517 Social commentaries poems

1 Against the low, New York State mountain background, a smokestack sticks up and gives out its snakelike wisp. Thin, stripped win- ter birches pick up the vertical lines. Last night we five watched the white, painted upright bars of steel in an ancient, New York jail called Herkimer (named for a general who lost an arm). Cops threw us against the car. Their marks grow gaudy over me. They burgeon beneath my clothes. I know I give my wound too much thought and time. Gallows loomed outside our sorry solitary cells. “You are in the oldest of our New York jails,” they said. “And we’ve been in books. It’s here they had one of Dreiser’s characters arraigned.” The last one of our company to be hanged we found had chopped her husband up and fed him to the hungry swine. They nudged the wan- ing warmth of his flesh. Each gave him a rooting touch, translating his dregs into the hopes of pigs. And now with their spirited wish and with his round, astonished face, her changed soul still floats about over their small farm near this little New York town. 2 The door bangs shut in the absolute dark. Toilets flush with a great force, and I can hear the old, gentle drunk, my neighbor in the tank, hawk his phlegm and fart. In the early day we line up easily as a cliché for our bread and bowls of gruel. We listen, timeless, for the courthouse bell, play rummy the whole day long and “shoot the moon,” go to bed and jack off to calm down, and scowl harshly, unmanned, at those who were once our friends. The prison of our skins now rises outside and drops in vertical lines before our very eyes. 3 Outdoors again, now we can walk to the Erie Locks (“Highest Lift Locks in the World!”) The old iron bridge has a good bed— cobbles made of wood. Things pass through this town everywhere for it was built in opposite tiers. Two levels of roads on either side the Canal, then two terraces of tracks and higher ranks of beds: roads where trucks lumber awkwardly above the town— like those heavy golden cherubim that try to wing about in the old, Baroque church. The little town—with its Gothic brick bank, Victorian homes with gingerbread frieze and its blasted factories (collapsed, roofs roll- ing back from walls like the lids of eyes)— has died and given up its substance like a hollow duct, smokestack or a pen through which the living stuff flows on. 4 So we walk the long, dead-end track along the shallow, frozen lake where the canal forms a fork (this time of year the locks don’t work). And now and again we look back, for the troopers haunt the five of us out the ledges toward The Locks. (We know they want to hose our bellies and our backs. Or—as they said— “Play the Mambo” on our heads.) We do not yet feel quite free— though the blue and yellow, newly painted posts for ships bloom gaily in the cold, and the bulbs about their bases bulge for spring. Soon the great, iron gates will open out and the first woman-shaped ship, mammoth, silent, will float toward us like a god come back to make us feel only half afraid. Until then, though my friends will be gone from this dry channel of snow and stone, I’ll stay here among the monuments of sheer, brown and gray rock where you can read the names of lovers, sailors and of kids etched in chalk, and in this winter air still keep one hand over my aching ear. Buffalo, March 1967

for Mark Strand There are the few we hear of like Christ, who, with divine grace, made goodness look easy, had a following to draw near, gave up the right things and saw to it that sinners got listened to. Sharpening my failures, I remember the Jains, the gentle swoosh of their brooms on a dirt path trodden by children and goats, each thoughtful step taken in peril of an ant’s life or a fat grub hidden under a stick. In the car-wash, thinking of yogis under a tree plucking hair by hair the head of an initiate, I feel at least elsewhere those able for holiness— its signs and rigors—are at work. Ignominiously, I am here, brushes clamped, soap and water pulsing against my car. (A good sign too, those asylums for old and diseased animals.) My car is clean and no one has had to lift a finger. The dead bugs have been gushed away into a soup of grit and foam—the evidence not subterranean, not streaming along the asphalt in sunlight so dazzling I attend the birth-moment of the word Hosannah! I care about the bugs and not in this life will I do enough towards my own worth in the memory of them. I appreciate the Jains, their atonements for my neglect, though I understand it makes poor farmers of them, and good we all don’t aspire to such purity so there’s somebody heartless enough to plow the spuds. Early on in admiration, I put off knowledge, and so delayed reading about the Jains—not to lose solace. But in the County Library, turning a page, I meet them as the wealthiest moneylenders in Western India. Reading on, I’m encouraged—the list of virtues exceeds vices—just four of those: anger, pride, illusion and greed. The emphasis clearly on striving. I write them down in the corner of a map of Idaho: forbearance, indulgence, straightforwardness, purity, veracity, restraint, freedom from attachment to anything, poverty and chastity. Choosing, getting into the car to get to the supermarket, hearing over engine noise the bright agonies of birds, the radio news with the child nailed into a broom-closet for twenty-four hours by parents who in straightforwardness sacrificed forbearance, I feel a longing for religion, for doctrine swift as a broom to keep the path clear. Later, alone in the kitchen with the groceries, I read the list again. Overwhelmed by the loneliness of the saints, I take up my broom and begin where I stand, with linoleum.

It was biting cold, and the falling snow, Which filled a poor little match girl’s heart with woe, Who was bareheaded and barefooted, as she went along the street, Crying, “Who’ll buy my matches? for I want pennies to buy some meat!” When she left home she had slippers on; But, alas! poor child, now they were gone. For she lost both of them while hurrying across the street, Out of the way of two carriages which were near by her feet. So the little girl went on, while the snow fell thick and fast; And the child’s heart felt cold and downcast, For nobody had bought any matches that day, Which filled her little mind with grief and dismay. Alas! she was hungry and shivering with cold; So in a corner between two houses she made bold To take shelter from the violent storm. Poor little waif! wishing to herself she’d never been born. And she grew colder and colder, and feared to go home For fear of her father beating her; and she felt woe-begone Because she could carry home no pennies to buy bread, And to go home without pennies she was in dread. The large flakes of snow covered her ringlets of fair hair; While the passers-by for her had no care, As they hurried along to their homes at a quick pace, While the cold wind blew in the match girl’s face. As night wore on her hands were numb with cold, And no longer her strength could her uphold, When an idea into her little head came: She’d strike a match and warm her hands at the flame. And she lighted the match, and it burned brightly, And it helped to fill her heart with glee; And she thought she was sitting at a stove very grand; But, alas! she was found dead, with a match in her hand! Her body was found half-covered with snow, And as the people gazed thereon their hearts were full of woe; And many present let fall a burning tear Because she was found dead on the last night of the year, In that mighty city of London, wherein is plenty of gold— But, alas! their charity towards street waifs is rather cold. But I hope the match girl’s in Heaven, beside her Saviour dear, A bright reward for all the hardships she suffered here.

¿are you on the other side waiting for alarms in a desert of sleepless evaporations? ¿are you beside yourself in the aisles that distance makes shorter than light waves in the daylight that pounds a lead slab in the soup that the winter dissolves? ¿are you the signal that another plane carves into wings in rounded contusions of a late afternoon storm, full of sparks that the night hurries out on Locust and serial cheeks shrouded in shiny costumes? ¿are you a circle like juntas that the winter makes clear on the shaved orbiting molecule that the ear revolves around, in a retreat of explosive fossils? ¿are you memorizing the connections between the hand and the foot and the torso in reverse of the automatic? ¿are you materializing the unknown without weather to increase the planet otherwise? ¿are you pocketing the insurance claims that parkas and snow equips with sutures and hand grenades? ¿forever? ¿are you increasing the tackle box full of piers to widen the sea and shorten circuits full of trees? ¿are you feeding the unworn through a parallel shapelessness in desert blooms on the roots of a tarp milking masks? ¿are you remodeling the world as a breathing action doll? ¿are you calm for knots like the guardian hell that a sewer makes for angels in their last testimony skewered like the pony was? ¿are you freezing in the open course that half of everything enumerates like clouds? ¿are you unwound in a fear that a jacket stores for feed, in easy shows and rented faces on the pain of entry? ¿are you good like ovens?

Nostrums? Lordy, I have seen them all. Alcohol’s the favorite. Many a quack’s panacea bottled in a cellar and hawked from door to door is thriving still. Bindweed’s supposed to heal a bruise. Cherokee remedies still survive, and slave recipes—hyssop, juniper, chives. Waitress, freshen this elixir, if you please. One day a hefty woman who works a loom down at Pepperell Mills sauntered in with no appointment and perched herself prim as an English queen in the waiting room. What happened next? For a prolapsed uterus, folk medicine recommends inserting an Irish potato. It works, if you can stand the weight, my friends. Well, she’d relied on that specific since winter. We’d hit, you understand, July, and her complaint, not one bit shy, was, Leaves in my virginia. Not beatific, no, but she was composed, no maniac, and it made some sense. What better place than a protected pocket, warm and moist? But the spud had sprouted, sent runners amok. You never know in these flatland burley counties if your manual skills will bloom as sawbones or private gardener. Deftly, I removed the obstruction and took it home. I’ve raised a whole colony in my window box, and bake, fry, or boil, I’m proud as hell of this year’s crop. The woman paid her bill with eggs and applejack. Life is a paradox. Now I’ve got to rush back and tend my flock. Got appointments at four—a pregnant lady, a leg to set, twins to inspect for chicken pox, and Marvin with his routine emergency. I guess you could say my practice is thriving. Drop by, and I’ll fry you up some shallot hash browns in Margie’s seasoned skillet, a flavor I can promise is sure to revive any ailing soul. Where do I get my onions? Don’t ask. The whole sweet world is a garden.

They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone, ached to get back inside. Officials surmise she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short, she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led to the discovery of her body. One neighbor speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person could disregard so much: the damper, the flue, the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced. The empty garage. The locked back door. And is that a light on in the den? They show us the grass where they found her purse. And it’s not impossible to picture her standing on the patio — abandoned — the mind turning obscene, all hopes pinned on refastening the snap. Then spotting the bricks rising above the roof and at first believing and then knowing, sun flashing its god-blinding light behind it, that the chimney was the way.

They peopled landscapes casually like trees, being there richly, never having gone there, and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands were reticent as trees with those not born there, and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands. Others to them were always one of two evils: the colonist or refugee. They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing; inferring from our looks their destiny as preservation or as clearing. I envied them. To be local was to know which team to support: the local team; where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local; best of all to feel by birthright welcome anywhere; be everywhere a local... Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there before you; the original prior claim that made your being anywhere intrusive. There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam wiped them out and settled in with Eve. Whether at home or away, whether kids playing or saying what they wanted, or adults chatting, waiting for a bus, or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead, there were always locals, and they were never us.

So when you go wherever it is you will go take the moon with you and make it wear that democratic white shroud, pocketless, since rich and poor, we take nothing with us, save a small stick or dowel in the casket, so we can all burrow through the earth to the Holy Land when the time is right. Please forgive that I confessed your amusement at Shakespeare’s “mewling and puking” in my eulogy.

You could figure it as a trapdoor, blur of hinge and down into the unconscious of this stranger moving around your garden like a trap— making all the greens unstable as the warble of nausea come bang up to greet you. Bang to rights is how he'd like to have your house. Cuckoo, wool-wearing garden-dweller, new-age Salvationist, holy among your cow-parsley and roses. Meanwhile, the unaccustomed heat. Meanwhile, a sky tunnelling upward— sense of proportion—golden section of elder hedge; then the disgraceful paddock gone wild.

I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse