872 Life poems

—After Robert Pinsky Defier of closed space, such as the head, opener Of the sealed passageways, so that Sunlight entering the nose can once again Exit the ear, vaporizer, mist machine, whose Soft hiss sounds like another human being But less erratic, more stable, or, if not like a human being, Carried by one, by my mother to the sick chamber Of my childhood — as Freud said, Why are you always sick, Louise ? his cigar Confusing mist with smoke, interfering With healing—Embodied Summoner of these ghosts, white plastic tub with your elegant Clear tub, the water sanitized by boiling, Sterile, odorless, In my mother’s absence Run by me, the one machine I understand: what Would life be if we could not buy Objects to care for us And bear them home, away from the druggists’ pity, If we could not carry in our own arms Alms, alchemy, to the safety of our bedrooms, If there were no more Sounds in the night, continuous Hush, hush of warm steam, not Like human breath though regular, if there were nothing in the world More hopeful than the self, Soothing it, wishing it well.

I would like a century a tree grows slow a crack of light hits my palm while I’m reading I grab to take a picture & the crack is gone branches pouring out of my hands days has made its mark I have wind swept hair I think of my step brother who I knew more like this his face a photo graph on a beach on a book & when he died I was family watching a tree in the wind & I wanted to speak to him who was truly my brother that speck of light is gone on my hand and him. I told her I’d probably like to end here like my com puters do & my dog did. I took a chance w horrifying her. I’m shooting for this love where I live. See me dying now or running across the beach to catch the tree book cover in the end of summer’s wind. The ocean is a feast & it’s here I bring my water tree book feet, taste branches the lot that is me who wants a century.

I understand, sure, hygiene, these days, if you're not paying attention, with all these sicknesses, you think I'm not aware? I'm not saying not to bathe, are you crazy? you don't want to wash? I'm just saying to not go overboard, because there's clean, that's fine, but not clean and shiny, it's just that people now, bath foams, bath salts, a bar of soap's not good enough, no, instead, sometimes, by washing too much, some things even get lost, the other day, there was one lady, I didn't know her, even if you tell me her name, she's not from here, she's from Rimini, we had met each other by chance, two months ago, then we met again, but it's not like now I'm wanting, I'm just telling you to give you an idea, it was Tuesday afternoon, at her house, her husband was away, she started to unzip me, she was wearing a dressing gown, we'd been drinking, we'd danced, then we went to bed, she climbed on top of me, sssh! and today is Thursday and I still smell her, do you understand?

here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so the whole valley shivers its windy silvers, watery ... A strange heat is upon us. Again. That was you thinking that. I suggested it. Maybe the wind did. We both put in the horizon line now, the great loneliness, its grip, chaos recessed but still there. After finitude you shall keep coming toward me it whines, whitish with non-disappearance. We feel the same about this. The same what? We feel is there more. That’s the default. We want to live with the unknown in front of us. Receding, always receding. A vanishing moving over it all. A sleepy vacancy. It’s the sky, yes, but also this thinking. As from the start, again, here I am, a mind alone in the fields. The sheep riding and falling the slants of earth. The sleepiness a no-good god come to assume we are halfwits, tending, sleepy, the animals gurgling and trampling, thistle-choked, stinging. A dove on a stone. No sky to speak of, the god lingers, it wants to retire, it thinks this is endgame, what could we be — mist about to dry off, light about to wipe a wall for no reason, that random. This must have been way BC. Or is it 1944. Surely in 2044 we shall be standing in the field again, tending, waiting to surprise the god who thinks he knows what he’s made. Well no. He does not know. We might be a small cavity but it guards a vast hungry — how bad does that hurt you, fancy maker — you have no idea what we turned our back on to come be in this field of earth and tend — yes tend — these flocks of minutes, whispering till the timelessness in us is wrung dry and we are heavied with endgame. Have I mentioned the soul. How we know you hustled that in, staining all this flesh with it, rubbing and swirling it all over inside with your god-cloth. Rinse. Repeat. Get this — here with this staff which soon I shall turn into a pen again — brilliantly negligent, diligent, inside all this self truly formless — I hear the laughter of the irrigation ditch I’ve made, I see the dry field blonde-up and green, day smacks its lips, they are back, the inventors, they are going to do it again, sprinkle-seed, joker rain coming to loosen it all. How many lives will we be given, how many will we trade in for this — it comes in bushels, grams, inches, notes, crows watch over it all as they always have, come back from the end of time to caw it into its redo again. Cherish us. Will not stop. Nothing to show for it but doing. The flock runs across as the dog chases and I walk slowly. I admire what I own what I am and I think the night is nothing, the stars click their ascent, I feel it rise in me, the word, I feel the skull beneath this skin, I feel the skin slick and shine and hide the skull and it is from there that it rises now, I taste it before I say it, this song.

I abide and abide and better abide, And after the old proverb, the happy day; And ever my lady to me doth say, "Let me alone and I will provide." I abide and abide and tarry the tide, And with abiding speed well ye may. Thus do I abide I wot alway, Nother obtaining nor yet denied. Ay me! this long abiding Seemeth to me, as who sayeth, A prolonging of a dying death, Or a refusing of a desir'd thing. Much were it better for to be plain Than to say "abide" and yet shall not obtain.

I allow myself the luxury of breakfast (I am no nun, for Christ’s sake). Charmed as I am by the sputter of bacon, and the eye-opening properties of eggs, it’s the coffee that’s really sacramental. In the old days, I spread fires and floods and pestilence on my toast. Nowadays, I’m more selective, I only read my horoscope by the quiet glow of the marmalade.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather. A bunch of violets without their roots, And sorrel intermixed, Encircled by a wisp of straw Once coiled about their shoots, The law By which I'm fixed. A nosegay which Time clutched from out Those fair Elysian fields, With weeds and broken stems, in haste, Doth make the rabble rout That waste The day he yields. And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, Drinking my juices up, With no root in the land To keep my branches green, But stand In a bare cup. Some tender buds were left upon my stem In mimicry of life, But ah! the children will not know, Till time has withered them, The woe With which they're rife. But now I see I was not plucked for naught, And after in life's vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place. That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here.

I am happy living simply: like a clock, or a calendar. Worldly pilgrim, thin, wise—as any creature. To know the spirit is my beloved. To come to things—swift as a ray of light, or a look. To live as I write: spare—the way God asks me—and friends do not. 1919

The seats faced backwards although the train car was headed forward. The engineers designed it that way intentionally: the cushioned seats at the front facing in toward the rest of the car,—passengers’ faces, a Japanese flower arrangement of faces. The platform began receding. Whoosh. Not in the sense of being unconscious or knocked out, but I was coming to see, that is, to understand an endurance test deep inside that things could have gone differently, the furniture. It could have turned out completely different. That’s within the realm of possibilities, as if the election were in our favor somewhere else, in the United States of Atlantis.— I left off just as I was going to make a mental note in that regard, that we were carried along, passively, in motion without walking or running, spastic reflex in the legs —To sit down in one city, stay seated an hour and a half, and then stand up in a small town Milton Bradley must have modeled its tiny green Monopoly houses and red hotels after

I create time I cannot create time I’m frozen in place I cannot be frozen I’m moving but don’t notice I notice me moving, I pay attention To the small yet immense yet Small movements that guide My limbs, my hair growth, my joint oils I don’t think about it I don’t feel it either I don’t have emotions right now I see films of divine quality I don’t see any films This black This not black To me I am I am not to me not I walk with this hollowness I walk with this blooming I’m moving outward forever Onward eternally inward I create all objects like shampoos And cats, I create nothing Like space and antimatter I resign to the clocks that keep time I surrender to the clocks that don’t keep time I’m sure about it, the color white I’m not sure about it, what is word? Oh, the loops and unloops Destiny unfolds in my knees I eat breakfast to begin the day