873 Life poems

Down the street, someone must be praying, and though I don’t Go there anymore, I want to at times, to hear the diction And the tone, though the English pronoun for God is obsolete— What goes on is devotion, which wouldn’t change if I heard: The polished sermon, the upright’s arpeggios of vacant notes. What else could unite widows, bankers, children, and ghosts? And those faces are so good as they tilt their smiles upward To the rostrum that represents law, and the minister who Represents God beams like the white palm of the good hand Of Christ raised behind the baptistry to signal the multitude, Which I am not among, though I feel the abundance of calm And know the beatitude so well I do not have to imagine it, Or the polite old ones who gather after the service to chat, Or the ritual linen of Sunday tables that are already set. More than any other days, Sundays stand in unvarying rows That beg attention: there is that studied verisimilitude Of sanctuary, so even mud and bitten weeds look dressed up For some eye in the distant past, some remote kingdom Where the pastures are crossed by thoroughly symbolic rivers. That is why the syntax of prayers is so often reversed, Aimed toward the dead who clearly have not gone ahead But returned to prior things, a vista of angels and sheep, A desert where men in robes and sandals gather by a tree. Hushed stores, all day that sense a bell is about to ring— I recognized it, waking up, before I weighed the bulk of news Or saw Saturday night’s cars parked randomly along the curb, And though I had no prayer, I wanted to offer something Or ask for something, perhaps out of habit, but as the past Must always be honored unconsciously, formally, and persists On this first and singular day, though I think of it as last.

1 Did I say I was a creature of habit? I meant the opposite. I meant behavior is a pile of clothes I might or might not wear. Before all the sowing and reaping could go on for centuries, before the calendar, I must have been convinced that my movements were both mandated and blessed. 2 I've never been an old woman knitting by a fire but I've played one in images where it meant being foolish or wise, a mistress of distraction's indirection. To rock while entwining is life's work, but I am reckless, restless

After you've been to bed together for the first time, without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance, the other party very often says to you, Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you, what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you lying together in completely relaxed positions like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed. You tell them your story, or as much of your story as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, until the oh is just an audible breath, and then of course there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror. And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story, they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all along, and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming no more than an audible sigh, as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left, draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion and stops breathing forever. Then? Well, one of you falls asleep and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

wedged in the top branches, rain still sighing to earth as a dissolute sky dissolves, a mozambican woman turns mother, her water breaking loose to pool with the flood licking the trunk below, a country-sized puddle calls forth the child whose name, the mother vowed, would not be drowned, no matter how high she had to climb. my mother’s water washed her bare yellow bathroom tile many years ago, a diluvial warning of my struggle to arrive. we fought to get me out, and have been tugging at each other ever since, tethered by a cord that simply thickens when it’s cut. we descended then, thirsting, churning, not into the waters that hound the mozambican mother, baying her and her baby in the tree, but into that enduring ocean in which — as mother, daughter, or both — a woman’s only choices are drink or swim.

—Once more the poem woke me up, the dark poem. I was ready for it; he was sleeping, and across the cabin, the small furnace lit and re-lit itself—the flame a yellow “tongue” again, the metal benignly hard again; and a thousand insects outside called and made me nothing; moonlight streamed inside as if it had been ... I looked around, I thought of the lower wisdom, spirit held by matter: Mary, white as a sand dollar, and Christ, his sticky halo tilted— oh, to get behind it! The world had been created to comprehend itself as matter: table, the torn veils of spiders ... Even consciousness— missing my love— was matter, the metal box of a furnace. As the obligated flame, so burned my life ... What is the meaning of this suffering I asked and the voice—not Christ but between us— said you are the meaning. No no, I replied, That is the shape, what is the meaning. You are the meaning, it said—

For Síle I give thee the sun as guarantee and the Egyptian faience beads and the little silver oar that was gifted once to an English harbor master. I give thee the silk dress with its triple-ruffled sleeves and the cloaks with big hoods that fall full though some are pulled in at a central button. I give thee the little colored goats that go down on their knees as penitents. I give thee the death mask and the plaster hand of Seán Ó Riada, for he is among the best loved of the musicians.

The woman at the Salvation Army who sorts and prices is in her eighties and she underestimates the value of everything, for which I am grateful. Lightly used snow suits, size 2T, are $6 and snow boots are $3. There is a little girl, maybe seven, fiddling with a tea set. Her mother inspects drapes for stains. Sometimes the very old and lonely are looking for an opening. She glances up from her pricing and says something about the tea set and a baby doll long ago. I am careful not to make eye contact, but the mother with drapes has such softness in her shoulders and her face and she knows how to say the perfect kind thing—“What a wonderful mother you had.” “Yes, she was.” Why do children sometimes notice us and sometimes not? From the bin of dolls: “What happened to your mother?” “She died.” The woman at the Salvation Army who sorts and prices is crying a little. She seems surprised to be crying. “It’s been eighty years and I still miss her.” When my daughter was born I couldn’t stop thinking about how we were going to die. If we were drowning, would it be better to hold her to me even as she fought away or should I let her float off to wonder why her mother didn’t help her? What if it’s fire and I have one bullet left? I made sure my husband knew if there were death squads and he had to choose, I’d never love him again if he didn’t choose her. If I’m lucky, her crying face is the last thing I’ll see. The mother with drapes is squeezing her daughter’s shoulder, trying to send a silent message, but children are children. “Why did she die?” “She was going to have a baby and—And she died.” “But she was a wonderful mother.” I’m holding a stack of four wooden jigsaw puzzles of farm animals, dinosaurs, jungle animals, and pets. Each for a quarter. “It’s silly how much I still miss her.” She takes out a tissue and wipes her eyes and then her nose. When my grandmother threw her sister, Susie, a 90 th birthday party, one hundred people came, including 5 of the 6 brothers and sisters. At dusk only a few of us were left, nursing beers with our feet kicked up on the bottom rungs of various walkers. Susie said then to my grandmother, “Can you think of all the people watching us in heaven now? And our mother must be in the front row.” Grandma took her sister’s hand. “Our mother—Estelle.” “Yes—her name was Estelle. I forgot that.” They looked so happy then, saying her name back and forth to each other. Estelle. Estelle.

9:13 p.m., Lucky Bock in hand, I inscribe: walked the lovely 33 blocks to school today, streets clear and thick melting snow all around. taught my 4 hours of poetry; the afternoon class was hard; kid named Schweikert kept on fucking up. took typed-up poems of yesterday to Platt and put up poster there of Anne and Reed’s reading Sat. ate nearly 2 peanutbutter sandwiches with raw carrots. typed. read kids’ poems. at 4 I started home, got a ride with Jim Bay. press release to daily paper. stopped in Baird’s for 2 beers, looked at paper. home, kissed Mara, Sierra. in the mail: Out There, from Chicago, and a letter stating the city of Grand Island had decided not to prosecute re my arrest Friday for intoxication. wonder why. Nick the landlord didn’t show (he was supposed to have us sign lease on the new duplex) (this place gonna be torn down). ate a very delicious supper, ham-and-cheese rarebit with cold broccoli and cold oregano’d tomato, cooked by Mara. paperwork, played a game of solitaire, harried by Sierra’s new red car. dropped over then to the Korner Bar, put up a poster under the phone sign, said hi to a few folks and got halloo’d by this guy I’d spoken to 2 months before, who’d said his high school son adored me, but it might be thought improper that I hang around, shoot pool in Korner Bar. a beefy mid-30’s man, he bought me a beer, apologized and told me of his luck: he’d won a thousand one-hundred eighty dollars today betting on one horse at Fonner Park. we talked of poetry, family, work — he mentioned Kilmer, Stevenson, Nash and others, quoted verbatim his own published poem on fire-fighting (he is the G.I. fire-chief). his boyhood favorites, whom he reads all of even now: Edgar Rice Burroughts and Jules Verne. his son, though epileptic, does the high jump at the high school; he was disturbed that it wasn’t the broad jump, in which he himself still holds a record, set in 1959. the taxes have jumped up like crazy on their nice spread just inside the city limits. I got up and slapped him on the back and left, stopping first to ask Clark, standing end of the bar, what he knew of me on Friday night at the Kyriss. I’d blanked out completely (woke up in jail, ate blue oatmeal). he said I’d just got drunk, he thought Rod had taken me home. he said, at one point, just waking up, I’d grabbed the edge of the table and tilted it till the glasses all came sliding down and almost off, then tilted it back till they slid back to where they were, and never spilled a drop. he said I’d bought some beers for him and Pat but before they could get to them drank them up myself. okay, Clark, you’re a good guy with your black curly hair and toothless grin, and your wild life. I was just wondering. check with Rod when have a chance. — and off, through mud and occasionally-lighted puddles, home, where Mara’s napping still and there are (were) 5 Lucky Bocks in the white (today!) icebox. 9:50. (no. 2) after finishing that (immediately after, during, in fact) the strange thing is there’s so much left out. last night finished reading The Vicar of Wakefield. the bluejays and cardinals that called on the way to school. my beard suddenly seems soft (that thought off some day-dreaming about talking to poetry students). reread (for the last “making” time) “the 14,” the magazine; it is all set. the poems there, here now, seemed so abstract, compared with what I’m used to, but that in a way intensely and properly shaking feeling and talk, tonight. the revolution (Mara gets up, starts drinking Pepsi) and all that. (yellow sweater).

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm; Besides I can tell where I am use'd well, Such usage in heaven will never do well. But if at the Church they would give us some Ale. And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale; We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day; Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray, Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing. And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring: And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch. And God like a father rejoicing to see, His children as pleasant and happy as he: Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord, Who was the Future, died full long ago. Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go, Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred. Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword; The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord And the long strips of river-silver flow: Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours. Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight About their fragile hairs’ aërial gold. Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old Apollo springing naked to the light, And all his island shivered into flowers.