102 Work poems

Vandergast to his neighbors— the grinding of a garage door and hiss of gravel in the driveway. He worked for the insurance company whose talisman is a phoenix rising in flames ...non omnis moriar. From his desk he had a view of the street— translucent raincoats, and umbrellas, fluorescent plate-glass windows. A girl knelt down, arranging underwear on a female dummy— sea waves and, on the gale, Venus, these busy days, poised in her garter belt and stockings. * The next day he saw her eating in the restaurant where he usually ate. Soon they were having lunch together elsewhere. She came from Dallas. This was only a start, she was ambitious, twenty-five and still unmarried. Green eyes with silver spiricles ... red hair ... When he held the car door open her legs were smooth and slender. “I was wondering,” she said, “when you'd get round to it,” and laughed. * Vandergast says he never intended having an affair. And was that what this was? The names that people give to things ... What do definitions and divorce-court proceedings have to do with the breathless reality? O little lamp at the bedside with views of Venice and the Bay of Naples, you understood!Lactona toothbrush and suitcase bought in a hurry, you were the witnesses of the love we made in bed together. Schrafft's Chocolate Cherries, surely you remember when she said she'd be true forever, and, watching “Dark Storm,” we decided there is something to be said, after all, for soap opera, “if it makes people happy.” * The Vandergasts are having some trouble finding a buyer for their house. When I go for a walk with Tippy I pass the unweeded tennis court, the empty garage, windows heavily shuttered. Mrs. Vandergast took the children and went back to her family. And Vandergast moved to New Jersey, where he works for an insurance company whose emblem is the Rock of Gibraltar— the rest of his life laid out with the child-support and alimony payments. As for the girl, she vanished. Was it worth it? Ask Vandergast. You'd have to be Vandergast, looking through his eyes at the house across the street, in Orange, New Jersey. Maybe on wet days umbrellas and raincoats set his heart thudding. Maybe he talks to his pillow, and it whispers, moving red hair. In any case, he will soon be forty.

The Busy-Man's Picture BUSINESS, thou Plague and Pleasure of my Life, Thou charming Mistress, thou vexatious Wife; Thou Enemy, thou Friend, to Joy, to Grief, Thou bring’st me all, and bring’st me no Relief, Thou bitter, sweet, thou pleasing, teazing Thing, Thou Bee, that with thy Honey wears a Sting; Some Respite, prithee do, yet do not give, I cannot with thee, nor without thee live.

here they come these guys grey truck radio playing they are in a hurry it’s quite exciting: shirt open bellies hanging out they run out the trash bins roll them out to the fork lift and then the truck grinds it upward with far too much sound . . . they had to fill out application forms to get these jobs they are paying for homes and drive late model cars they get drunk on Saturday night now in the Los Angeles sunshine they run back and forth with their trash bins all that trash goes somewhere and they shout to each other then they are all up in the truck driving west toward the sea none of them know that I am alive REX DISPOSAL CO.

He finds himself stepping off the bus in some burg he’s already bored with. Picking his teeth for 200 miles—here’s where he spits the toothpick out. Past Holiday Inn the neighborhoods get dark. All-night laundromats where women with circles under their eyes press laundered underwear, warm as bread, against their sinuses. Finally, he’s signing the register at a funeral home where he knows no one, but is mistaken for a long-lost friend of the deceased, for someone who has dislocated his life to make the hazardous journey on a night when the dead man’s own children have avoided him. Once again instinct has taken him where he’s needed; where the unexpected transforms routine into celebration. He kneels before the corpse, striking his forehead against the casket.

I had a calling. I took the call. It was all I could do to follow the voice streaming into me Like traffic on the runway where I lay Down to gather. I had a calling. I heard the geese bleat In the firmament as they migrated Into the jet’s jets. And could I have foreseen that falling I could have fallen too Rather than being sutured to the bottomless Freeze-out lake. For it is fine to lie within one’s borrowed blankets Looking up at the Dropped ceiling coming down. For at the moment I am employed counting the holes In the sound absorbing tiles Keeping a running record of the interlocutor’s Chides. I feel at one with extinction By my own hand (Inner hand) Though once there were many of my kind Flocking inland, or perhaps It felt that way.

Another day come, add it To the list, the Not to do list. Son of mine, I was rambling across the undercarpeting Strewn with imperceptible tacks In one shapeless slip-on When a pain rang out in my flank And I fell to, Braying, But who should answer but no one. I lost good cause that day, don’t ask, Let us sit a bit in this ill-starred Suit in the form-filling Chamber of subtraction, Listing. I haven’t another trip around the sun Left in me. Speak to me Son, vague one. For this is where it thickens, Me here and it there and me there and them here And you with the soul. I’ll cross that gravid boneyard All the day poking Radishes for remembrance. For this is a private matter Between a man and his scaffolding And it shall remain so Privation permitting.

Sir, please accept my resignation As of next month, And, if it seems right, plan on replacing me. I’m leaving much unfinished work, Whether out of laziness or actual problems. I was supposed to tell someone something, But I no longer know what and to whom: I’ve forgotten. I was also supposed to donate something — A wise word, a gift, a kiss; I put it off from one day to the next. I’m sorry. I’ll do it in the short time that remains. I’m afraid I’ve neglected important clients. I was meant to visit Distant cities, islands, desert lands; You’ll have to cut them from the program Or entrust them to my successor. I was supposed to plant trees and I didn’t; To build myself a house, Maybe not beautiful, but based on plans. Mainly, I had in mind A marvelous book, kind sir, Which would have revealed many secrets, Alleviated pains and fears, Eased doubts, given many The gift of tears and laughter. You’ll find its outline in my drawer, Down below, with the unfinished business; I didn’t have the time to write it out, which is a shame, It would have been a fundamental work. Translated from the Italian

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

No more savage art: filleting: a deft pressure along the backbone from tail fan to the red gills: fighting mystery with a honed blade through the small bones: salt and scales on face and hands:: the Greek God, as well, found flesh unmysterious, but in anger and disappointment:— seagull cries, your music, are all about you: Apollonian but hungrier: nature is hungry:: the brave fish dies the birds swoop for the insides in no lovelier spirals.

Is this the world, Miss Bliss? Stacks of ingots on the docks where my brother works? Work and things on the threshold of raw and radiated. Bananas gassed in shacks to ripen by the forklifts. Ships of foreign port. Ships of car parts and dyes. The beef-stripping business. Things, Miss Bliss, and work. Flavors translated from Costa Rica, volatile oils, seized cargoes, incensed loads, cracked coal. After a week the exposed skin around his wrists was blue, vein color, the color of the world. Labor, and the union of the senses to deliver us from our geography. Everywhere is here. When the stevedores break for lunch, one is responsible for the pot-luck of cold meats, the deep dish, leftovers from the wedding, while one is responsible for inviting the office women. These men set the table with the pomp of the late Elizabeth: linen, gilt plates, a taster, and a trumpeted summons. They force the choice bits on each other. They talk about blood and Solomon’s operation. They talk about Lily’s kids and the dead as they come hack to speak to Lonnie in his sleep. And they talk about food they could not eat, the boss, and a dream of playing lead before they switch on the TV with its loud prophecies of soap. They eat deeply in gratitude. The pot scraped with a spoon, that sound. The world’s a word, and a lever. The ghosts at the banquet want something, Miss Bliss. From one world I come to you with two blue wrists, my brother’s rage against the living the world owes, and everything I do that’s duplicate. My cells split. They can’t be true. I smoke. I turn out a little verse. I make a small sacrifice. I throw what cannot be eaten away. I throw it on the ground. Here, some things you can’t eat.