17 Regret poems

1 Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour, Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten, My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs. 2 Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely, You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling, You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless. 3 Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better? Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago. 4 To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic? In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible, Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid. 5 The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward, Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you: We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar, My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

A fool I was to sleep at noon, And wake when night is chilly Beneath the comfortless cold moon; A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept; Faded and all-forsaken, I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I slept, It's winter now I waken. Talk what you please of future spring And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:— Stripp'd bare of hope and everything, No more to laugh, no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow.

This is the debt I pay Just for one riotous day, Years of regret and grief, Sorrow without relief. Pay it I will to the end — Until the grave, my friend, Gives me a true release — Gives me the clasp of peace. Slight was the thing I bought, Small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best — God! but the interest!

All my undone actions wander naked across the calendar, a band of skinny hunter-gatherers, blown snow scattered here and there, stumbling toward a future folded in the New Year I secure with a pushpin: January’s picture a painting from the 17th century, a still life: Skull and mirror, spilled coin purse and a flower.

It seems like you could, but you can’t go back and pull the roots and runners and replant. It’s all too deep for that. You’ve overprized intention, have mistaken any bent you’re given for control. You thought you chose the bean and chose the soil. You even thought you abandoned one or two gardens. But those things keep growing where we put them— if we put them at all. A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall. Even the one vine that tendrils out alone in time turns on its own impulse, twisting back down its upward course a strong and then a stronger rope, the greenest saddest strongest kind of hope.

Of your fate Fast asleep On the bed you made Dream away Wake up late

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes. Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness, Like the flight of a moth which, had it known, Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame. Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety, The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored. I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride, The time when I was among their adherents Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting. But all of them would have one subject, desire, If only my own—but no, not at all; alas, I was driven because I wanted to be like others. I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me. The history of my stupidity will not be written. For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious. Berkeley, 1980.