478 Identity poems

In the beginning, a word, move ; then a plan and then the reasons, which I do not remember exactly. I remember clearly only the clothes we were given for the journey and the last, silent meal we ate. We left the place as lightly as we had come, so many years before. From a sunlit state of innocence where white sheets were hung to dry like clouds over paradise; from eucalyptus-scented earth, a red house with a yard swung between dreaming hills, pillaged by raccoons, framed with lilies like trumpets of the archangels, we moved: into history, a river slowed by many bends, a village of peacocks with a hundred eyes; a low house among fields, with an iron stove, a winter shrine; a fireplace blackened by time, the fragile bones of a sparrow frozen in the shape of its flight. When father played his trombone in the attic, schoolchildren tittered in the street. In the late afternoon, the cows assembled at the gate, witless, waiting for a farmer's son. Home, the children conjugated verbs, found variables and drew diagrams of the human heart. Evenings, the round kitchen table, lit by a low Dutch lamp, summoned poets, players, horsethieves, to glasses of jenever . An incense of gossip rose slowly, blackening the walls. Outside, horses pawed the darkness, breathing delicate feathers of ice. We courted the favors of spiders, mice and moles. Our words grew small and porous as fossiled bones, our gestures groaned with the cold. The will-less world of water, wood and stone taught us when to yield. When it came time to move along again, we were four strangers waving at each other, in slow motion, across a deafening expanse of ocean.

X, whom society’s most mild command, For instance evening dress, infuriates, In art is seen confusingly to stand For disciplined conformity, with Yeats. Taxed to explain what this resentment is He feels for small proprieties, it comes, He likes to think, from old enormities And keeps the faith with famous martyrdoms. Yet it is likely, if indeed the crimes His fathers suffered rankle in his blood, That he find least excusable the times When they acceded, not when they withstood. How else explain this bloody-minded bent To kick against the prickings of the norm; When to conform is easy, to dissent; And when it is most difficult, conform?

We won’t pretend we’re not hungry for distinction but what can ever distinguish us enough? This country, this language won’t last long, the race will die, later the cockroach, earth itself, and last this beer bottle: silicon fused by man, almost indestructible, like a soul: it will go spinning ever farther from the nearest thing until space, continually deepening, drowns in itself. Yet we keep a hungry eye on old schoolmates and everyone born in the year of our own birth, and spend the nights in ranting over them, their money, fashionable companions, pliant critics. To live just a little longer than they do: that would be triumph. Hence exercise and diets, and the squabble over who will write the history of this paradise of demons casting each other out.

Good Heav’n, I thank thee, since it was designed I should be framed, but of the weaker kind, That yet, my Soul, is rescued from the love Of all those trifles which their passions move. Pleasures and praise and plenty have with me But their just value. If allowed they be, Freely, and thankfully as much I taste, As will not reason or religion waste, If they’re denied, I on my self can live, And slight those aids unequal chance does give. When in the sun, my wings can be displayed, And, in retirement, I can bless the shade.

You swear the twin spirits taught you to write. At night, you climbed the leaves to hear the gods. Catch in the throat. Hollow breath. Paj is not pam is not pab. Blossom is not blanket is not help. Ntug is not ntuj is not ntub. Edge is not sky is not wet. On sheet of bamboo with indigo branch. To txiav is not the txias. To scissor is not the cold. The obsidian mask will make its own sleep, leave behind the silver your body won’t shed. Now you are Niam Ntawv who was once a young farmer scrawling in secret toward the triggering day. When they could take no more, when all that you had was given, you lined your grave with paper.

I know a funny little man, As quiet as a mouse, Who does the mischief that is done In everybody’s house! There’s no one ever sees his face, And yet we all agree That every plate we break was cracked By Mr. Nobody. ’Tis he who always tears out books, Who leaves the door ajar, He pulls the buttons from our shirts, And scatters pins afar; That squeaking door will always squeak, For prithee, don’t you see, We leave the oiling to be done By Mr. Nobody. He puts damp wood upon the fire That kettles cannot boil; His are the feet that bring in mud, And all the carpets soil. The papers always are mislaid; Who had them last, but he? There’s no one tosses them about But Mr. Nobody.

I am so young that I am still in love with Battle Creek, Michigan: decoder rings, submarines powered by baking soda, whistles that only dogs can hear. Actually, not even them. Nobody can hear them. Mrs. Hill from next door is hammering on our front door shouting, and my father in his black and gold gangster robe lets her in trembling and bunched up like a rabbit in snow pleading,oh I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry,

He protested all his life long The newspapers lied about him villainously; That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, But only tried to help her. Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see That even trying to help her, as he called it, He had broken the law human and divine. Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, And all your pathways peace, Love God and keep his commandments.

The school bell rings, we go inside, Our teacher isn’t there. “Maybe she’s sick!” her pet cries out. Yeah, right. As if I’d care. I have a D in Language Arts, My grade in math’s the same. And now my teacher might be sick. Could be I’m part to blame. She doesn’t like me, that’s a fact, I wouldn’t tell a lie. She says stuff like: “You’re very smart, But you don’t even try.” I start to laugh—my teacher’s sick! And boy, I’m feeling fine . . . When someone knocks the door right in, And there stands Frankenstein. She’s six-foot-eight, her dress is black, She’s wearing combat boots. I start to gasp, she growls and says, “I’ll be your substitute.” The teacher’s pet is whimpering; She doesn’t stand a chance. The smart kid stares and points and faints. The bully wets his pants. “My name is Mrs. Stein,” she says, And every student cringes. She leans the door against the wall, She’s knocked it off its hinges. “Now let’s begin. You there! Stand up!” She looks me in the eye. I try to move, my legs won’t work. I know I’m going to die! In one big step she’s next to me, And she does more than hover. She blocks the sun, it’s dark as night, My classmates run for cover. “Now get up to the board,” she says. “I’d like to see some action. Pick up the chalk, explain to us Division of a fraction.” I leap away to save my life, This time I really try. I think and think and think and croak, “Invert and multiply.” “Correct! She says. I breathe again And head back for my chair. “You, FREEZE!” she shouts, and I stop cold. “And don’t go anywhere.” This all begins at nine o’clock, I fight to stay alive. It seems to last a million years— The clock says nine-o-five. That’s just three hundred seconds, And then my turn is through. She points at every one of us— “Now you. Now, you. Now, you.” We all get nailed this awful day, There’s nowhere we can hide. The lunch bell rings, we cannot eat, We simply crawl outside. We can’t believe the other kids Who run and play their games. Not us, who have big Mrs. Stein— Our world is not the same. The bell has tolled, I must go in, My time on earth is through. I’ll leave this on the playground— Here’s what you have to do. You must listen to your teacher And pray her health is fine, Or one day soon you’ll hear the words: “My name is Mrs. Stein.”

Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - ’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you’re straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -