872 Life poems

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations The Christmas twigs crispen crispen To make crisp and needles rattle Along the window-ledge. A solitary pearl Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party Lies in the suety, suety Fatty; from suet, an animal fat used in cooking to create tallow snow-luminous plainness Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them. And all the furniture that circled stately And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses Into its previous largeness. I remember Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave Where cold so little can contain; I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust, And the long loop of winter wind Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus Arcturus The brightest star in the northern sky, located in the constellation Boötes down To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard, And the still window-ledge. Gentle and just pleasure It is, being human, to have won from space This unchill, unchill Warmed, thawed habitable interior Which mirrors quietly the light Of the snow, and the new year.

I will dive to the bottom of the hotel pool and find my mother’s hairpin. With the mouth of a drowning woman on my lap, I will add her breath to mine. In the dark, I will lay the thin white sheet of the moonlight over the blue plums of my wife’s breasts. With the new planet I discovered just when I thought I was losing my sight, I will love another man because I will be a woman. Everything important will never as yet have happened. Let it happen. I will throw a lit match on the secrets my body has kept from me and stand in the fire. The people I have sawed in half will appear in my bedroom mirror, getting dressed.

Rosh-Hashanah, 5643 Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled, And naked branches point to frozen skies.— When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold, The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn A sea of beauty and abundance lies, Then the new year is born. Look where the mother of the months uplifts In the green clearness of the unsunned West, Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts, Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light; Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest Profusely to requite. Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all. The red, dark year is dead, the year just born Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob, To what undreamed-of morn? For never yet, since on the holy height, The Temple’s marble walls of white and green Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world’s light Went out in darkness,—never was the year Greater with portent and with promise seen, Than this eve now and here. Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent Hath been enlarged unto earth’s farthest rim. To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went, Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave, For freedom to proclaim and worship Him, Mighty to slay and save. High above flood and fire ye held the scroll, Out of the depths ye published still the Word. No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul: Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths, Lived to bear witness to the living Lord, Or died a thousand deaths. In two divided streams the exiles part, One rolling homeward to its ancient source, One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart. By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled, Each separate soul contains the nation’s force, And both embrace the world. Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays, Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers, The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove How strength of supreme suffering still is ours For Truth and Law and Love.

Up on the roof, waiting for the fireworks to begin in warm winter rain, a moment ago I stepped from the elevator into the black air of an almost New Year and need a minute to catch my breath at the spread of city open to my eye. I can't go to the edge; I never could. The old fear of height still troubles me, the sensation that nothing can be under me if I am surrounded by mist and rain and all of the dark night air we breathe. Even a glimpse at the treetops in the park, with its slick crisscrossing roads that plunge into the jumbled panorama of East Side Manhattan, hysterical tonight with its own incandescence, gives me the willies. I feel as if I were standing on the deck of a showboat of a cloud as it drifts down some dark river, waiting for it to bang into some other building's fifteenth floor. How can these old people hunch the railing, hoisting their plastic glasses of champagne from under dripping umbrellas, as if they drank the rain as they laugh their analyses of the weather? Maybe now, like me, they have nothing to lose. I moved in three weeks ago; this is my first trip to the roof. I don't want to die tonight, the first fatality of 1990! There's too much of me I left in pieces last year, oh, the whole last decade: But I'm up here to distract myself, temporarily, from what I don't want or can't have in the way of love. . . . That must be the Triborough Bridge, tied in its strings of blue lights, and I can see in Central Park the skating rink, like a scoured mirror below, where some madman waves a red lantern; he must be drunk. I have only sipped a speck of Drambuie, which I didn't carry in my Coca-Cola glass up to these festivities. This is the first New Year's I've spent alone in twenty, twenty-two years. I never could go to the edge; but I did. Out there in the dark: my marriage, the woman I loved badly, as she did me, or none too well; the places we lived; the apartment I once half-owned; the thousands of books I had to leave behind (though I am to be granted library privileges) and the black and white cat I really miss. My wife's with her friends tonight somewhere in Brooklyn; friends of mine out there, too, though I don't know where. It's just like me to move in the middle of a telephone company strike. Thus, no calls from anyone—and I don't even have a telephone yet, so who could call? Damp but trying to smile, I eye the revelers. Two young men and their enormous girlfriends have joined us, really large women who carry balloons, all ready to froth in merry champagne. We check our watches to the screams from swarms of apartment windows to the west as the sky lights up with the first furious bombardment of colored shells. I can see that red lantern swinging toward the rockets—aha! So it wasn't a drunk, but the fireworks engineer preparing to blow the year's last sky to smithereens for our delight! I like to follow the tiny spurts of flame from the launching pad in their heavenward trajectory as much as I like the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, which give proof to the night that I am still here, hands jammed in the pockets of my sodden raincoat, face dripping with rain, hat soaked, wondering if the skinny guy in the army jacket behind me (who looks just like I did in the sixties) is mumbling his way into a combat flashback and ready to hurl me over the edge of the roof and into kingdom come. I guess not yet. We've survived the first blasts of spinning green, corkscrews of spangled flame, buds of fireballs spewed in arching gold sprays, the whistling fire-fish that curl and howl as they flare, falling to ash. Screaming its head off, the New York New Year enters. I feel sad that beautiful things must die, even shadows made of smoke and flame, whatever I thought I had made out of my life— music, poems, books, kisses, a little useless fame. The army guy behind me grumbles at the haze of rocket smoke that coils around the trees, then tumbles up into the air toward Harlem. That bump and thud and bump sound everywhere, more clouds smacking each other head-on. The flashes of the explosions are close enough to touch if you wanted to burn your fingers on the sky, and the glare rocks our shadows back against the brick, as if chaos snapped our pictures in the dark. I smile for my portrait, curious at the New Year, smelling the acrid smoke of the one we've just destroyed. Then I squeeze into the tiny elevator car with the others, anonymous, reconciled to be so, back to my little apartment and the waiting glass of amber drink I'll raise, only half in jest, to my new life.

new york, madame, is a monument to a city it is TA-DA a gigantic pike whose scales bristled up stunned and what used to be just smoke found a fire that gave it birth champagne foam melted into metal glass rivers flowing upwards and things you won't tell to a priest you reveal to a cabdriver even time is sold out when to the public's "wow" and "shhh" out of a black top hat a tailed magician is pulling new york out by the ears of skyscrapers

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes. When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water— It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work—I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old. And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her and I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

One day we’re told to look at the sun through a hole in a cereal box     All there is to be seen is the rest of  the world disappearing     This somehow shadows aliveness but almost everyone who has ever lived is restlessly sleeping as dead For who     About what     The end is near over & over yet we insist on making dates to keep talking Always about the last eclipse the next blood flower buck worm strawberry ice wolf event Then there’s a last constellation we might ever see until there’s something else to look out for Gone are the frightening & gorgeous conspirators that I’m sure I will not see again Traces of sweat & mystery streaks some hells     communion & of course a few awkward goodbyes     The mattress is gone forever like so many of the bodies I’ve worshipped Here we are left with impressions & a recollection of  my side of  the story     I cry w/ one eye all the time but the right one staid defiant What would you read to someone you love if you knew that they were dying If  it’s over again can we share more than black sites & drownings     skin turned confetti     blue turned coal & innards swept down sewers w/ brooms We give way beyond what we know     So the gun in my mouth made me a monster for a while Coming back shoeless calloused me everywhere but the bottoms of feet     Someone dressed like a traitor convinced me there are loyalties that deserve to be broken     Someone w/ death to the klan on the door let me know I already broke free Hear them both     They’re dead & it’s tricky since the decomposed & me are close but here I am w/ you     The friend who is you Impossible almost lover you The us we chose as family you& others in the fullness of  time None of us breed but someone will give birth behind bulletproof glass where life & the divide begin     This is a fabled event packaged as betterment     It will spawn someone who pays to spray us like invasive bugs in the street     Cops were children so we can look forward to good regime/bad regime during future questioning     Thanks for the theater but we’ve seen the play     Civil discourse is broken down in the destruction manual     They can have all the orchestras     Classical music will never drown out the sins What would you write to someone you love if   you thought you might be dying Maybe once I was someone who I’d love to see punched in the face     But I am here & not yet dead so a constellation of the imaginary is no imaginary constellation     There is no sky w/o a dream of sky You who are family   fuck a grid & thanks to you I see brightness independent of state-sponsored power We talk about who threw that brick through the window     & how it’s now part of a path in a garden Broken glass is as old as glass     but the sound is more than fresh wounds     There are fresh worlds still to be heard Oh  &you my friend   I will fight anyone who says you’re not pretty     That is just ridiculous talk     Distant impractical you I believed we could be possible w/ translation software & hearts-for-eyes emojis     No dice but not before I entertained dressing in a tux as your husband     Look I never thought when you said no more haircuts until wars were over that you’d never have short hair again     My beautiful barber brushes my face     I feel funny I moan a weird prayer for peace     I guess it could happen lol     after all we deserve a new start     Soon we’ll be dead & brag about riches     We were here & looked right into the sun

The niche narrows Hones one thin Until his bones Disclose him

Unmet at Euston in a dream Of London under Turner’s steam Misting the iron gantries, I Found myself running away From Scotland into the golden city. I ran down Gray’s Inn Road and ran Till I was under a black bridge. This was me at nineteen Late at night arriving between The buildings of the City of London. And the I (O I have fallen down) Fell in my dream beside the Bank Of England’s wall to be, me With my money belt of Northern ice. I found Eliot and he said yes And sprang into a Holmes cab. Boswell passed me in the fog Going to visit Whistler who Was with John Donne who had just seen Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green. Midnight. I hear the moon Light chiming on St Paul’s. The City is empty. Night Watchmen are drinking their tea, The Fire had burnt out. The Plague’s pits had closed And gone into literature. Between the big buildings I sat like a flea crouched In the stopped works of a watch.

Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks the white line on night’s new hide, licks the undulating blacktop flat, sticks its end- less forking tongue out onward, flicks itself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign insisting heartbeats equal conscious life (it may be) of someone’s (maybe my) forever unborn child. I let the knife of wind inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale, no earthly reason why, and think of what won’t be and who, and whether it be speed, wind, song, or my mind’s roar that drowns for once time’s slangy whine, here comes hope to climb clear of before; stillborn hope with desperate, Moro-reflex, undead grip climbs right back up my neck, raising each pointless, residual nape hair in ancestral salute to an absence, to the air that won’t question itself, won’t ever check the moral rearview. I accelerate gamely, wondering what makes me want to leave each person, place and thing I learn to love. What shoves me off again, racing insanely, as if to the place that will always save a place for me, a room that will contain the kind of people who’d embrace the things I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face.