51 Imagination poems

I cut a staff in a churchyard copse, I clad myself in ragged things, I set a feather in my cap That fell out of an angel’s wings. I filled my wallet with white stones, I took three foxgloves in my hand, I slung my shoes across my back, And so I went to fairyland. But lo, within that ancient place Science had reared her iron crown, And the great cloud of steam went up That telleth where she takes a town. But cowled with smoke and starred with lamps, That strange land’s light was still its own; The word that witched the woods and hills Spoke in the iron and the stone. Not Nature’s hand had ever curved That mute unearthly porter’s spine. Like sleeping dragon’s sudden eyes The signals leered along the line. The chimneys thronging crooked or straight Were fingers signalling the sky; The dog that strayed across the street Seemed four-legged by monstrosity. ‘In vain,’ I cried, ‘though you too touch The new time’s desecrating hand, Through all the noises of a town I hear the heart of fairyland.’ I read the name above a door, Then through my spirit pealed and passed: ‘This is the town of thine own home, And thou hast looked on it at last.’

This is a world where there are monsters There are monsters everywhere, racoons and skunks There are possums outside, there are monsters in my bed. There is one monster. He is my little one. I talk to my little monster. I give my little monster some bacon but that does not satisfy him. I tell him, ssh ssh, don’t growl little monster! And he growls, oh boy does he growl! And he wants something from me, He wants my soul. And finally giving in, I give him my gleaming soul And as he eats my gleaming soul, I am one with him And stare out his eyepits and I see nothing but white And then I see nothing but fog and the white I had seen before was nothing but fog And there is nothing but fog out the eyes of monsters.

So why assume [she] Is cold why not Assume drunk “Legless” Can keep up pretty good though With your car in the rural night You are a passenger Your left leg lolls and Your friend reaches a hand Across the emergency brake Which points now at the base of The gearstick shaft And can point at its head But nowhere else Thus does not “Speak” And unless overused abused is Reliable Whereas anyone can misunderstand Or willfully misinterpret the Point and represent Are very different (Moon!) 6am and the snow Sent enough light upward For this window to Transmit and permit My seeing I heard more than I saw I understood less than I heard I was well read compared to But not compared to I begin to feel warm in My crotch, as if a wodge Of moist electric blanket Were stuck in there And my friend was not Riding on the other side of the brake —I mean emergency—he is not Fox-hunting and on A horse in a novel In which the brake Is a strip of greenwood He is downstairs  the coffee’s Made  but he ignores My text   He works alone And I will have to go down there

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations A silver Lucifer Lunar Baedeker...Lucifer A Baedeker is a series name of popular guidebooks. Another modern poem with “Baedeker” in the title is T. S. Eliot’s “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” (1919). Lucifer is the former angel name for Satan, which has been used to name the morning star, that is the planet Venus serves cocaine in cornucopia To some somnambulists of adolescent thighs draped in satirical draperies Peris Peris “In Persian myth, an elf or fairy, male or female, represented as a descendant of fallen angels, excluded from Paradise till their penance is accomplished” (Century Dictionary) in livery in livery Dressed for their job prepare Lethe Lethe River of forgetfulness in Hades for posthumous parvenues parvenues Those who have recently come into wealth Delirious Avenues lit with the chandelier souls of infusoria infusoria Class of protozoa; “so called because found in infusions of decaying animal or vegetable matter” (OED) from Pharoah’s tombstones lead to mercurial doomsdays doomsdays The end of the world or Judgment Day, usually in the singular Odious oasis in furrowed phosphorous phosphorous “Phosphorous” (with a capital “P”) is Venus, the morning star, archaically referred to as Lucifer, mentioned in the first line of this poem. the eye-white sky-light white-light district white-light district Possible alternative to red-light district. The term appears in Theodore Dreiser's book A Hoosier Holiday(1916). of lunar lusts Stellectric Stellectric A word formed from “stellar” (star) and “electric” signs “Wing shows on Starway” “Zodiac carrousel” Cyclones of ecstatic dust and ashes whirl crusaders from hallucinatory citadels of shattered glass into evacuate craters A flock of dreams browse on Necropolis Necropolis Literally: a city of corpses From the shores of oval oceans in the oxidized Orient Onyx-eyed Odalisques Odalisques “Female slaves or concubines in an Eastern harem” (OED) and ornithologists observe the flight of Eros Eros God of Love in Greek mythology; also, the name of an asteroid, discovered in 1898 obsolete And “Immortality” mildews ... in the museums of the moon “Nocturnal cyclops” “Crystal concubine” Pocked with personification the fossil virgin of the skies waxes and wanes

I came into the world a young man Then I broke me off Still the sea and clouds are Pegasus colors My heart is Pegasus colors but to get there I must go back Back to the time before I was a woman Before I broke me off to make a flattened lap And placed thereon a young man Where I myself could have dangled And how I begged him enter there My broken young man parts And how I let the mystery collapse With rugged young man puncture And how I begged him turn me Pegasus colors And please to put a sunset there And gone forever was my feeling snake And in its place dark letters And me the softest of all And me so skinless I could no longer be naked And me I had to de-banshee And me I dressed myself I made a poison suit I darned it out of myths Some of the myths were beautiful Some turned ugly in the making The myth of the slender girl The myth of the fat one The myth of rescue The myth of young men The myth of the hair in their eyes The myth of how beauty would save them The myth of me and who I must become The myth of what I am not And the horses who are no myth How they do not need to turn Pegasus They are winged in their un-myth They holy up the ground I must holy up the ground I sanctify the ground and say fuck it I say fuck it in a way that does not invite death I say fuck it and fall down no new holes And I ride an unwinged horse And I unbecome myself And I strip my poison suit And wear my crown of fuck its

M loved the little house she shared with her mum, its magnolias and mansard roof. Inside, the smell of molasses and ginger had sunk into the timbers. Water mumbled from a hand pump, not a faucet tap. Music murmured, not from a radio, but from a soft piano. All was washed to softness—the sheets, the table linens. Even the gold rims on the old dishes were brushed down to a blur. M had been a surprise late baby, and her mother was almost the age of a grandmother. There were only the two of them—plus Maugie, their cat. M grew up thinking she understood her mum. But in fact she only understood her in daylight. The night world was where mum paced with her mountains of money worries. Down the hall M blissfully slept, and down in the basement Maugie moused, bringing her prizes up to the landing so M and Mum could find them first thing in the morning. And in the morning light Mum’s money misery vanished. She never spoke of it. But when Mum got sick, her worries magnified. Her illness brought the night world to daylight, though she still managed to hide it from her daughter. Mum could no longer hope for a miracle. Unbeknownst to M, just before Mum died, the ancient lady up and took misfortune into her own misguided hands. She sold their home to the neighbors who had always coveted it. Why didn’t she tell me? M plagued herself with questions all through the small funeral—she and her mum were the last of their line—and said to her distant cousins and her friends:She never ever mentioned money! Lawyers, real estate agents, and the neighbors of course were summoned. But the deal was done. Though M harbored murder in her heart for those greedy neighbors, she couldn’t get the house back. It’s all MY fault—I should have known, M moaned. It took a long time for her to settle these affairs. She’d taken a leave from her job at the museum, but eventually she had to go back to work. She and Maugie went to the only place M could afford to buy, a small but gleaming condominium. How could she transfer doilies and dusty velvet couches with broken legs into this glare? What was home any more? She had an iron bedstead, not a sleek futon. Of course Maugie kept finding her way back to the old homestead, and M had to keep quashing the mayhem in her heart as she retrieved the crafty little animal from that basement now full of the neighbor’s traps instead of mice. Up in the condo, M’s dreams began. Each night she dreamed of a ruined house. Mornings she woke to a smell like something left in an oven too long, a whiff of burnt molasses. Sometimes in a dream a window without a wall fell to the ground in mockery. Night after night in her sleep M shouldered mountains of blame. But then came morning. All she could do was embrace the day. With her long shapely arms, she put on her makeup, donned her mackintosh, and struck out for the museum, determined to muddle through. “It’s not my fault, I know,” she said to McM, the man who occupied the next desk. “I just miss my home.” He offered her a meatloaf sandwich. She said, “I never knew my mum, after all.” M’s dreams went on mortgaging her nights. When she startled awake, there was only Maugie at the foot of the iron bedstead squeaking an unsatisfactory plastic rodent, and a monstrous stink of burnt molasses and cat pee. M decided to bake. Using her mother’s measuring cups, she chased the aftermaths of the dreams away by spicing the smells. With cinnamon, with allspice, with vanilla and cardamom, she made muffins, mousse, and meringues in the open-concept kitchen. She used all her mother’s bowls, and all her mother’s spoons, to expunge the smells—and she almost did. Meanwhile, Maugie knew whenever workmen propped open a staircase door. The cat would slip into the hall, then escape down the stairwell through the service door. And M would get a call at the museum from the mingy mean-spirited neighbors. “And what am I going to do with Maugie?” M moaned to McM. “Your cat is lonely,” he said. “Does she have service potential?” Maugie would be tested. McM agreed to help. The minute McM walked into the combo of gleam and old wood and velvet and iron, the marvelous smells wrapped around him. “You’ve been baking,” he murmured approvingly, “in your farmhouse in the sky.” But M was busy wrangling Maugie into the carrier. Shortly the cat was deposited on the welcoming laps of ancient ladies in wheelchairs. That champion purr eased the ladies’ hearts. Maugie aced the test. Seeing the ladies, something in M eased, too. “My mother is a mystery I may never solve,” she said to McM on one of their lunchtime trips to the old ladies. Maugie now went willingly into her carrier. And so the bright weekday activities wore down the mountains of dreams. Blame became a molehill. M’s nightmares became so predictable they were almost friendly. Metamorphosis set in. McM lingered when he held M’s coat, and she lingered as he slipped it on. Their hands met when they put the cat carrier into the car. But these were the gestures of daylight. Thinking she was ready to brave the evening light, M had made the mistake of inviting McM for Saturday dinner. When the day came, she lay in bed with a fever, vacuuming was abandoned, her mahogany hair unwashed. Though the mushroom soup gurgled on the stove and the mousse slept in the fridge, the main course had never been started. She left a message canceling. McM arrived anyway with merlot and magnolias. He merged into M’s mess. It smelled of cough drops and kitty litter and dust and the fragrance of a woman in a slept-in nightgown. She slid beneath layers of consciousness like the layers of the blankets he straightened for her. And then balancing two hot toddies, fully clothed, he climbed into the bed. Maugie obliged him with a space. M was too weak to protest. She woke and drank and woke and slept. At midnight M sat up and slurped the mushroom soup held by McM. Magnificent . . . And then she sank. That night of course she dreamed of a house, but this house was merely old, not ruined. It was the homestead, magnolias laden, sheet music still in the piano bench. When she woke, she smelled McM, still fully clothed at her side, his glasses on the floor, batted about by Maugie. Nothing smelled burnt. Unlike her mother, M didn’t believe in miracles. She believed in muddling through. Slowly something had risen in her, like those moons you sometimes see in an afternoon sky, night inside the persistence of day. M sat up in bed, hugging her knees, looking at McM sprawled beside her.The house at last is inside me, she thought.I’ve finally moved.

I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years ago or three. The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before. Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive, Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed, For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall. “I kept dreaming of snow and birch forests. Where so little changes you hardly notice how time goes by. This is, you will see, a magic mountain.” Budberg: a familiar name in my childhood. They were prominent in our region, This Russian family, descendants of German Balts. I read none of his works, too specialized. And Chen, I have heard, was an exquisite poet, Which I must take on faith, for he wrote in Chinese. Sultry Octobers, cool Julys, trees blossom in February. Here the nuptial flight of hummingbirds does not forecast spring. Only the faithful maple sheds its leaves every year. For no reason, its ancestors simply learned it that way. I sensed Budberg was right and I rebelled. So I won’t have power, won’t save the world? Fame will pass me by, no tiara, no crown? Did I then train myself, myself the Unique, To compose stanzas for gulls and sea haze, To listen to the foghorns blaring down below? Until it passed. What passed? Life. Now I am not ashamed of my defeat. One murky island with its barking seals Or a parched desert is enough To make us say: yes,oui, si. "Even asleep we partake in the becoming of the world.” Endurance comes only from enduring. With a flick of the wrist I fashioned an invisible rope, And climbed it and it held me. What a procession!Quelles délices! What caps and hooded gowns! Most respected Professor Budberg, Most distinguished Professor Chen, Wrong Honorable Professor Milosz Who wrote poems in some unheard-of tongue. Who will count them anyway. And here sunlight. So that the flames of their tall candles fade. And how many generations of hummingbirds keep them company As they walk on. Across the magic mountain. And the fog from the ocean is cool, for once again it is July. Berkeley, 1975

Half clown, half Keebler elf, he works a throng of meth heads and young mothers who peruse the storefronts, tugging surly kids along. The pant legs bunch around his wing-tipped shoes. When a couple walks up to his TV tray, he hands them each a tattered business card. Who wants to see a magic trick today? He grins and cuts a deck: His hands are scarred, but seldom shake. The two confer, agree, and fidget as the magician fans an arc of cherubs laced with flips of filigree. The man inspects them for a crease or mark, but they look clean. I’ve watched him do this trick for weeks now, each time to polite surprise: He hams it up; he lays the charm on thick. (As always, haughty jacks materialize.) The woman smiles and nods in mild content. Another trick: He pulls a wrinkled bill from his lapel and folds the president, explaining how a wise investment will turn one buck into ten—et cetera. He taps twice on the bill, a modest “one,” unfolds it square by square, and then voila!— the bust of Alexander Hamilton. They clap as the magician takes a bow. He’s greasy, but he’s on the up-and-up, and magic tricks are good enough for now. The woman floats a dollar to his cup.

After Jim Steinmeyer’s book “Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear” Over the years they hunted, the wayward apprentice watchmakers, the disappointing sons who transformed their surnames, hunted over acres of hinges, cogs, calluses, hidden whiskey, mustaches a breath from feral, poured an ocean of fortune into fabrications of brass and iron, spent entire seasons strumming massive harps of wire into perfect calibrations of invisibility, prayed to the gods of adjustable mirrors, cursed the gods of temperamental gaslights, broke the legs of imitators and thieves, chewed holes in each other’s pockets, harnessed nightmares of giant silver hoops making endless passes over the bodies of the dead, hoisted high a cenotaph for hundreds of sacrificed rabbits, breathed miles of delicate thread into the lost labyrinths of their lungs, all to make a woman float to make a woman float and none of them ever thought of simply asking her.

So that the truant boy may go steady with the State, So that in his spine a memory of wings Will make his shoulders tense & bend Like a thing already flown When the bracelets of another school of love Are fastened to his wrists, Make a law that doesn’t have to wait Long until someone comes along to break it. So that in jail he will have the time to read How the king was beheaded & the hawk that rode The king’s wrist died of a common cold, And learn that chivalry persists, And what first felt like an insult to the flesh Was the blank ‘o’ of love. Put the fun back into punishment. Make a law that loves the one who breaks it. So that no empty court will make a  judge recall Ice fishing on some overcast bay, Shivering in the cold beside his father, it ought To be an interesting law, The kind of thing that no one can obey, A law that whispers “Break me.” Let the crows roost & caw. A good judge is an example to us all. So that the patrolman can still whistle “The Yellow Rose of Texas” through his teeth And even show some faint gesture of respect While he cuffs the suspect, Not ungently, & says things like ok , That’s it