209 Nostalgia poems

Stars by the power of their orbit are stars in the order of the sun. But if they are not figures of orbit, they are not in the sun. Exactly like me: by the power of my yearnings I am in the family. And if I will not yearn, I am not in the family. Memories are a house. Time is a roof. All the time a roof. All the time time. I would like sometime to die unto them and see them. Benno Rothenberg related that when he saw some archaeology, he had a feeling of homeland. As if he were in his house. I do not deny that a man who reaches a certain age can no longer hope that those from whom he came will remain still alive with him, as my mother once wrote to me in one of the letters of her twilight. From the fadings of her letters into the fatedness of man: But when can they. After all there's no chance of seeing you. And once, in a discarded and forgotten letter: "Good night, Yehiel alter lebn. Slumber has descended upon me. I am caught in the throes of sleep.Khbin shlayferig gevorn." Said in a letter that nobody reads, that nobody read. —February 8, 1989

Memory is an old Mexican woman sweeping her yard with a broom. She has grown even smaller now, residing at that vanishing point decades after one dies, but at some times, given the right conditions— an ordinary dream, or practically anything in particular— she absolutely looms, assuming the stature she had in the neighborhood. This was the Great Valley, and we had swept in to do the grooming. We were on the move, tending what was essentially someone else's garden. Memory's yard was all that in miniature, in microcosm: rivers for irrigation, certain plants, certain trees ascertained by season. Without formal acknowledgment, she was most certainly the head of a community, American. Memory had been there forever. We settled in around her; we brought the electricity of blues and baptized gospel, ancient adaptations of icons, spices, teas, fireworks, trestles, newly acquired techniques of conflict and healing, common concepts of collective survival. . . Memory was there all the while. Her house, her shed, her skin, were all the same— weathered— and she didn't do anything, especially, except hum as she moved; Memory, in essence, was unmemorable. Yet, ask any of us who have long since left, who have all but forgotten that adulterated place paved over and parceled out by the powers that be, and what we remember, without even choosing to, is an old woman humming, sweeping, smoothing her yard: Memory.

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons. Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing. Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam’s neighbors. Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant. Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one. Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediæval grace Of iron clothing. Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it. Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.

O Venlo, Venlo, stedje van pleseer. This time her body made him think of countryside, some figure from his childhood, sun on scythe, wind blowing shadows across the shining barley, the milk-pail dented from use, the smell of leaf-mulch and leather in the tack room. Soon she’d take bus and ferry from London to Belfast, but first the fire in her bed-sit. Her fingers traveled too, down the raised purple scars along his vertebrae, the flannel sheets between her thighs, his hair trailing along her abdomen, the quill of a feather poking through seams of the comforter, the comforter itself. Those scars—he’d lied to her, his time in Nicaragua, thugs cut him coming from the fields. The bloodier fight was with his brother, slicing tines of a pitchfork plucked up along the flooded Maas. Everything reduced to trinket and anecdote, the beer and facepaint of carnival, street-dance and tuba, beyond the muddy English roundabouts, the brown and white waves, yellow lamps along Dutch highways, his work at the union office pinned beneath a glass globe paperweight—shaken it showered silver snow over the wide straw hat, red and green plow, the slouching body, a campesino from days before Somoza fell. He wondered if she were any better, smuggling French social theory into Ulster, encounter groups in the rec-centers of tower-block basements. She’d just gotten the news: her last lover died in a fire along the side of the highway, body broken in seven places, silver chrome, pearl and gold gas tank scorched, his bike crumpled beneath the husk of an overturned van. There wasn’t much to talk about. Afterwards she lay with her back to him and he sang her carnival songs in a language she didn’t speak,O Venlo, stedje van pleseer. He thought of himself as the sun, kissing her neck at the hairline, turning grey cobblestones of the town-square silver, marshaling parades.

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat Saying to me as we walked across the Yard Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said You are not wearing overcoat. He said, You should do as I say not do as I do. Just how American it was and how late Forties it was Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me In his New York apartment sitting on chair Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering. Look at this photograph said of his mother and father. Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out. Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture. Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said. Why don't you ask him? Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not. Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph. Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs. Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true. Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

She was always elsewhere. That’s what Mom wants carved on her stone. When did she first realize there was an Elsewhere, and that she was in it? What baby songs did she sing from wherever she was down to me in my crib? The lullabies of   Elsewhere. On birthdays she filled little flowerpots with chocolate ice cream and a real zinnia, chocolate jimmies for dirt. I tasted the cold chocolate, I opened the gifts. If  they were real, I was real. I was in the Elsewhere too.

In the America of the dream the first rise of the moon swings free of the ocean, and she reigns in her shining flesh over a good, great valley of plumped, untrampled grasses and beasts with solemn eyes, of lovers infallibly pitched in their ascendant phase. In this America, death is virginal also, roaming the good, great valley in his huge boots, his shadow steady and lean, his pistol silver, his greeting clear and courteous as a stranger’s who looks for another, a mind to share his peaceable evenings. Dreaming, we are another race than the one which wakes in the cold sweat of fear, fires wild shots at death., builds slippery towers of glass to head him off, waylays him with alcohol traps, rides him down in canyons of sex, and hides in teetering ghost towns. Dreaming, we are the mad who swear by the blood of trees and speak with the tongues of streams through props of steel and sawdust, a colony of souls ravaged by visions, bound to some wild, secret cove not yet possessed, a place still innocent of us.

Long ago I heard footsteps come to the door, and a man knocking. We’ve had an accident up on the road, can you help he pled at the unanswered door, and kept knocking. He might have been a thief but soon enough a woman’s howl lit up the night, and I put a knife in my belt. Around dawn I figured their fortunes might be worth change.

You couples lying where moon-scythes and day-scythes reaped you, browning fruit falls and sleeps in tangled nests, the wild grass, falls from your apple tree that still grows here: cry for your dead hero, his weak sword, his flight, that you were slaughtered and your bed poured whiteness, the issue of murdered marriage dawns. The streets crack, a house falls open to the air, sun and rain lie on the bed. And the river still runs in a child’s hands under the factory’s black hulk, four stacks that used to bloom with smoke over shining leaves, beneath thunderheads. Then the storm shatters and beats and after in woods a scented smoke of light, a dripping quiet, and the small gold snake sparkles at the pond’s edge. But who is he? What were the goods he made, what became of his loved wife, his children, and where has he gone, fearsome, powerless? The silver path of air from the river’s bend to its rippling away beneath the low concrete bridge is still pure. No one comes, and the child who watched by it has vanished. Or sometimes he appears for a day, a night, in the walls and windows reflected on the water, in goldfinches’ flight, cricket song, the heron’s great rise from the bank. Last a carp leaps, voices and a lantern slide down the secret stream in black and gold peace, past the child’s husk, the family never born.

I. Children's Arms On my way home I pass a cameraman On a platform on the bumper of a car Inside which, rolling and plunging, a comedian Is working; on one white lot I see a star Stumble to her igloo through the howling gale Of the wind machines. On Melrose a dinosaur And pterodactyl, with their immense pale Papier-mâché smiles, look over the fence Of The Lost World. Whispering to myself the tale These shout—done with my schoolwork, I commence My real life: my arsenal, my workshop Opens, and in impotent omnipotence I put on the helmet and the breastplate Pop Cut out and soldered for me. Here is the shield I sawed from beaver board and painted; here on top The bow that only Odysseus can wield And eleven vermilion-ringed, goose-feathered arrows. (The twelfth was broken on the battlefield When, searching among snap beans and potatoes, I stepped on it.) Some dry weeds, a dead cane Are my spears. The knife on the bureau's My throwing-knife; the small unpainted biplane Without wheels—that so often, helped by human hands, Has taken off from, landed on, the counterpane— Is my Spad. O dead list, that misunderstands And laughs at and lies about the new live wild Loves it lists! that sets upright, in the sands Of age in which nothing grows, where all our friends are old, A few dried leaves marked THIS IS THE GREENWOOD— O arms that arm, for a child's wars, the child! And yet they are good, if anything is good, Against his enemies . . . Across the seas At the bottom of the world, where Childhood Sits on its desert island with Achilles And Pitamakan, the White Blackfoot: In the black auditorium, my heart at ease, I watch the furred castaways (the seniors put A play on every spring) tame their wild beasts, Erect their tree house. Chatting over their fruit, Their coconuts, they relish their stately feasts. The family's servant, their magnanimous Master now, rules them by right. Nature's priests, They worship at Nature's altar; when with decorous Affection the Admirable Crichton Kisses a girl like a big Wendy, all of us Squirm or sit up in our seats . . . Undone When an English sail is sighted, the prisoners Escape from their Eden to the world: the real one Where servants are servants, masters masters, And no one's magnanimous. The lights go on And we go off, robbed of our fruit, our furs— The island that the children ran is gone. The island sang to me:Believe! Believe! And didn't I know a lady with a lion? Each evening, as the sun sank, didn't I grieve To leave my tree house for reality? There was nothing there for me to disbelieve. At peace among my weapons, I sit in my tree And feel:Friday night, then Saturday, then Sunday! I'm dreaming of a wolf, as Mama wakes me, And a tall girl who is–outside it's gray, I can't remember, I jump up and dress. We eat in the lighted kitchen. And what is play For me, for them is habit. Happiness Is a quiet presence, breathless and familiar: My grandfather and I sit there in oneness As the Sunset bus, lit by the lavender And rose of sunrise, takes us to the dark Echoing cavern where Pop, a worker, Works for our living. As he rules a mark, A short square pencil in his short square hand, On a great sheet of copper, I make some remark He doesn't hear. In that hard maze—in that land That grown men live in—in the world of work, He measures, shears, solders; and I stand Empty-handed, watching him. I wander into the murk The naked light bulbs pierce: the workmen, making something, Say something to the boy in his white shirt. I jerk As the sparks fly at me. The man hammering As acid hisses, and the solder turns to silver, Seems to me a dwarf hammering out the Ring In the world under the world. The hours blur; Bored and not bored, I bend things out of lead. I wash my smudged hands, as my grandfather Washes his black ones, with their gritty soap: ahead, Past their time clock, their pay window, is the blue And gold and white of noon. The sooty thread Up which the laborers feel their way into Their wives and houses, is money; the fact of life, The secret the grown-ups share, is what to do To make money. The husband Adam, Eve his wife Have learned how not to have to do without Till Santa Claus brings them their Boy Scout knife— Nor do they find things in dreams, carry a paper route, Sell Christmas seals . . . Starting his Saturday, his Sunday, Pop tells me what I love to hear about, His boyhood in Shelbyville. I play What he plays, hunt what he hunts, remember What he remembers: it seems to me I could stay In that dark forest, lit by one fading ember Of his campfire, forever . . . But we're home. I run in love to each familiar member Of this little state, clustered about the Dome Of St. Nicholas—this city in which my rabbit Depends on me, and I on everyone—this first Rome Of childhood, so absolute in every habit That when we hear the world our jailor say: "Tell me, art thou a Roman ?" the time we inhabit Drops from our shoulders, and we answer: "Yea. I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, I appeal Unto Caesar." I wash my hands, Pop gives his pay Envelope to Mama; we sit down to our meal. The phone rings: Mrs. Mercer wonders if I'd care To go to the library. That would be ideal, I say when Mama lets me. I comb my hair And find the four books I have out:The Food Of the Gods was best. Liking that world where The children eat, and grow giant and good, I swear as I've often sworn: "I'll never forget What it's like, when I've grown up." A prelude By Chopin, hammered note by note, like alphabet Blocks, comes from next door. It's played with real feeling, The feeling of being indoors practicing. "And yet It's not as if—" a gray electric, stealing To the curb on silent wheels, has come; and I See on the back seat (sight more appealing Than any human sight!) my own friend Lucky, Half wolf, half police-dog. And he can play the piano— Play that he does, that is—and jump so high For a ball that he turns a somersault. "Hello," I say to the lady, and hug Lucky . . . In my Talk with the world, in which it tells me what I know And I tell it, "I know—" how strange that I Know nothing, and yet it tells me what I know!— I appreciate the animals, who stand by Purring. Or else they sit and pant. It's so— So agreeable. If only people purred and panted! So, now, Lucky and I sit in our row, Mrs. Mercer in hers. I take for granted The tiller by which she steers, the yellow roses In the bud vases, the whole enchanted Drawing room of our progress. The glass encloses As glass does, a womanish and childish And doggish universe. We press our noses To the glass and wish: the angel- and devilfish Floating by on Vine, on Sunset, shut their eyes And press their noses to their glass and wish. II. A Night with Lions When I was twelve we'd visit my aunt's friend Who owned a lion, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion. I'd play with him, and he'd pretend To play with me. I was the real player But he'd trot back and forth inside his cage Till he got bored. I put Tawny in the prayer I didn't believe in, not at my age, But said still; just as I did everything in fours And gave to Something, on the average, One cookie out of three. And by my quartz, my ores, My wood with the bark on it, from the Petrified Forest, I put his dewclaw . . . Now the lion roars His slow comfortable roars; I lie beside My young, tall, brown aunt, out there in the past Or future, and I sleepily confide My dream-discovery: my breath comes fast Whenever I see someone with your skin, Hear someone with your voice. The lion's steadfast Roar goes on in the darkness. I have been Asleep a while when I remember: you Are—you, and Tawny was the lion in— In Tarzan. In Tarzan! Just as we used to, I talk to you, you talk to me or pretend To talk to me as grown-up people do, Of Jurgen and Rupert Hughes, till in the end I think as a child thinks: "You're my real friend." III. A Street off Sunset Sometimes as I drive by the factory That manufactures, after so long, Vicks VapoRub Ointment, there rises over me A eucalyptus tree. I feel its stair-sticks Impressed on my palms, my insteps, as I climb To my tree house. The gray leaves make me mix My coughing chest, anointed at bedtime, With the smell of the sap trickling from the tan Trunk, where the nails go in. My lifetime Got rid of, I sit in a dark blue sedan Beside my great-grandmother, in Hollywood. We pass a windmill, a pink sphinx, an Allbran Billboard; thinking of Salâmmbo, Robin Hood, The old prospector with his flapjack in the air, I sit with my hands folded: I am good. That night as I lie crossways in an armchair Reading Amazing Stories(just as, long before, I'd lie by my rich uncle's polar bear On his domed library's reflecting floor In the last year of the first World War, and see A poor two-seater being attacked by four Triplanes, on the cover of the Literary Digest, and a Camel coming to its aid; I'd feel the bear's fur warm and rough against me, The colors of the afternoon would fade, I'd reach into the bear's mouth and hold tight To its front tooth and think, "I'm not afraid") There off Sunset, in the lamplit starlight, A scientist is getting ready to destroy The world. "It's time for you to say good night," Mama tells me; I go on in breathless joy. "Remember, tomorrow is a school day," Mama tells me; I go on in breathless joy. At last I go to Mama in her gray Silk, to Pop, to Dandeen in her black Silk. I put my arms around them, they Put their arms around me. Then I go back To my bedroom; I read as I undress. The scientist is ready to attack. Mama calls, "Is your light out?" I call back, "Yes," And turn the light out. Forced out of life into Bed, for a moment I lie comfortless In the blank darkness; then as I always do, I put on the earphones of the crystal set— Each bed has its earphones—and the uneasy tissue Of their far-off star-sound, of the blue-violet Of space, surrounds the sweet voice from the Tabernacle Of the Four-Square Gospel. A vague marionette, Tall, auburn, holds her arms out, to unshackle The bonds of sin, of sleep—as, next instant, the sun Holds its arms out through the fig, the lemon tree, In the back yard the clucking hens all cackle As Mama brings their chicken feed. I see My magazine. My magazine! Dressing for school, I read how the good world wins its victory Over that bad man. Books; book strap; jump the footstool You made in Manual Training . . . Then we three Sit down, and one says grace; and then, by rule, By that habit that moves the stars, some coffee— One spoonful—is poured out into my milk And the milk, transubstantiated, is coffee. And Mama's weekday wash-dress, Dandeen's soft black silk Are ways that habit itself makes holy Just as, on Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, His will Comes in their ways—of Church, of Prayer Meeting—to set free The spirit from the flesh it questions. So, So unquestioned, my own habit moves me To and through and from school, like a domino, Till, home, I wake to find that I am playing Dominoes with Dandeen. Her old face is slow In pleasure, slow in doubt, as she sits weighing Strategies: patient, equable, and humble, She hears what this last child of hers is saying In pride or bewilderment; and she will grumble Like a child or animal when, indifferent To the reasons of my better self, I mumble: "I'd better stop now—the rabbit . . ." I relent And play her one more game. It is miraculous To have a great-grandmother: I feel different From others as, between moves, we discuss The War Between the States. The cheerful troops Ride up to our farmhouse, steal from us The spoons, the horses—when their captain stoops To Dandeen and puts Dandeen on his horse, She cries . . . As I run by the chicken coops With lettuce for my rabbit, real remorse Hurts me, here, now: the little girl is crying Because I didn't write. Because— of course, I was a child, I missed them so. But justifying Hurts too: if only I could play you one more game, See you all one more time! I think of you dying Forgiving me—or not, it is all the same To the forgiven . . . My rabbit's glad to see me; He scrambles to me, gives me little tame Bites before he eats the lettuce. His furry Long warm soft floppy ears, his crinkling nose Are reassuring to a child. They guarantee, As so much here does, that the child knows Who takes care of him, whom he takes care of. Mama comes out and takes in the clothes From the clothesline. She looks with righteous love At all of us, her spare face half a girl's. She enters a chicken coop, and the hens shove And flap and squawk, in fear; the whole flock whirls Into the farthest corner. She chooses one, Comes out, and wrings its neck. The body hurls Itself out—lunging, reeling, it begins to run Away from Something, to fly away from Something In great flopping circles. Mama stands like a nun In the center of each awful, anguished ring. The thudding and scrambling go on, go on—then they fade, I open my eyes, it's over . . . Could such a thing Happen to anything ? It could to a rabbit, I'm afraid; It could to— "Mama, you won't kill Reddy ever, You won't ever, will you?" The farm woman tries to persuade The little boy, her grandson, that she'd never Kill the boy's rabbit, never even think of it. He would like to believe her . . . And whenever I see her, there in that dark infinite, Standing like Judith, with the hen's head in her hand, I explain it away, in vain—a hypocrite, Like all who love. Into the blue wonderland Of Hollywood, the sun sinks, past the eucalyptus, The sphinx, the windmill, and I watch and read and Hold my story tight. And when the bus Stops at the corner and Pop—Pop!—steps down And I run out to meet him, a blurred nimbus, Half-red, half-gold, enchants his sober brown Face, his stooped shoulders, into the All-Father's. He tells me about the work he's done downtown, We sit there on the steps. My universe Mended almost, I tell him about the scientist. I say, "He couldn't really, could he, Pop ?" My comforter's Eyes light up, and he laughs. "No, that's just play, Just make-believe," he says. The sky is gray, We sit there, at the end of our good day.