51 Imagination poems

People would come to my great-grandmother’s house. She was in a room. They would stay in the kitchen. The words their words rolled like cars by on a train Here from somewhere else and going somewhere else Moving on faster almost than we could read them, Sound them out my brother and me with our small mouths, Chessie, a cat, see? the Erie, Santa Fe, Ferrocarril, Ore cars from the Southern Pacific, brown And all the numbers of all the engines. The words they rolled easier, fat and longer With each beer held in a fist and hit Against brown lips and thin tongues, And things slid out of those mouths then with the drinking, Took shape in sounds larger than we were, those uncles’ laughs, Loud things which could be called back no longer. The words they rolled into plates of food Up with the smoke curling, there around the elbows, the words And the smoke, a tablecloth, a rope wound like a hypnotist’s wheel) All of it catching the heads of our mother in weak headlocks That fooled us—we had thought we were stronger With our thousand gatling short words, Half tears, half whispered. We were not. The words they rolled their wheels they rolled Until the mayonnaise turned light and then dark brown Until we slept in the corners, my brother and my cousins, Me with Midnight and Puerquito, our own hands Held around ourselves, our voices intimate Only with the animals, who understood something of us, Who let us hold their heads to our chests, Who looked at the things we whispered. The words, they rolled, they, they would not stop. I closed my eyes then, and their phrases became birds, Long birds, fat, snake birds that would not fly. A single laugh, some thin tongue pulled to its shrill Kicking roots, this one laugh, an uncle’s, It was the thinnest and strongest string Pulling their faces up together like puppets And they hit each other, those wooden heads Laughing, hit each other rolling, blunt-edged Side hitting sides like rocks and pieces of hill Heading along toward some bottom, heading Somewhere, the place of the broken parts. Nothing would take me by the hand, only the handle On the drawer in the corner, my hand holding it, my eyes Seeing how it became a licorice stick, then thousands of them Holding me, by the eyes, so I could see nothing, Hear only the sounds of a second world In league with the thunder and this night of summer. The words, they rolled, they would not stop, They would not take me home.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes; And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day; But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

At last I know—it’s on old ivory jars, Glassed with old miniatures and garnered once with musk. I’ve seen those eyes like smouldering April stars As carp might see them behind their bubbled skies In pale green fishponds—they’re as green your eyes, As lakes themselves, changed to green stone at dusk. At last I know—it’s paned in a crystal hoop On powder-boxes from some dead Italian girl, I’ve seen such eyes grow suddenly dark, and droop Their small, pure lids, as if I’d pried too far In finding you snared there on that ivory jar By crusted motes of rose and smoky-pearl.

We passed old farmer Boothby in the field. Rugged and straight he stood; his body steeled With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes That never flinched or turned to compromise, And “Luck,” he cried, “good luck!”—and waved an arm, Knotted and sailor-like, such as no farm In all of Maine could boast of; and away He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay... We walked on leisurely until a bend Showed him once more, now working toward the end Of one great path; wearing his eighty years Like banners lifted in a wind of cheers. Then we turned off abruptly—took the road Cutting the village, the one with the commanding View of the river. And we strode More briskly now to the long pier that showed Where the frail boats were kept at Indian Landing. In the canoe we stepped; our paddles dipped Leisurely downwards, and the slim bark slipped More on than in the water. Smoothly then We shot its nose against the rippling current, Feeling the rising river’s half-deterrent Pull on the paddle as we turned the blade To keep from swerving round; while we delayed To watch the curious wave-eaten locks; Or pass, with lazy turns, the picnic-rocks.... Blue eels flew under us, and fishes darted A thousand ways; the once broad channel shrunk. And over us the wise and noble-hearted Twilight leaned down; the sunset mists were parted,— And we, with thoughts on tiptoe, slunk Down the green, twisting alleys of the Kennebunk, Motionless in the meadows The trees, the rocks, the cows... And quiet dripped from the shadows Like rain from heavy boughs. The tree-toads started ringing Their ceaseless silver bells; A land-locked breeze came swinging Its censer of earthy smells. The river’s tiny cañon Stretched into dusky lands; Like a dark and silent companion Evening held out her hands. Hushed were the dawn’s bravados; Loud noon was a silenced cry— And quiet slipped from the shadows As stars slip out of the sky...

Applying to Heavy Equipment School I marched farther into the Great Plains And refused to come out. I threw up a few scaffolds of disinterest. Around me in the fields, the hogs grunted And lay on their sides. You came with a little water and went away. The glass is still on the table, And the paper, And the burned scaffolds. * You were bent over the sink, washing your stockings. I came up behind you like the night sky behind the town. You stood frowning at your knuckles And did not speak. * At night I lie still, like Bolivia. My furnaces turn blue. My forests go dark. You are a low range of hills, a Paraguay. Now the clouds cover us both. It is raining and the movie houses are open.

The goal of the Meisner acting technique has often been described as getting actors to "live truthfully under imaginary circumstances." Here are some acting games we have found useful. I. THE REPETITION GAME: The Moment is a Tricky Fucker

Fire isn’t allowed, for the sake of the books. The lean monk-copyist who scribes the books is slate-blue at his fingertips this steely late-November day in the year 1000. Brother Ambrosio huffs some perfunctory warmth on his stiffening hands, then bends again to his goat’s-horn of ink. For every line, he believes, he’s forgiven a sin. And now he’s at his heavy uncial letters, and will be for nine hours more, until a slab of bread and a beet relieve his transcriptual ardor. What he copies?—psalter, missal, hagiography: the predetermined and sanctioned community passions of a religious culture. Nothing like the twentieth century’s prevalent kneejerk “self-expression.” Nothing like the priest, excuse me: former priest, and former nun, on daytime talk TV, who live, she tells us, in a “trinity of love” with the former creator-of-tourist-ashtrays-out-of-catfish-heads. This is, she insists, the final and jubilant stage of a lifelong “quest to feel belongingness” initiated thirty years before by parents skittering cross-country with the military: they were wholly rootless, and so she grew up “unable to commit.” The following day, a man confesses to pedophilia because of a lesbian aunt. A woman says she robbed the Sack-N-Save of $13.42 “because of what they’re dumping in the water supply, it makes me go all freaky.” Steve was bounced out from The Chicken Shack “because I’m Scandinavian.” The culture of blame is so completely exterior in its search for cause, some days I wake to think I’ll find most people laboring under the weight of sci-fi-style mind parasites, like fleshy turbans spewing in, and feeding off, their brain blood. This (by “this” I mean of course a recognition of the magic of objective correlative boppin’ about in the spotlight) is, to some length, understandable: you can’t beat the miniscule carry-along convenience of a silicon chip invisibly set in something, BUT for sheer persuasive visual power, that can’t touch a 1940s generating plant, its giant Alcatrazian shape against the sky, and the enormous wrestling electrical crackles snaking its rooftop pylon. In the scriptorium, even —such an isolated unit of human endeavor, its limited range of reactions surely is pure—when Brother Ambrosio nods off, sleepy in his long day’s long eighth hour of thickly nibbed and careful letters, he knows it’s imps in league with Satan that keep pulling down his eyelids. If in scratching his flea-measled thigh he spills a hand’s-expanse of ink across the vellum page, the fleas are tiny devils on a guerilla mission from Hell. And once a devilkin took lodging in his belly, and there created “rumbling noises like a toad, and which, for hours, spoiled the concentration of all of the other Brothers.” We find parchment scraps with appropriate exorcisms: “Away! you flaming sow, you poisoned udder, you arse of the arch-fiend, shit-fly, stinking he-goat, out out out, away, back into thine infernal kitchen, you bestial puke!” We also find those charming marginal doodles (sprigs in flower, unicorns, seemingly every songbird in Creation): such diminutive external bodies given to the longings of these cooped-up men. And when they came to drag my friend Jess screaming to the ward, because he was beating his head on the lawyer’s steps, it was clear to us all that the chemicals in his mind had turned against him. It was clear to Jess that he was being hunted like prey by hounds from the moon.

In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion, It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A wingèd odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically To a lute’s well-tunèd law, Round about a throne where, sitting, Porphyrogene! In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travellers, now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more.

Always the script, the dramatic comma, the pointed ellipsis, half turn, beat, the exit itself as punctuation. Let’s say the back wall of the house fell away: first cracks down the plaster, then it crumbles to reveal seventy-five rows of spectators. That’s the explanation: they’ve been there all along; I mulled blocking on a blind impulse, but it turns out a correct one. Maybe someone is making love to me (in the 19th century sense): do I throw off his hand, exit with pithy wit? Or simply submit to it: the sappy moment which will, I know, have to be resisted in some later scene. Had I been there, had it been me, I would have said— and the audience would have been moved to applaud. Astounding improvisation! I’d have walked right up to the lawyer, the bank manager, and I’d have said— or, if it was me, it would never have gotten that far; I’d have turned to her and said— So I am contemplating in its shade an apple tree. Haven’t I often done that? So why not me? Late August, the leaves like arrowheads, dark green, waxy, punctuated by apples—constellations of apples. There I see The Hunter, bow pulled back, the apples of his quiver fixed with perfect aim: William Tell, daughter across the tree, of apples herself, poised with a perfect fruit above her head: wet tension of its surface, red skin that kisses the sun. And this perfect tree. This perfect tree in which every stamen was touched by pollen, in which every flower thickened to fruit: tree that knows by its own example perfection. In each cluster, five apples bunch as tight as chambers of a human heart. Had I been there, had it been me—and the slither up the trunk brought my attention low, the rippling body sliding along the trunk, I who have been so good all these years at resisting, and giving in, and resisting— I’d have heard the melodious hiss, seen the glinting tongue, its fork invading the region of my heart, the archer in that perfect canopy aiming right at me, I who have given in to desire when the stakes were much lower, could I resist those movements, how fully the serpent’s hiss gives itself over to simile: I am like, I am like, I am like. . . . Seen it before, mister. I’d have sighed in an aside, glanced up at the sky, deadpanned the audience, and said— Or had my lover brought the apple. For years I have told them not to burn money on me. But to bring only this, to hold it out with a silent smile as they enter the house, down center on the stage of the palm. No better way to say I love you. So why not me? Early October, the outsize hunger after running, and my lover brings it over. I recognize on his breath the scent of the serpent, and the apple, the one forbidden thing. Deep voice, dark eyes, silent smile and perfect apple; only midday draped across his body, tight, alert, alive to the moment of sin. And reaching out to take it in my hand. Who better than me? Let the tension linger, let the audience pulse with anticipation. We touch over the forbidden fruit. The stage lights dim, and I look at him, and I look at him, and raise my eyebrows, and say— But even so, wouldn’t I end up here again, always here? Angels crossing swords behind me, shame clothing me, conflating all my losses—the loss of God, the loss of apples, how they expand inside to fill up hunger. Maybe there are no words here, just the sky blackening with anger. Maybe words wouldn’t be useful here anyway. Consider a scrim: the night sky blotted of constellations; nothing but gray swirls of wrath. And project against it a man’s silhouette: head bent, empty- handed, the memory of apples imprinted on his wordless tongue, and around his neck, loss—like a cowbell—announcing his presence to the fallen world.

Your TV cable’s on the fritz. Your Xbox is corroded. Your iPod sits in useless bits. Your Game Boy just imploded. Your cell phone? Static’s off the scale. Your land line? Disconnected. You’ve got no mail—E, junk or snail. Your hard drive is infected. So here you idle, dumb and blue, with children, spouse and mother— and wish you knew what people do to entertain each other.