my behalf. I guess I’d stand up, put on a mike, look out at all the empty faces, make them look alive, and even cheer. Had I remembered a firsthand poltergeist, a temptatious legend ... I guess I’d accept a sleek Angora bunny in a mohair hat, or magic like a two-dollar bill, ask for a life my brother could have back.

Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know The cause why that homeward I me draw, And flee the press of courts, whereso they go, Rather than to live thrall under the awe Of lordly looks, wrappèd within my cloak, To will and lust learning to set a law: It is not for because I scorn or mock The power of them, to whom fortune hath lent Charge over us, of right, to strike the stroke. But true it is that I have always meant Less to esteem them than the common sort, Of outward things that judge in their intent Without regard what doth inward resort. I grant sometime that of glory the fire Doth twyche my heart. Me list not to report Blame by honour, and honour to desire. But how may I this honour now attain, That cannot dye the colour black a liar? My Poynz, I cannot from me tune to feign, To cloak the truth for praise without desert Of them that list all vice for to retain. I cannot honour them that sets their part With Venus and Bacchus all their life long; Nor hold my peace of them although I smart. I cannot crouch nor kneel to do so great a wrong, To worship them, like God on earth alone, That are as wolves these sely lambs among. I cannot with my word complain and moan, And suffer nought, nor smart without complaint, Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone. I cannot speak and look like a saint, Use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure, And call craft counsel, for profit still to paint. I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer With innocent blood to feed myself fat, And do most hurt where most help I offer. I am not he that can allow the state Of him Caesar, and damn Cato to die, That with his death did scape out of the gate From Caesar's hands (if Livy do not lie) And would not live where liberty was lost; So did his heart the common weal apply. I am not he such eloquence to boast To make the crow singing as the swan; Nor call the liond of cowardes beasts the most That cannot take a mouse as the cat can; And he that dieth for hunger of the gold Call him Alexander; and say that Pan Passeth Apollo in music many fold; Praise Sir Thopias for a noble tale, And scorn the story that the Knight told; Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale; Grin when he laugheth that beareth all the sway, Frown when he frowneth and groan when is pale; On others' lust to hang both night and day: None of these points would ever frame in me. My wit is nought—I cannot learn the way. And much the less of things that greater be, That asken help of colours of device To join the mean with each extremity, With the nearest virtue to cloak alway the vice; And as to purpose, likewise it shall fall To press the virtue that it may not rise; As drunkenness good fellowship to call; The friendly foe with his double face Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal; And say that favel hath a goodly grace In eloquence; and cruelty to name Zeal of justice and change in time and place; And he that suffer'th offence without blame Call him pitiful; and him true and plain That raileth reckless to every man's shame. Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign; The lecher a lover; and tyranny To be the right of a prince's reign. I cannot, I; no, no, it will not be! This is the cause that I could never yet Hang on their sleeves that way, as thou mayst see, A chip of chance more than a pound of wit. This maketh me at home to hunt and to hawk, And in foul weather at my book to sit; In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk; No man doth mark whereso I ride or go: In lusty leas at liberty I walk. And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe, Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel. No force for that, for it is ordered so, That I may leap both hedge and dyke full well. I am not now in France to judge the wine, With saffry sauce the delicates to feel; Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline Rather than to be, outwardly to seem: I meddle not with wits that be so fine. Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem. Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey For money, poison, and treason at Rome— A common practice used night and day: But here I am in Kent and Christendom Among the Muses where I read and rhyme; Where if thou list, my Poinz, for to come, Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.

For example, with someone who no longer is, who exists only in yellowed letters. Or long walks beside a stream, whose depths hold hidden porcelain cups—and the talks about philosophy with a timid student or the postman. A passerby with proud eyes whom you'll never know. Friendship with this world, ever more perfect (if not for the salty smell of blood). The old man sipping coffee in St.-Lazare, who reminds you of someone. Faces flashing by in local trains— the happy faces of travelers headed perhaps for a splendid ball, or a beheading. And friendship with yourself —since after all you don't know who you are.

I A whim of Time, the general arbiter, Proclaims the love, instead of death, of friends. Under the domed sky and athletic sun Three stand naked: the new, bronzed German The communist clerk, and myself, being English. Yet to unwind the travelled sphere twelve years Then two take arms, spring to a soldier's posture: Or else roll on the thing a further ten, The third - this clerk with world-offended eyes— Builds with red hands his heaven: makes our bones The necessary scaffolding to peace. II Now, I suppose, the once-envious dead Have learned a strict philosophy of clay After long centuries, to haunt us no longer In the churchyard or at the end of the lane Or howling at the edge of the city Beyond the last bean rows, near the new factory. Our fathers killed. And yet there lives no feud Like Hamlet's, prompted on the castle stair: There falls no shadow on our blank of peace, We three together, struck across our path, No warning finger threatening each alone. III Our fathers' misery, their spirits' mystery, The cynic's cruelty, weave this philosophy: That the history of man, traced purely from dust, Is lipping skulls on the revolving rim Or war, us three each other's murderers - Lives, risen a moment, joined or separate, Fall heavily, then are ever separate, Sod lifted, turned, slapped back again with spade.

friends! if i may interrupt right quick i know y’all working, busy smoking & busy trying not to smoke, busy with the kids & moms & busy with alone, but i have just seen two boys — yes, black — on bikes — also — summer children basketball shorts & they outside shoes, wild laughing bout something i couldn’t hear over my own holler, trying to steady the wheel & not hit they asses as they swerved frienddrunk, making their little loops, sun-lotioned faces screwed up with that first & cleanest love we forget to name as such, &, hear me out i’m not trying to dis lil dude, but in this gold hour he kind of looked like Francine off Arthur same monkey mouth & all, ole & i say hey looking-ass boy tho in a beautiful way, the best beautiful same as i know all of us have looked like something off when backlit by love. o loves, y’all ugly asses have crowned me the worst names: wayne brady, gay wiz khalifa, all kinds of bitches & fags (tho only with my bitches & fags), all kinds of shit &, once, mark of buddha that year acne scored my forehead with its bumpy faith. my niggas & my niggas who are not niggas i been almost-pissed myself, almost been boxin’ been tears & snot off your dozen wonders been the giddy swine dancing the flame. o my many hearts, y’all booty-faced weird-ass ole mojo-jojo-looking asses dusty chambers where my living dwells roast me. name me in the old ways, your shit- talk a river i wade, howling until it takes me. i can’t stop laughing, more river wades down my throat. could be drowning could be becoming the water, could be a baptism from the inside out. don’t save me, i don’t wanna be saved. i’ve died laughing before, been seen god’s face & you have her teeth, my nig. but   hers   ain’t   as   yellow   as   them   saffron   shits you   keep   stashed   in   your   gloryfoul   mouth my friend! my friends! my niggas! my wives! i got a crush on each one of your dumb faces smashing into my heart like idiot cardinals into glass but i am a big-ass glass bird, a stupid monster crashing through the window & becoming it just to make you laugh. Andrew used to say friendship is so friendship& ain’t it even after Andrew gave it on over to whatever he was still my nigga. when they turned his body to dust he was still my dusty-ass boy. don’t you hear it? the dust on the fan calls me a bum, says my hairline looks like it’s thinking about retirement. the dust in the car says i look like a chubby slave, says i look too drunk, takes my keys, drives me home. the wind is tangled with the dust of the dead homies, carrying us over to them, giggling in the mirror. hear them. hear your long-gone girl tease your hair on the bus. hear them rolling when you sweep broom across the beaten floor. i miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly to miss what you will become. i apologize. sometimes it just catches up in me. love & ghost gets caught up in us like wind & birds trapped in a sheet just the same. & my friends is some birds, some chicken-head muhfuckas who i would legit stomp a nigga for, do you feel me? when they buried my nigga i put on my timbs walked into that hot august tried to beat his name out the dirt. i beat the earth like a nigga. i threw hands at the earth like a punk muhfucka & the ground chuckled, said my nigga. what is you doing! you can’t hear the wind drunk off the kindred lent? can you hear that great roll from way off like a big nigga laughing in an alley! how your dead auntie laugh when she see you still ain’t grew into that big-ass head! like your real friend laugh when you still the same ugly as yesterday! same ugly as always! same ugly as their last life!

As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,—John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going.

and then Tony showed us the lake where he had thrown some of his sadness last summer and it had dissolved like powder so he thought maybe the lake could take some of the radiant, aluminum kind he had been making lately. And it did. It was a perfect lake, none of the paint had chipped off, no bolts showing, the arms that Dante and Virgil would have to hack through not even breaking the surface. Mumbling Italian to itself, it had climbed down two wooden stairs back to the beach now that the rains were done. How strange to be water so close to the ocean yet the only other water you get to talk to comes from the sky. Maybe this is why it seems so willing to take on Tony’s sadness which sometimes corrodes his friends, which is really many different sadnesses, smaller and smaller, surrounded by more and more space, each a world and at its core an engine like a bee inside a lily, like buzzing inside the bee. It seems like nothing could change its color although we couldn’t tell what color it was, it kept changing. In the summer, Tony says he comes down early each day and there’s no one around so the lake barely says a thing when he dives in and once when his kitchen was on fire in Maine and he was asleep, the lake came and bit his hand, trying to drag him to safety and some nights in New Mexico, he can hear it howling, searching for him in the desert so we’re glad Tony has this lake and we promise to come back in August and swim with him across, maybe even race.

A friend calls, so I ask him to stop by. We sip old Scotch, the good stuff, order in, some Indian—no frills too fine for him or me, particularly since it's been ages since we made the time. Two drinks in, we've caught up on our plans. I've sleepwalked through the last few years by rote; he's had a nasty rough patch, quote unquote, on the home front. So, we commiserate, cupping our lowballs in our hands. It's great to see him, good to have a friend who feels the same as you about his lot— that, while some grass is greener, your small plot is crudely arable, and though you're not so young, it's still not quite the end. As if remembering then, he spills his news. Though I was pretty lit, I swear it's true, it was as if a gold glow filled the room and shone on him, a sun-shaft piercing through dense clouds, behind which swept long views. In that rich light, he looked not like my friend but some acquaintance brushed by on the train. Had his good fortune kept me from the same, I had to wonder, a zero-sum game that gave the night its early end? Nothing strange. Our drinks were done, that's all. We haven't spoken since. By morning, I couldn't remember half of what the guy had said, just his good news, my slurred goodbye, the click of the latch, the quiet hall.

for Pat Boran That kind of summer's day when music comes down from the hills and sings in small back-rooms and half-sets from a century before batter their complex hobnails on the floor and long laments in overcoats and caps draw tears, reluctant from the porter-taps — that was the kind of day it was, that day when I forsook the world of earn and pay. There, on the cobbles of the market square, where toothless penny ballads rasped the air, there among spanners, scollops, hones, and pikes, limp Greyhound cabbage, mending-kits for bikes, velvet calves in creels, women's overalls, she shook my hand beside the market stalls. And there before the coulter of a plough, aware of all the gifts she could endow, aware, as women are, of all her powers, as startling as a bunch of winter flowers, she tricked from me my childish, sacred vow. I got to know her lovers one by one: some saw her in an eclipse of the sun, some saw her practise magic with strange herbs and made her opaque alchemies of verbs — some, for her sake, thought blood her favourite wine, and some thought spirits helped them to divine her arcane instincts and, as holy fools, would chant her words not known to any schools. Some thought that secret nurture made her grow and more believed she thrived in public show; some scattered syntax like the blackthorn snow in flashy spangles on the mud below and some, like me, immersed themselves in laws, for what good are the sparks without the straws? But none of these sufficed. All through the land I see the poets in their mad distress — all favoured rivals? No, but victims, yes. A creature driven by a savage gland, she takes, and then dismisses, out of hand, the men and women that she most does bless. She does not rest, she does not detumesce. I leave her by a river on a bed, a silken landscape underneath her head, and spread her in her finest courting gown on a spectacular eiderdown with painted eyes and rings to catch the light by the oblivious water overnight. Only the poets can make her come to life, the stricken catalyst, who call her wife — at dawn I give her bed a gentle shove and amputate the antennae of love and watch the river carry her away into the silence of a senseless bay where light ignores the facets of her rings and where names are not the names of things.