Collected Earlier Poems (2 page)

They entered his hotel room, tomahawks

Flashing like barracuda. He tried to pray.

Three years of treatment. Occasionally he talks

About how he almost didn’t get away.

Daily the prowling sunlight whets its knife

Along the sidewalk. We almost never meet.

In the Rembrandt dark he lifts his amber life.

My bar is somewhat further down the street.

During the plague I came into my own.

It was a time of smoke-pots in the house

Against infection. The blind head of bone

                         Grinned its abuse

Like a good democrat at everyone.

Runes were recited daily, charms were applied.

That was the time I came into my own.

                         Half Europe died.

The symptoms are a fever and dark spots

First on the hands, then on the face and neck,

But even before the body, the mind rots.

                         You can be sick

Only a day with it before you’re dead.

But the most curious part of it is the dance.

The victim goes, in short, out of his head.

                         A sort of trance

Glazes the eyes, and then the muscles take

His will away from him, the legs begin

Their funeral jig, the arms and belly shake

                         Like souls in sin.

Some, caught in these convulsions, have been known

To fall from windows, fracturing the spine.

Others have drowned in streams. The smooth head-stone,

                         The box of pine,

Are not for the likes of these. Moreover, flame

Is powerless against contagion.

That was the black winter when I came

                         Into my own.

A dying firelight slides along the quirt

Of the cast-iron cowboy where he leans

Against my father’s books. The lariat

Whirls into darkness. My girl, in skin-tight jeans,

Fingers a page of Captain Marryat,

Inviting insolent shadows to her shirt.

We rise together to the second floor.

Outside, across the lake, an endless wind

Whips at the headstones of the dead and wails

In the trees for all who have and have not sinned.

She rubs against me and I feel her nails.

Although we are alone, I lock the door.

The eventual shapes of all our formless prayers,

This dark, this cabin of loose imaginings,

Wind, lake, lip, everything awaits

The slow unloosening of her underthings.

And then the noise. Something is dropped. It grates

Against the attic beams.

                                        I climb the stairs,

Armed with a belt.

                         A long magnesium strip

Of moonlight from the dormer cuts a path

Among the shattered skeletons of mice.

A great black presence beats its wings in wrath.

Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.

Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.

It is raining here.

On my neighbor’s fire escape

geraniums are set out

in their brick-clay pots,

along with the mop,

old dishrags, and a cracked

enamel bowl for the dog.

I think of you out there

on the sandy edge of things,

rain strafing the beach,

the white maturity

of bones and broken shells,

and little tin shovels and cars

rusting under the house.

And between us there is—what?

Love and constraint,

conditions, conditions,

and several hundred miles

of billboards, filling-stations,

and little dripping gardens.

The fir tree full of whispers,

trinkets of water,

the bob, duck, and release

of the weighted rose,

life in the freshened stones.

(They used to say that rain

is good for growing boys,

and once I stood out in it

hoping to rise a foot.

The biggest drops fattened

on the gutters under the eaves,

sidled along the slant,

picked up speed, let go,

and met their dooms in a “plock”

beside my gleaming shins.

I must have been near the size

of your older son.)

Yesterday was nice.

I took my boys to the park.

We played Ogre on the grass.

I am, of course, the Ogre,

and invariably get killed.

Merciless and barefooted,

they sneak up from behind

and they let me have it.

O my dear, my dear,

today the rain pummels

the sour geraniums

and darkens the grey pilings

of your house, built upon sand.

And both of us, full grown,

have weathered a long year.

Perhaps your casual glance

will settle from time to time

on the sea’s travelling muscles

that flex and roll their strength

under its rain-pocked skin.

And you’ll see where the salt winds

have blown bare the seaward side

of the berry bushes,

and will notice

the faint, fresh

smell of iodine.

And from America the golden fleece
   
MARLOWE

The room is full of gold.

Is it a chapel? Is that the genuine buzz

Of cherubim, the wingèd goods?

Is it no more than sun that floods

To pool itself at her uncovered breast?

O lights, o numina, behold

How we are gifted. He who never was,

Is, and her fingers bless him and are blessed.

That blessedness is tossed

In a wild, dodging light. Suddenly clear

And poised in heavenly desire

Prophets and eastern saints take fire

And fuse with gold in windows across the way,

And turn to liquid, and are lost.

And now there deepens over lakes of air

A remembered stillness of the seventh day

Borne in on the soft cruise

And sway of birds. Slowly the ancient seas,

Those black, predestined waters rise

Lisping and calm before my eyes,

And Massachusetts rises out of foam

A state of mind in which by twos

All beasts browse among barns and apple trees

As in their earliest peace, and the dove comes home.

Tonight, my dear, when the moon

Settles the radiant dust of every man,

Powders the bedsheets and the floor

With lightness of those gone before,

Sleep then, and dream the story as foretold:

Dream how a little boy alone

With a wooden sword and the top of a garbage can

Triumphs in gardens full of marigold.

for Leonard Baskin

And now. An attempt.

Don’t tense yourself; take it easy
.

Look at the flowers there in the glass bowl
.

Yes, they are lovely and fresh. I remember

Giving my mother flowers once, rather like those

(Are they narcissus or jonquils?)

And I hoped she would show some pleasure in them

But got that mechanical enthusiastic show

She used on the telephone once in praising some friend

For thoughtfulness or good taste or whatever it was,

And when she hung up, turned to us all and said,

“God, what a bore she is!”

I think she was trying to show us how honest she was,

At least with us. But the effect

Was just the opposite, and now I don’t think

She knows what honesty is. “Your mother’s a whore,”

Someone said, not meaning she slept around,

Though perhaps this was part of it, but

Meaning she had lost all sense of honor,

And I think this is true.

But that’s not what I wanted to say.

What was it I wanted to say?

When he said that about Mother, I had to laugh,

I really did, it was so amazingly true.

Where was I?

Lie back. Relax
.

Oh yes. I remember now what it was.

It was what I saw them do to the emperor.

They captured him, you know. Eagles and all.

They stripped him, and made an iron collar for his neck,

And they made a cage out of our captured spears,

And they put him inside, naked and collared,

And exposed to the view of the whole enemy camp.

And I was tied to a post and made to watch

When he was taken out and flogged by one of their generals

And then forced to offer his ripped back

As a mounting block for the barbarian king

To get on his horse;

And one time to get down on all fours to be the royal throne

When the king received our ambassadors

To discuss the question of ransom.

Of course, he didn’t want ransom.

And I was tied to a post and made to watch.

That’s enough for now. Lie back. Try to relax
.

No, that’s not all.

They kept it up for two months.

We were taken to their outmost provinces.

It was always the same, and we were always made to watch,

The others and I. How he stood it, I don’t know.

And then suddenly

There were no more floggings or humiliations,

The king’s personal doctor saw to his back,

He was given decent clothing, and the collar was taken off,

And they treated us all with a special courtesy.

By the time we reached their capital city

His back was completely healed.

They had taken the cage apart—

But of course they didn’t give us back our spears.

Then later that month, it was a warm afternoon in May,

The rest of us were marched out to the central square.

The crowds were there already, and the posts were set up,

To which we were tied in the old watching positions.

And he was brought out in the old way, and stripped,

And then tied flat on a big rectangular table

So that only his head could move.

Then the king made a short speech to the crowds,

To which they responded with gasps of wild excitement,

And which was then translated for the rest of us.

It was the sentence. He was to be flayed alive,

As slowly as possible, to drag out the pain.

And we were made to watch. The king’s personal doctor,

The one who had tended his back,

Came forward with a tray of surgical knives.

They began at the feet.

And we were not allowed to close our eyes

Or to look away. When they were done, hours later,

The skin was turned over to one of their saddle-makers

To be tanned and stuffed and sewn. And for what?

A hideous life-sized doll, filled out with straw,

In the skin of the Roman Emperor, Valerian,

With blanks of mother-of-pearl under the eyelids,

And painted shells that had been prepared beforehand

For the fingernails and toenails,

Roughly cross-stitched on the inseam of the legs

And up the back to the center of the head,

Swung in the wind on a rope from the palace flag-pole;

And young girls were brought there by their mothers

To be told about the male anatomy.

His death had taken hours.

They were very patient.

And with him passed away the honor of Rome.

In the end, I was ransomed. Mother paid for me.

You must rest now. You must. Lean back
.

Look at the flowers
.

Yes. I am looking. I wish I could be like them.

In the manger of course were cows and the Child Himself

                         Was like unto a lamb

Who should come in the fulness of time on an ass’s back

                         Into Jerusalem

And all things be redeemed—the suckling babe

                         Lie safe in the serpent’s home

And the lion eat straw like the ox and roar its love

                         to Mark and to Jerome

And God’s Peaceable Kingdom return among them all

                         Save one full of offense

Into which the thousand fiends of a human soul

                         Were cast and driven hence

And the one thus cured gone up into the hills

                         To worship and to pray:

O Swine that takest away our sins

                         That takest away

for William and Dale MacDonald

                         Given this light,

    The departing thunderhead in its anger

               Off to one side, and given

These ancient stones in their setting, themselves refreshed

               And rendered strangely younger

By wetness alive with the wriggling brass of heaven,

    Where is the spirit’s part unwashed

                         Of all poor spite?

                         The cypress thrust,

    Greened in the glass of air as never

               Since the first greenness offered,

Not to desire our prayer: “To ghostly creatures,

               Peace, and an end of fever

Till all this dust assemble,” but delivered

    To their resistless lives and natures,

                         Rise as they must.