48 Morning poems

While the long grain is softening in the water, gurgling over a low stove flame, before the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced for breakfast, before the birds, my mother glides an ivory comb through her hair, heavy and black as calligrapher’s ink. She sits at the foot of the bed. My father watches, listens for the music of comb against hair. My mother combs, pulls her hair back tight, rolls it around two fingers, pins it in a bun to the back of her head. For half a hundred years she has done this. My father likes to see it like this. He says it is kempt. But I know it is because of the way my mother’s hair falls when he pulls the pins out. Easily, like the curtains when they untie them in the evening.

Is this what I was made for? Is the world that fits Like what I feel when I wake up each morning? Steamclouds Hovering over the lake, and smoke ascending from ten thousand chimneys As in a picture on a calendar, in a frieze of ordinary days? Beneath a sky of oatmeal gray, the land slides downwards from a Kmart parking lot Into a distance lined with bungalows, and then a vague horizon. Higher and higher, until its gaze becomes a part of what it sees, The mind ascends through layers of immobility into an unfamiliar atmosphere Where nothing lives, and with a sense of finally breaking free Attains its kingdom: a constructed space, or an imaginary city Bordered all around by darkness; or a city gradually sinking into age, Dominated by a television tower whose blue light warns the traveler away. People change, or drift away, or die. It used to be a country Bounded by possibility, from which the restless could embark And then come home to, and where the soul could find an emblem of itself. Some days I feel a momentary lightness, but then the density returns, The salt-encrusted cars drive by the factory where a clock tower Overlooks the highway, and the third shift ends. And then softly, The way the future used to sing to me when I was ten years old, I start to hear the murmur of a voice that isn’t mine at all, Formless and indistinct, the music of a world that holds no place for me; And then an image starts to gather in my mind—a picture of a room Where someone lingers at a window, staring at a nearly empty street Bordered by freight yards and abandoned tanneries. And then the bus stops And a man gets off, and stands still, and then walks away. Last night I had a dream in which the image of a long-forgotten love Hovered over the city. No one could remember what his name was Or where he came from, or decipher what that emptiness might mean; Yet on the corner, next to the USA Today machine, a woman seemed to wave at me, Until the stream of morning traffic blocked her from my view. It’s strange, the way a person’s life can feel so far away, Although the claims of its existence are encountered everywhere —In a drugstore, or on the cover of a tabloid, on the local news Or in the mail that came this morning, in the musings of some talk show host Whose face is an enigma and whose name is just a number in the phone book, But whose words are as pervasive as the atmosphere I breathe. Why can’t I find my name in this profusion? Nothing even stays, No image glances back at me, no inner angel hurls itself in rage Against the confines of this surface that confronts me everywhere I look —At home or far away, here or on the way back from the store— Behind an all-inclusive voice and personality, fashioned out of fear And scattered like a million isolated points transmitting random images Across a space alive with unconnected signals. I heard my name Once, but then the noise of waiting patiently resumed. It felt the same, Yet gradually the terms I used to measure out my life increased, Until I realized that I’d been driving down these streets for sixteen years. I was part of the surroundings: people looked at me the way I used to look at them, And most of what I felt seemed second nature. Now and then that sense I’d had in high school —Of a puzzlement about to lift, a language just about to start— Meandered into consciousness; but by and large I’d spend the days Like something in the background, or like part of a design too intricate to see. Wasn’t there supposed to be a stage at which the soul at last broke free And started to meet the world on equal terms? To feel a little more at home, More intensely realized, more successfully contained Within the arc of its achievements? Filled with reservations, Moods and private doubts, yet always moving, with increasing confidence, Towards a kind of summary, towards the apex of a long career Advancing down an avenue that opened on a space of sympathy and public understanding? Or howling like the wind in the wires outside my window, in a cacophony of rage? I don’t think so. Age is like the dreams one had in childhood, Some parts of which were true—I have the things I want, the words to misdescribe them, And the freedom to imagine what I think I feel. I think that most of what I feel remains unknown, But that beneath my life lies something intricate and real and Nearly close enough to touch. I live it, and I know I should explain it, Only I know I can’t—it’s just an image of my life that came to me one day, And which remained long after the delight it brought had ended. Sometimes I think I hear the sound of death approaching Like a song in the trees, a performance staged for me and me alone And written in the ersatz language of loss, the language of time passing, Or the sound of someone speaking decorously into the unknown —Like a voice picked up on the telephone when two lines cross momentarily —Overheard, and then half heard, and then gone.

5 am : the frogs ask what is it, what is it? It is what it is.

The soft-toned clock upon the stair chimed three— Too sweet for sleep, too early yet to rise. In restful peace I lay with half-closed eyes, Watching the tender hours go dreamily; The tide was flowing in; I heard the sea Shivering along the sands; while yet the skies Were dim, uncertain, as the light that lies Beneath the fretwork of some wild-rose tree Within the thicket gray. The chanticleer Sent drowsy calls across the slumbrous air; In solemn silence sweet it was to hear My own heart beat . . . Then broad and deep and fair— Trembling in its new birth from heaven’s womb— One crimson shaft of dawn sank thro’ my room.

You can see the face of everything, and it is white— plaster, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold— turned to the east. Oh closeness to life! Hardness of life! Like something in the body that is animal—root, slag-ends— with the soul still not set well there— and mineral and vegetable! Sun standing stiffly against man, against the sow, the cabbages, the mud wall! —False joy, because you are merely in time, as they say, and not in the soul! The entire sky taken up by moist and steaming heaps, a horizon of dung piles. Sour remains, here and there, of the night. Slices of the green moon, half-eaten, crystal bits from false stars, plaster, the paper ripped off, still faintly sky-blue. The birds not really awake yet, in the raw moon, streetlight nearly out. Mob of beings and things! —A true sadness, because you are really deep in the soul, as they say, not in time at all!

Noted to be the definitive bright morning of 10,000 calendars. The church bell melted. Rage of unrequited love became a terrible serpent. The morning star lowered like an enemy’s flag. A vampire’s mattress tumbled out at the outskirts of town. Ancient lanterns, suddenly thrown through the air, somewhere deep in the mountains. That night, in a snowy rural area, an elderly, powder-faced woman appeared on doorsteps in search of wine. Her origins, neatly wrapped in the cold dressing of a snowflake’s breath.

Morning’s mirage, disdainful & calm as a mirror, held the shorn bush that yesterday flourished, now lopped canes & a scant spitfall of remnance, confetti trampled in the clefts of vanishing deer. To touch its truth I punched my fist into the chopped molest, the boscage—withdrew my red sleeve. Abstract that.

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach. Now Betty from her master's bed had flown, And softly stole to discompose her own. The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs, Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs. The youth with broomy stumps began to trace The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place. The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep; Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep." Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet; And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street. The turnkey now his flock returning sees, Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees. The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands; And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

The morning comes, and thickening clouds prevail, Hanging like curtains all the horizon round, Or overhead in heavy stillness sail; So still is day, it seems like night profound; Scarce by the city’s din the air is stirred, And dull and deadened comes its every sound; The cock’s shrill, piercing voice subdued is heard, By the thick folds of muffling vapors drowned. Dissolved in mists the hills and trees appear, Their outlines lost and blended with the sky; And well-known objects, that to all are near, No longer seem familiar to the eye, But with fantastic forms they mock the sight, As when we grope amid the gloom of night.

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms: The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.