872 Life poems

28 June 1914 Although an assassin has tried and failed to blow him to pieces earlier this morning, Archduke Ferdinand has let it be known he will very soon complete his journey as planned along the quay in Sarajevo. For a moment, however, he has paused to recover his composure at the window of a private room in the Town Hall, after finding the blood of his aide-de-camp spattered over the manuscript of the speech he was previously unable to complete. And indeed, the prospect of an Austrian brewery in the distance is reassuring, likewise the handsome bulk of the barracks filled with several thousand soldiers of the fatherland. This is how those who survive today will remember him: a man thinking his thoughts until his wife has finished her duties— the Countess Chotek, with her pinched yet puddingy features, to whom he will whisper shortly, ‘Sophie, live for our children’, although she will not hear. As for his own memories: the Head of the local Tourist Bureau has now arrived and taken it upon himself to suggest the Archduke might be happy to recall the fact that only last week he bagged his three thousandth stag. Was this, the Head dares to enquire, with the double-barrelled Mannlicher made for him especially— the same weapon he used to dispatch two thousand one hundred and fifty game birds in a single day, and sixty boars in a hunt led by the Kaiser? These are remarkable achievements the Head continues, on the same level as the improvement the Archduke has suggested in the hunting of hare, by which the beaters, forming themselves into a wedge-shape, squeeze those notoriously elusive creatures towards a particular spot where he can exceed the tally of every other gun. In the silence that follows it is not obvious whether the Archduke has heard the question. He has heard it. He is more interested, however, in what these questions bring to mind: an almost infinite number of woodcock, pigeon, quail, pheasant and partridge, wild boars bristling flank to flank, mallard and teal and geese dangling from the antlers of stags, layer and layer of rabbits and other creatures that are mere vermin— a haul that he predicts will increase once the business of today has been completed.

I never glimpse her but she goes Who had been basking in the sun, Her links of chain mail one by one Aglint with pewter, bronze and rose. I never see her lying coiled Atop the garden step, or under A dark leaf, unless I blunder And by some motion she is foiled. Too late I notice as she passes Zither of chromatic scale— I only ever see her tail Quicksilver into tall grasses. I know her only by her flowing, By her glamour disappearing Into shadow as I’m nearing— I only recognize her going.

For Michael Williams Monaco was clean, with small clean streets. There was not much in the way of  a shore. There was hardly any place to go. One clipped, well-behaved London plane tree, not welcoming like most ordinary trees, was kept apart by a white spear-tipped fence, and had a somewhat diffident sense of  noblesse oblige. Through the cream silk brocade window treatments, you could see it; it did not contain birds, repelled the idea of  nests, its roots trained and snipped. At night, it was lit. Spritzed, its leaves shimmered like the sequins of a whore. In the palace hung a portrait of   Princess Grace’s family, an extravaganza of pastel sfumato by R.W. Cowan, blurring every uncertain, authentic thing. The air inside the cliffs thickened as in the closet of a grandmother. Perfumed Germans winced, smooching with strong lips on the embankment. When the man and woman arrived at the Hôtel de Paris, the staff assumed they  were married. The German  jet ski instructor was unsure and asked: “Are you brother and sister?” They paused, demurely, and smiled. The mystery of  their bond made it more intense. The man and the woman were in their late thirties or early forties; they were not young, nor were they old. The woman was French and wore a white linen shirt, starched and pressed. She made her money in the drug trade, but all the man knew was that she sold works of art: a Matisse here, a Picasso there — each transaction taking place in the Bahamas. She was what she said she was, but we are rarely what we say we are. The man, a poor American, meant to say no, but instead said yes. He was tall, athletic and effeminate with a mincing gate — as if  he were being chased by something no one could see. Dressed in cashmere and shantung, he wore needle-pointed shoes by Stubbs & Wootton. Broad-shouldered, practical, the Frenchwoman grimaced, was referred to as “handsome.” Ample were her gestures, ample her need to please; her tone, although not sexual, came close. Her preferences were dubious; maybe everyone’s are. Nevertheless, the couple exhibited variations the world never embraced, but presented as a couple the world embraced them promptly, for the world trusted what was coupled. He was he; she was she; both were naive, but naivety has a way of  hiding its intentions. Whatever their motives happened to be, it pleased them to make a myth for everyone to see. Promises were skirted at a little cafe — “What shall we name our children,mon petit chéri?” she asked. How controlled their wonder was. The couple was received for cakes and tea by the Baroness von Lindenhoffer. The Baroness was lesbian, but of this she never spoke, and so she believed herself a conundrum — for her, muteness banished the undoable. She often began her conversations by mentioning her brief marriage to a hairy Russian acrobat. Her makeup was heavy, clown-like, and over her large, ill-defined body, red polka dots sheeted her parts. Despite this, people mistook her for a man. On a chintz loveseat, each hip bookended by a pug, she sat and said: “You seem like a lovely couple!” She meant what she said but she didn’t say what she meant. Then there was talk of  places they had traveled and feelings of superiority at having seen what others had not: “Oh, you haven’t been there?” and “Oh, you must go!” Through the large picture window, beyond the Baroness’s head, piled high with hair dyed red, slowly processed gargantuan cruise ships like wedding cakes with glittering tiers of candles. She inserted another biscotti behind her lips which were the size of   luggage handles, winked and said: “Here in Monaco our favorite word is more!” Her eyes scanned the clutter of the Côte d’Azur: the sea published its gilded mirrors, the sun accelerated beauty and its loss, no children for miles and Brigitte Bardot, in St. Tropez, locked her house, cats licking her purple-veined ankles. The Baroness was thinking, pausing like an old steamer. Her mascara-clotted eyelids closed and for a moment, she erased what she could. With mounting unease, she realized she might be what was missing. The thought vanished. Should she warn the couple? Although not feminine, she was maternal. Then that thought passed. She shrugged and comforted herself. Difficult, celibate, implacable, a final time she assessed the couple of compromised want, aware that nothing blackens the heart like a mariage blanc, and stamped them —Mwah! Mwah!— with the imprimatur of  two kisses each. The relationship lasted three months. They had chosen wrongly, and plausibly they fell apart, like the couple in Godard’s Le Mépris. Had she wanted more than a cover? Had he covered more than he wanted? The heart, behind its casements, is faceted, pronged, coveted, intricate and known by few. He could not be kept. She withdrew her money. Reconciliation occurred after they ceased speaking. On their last night in Monaco, she turned to him and wondered if  her life had meant anything. He did not answer: he had developed a grace for offering himself  to those who found truth difficult. When they left the restaurant, she paid using a heavy, black American Express card. Each took a doggy bag and smelled of cooked meat. This alignment of opposite sexes had provided solace, and for a time, each had assumed a place, discerned a way to live. Indeed, they lived on, never to see each other again, both aware the one had harmed the other: whether intended or not, the act could not be undone. What they recalled, when they recalled, was often wrong, or was it that so much went wrong and that was why they kept recalling? At the mention of   Monaco, they recounted certain adornments — agapanthus purpling, old men playing boules, and blue yachts tilting on a malachite sea, or were they malachite yachts tilting on a blue sea? Wherever they went henceforth — the Hôtel du Cap, the Boboli Gardens, or even simple, small places in America — their minds would inexorably turn, and then return, to that interval in Monaco, where they saw the truth and the truth was . . . Monaco, Monaco — frivolous, ridiculous, miniscule principality. It was there they came to know how dangerous beauty could be, how one could disappear into it, and with that dark knowledge they traveled on. Each, in their separate lives, always mentioned Monaco with deference, out of shyness, yes, but also shame, and that need to abridge the past. Do you recognize them? They were not a couple, but they were a pair. Tonight the sea pushes against Monaco. Jewelry store owners don white gloves, lock their doors. The principality has long forgotten the pair. Baronesses, marchionesses, and princesses have had their portraits painted and affixed to walls. The narrow, dead-end streets embed themselves into the escarpments like bobby pins. The moon spreads her cape of   baubles across the sea with glamorous transience, enlarging behind the dollhouse casino, banks, hotels, feeling into the rooms, fingering the miniatures.

First all belief is paradise. So pliable a medium. A time not very long. A transparency caused. A conveyance of rupture. A subtle transport. Scant and rare. Deep in the opulent morning, blissful regions, hard and slender. Scarce and scant. Quotidian and temperate. Begin afresh in the realms of the atmosphere, that encompasses the solid earth, the terraqueous globe that soars and sings, elevated and flimsy. Bright and hot. Flesh and hue. Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. We range the spacious fields, a battlement trick and fast. Bright and silver. Ribbons and failings. To and fro. Fine and grand. The sky is complicated and flawed and we’re up there in it, floating near the apricot frill, the bias swoop, near the sullen bloated part that dissolves to silver the next instant bronze but nothing that meaningful, a breach of greeny-blue, a syllable, we’re all across the swathe of fleece laid out, the fraying rope, the copper beech behind the aluminum catalpa that has saved the entire spring for this flight, the tops of these a part of the sky, the light wind flipping up the white undersides of leaves, heaven afresh, the brushed part behind, the tumbling. So to the heavenly rustling. Just stiff with ambition we range the spacious trees in earnest desire sure and dear. Brisk and west. Streaky and massed. Changing and appearing. First and last. This was made from Europe, formed from Europe, rant and roar. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Crested and turbid. Silver and bright. This was spoken as it came to us, to celebrate and tint, distinct and designed. Sure and dear. Fully designed. Dear afresh. So free to the showing. What we praise we believe, we fully believe. Very fine. Belief thin and pure and clear to the title. Very beautiful. Belief lovely and elegant and fair for the footing. Very brisk. Belief lively and quick and strong by the bursting. Very bright. Belief clear and witty and famous in impulse. Very stormy. Belief violent and open and raging from privation. Very fine. Belief intransigent after pursuit. Very hot. Belief lustful and eager and curious before beauty.Very bright. Belief intending afresh. So calmly and clearly. Just stiff with leaf sure and dear and appearing and last. With lust clear and scarce and appearing and last and afresh.

cheerful stoic epic cozy corporate convalescence hollow gold-brick rhetoric almighty and sleek

Inside me lived a small donkey. I didn’t believe in magic, but the donkey was a sucker for the stuff. Psychics, illusionists, arthritics who’d predict the rainfall. That was the year I had trouble walking. I over-thought it and couldn’t get the rhythm right. The donkey re-taught me. “This foot. Yes, then that one. And swing your arms as if you’re going to trial to be exonerated of a crime you’ve most definitely committed.” Next, trouble sleeping because I’d need to crank the generator in my chest so frequently. Seeing I was overworked, the donkey finally hauled it out— it looked shiny and new, a silver dollar— and tossed it into a flock of birds who had to fly a long way to find safety. I knew then I was a large and dangerous man, what with this donkey living inside me, but felt futile. One day, during a final lesson on breathing, the donkey asked what kind of jeans I was wearing. I said, “The somber ones.” “Poor kid.” “So will you be staying on for a third year, donkey?” “No. I think I should be leaving soon. I think I should go and await your arrival beside the crumpled river.” “Yes, I suppose you have many important matters to attend to, but maybe one day I will come and join you for a drink or, perhaps, for a brief nap.”

After the first course, your corsage         flatlines into beautiful convulsions          It sprouts wings, thorns, claws its way up your arm to swallow you goosebump          by goosebump          There is a moment when resurrection devours the most devout heart          Deep blue           the ink pen veins blow up behind my eyes        Patron saint of stifling anger on the rocks        Patron saint of politely            melting into this tomato        soup a spoonful at a time & we speak        in fortune cookie all night               The next dish, a ventilator       An IV        dripping into something already dead       I order two specials Make the pain remind you of the one who signed your tiny gashes today A struggling creek, your tongue wriggles out from the baby's         breath to ask Were we ever anything more than    echolocation Patron saint of the meteor that falls from the sky:                          forgiven, eventually, easily

The first lily of June opens its red mouth. All over the sand road where we walk multiflora rose climbs trees cascading white or pink blossoms, simple, intense the scene drifting like colored mist. The arrowhead is spreading its creamy clumps of flower and the blackberries are blooming in the thickets. Season of joy for the bee. The green will never again be so green, so purely and lushly new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads into the wind. Rich fresh wine of June, we stagger into you smeared with pollen, overcome as the turtle laying her eggs in roadside sand.

I was so sick last night I Didn’t hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn’t know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that Almost made me blind. Had a dream last night I Thought I was in hell. I drempt last night I Thought I was in hell. Woke up and looked around me— Babe, your mouth was open like a well. I said, Baby! Baby! Please don’t snore so loud. Baby! Please! Please don’t snore so loud. You jest a little bit o’ woman but you Sound like a great big crowd.

I have some explaining to do — 5 o’clock meant I would speculate about artichokes (Greek) and the unfarmed mackerel. Anyway, the men would present us with a bed of carrot and potatoes + 1 cup of broth. Our husbandry in sharp mustard suit, laden with trial pieces for the fondue. I would prefer not to. I had such friends — a long time faring all through the West with my filth and a bouquet of cutlery where I had put it: by me. And yet expansive, the things made by the things I made. And a supervisor hovering behind me. The heaviness of being. I am the Name, Jehovah called from the bush. I had visions of pigeons. And I replied: Here I am to be called Ishmael and beget.