Authors: Edward Hirsch
Because everyone needs a good beer
Especially the guy on the ventilator
And the nurses who work too hard
He said the countryside
Made him feel nervous he wanted
A twenty-four-hour kind of city
He woke me up at two a.m.
To take a walk he needed to talk
Laurie pulled me back into bed
He had flat feet and an awkward gait
He didn’t like to dance he liked
To go to raves and chill with friends
He couldn’t pay attention
But his meds made him feel sleepy
And he sold them to college kids
He liked to kick back and remember
The time we were riding home
In a taxicab on the West Side Highway
And my mother offered to take him
To a strip club for his twenty-first birthday
What’s wrong with that
she wanted to know
Why they couldn’t celebrate together
That’s just what you want
he bellowed
Going for a lap dance with Grandma
He liked to kick back and declare
He wanted to track down his birth mother
To see if he really had Celtic blood
He liked to kick back and tell my family
About the time he saw an American Hasidic
Jewish reggae musician at Hampshire College
He saw Nicholas Cage going up an escalator
In a movie theater and turned to his friends
I hate Nicholas Cage he has such a big head
He liked to kick back and tell us
How much he liked weed and ’shrooms
How bad could it be for you
he said
It comes out of the ground
He liked to kick back and roll a spliff
With his friends at night
He always liked to go higher and higher
We’re here
he’d say lifting his hand
To the middle of his chest
But we need to go here
He continued on
And raised his hand up to his neck
Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poems
After his two youngest children
Died from scarlet fever
Within sixteen days of each other
In 1833 and 1834 he could not cope
And often thought they had gone out
For a while
they’ll be home soon
He told himself to tell his wife
They’re only taking a long walk
Mahler scored five of those poems
In 1901 and 1904 for a vocalist
And an orchestra to break your heart
As soon as I heard the plaintive oboe
And the descending movement of the horn
And the lyric baritone entering
I felt I should not be listening
To Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing
Kindertotenlieder
with the Berlin Philharmonic
Mahler’s wife was superstitious
And thought he was chancing disaster
With
Songs on the Death of Children
Now the sun wants to rise so brightly
As if nothing terrible had happened overnight
The tragedy happened to me alone
Mahler knew he could never have written them
After his four-year-old daughter died
From scarlet fever three years later
He said he felt sorry for himself
That he needed to write these songs
And for the world that would listen to them
Mallarmé was left in fragments
And could not right it
After his adored Anatole
His exquisite second born
His future prospects
A celestial soul
Succumbed to rheumatic fever
Treacherous blow of death
Ridiculous enemy
Ailing in springtime
Mourned in winter
His eight-year-old was lodged
In a little cemetery
Overlooking the Seine
Where skaters glided by at Christmas
And barges froze in the canals
And the moon eclipsed
His future projects
Hugo could speak of his daughter’s death
Hugo was happy to be able to speak
Of his daughter’s death
But it was impossible for Mallarmé
Though year after year
He labored at a tomb for Anatole
Which he could never complete
An immortality made human
An offering to the absolute
With his son
Transposed by death
Mallarmé was left with fragments
He came by my office for cash
Every Monday Wednesday and Friday
I was good for thirty bucks a pop sometimes more
You only drop by when you want your money
I said but he protested
it’s not like that Dad
He didn’t like to think of himself that way
I was usually working at the computer
When he strolled in
Dad you’re the sort of person
Who needs to work a lot
I’m the sort of person
Who needs a lot of down time
He wasn’t doing anything all day long
He just slept in and hung with his friends
And so I tried to convince him to volunteer
For an organization he was contemptuous
He thought volunteering was for stooges
He didn’t like charities either
He told his friends he had once
Attended a six-month training program
In audio production at EWF
He had some skills using Pro Tools
And Reason software he had major skills
In DJing and music production
He told my friends he was going back to school
To finish up his degree in marketing
At the University of Massachusetts
He just needed a few more credits
To collect his diploma
Maybe next summer
From the playbook
Say you get caught lifting eighty bucks
Out of your dad’s wallet or your mom’s purse
Simply deny it deny everything
Never take responsibility for what
You could not possibly have done
The strategy for getting what you want
When you want it is simple
Never take
no
for an answer
Pump up the volume
Remember that
no
is not an option
It is just a temporary setback
He wanted us to buy him a bicycle
So he could deliver specialty donuts and ice cream
Concoctions at night in Hell’s Kitchen
It was a scheme we refused
He found an old girl’s bicycle on the side
Of the street and fixed it up for twenty bucks
Take that parents
He never used the bike because the shop
Didn’t bother to call him back Janet still has it
He was determined to get his own apartment
And certain that epilepsy qualified him
For a free apartment from the city
Otherwise he could move in with Tamar
Her dad would get her an apartment as soon
As she went back to school full time
He was finally accepted for Job Path
He could make some real dough at last
And get an apartment after Labor Day
I stood at the damaged site
Across the street from my house
And watched a steel ball
Crashing into the homeless shelter
Abandoned on Dean Street
All the people scattered
It takes tremendous force
To weaken a building
And turn bricks into rubble
It doesn’t take long
The crane swung around
And pitched the heavy ball
Into the guts of the structure
Holding its side
Like a wounded veteran
The hard hats gathered
To watch the pendulum swing
Into the concrete body
Of a building slated for demolition
So there could be progress
I was against the project
And riveted to the wreckage
Time and again the fighter wavered
And finally collapsed
I did not stay to see the building
Broken down into debris
And then carted away
Some nights I could not tell
If he was the wrecking ball
Or the building it crashed into
It’s the way he roared into the house
And started to rant
Against those he did not like
Rude waiters who charged him extra
For stuff he ordered too much
On a whim his appetite vanished
He did not like certain cousins
Preppies fake bohemians in the Village
Spoiled Amherst students
Mass-holes
Especially bugged him
Social workers he did not like
Men in tight leggings feminists
Do you even know what a feminist is
Laurie asked him he did not
Like hairy-armed lesbians kissing
On the street in Northampton
All right all right that’s enough now
I said it was hard to calm him down
Once he started to rail
Against boy bands or Hasidic Jews
Or boarding schools those hellholes
Models and snobs annoyed him
He didn’t have much use
For bullies or honor students
Don’t be a hater
his friends said
Don’t drink a pitcher of Haterade
But he just laughed
And continued the blast
His parents did not escape his wrath
I wonder if he forgave us
Laurie and I looked around
Jittery and shaken the after-draft
Was like drinking a pot of coffee
And then trying to sleep
It was impossible
To keep track of him at all hours
He spent whatever money he had
Whenever he had it spendthrift gambler
I could never stay mad at him for long
He just shrugged his shoulders
And laughed helplessly
I couldn’t help it I had to Dad
He wasn’t made for a world
Of checkbooks and savings accounts
Stockbrokers investment bankers
Charlie called him
a Clown of God
He wasn’t
a Monster of Subtlety
Like the two of us
He would try anything once he hazarded
He was sometimes scared
He was never scared enough
Of scoundrels and drug dealers
He thought teachers and supervisors
And psychiatrists were the enemy
Policemen riled him he had rights
A lover a posse of friends
No one could restrain him
King of the Sudden Impulse
Lord of the Torrent
Emperor of the Impetuous
He breezed into the office
With his girlfriend and hit me up
For extra money because of the storm
Pounding across the Atlantic Ocean
He was heading to the store to buy food
So they wouldn’t starve to death ha ha
Love you
he coughed and kissed me
See you next week
he was out
The door like a thousand other times
Some people were nervous others festive
When we closed for the day
And told everyone to buy supplies
Is this the apocalypse line
Somebody asked the disorderly crowd
Outside the hardware store on First Avenue
The apocalypse line was getting longer
We should forget about power downtown
The spokesman for Con Ed said
When Hurricane Irene hit North Carolina
And started to churn up the East Coast
The city decided to evacuate
370,000 people from the low-lying areas
Of Manhattan my friends in Zone A
Boarded their windows and stormed out
On the local news I watched some idiots
Sitting on the beach and working
On their tans in Asbury Park
Here comes Irene bearing down on us
It’s time to get out
Of the apocalypse line
He left the house during a rainstorm
Almost impulsively
He rushed out headlong into the night
While everyone else hunkered down
With flashlights and batteries
The city on high alert
The subways closing down
Stay home
the mayor said
And only go out in an emergency
But he left the house during a rainstorm
And never came home
Where was he going in such a hurry
It was almost as if the hurricane
Swept him away in a flood
Swarming over the banks
He left the house
And headed to another town
We had no idea where he had gone
He was a secret
We could not decipher
And no one would help us find him
We called to report him missing
No one would help us find him
For four days and four nights
We tried desperately to track him down
The hurricane carried him away
He rushed out headlong into the night
And I never saw him alive again
Most reckless of reckless angels
Who left the house during a rainstorm
I was at home in Brooklyn
Working on a lyric
About the troubadours
When he left the apartment
On the Upper West Side
Looking for an adventure
I was reading the eleven poems
Of Guilhem IX Duke of Aquitane
The earliest troubadour
When he left his girlfriend
And his mother at home
To meet a friend for a drink
He said he would be home soon
Don’t worry about anything
He texted Tamar
I didn’t know he had gone out
In the rain it was raining steadily
I was at home in Brooklyn working
On a simple poem about nothing
A troubadour song
How nothing came to me
When he took the train to Jersey City
If that’s how he got there
I thought he was at home
While I worked on a song
About nothing
And then went to sleep
Without knowing anything