343 Grief poems

(In Lenox Hill Hospital, after surgery, my mother said the sirens sounded like the elephants of Mihiragula when his men drove them off cliffs in the Pir Panjal Range.) The Hun so loved the cry, one falling elephant’s, he wished to hear it again. At dawn, my mother heard, in her hospital-dream of elephants, sirens wail through Manhattan like elephants forced off Pir Panjal’s rock cliffs in Kashmir: the soldiers, so ruled, had rushed the elephant, The greatest of all footprints is the elephant’s, said the Buddha. But not lifted from the universe, those prints vanished forever into the universe, though nomads still break news of those elephants as if it were just yesterday the air spread the dye (“War’s annals will fade into night / Ere their story die”), the punishing khaki whereby the world sees us die out, mourning you, O massacred elephants! Months later, in Amherst, she dreamt: She was, with dia- monds, being stoned to death. I prayed: If she must die, let it only be some dream. But there were times, Mother, while you slept, that I prayed, "Saints, let her die." Not, I swear by you, that I wished you to die but to save you as you were, young, in song in Kashmir, and I, one festival, crowned Krishna by you, Kashmir listening to my flute. You never let gods die. Thus I swear, here and now, not to forgive the universe that would let me get used to a universe without you. She, she alone, was the universe as she earned, like a galaxy, her right not to die, defying the Merciful of the Universe, Master of Disease, “in the circle of her traverse” of drug-bound time. And where was the god of elephants, plump with Fate, when tusk to tusk, the universe, dyed green, became ivory? Then let the universe, like Paradise, be considered a tomb. Mother, they asked me,So how’s the writing? I answered My mother is my poem. What did they expect? For no verse sufficed except the promise, fading, of Kashmir and the cries that reached you from the cliffs of Kashmir (across fifteen centuries) in the hospital.Kashmir, she’s dying! How her breathing drowns out the universe as she sleeps in Amherst. Windows open on Kashmir: There, the fragile wood-shrines—so far away—of Kashmir! O Destroyer, let her return there, if just to die. Save the right she gave its earth to cover her, Kashmir has no rights. When the windows close on Kashmir, I see the blizzard-fall of ghost-elephants. I hold back—she couldn’t bear it—one elephant’s story: his return (in a country far from Kashmir) to the jungle where each year, on the day his mother died, he touches with his trunk the bones of his mother. "As you sit here by me, you’re just like my mother," she tells me. I imagine her: a bride in Kashmir, she’s watching, at the Regal, her first film with Father. If only I could gather you in my arms, Mother, I’d save you—now my daughter—from God. The universe opens its ledger. I write: How helpless was God’s mother! Each page is turned to enter grief’s accounts. Mother, I see a hand.Tell me it’s not God’s. Let it die. I see it. It’s filling with diamonds. Please let it die. Are you somewhere alive, somewhere alive, Mother? Do you hear what I once held back: in one elephant’s cry, by his mother’s bones, the cries of those elephants that stunned the abyss? Ivory blots out the elephants. I enter this:The Beloved leaves one behind to die. For compared to my grief for you, what are those of Kashmir, and what (I close the ledger) are the griefs of the universe when I remember you—beyond all accounting—O my mother?

He hardly spoke any words only two — or you could call it one the last thing he said was bye-bye flight-feathers veined and hairlike with interlocking barbules of  sound the bye-bye trapped a breath of air the two linked words drifted out on a calm lake that lay there with a single purpose — to receive final words and allow them to drift on its surface out and further out on the lake of  thought and composure encircled by mountains the simple phrase soared upwards to the highest peak where it would be planted like a flag would eventually be enshrined each identical word carefully balanced either side of the invisible join — like baby talk he put equal emphasis on each word his face was pinched and his bird beak very prominent there have never been two joined words with so much space around them pack up all my cares and woes light the light I’ll arrive late tonight blackbird     bye bye bye

Those notes are fetching when they touch the ear. It's true, there are more tears in sand than water. "Come out and play," the song's refrain in my head, my sawdust showing. My heart, your eyes is what the day made. There, the notes, the song, the besidedness to live on Saturday, to walk out, wanted to, right out the frame. The sadness, gas pumps, sunshine on oil, that crow overhead destroys the picture. Everything faking it so badly. What's so wrong about the real, so off with clarity, dumbfuck, shirttail-hanging scatter-brained word. Shattered-pane world? The whir of the camera inside pictures but we want the voice to lift, don't we, across the mini-plaza to where? How about pulling taffy for a living or a rabbit from one ideal-ology to another. That's the trick isn't it, parallel lives? You know, here a dumpster there a Dane. On the street I see birds, bricks, clouds I see a friend getting into her car I see myself in the puddle I see. And even if we pray to remain unabated, a minor chord can sometimes reconnoiter the most distant thoughts camouflaged in lace and literature. O western wind let's not decorate the light with roseate diadems, plumbago shadows in the rushes. Haven't we heard enough from the birds, their annual trips and cross-talk? Listen. The arc of a rocket is louder than a rainbow.

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten, Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold, Let it be forgotten for ever and ever, Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. If anyone asks, say it was forgotten Long and long ago, As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall In a long forgotten snow.

It smiles to see me Still in my bathrobe. It sits in my lap And will not let me rise. Now it is kissing my eyes. Arms enfold me, arms Pale with a thick down. It seems I am falling asleep To the sound of a story Being read me. This is the story. Weeks have passed Since first I lifted my hand To set it down.

Where is the promise of my years; Once written on my brow? Ere errors, agonies and fears Brought with them all that speaks in tears, Ere I had sunk beneath my peers; Where sleeps that promise now? Naught lingers to redeem those hours, Still, still to memory sweet! The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers Are withered all; and Evil towers Supreme above her sister powers Of Sorrow and Deceit. I look along the columned years, And see Life’s riven fane, Just where it fell, amid the jeers Of scornful lips, whose mocking sneers, For ever hiss within mine ears To break the sleep of pain. I can but own my life is vain A desert void of peace; I missed the goal I sought to gain, I missed the measure of the strain That lulls Fame’s fever in the brain, And bids Earth’s tumult cease. Myself! alas for theme so poor A theme but rich in Fear; I stand a wreck on Error’s shore, A spectre not within the door, A houseless shadow evermore, An exile lingering here.

An end is always punishment for a beginning. If you’re Catholic, sadness is punishment for happiness, you become the bug you squash if you’re Hindu, a flinty space opens in your head after a long night of laughter and wine. For waking there are dreams, from French poetry, English poetry, for light fire although sometimes fire must be punished by light which is why psychotherapy had to be invented. A father may say nothing to a son for years. A wife may keep something small folded deep in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in resembling the terrible things we believe about ourselves, a rock comes loose from a ledge, the baby just cries and cries. Doll in a chair, windshield wipers, staring off into the city lights. For years you may be unable to hear the word monkey without a stab in the heart because she called you that the summer she thought she loved you and you thought you loved someone else and everyone loved your salad dressing. And the daffodils come up in the spring and the snow covers the road in winter and the water covers the deep trenches in the sea where all the time the inner stuff of this earth surges up which is how the continents are made and broken.

One death comes before another. Breath and smoke. And smoke which puts out breath. And silence. But sometimes only a cigarette helps you keep your grip. And keeps its promises more quickly, too. Between yellowed fingers it burns like love becomes ashes like betrayal. Breath and smoke. The three fingers of oath curved around the cigarette: to not forswear. Giordano burns on the Campo de Fiori. The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore are still pealing for the auto-da-fé. Breath and smoke. And smoke which puts out breath. And to write with a burned hand about fire. And the borders of the German language are mined with murderous accidents. One death comes before another. * * * Ein Tod kommt vor dem andern. Atem und Rauch. Und Rauch der Atem löscht. Und Schweigen. Manchmal ist aber eine Zigarette der letzte Halt. Und hält was sie verspricht auch schneller. Zwischen vergilbten Fingern brennts wie Liebe wird Asche wie Verrat. Atem und Rauch. Die Schwurfinger gekrümmt um die Zigarette: um nicht abzuschwören. Giordano brennt auf dem Campo de Fiori. Die Glocken von Santa Maria Maggiore gellen noch immer zum Autodafé. Atem und Rauch. Und Rauch der Atem löscht. Und mit verbrannter Hand über das Feuer schreiben. Und die Grenzen der deutschen Sprache sind mit mörderischen Zufällen vermint. Ein Tod kommt dem andern zuvor.

Nothing can reach you now, not lead or steel, or what life itself eventually reveals. No more studies of kindness or courtesy, nor grace or charity, all is needless now. All is needless now, sky, world, family grieving for their bundles of purity, now beyond disgrace, failure, winter streets, or whatever attacks, and then retreats. Classrooms emptied of children’s things, paper and paste, and love’s imaginings, bundles of peace, Christmas-blessed with the unborn and the dead at rest, nothing can reach you now, not lead or steel or what life itself eventually reveals.

The quick-sliding cape of mind Drags wrinkled on a dusty floor, A party dress, Sagging from those shoulders of a smile that stalks through crooked time followed by a goat nipping the petticoat. Scape-goat, grin out loud. Make the cloak a shroud. He whinnys through the nose, paws the trailing hem and strikes a fawning pose. Tight-clamped, the clasp of tin Tears cloth it won’t undo. Before the gown slips down. A rent . . . which lets the darkness through.