872 Life poems

Our labor realized in the crowns of marigolds, blue eyes of the hydrangeas, smell of lavender and late bloom of the hosta’s erect purple flower with its marvel of thick green leaves. In our twilight every year we trimmed back and the garden grew more lustrous and untamable as if the eternal woods and animals asleep at night in its beds were claiming it back. The water in the pool shimmered an icy Tuscan blue. When we arrived we swam until the stress from the grueling life in the city released our bodies. Later we sat under the umbrella and watched a garter snake slip into the water, careful not to startle its flight-or-fight response. Its barbed-wire coil. Comet of danger, serpent of the water, how long we had thwarted the venom of its secret lures and seductions. It swam by arching then releasing its slithery mercurial form. Through the lanky trees we heard the excited cries of the neighbor’s children—ours, the boy in our late youth, of our happiness and our struggles, the boy who made us whole and broken, was in his room perhaps dreaming of a girl and sleeping the long, tangled sleep of a teenager. It was a miracle, our ignorance. It was grace incarnate, how we never knew.

The kilted porter shook my hand in welcome, drained it of blood and gave me back my luggage. I signed the register in my own name for the first time in my life of low celebrity. In the lounge bar, there were pictures by Margarita but no sign of margaritas by the pitcher. All night, the couple in the next-door room failed noisily to make love even once. The signature tune of the air conditioning was a surface B-side for any one-hit-wonder. Weary, I ordered up the late night menu from room service, but sleep wasn’t on it so, after an hour of mentally undressing myself, I donned the pyjamas with the killer bee motif and there on the bed I wrote a dozen identical postcards to friends I’d forgotten. No doubt to keep the cold tap company, the hot tap had opted to be a cold tap too. Funnel-web spiders wove their lazy way toward each other across the scarlet ceiling and when I solved the riddle of the shower, no blood came gushing, but no water either. By the bed, a Gideon Bible in Esperanto and a phone-book listing Lumsdens of the world; in the mini-bar, flat Vimto and a half-pint of someone else’s mother’s milk, turned to fur. The TV had one channel, showing highlights from my worst performances in every sphere. At three, in the courtyard, a chambermaid choir sang a barbershop version of ‘I Will Survive’. The only time I dared to close my eyes, dervishes under the bed began to talk dirty. When I left at nine and settled my check, they told me clearly Don't come back.

You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom. Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men, As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill, Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided. But pass on into life: In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror; Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, And you shall know that guest, And read the authentic message of his eyes.

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men. —

(For My Father) I listened to them talking, talking, That tableful of keen and clever folk, Sputtering . . . followed by a pale and balking Sort of flash whenever some one spoke; Like musty fireworks or a pointless joke, Followed by a pointless, musty laughter. Then Without a pause, the sputtering once again . . . The air was thick with epigrams and smoke; And underneath it all It seemed that furtive things began to crawl, Hissing and striking in the dark, Aiming at no particular mark, And careless whom they hurt. The petty jealousies, the smiling hates Shot forth their venom as they passed the plates, And hissed and struck again, aroused, alert; Using their feeble smartness as a screen To shield their poisonous stabbing, to divert From what was cowardly and black and mean. Then I thought of you, Your gentle soul, Your large and quiet kindness; Ready to caution and console, And, with an almost blindness To what was mean and low. Baseness you never knew; You could not think that falsehood was untrue, Nor that deceit would ever dare betray you. You even trusted treachery; and so, Guileless, what guile or evil could dismay you? You were for counsels rather than commands. Your sweetness was your strength, your strength a sweetness That drew all men, and made reluctant hands Rest long upon your shoulder. Firm, but never proud, You walked your sixty years as through a crowd Of friends who loved to feel your warmth, and who Knowing that warmth, knew you. Even the casual beholder Could see your fresh and generous completeness, Like dawn in a deep forest, growing and shining through. Such faith has soothed and armed you. It has smiled Frankly and unashamed at Death; and, like a child, Swayed half by joy and half by reticence, Walking beside its nurse, you walk with Life; Protected by your smile and an immense Security and simple confidence. Hearing the talkers talk, I thought of you . . . And it was like a great wind blowing Over confused and poisonous places. It was like sterile spaces Crowded with birds and grasses, soaked clear through With sunlight, quiet and vast and clean. And it was forests growing, And it was black things turning green. And it was laughter on a thousand faces . . . It was, like victory rising from defeat, The world made well again and strong—and sweet.

Daddy goes. Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water and cane-poling for bream and shallow-gigging too with a nail-pointy broomstick and creek-shrimping and cooler-dragging and coon-chasing and dove-dogging and duck-bagging and squirrel-tailing and tail-hankering and hard-cranking and -shifting and backfiring like a gun in his tittie-tan El Camino and parking it at The House of Ham and Dawn's Busy Hands and Betty's pink house and Mrs. Sweatman's brick house and Linda's dock-facing double-wide and spine-leaning Vicki against her WIDE-GLIDE Pontiac and pumping for pay at Ray Wade's Esso and snuff-dipping and plug-sucking and tar-weeping pore-wise and LuckyStrike-smoking and Kool only sometimes and penny-pitching and dog-racing and bet-losing cocksuckmotherfuck and pool-shooting and bottle-shooting over behind Tas-T-O's Donuts and shootin' the shit and chewin' the fat and just jawin' who asked you and blank-blinking quick back at me and whose young are you no-how and hounddog-digging buried half-pints from the woods.

for Amadou Diallo The few strings snap and pull the doll’s flimsy limbs for his last ballet, an American piece, arms flung like a flamingo’s wings, his sashay a flame’s undulation, dip, wave, head snapped into a skygaze, a pained grin white beneath the doorway’s light, legs braiding in the climactic pirouette, convulsive shoulders rolling, the body’s final drift smooth as a sun-baked bloodflake flecked off a rhino’s horn, the gored corpse sweet meat to a smoky gauze of ravenous flies humming and blood- sucking tiny gunpowder-singed hearts, charred kiss marks, until, at last, the strings go slack, the doll sprawls in a crippled collapse, his face half lit, the puppeteers praising this black ghost’s steel-pierced, last dying quake, the dead sweet and clean, and that last wheeze, an escaping, you’ve heard it, drops the floodgates for the real ghosts, a bouqet of them, a blitzkrieg of black orchids roaring. And they blaze.

Young enough to believe nothing will change them, they step, hand-in-hand, into the bomb crater. The night full of  black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks from shattering against her cheek, now dims like a miniature moon behind her hair. In this version the snake is headless — stilled like a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles. He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press into her — as the field shreds itself with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a home out of  hip bones. O mother, O minutehand, teach me how to hold a man the way thirst holds water. Let every river envy our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body like a season. Where apples thunder the earth with red hooves. & I am your son.

there are these trees. and beyond these trees, trees. and beyond that little or nothing. little fields and nothing but sky.

I Oh! the huge avenues of the holy land, the terraces of the temple! What has happened to the brahmin who taught me the Proverbs? From then and from there I can still see even the old women! I remember silvery hours and sun near rivers, the hand of the country on my shoulder, and our caresses as we stood in the fiery fields. — A flight of red pigeons thunders around my thoughts — In exile here I had a stage on which to perform the dramatic masterpieces of all literatures. I might tell you about unheard-of wealth. I follow the story of the treasures you found. I see the next chapter! My wisdom is as neglected as chaos is. What is my void, compared with the stupefaction awaiting you? II I am a far more deserving inventor than all those who went before me; a musician, in fact, who found something resembling the key of love. At present, a noble from a meager countryside with a dark sky I try to feel emotion over the memory of mendicant childhood, over my apprenticeship  when I arrived wearing wooden shoes, polemics, five or six widowings, and a few wild escapades when my strong head kept me from rising to the same pitch as my comrades. I don’t miss what I once possessed of divine happiness: the calm of this despondent countryside gives a new vigor to my terrible scepticism. But since this scepticism can no longer be put into effect, and since I am now given over to a new worry — I expect to become a very wicked fool. III In an attic where at the age of twelve I was locked up, I knew the world and illustrated the human comedy. In a wine cellar I learned history. At some night celebration, in a northern city, I met all the wives of former painters. In an old back street in Paris I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent palace, surrounded by all the Orient, I finished my long work and spent my celebrated retirement. I have invigorated my blood. I am released from my duty. I must not even think of that any longer. I am really from beyond the tomb, and without work.