872 Life poems

When others run to windows or out of doors To catch the sunset whole, he is content With any segment anywhere he sits. From segment, fragment, he can reconstruct The whole, prefers to reconstruct the whole, As if to say, I see more seeing less. A window to the east will serve as well As window to the west, for eastern sky Echoes the western sky. And even less— A patch of light that picture-glass happens To catch from window-glass, fragment of fragment, Flawed, distorted, dulled, nevertheless Gives something unglassed nature cannot give: The old obliquity of art, and proves Part may be more than whole, least may be best.

And that’s how it is; everyone standing up from the big silence of the table with their glasses of certainty and plates of forgiveness and walking into the purple kitchen; everyone leaning away from the gas stove Marie blows on at the very edge of the breaking blue-orange-lunging- forward flames to warm another pot of coffee, while the dishes pile up in the sink, perfect as a pyramid.Aaah, says Donna, closing her eyes, and leaning on Nick’s shoulders as he drives the soft blade of the knife through the glittering dark of the leftover chocolate birthday cake. That’s it; that’s how it is; everyone standing around as if just out of the pool, drying off, standing around, that’s it, standing, talking, shuffling back and forth on the deck of the present before the boat slowly pulls away into the future. Because it hurts to say goodbye, to pull your body out of the warm water; to step out of the pocket of safety, clinging to what you knew, or what you thought you knew about yourself and others. That’s how it is, that’s it, throwing your jacket over your shoulders like a towel and saying goodbye Victoria goodbye Sophie goodbye Lili goodbye sweetie take care be well hang in there see you soon.

The world will burst like an intestine in the sun, the dark turn to granite and the granite to a name, but there will always be somebody riding the bus through these intersections strewn with broken glass among speechless women beating their little ones, always a slow alphabet of rain speaking of drifting and perishing to the air, always these definite jails of light in the sky at the wedding of this clarity and this storm and a woman's turning—her languid flight of hair traveling through frame after frame of memory where the past turns, its face sparking like emery, to open its grace and incredible harm over my life, and I will never die.

Passing the shop after school, he would look up at the sign and go on, glad that his own life had to do with books. Now at night when he saw the grey in his parents’ hair and heard their talk of that day’s worries and the next: lack of orders, if orders, lack of workers, if workers, lack of goods, if there were workers and goods, lack of orders again, for the tenth time he said, “I’m going in with you: there’s more money in business.” His father answered, “Since when do you care about money? You don’t know what kind of a life you’re going into— but you have always had your own way.” He went out selling: in the morning he read the Arrival of Buyers

For Max Rojas Once a month when the moon loses everything, Don Max takes a chair to the edge of the sea. Black sand beach & green-backed heron. The moon casts off her milkglass earrings. I am nothing, she says, but black & white. I keep losing my face. Don Max feels for his pipe in his pocket. Takes it, knocks it against his palm. I am old! She cries. I get gooseflesh in the dark. Don Max is looking for his tobacco. Don Max has found a match. You don’t know how hard it is to come back from nothing. Don Max smiles & lights up. I keep making the same mistakes, she says. I think you should leave me, she says. Through smoke, she watches Don Max fold a strip of seaweed into a grasshopper. Leave me for your own good! She demands. Don Max has set the grasshopper in the sand. Besides, I am too beautiful. She speaks it as though it makes her sad. I’ll find other lovers. I will forget you.

from           the 4        corners       of this tower      lumped on a map the     best     magician   wins   the        day  /        thinks he’s invisible     /          white rabbits           hide       in        cupboards in          boxes        in      hats  /      a peaceful contradiction       exists  / a   plan    for    a    park    a plantation for immaculate thoughts for    flower beds     which    eat    fragrances         all  year round  / from    this  monolithic  inheritance       avenues           spoke outwards to         capture             returning prodigals  /    ancestral dropouts  /              the            multiple   births               of          children the             sun’s               last    sentence       of            the             day

A pedal-pusher said to me No braykaiser No sterfput A-stepping and a-stoumping cretin-wise Could drive a man to madness Just as no thousand Orphas all draped in damp peignoirs Doing their great kochera With the prima donna Of Iquzegdamoda Of Paczevast Of Anunec Each Orpha in an evening gown Imploring of our pedal-pusher To go a-step and go a-stoump all over yet again With a thousand mops And a thousand sterfputs imploring them The braykaiser in me The sterfput in me The mop in me The kochera in me The Paczevast in me The Anunec in me The Iquzegdamoda in me And all the stoumpers The steppers The mops The evening gowns And all the Orphas All the pedal-pushers The damp peignoirs The cretins The prima donnas Who beg The kocheras The Iquzegdamodas The Anunecs And all the Paczevasts To step And to stoump for the sake of love The great flowering love Of a thousand pedal-pushers A-draped in damp peignoirs Will lead no braykaiser No sterfput No mop No kochera No Paczevast No Anunec No Iquzegdamoda To implore a man to madness And that is what a-stepping and a-stoumping cretin-wise A pedal-pusher said to me

Tottering and elastic, middle name of Groan, ramfeezled after a hard night at the corpse-polishing plant, slope- shouldered, a half loaf of bread, even his hair tired, famished, fingering the diminished beans in his pocket—you meet him. On a thousand street corners you meet him, emerging from the subway, emerging from your own chest—this sight’s shrill, metallic vapors pass into you. His fear is of being broken, of becoming too dexterous in stripping the last few shoelaces of meat from a chicken’s carcass, of being moved by nothing short of the Fall of Rome, of being stooped in the cranium over some loss he’s forgotten the anniversary of.... You meet him, know his defeat, though proper and inevitable, is not yours, although yours also is proper and inevitable: so many defeats queer and insignificant (as illustration: the first time you lay awake all night waiting for dawn—and were disappointed), so many no-hope exhaustions hidden, their gaze dully glazed inward.—And yet we all fix our binoculars on the horizon’s hazy fear-heaps and cruise toward them, fat sails forward.... You meet him on the corners, in bus stations, on the blind avenues leading neither in nor out of hell, you meet him and with him you walk.

Today is a trumpet to set the hounds baying. The past is a fox the hunters are flaying. Nothing unspoken goes without saying. Love’s a casino where lovers risk playing. The future’s a marker our hearts are prepaying. The future’s a promise there’s no guaranteeing. Today is a fire the field mice are fleeing. Love is a marriage of feeling and being. The past is a mirror for wishful sightseeing. Nothing goes missing without absenteeing. Nothing gets cloven except by dividing. The future is chosen by atoms colliding. The past’s an elision forever eliding. Today is a fog bank in which I am hiding. Love is a burn forever debriding. Love’s an ascent forever plateauing. Nothing is granted except by bestowing. Today is an anthem the cuckoos are crowing. The future’s a convolute river onflowing. The past is a lawn the neighbor is mowing. The past is an answer not worth pursuing, Nothing gets done except by the doing. The future’s a climax forever ensuing. Love is only won by wooing. Today is a truce between reaping and rueing.

I have met people who, asked after their names, shyly—as if they had no title to an appellation all to themselves— replied “Fräulein Christian” and added: “like the first name,” they wanted to make it easy for the other, not a difficult name like “Popiol” or “Babendererde”— “like the first name”—please, don’t burden your memory overmuch! I have met people who grew up in a single room with their parents and four brothers and sisters, and studied at night with their fingers in their ears at the kitchen table, and grew up to be beautiful and self-possessed as duchesses— and innerly gentle and hard-working as Nausicaa, clear-browed as angels. I have often asked myself and never found an answer whence kindness and gentleness come, I don’t know it to this day, and now must go myself.