The Trouble with Poetry (3 page)

But we are not like these others,

for at this very moment on the face of the earth,

we are standing under a hot shower,

or we are eating our breakfast,

considered by people of all zones

to be the most important meal of the day.

Later, when the time is right,

we might sit down with the boss,

wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table,

but now is the hour for pouring the juice

and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster.

So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam,

lift our brimming spoons of milk,

and leave it to the others to lower a flag

or spin absurdly in a barber’s chair—

those antipodal oddballs, always early or late.

Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming,

the Canadian genius who first scored

with these lines the length of the spinning earth.

Let us move together through the rest of this day

passing in unison from light to shadow,

coasting over the crest of noon

into the valley of the evening

and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night.

In the morning I ate a banana

like a young ape

and worked on a poem called “Nocturne.”

In the afternoon I opened the mail

with a short kitchen knife,

and when dusk began to fall

I took off my clothes,

put on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo”

and soaked in a claw-footed bathtub.

I closed my eyes and thought

about the alphabet,

the letters filing out of the halls of kindergarten

to become literature.

If the British call
z
zed,

I wondered, why not call
b
bed and
d
dead?

And why does
z
, which looks like

the fastest letter, come at the very end?

unless they are all moving east

when we are facing north in our chairs.

It was then that I heard

a clap of thunder and the dog’s bark,

and the claw-footed bathtub

took one step forward,

or was it backward

I had to ask

as I turned

to reach for a faraway towel.

What scene would I rather be enveloped in

than this one,

an ordinary night at the kitchen table,

at ease in a box of floral wallpaper,

white cabinets full of glass,

the telephone silent,

a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think

about the leaves gathering in corners,

lichen greening the high gray rocks,

and the world sailing on beyond the dunes—

huge, oceangoing, history bubbling in its wake.

Outside of this room

there is nothing that I need,

not a job that would allow me to row to work,

or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4

with cracked green leather seats.

No, it is all right here,

the clear ovals of a glass of water,

a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,

an odd snarling fish in a frame on the wall,

and these three candles,

each a different height, singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me

if I lower my head and listen

to the short bass candle as he takes a solo

while my heart

thrums under my shirt—

frog at the edge of a pond—

and my thoughts fly off to a province

composed of one enormous sky

and about a million empty branches.

Some like the mountains, some like the seashore,

Jean-Paul Belmondo says

to the camera in the opening scene.

Some like to sleep face up,

some like to sleep on their stomachs,

I am thinking here in bed—

some take the shape of murder victims

flat on their backs all night,

others float face down on the dark waters.

Then there are those like me

who prefer to sleep on their sides,

knees brought up to the chest,

head resting on a crooked arm

and a soft fist touching the chin,

which is the way I would like to be buried,

curled up in a coffin

in a fresh pair of cotton pajamas,

a down pillow under my weighty head.

After a lifetime of watchfulness

and nervous vigilance,

I will be more than ready for sleep,

so never mind the dark suit,

the ridiculous tie

and the pale limp hands crossed on the chest.

Lower me down in my slumber,

tucked into myself

like the oldest fetus on earth,

and while cows look over the stone wall

of the cemetery, let me rest here

in my earthy little bedroom,

my lashes glazed with ice,

the roots of trees inching nearer,

and no dreams to frighten me anymore.

The heads of roses begin to droop.

The bee who has been hauling his gold

all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

In the sky, traces of clouds,

the last few darting birds,

watercolors on the horizon.

The white cat sits facing a wall.

The horse in the field is asleep on its feet.

I light a candle on the wood table.

I take another sip of wine.

I pick up an onion and a knife.

And the past and the future?

Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

I liked listening to you today at lunch

as you talked about the dead,

the lucky dead you called them,

citing their freedom from rent and furniture,

no need for doorknobs, snow shovels,

or windows and a field beyond,

no more railway ticket in an inside pocket,

no more railway, no more tickets, no more pockets.

No more bee chasing you around the garden,

no more you chasing your hat around a corner,

no bright moon on the glimmering water,

no cool breast felt beneath an open robe.

More like an empty zone that souls traverse,

a vaporous place

at the end of a dark tunnel,

a region of silence except for

the occasional beating of wings—

and, I wanted to add

as the sun dazzled your lifted wineglass,

the sound of the newcomers weeping.

It has been calculated that each copy of the

Gutenburg Bible … required the skins of 300 sheep
.

—from an article on printing

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen

behind the stone building

where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around

to find a little room

and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible

to count them,

and there is no telling

which one will carry the news

that the Lord is a shepherd,

one of the few things they already know.

Alone in the basement,

I would sometimes lower one eye

to the level of the narrow train track

to watch the puffing locomotive

pull the cars around a curve

then bear down on me with its dazzling eye.

What was in those moments

before I lifted my head and let the train

go rocking by under my nose?

I remember not caring much

about the fake grass or the buildings

that made up the miniature town.

The same went for the station and its master,

the crossing gates and flashing lights,

the milk car, the pencil-size logs,

the metallic men and women,

the dangling water tower,

and the round mirror for a pond.

All I wanted was to be blinded

over and over by this shaking light

as the train stuck fast to its oval course.

Or better still, to close my eyes,

to stay there on the cold narrow rails

and let the train tunnel through me

the way it tunneled through the mountain

painted the color of rock,

and then there would be nothing

but the long whistling through the dark—

no basement, no boy,

no everlasting summer afternoon.

How suddenly the private

is revealed in a bombed-out city,

how the blue and white striped wallpaper

of a second story bedroom is now

exposed to the lightly falling snow

as if the room had answered the explosion

wearing only its striped pajamas.

Some neighbors and soldiers

poke around in the rubble below

and stare up at the hanging staircase,

the portrait of a grandfather,

a door dangling from a single hinge.

And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed

by its uncovered ochre walls,

the twisted mess of its plumbing,

the sink sinking to its knees,

the ripped shower curtain,

the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

It’s like a dollhouse view

as if a child on its knees could reach in

and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

Or it might be a room on a stage

in a play with no characters,

no dialogue or audience,

no beginning, middle and end—

just the broken furniture in the street,

a shoe among the cinder blocks,

a light snow still falling

on a distant steeple, and people

crossing a bridge that still stands.

And beyond that—crows in a tree,

the statue of a leader on a horse,

and clouds that look like smoke,

and even farther on, in another country

on a blanket under a shade tree,

a man pouring wine into two glasses

and a woman sliding out

the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper

filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

I had to send away for them

because they are not available in any store.

They look the same as any sunglasses

with a light tint and silvery frames,

but instead of filtering out the harmful

rays of the sun,

they filter out the harmful sight of you—

you on the approach,

you waiting at my bus stop,

you, face in the evening window.

Every morning I put them on

and step out the side door

whistling a melody of thanks to my nose

and my ears for holding them in place, just so,

singing a song of gratitude

to the lens grinder at his heavy bench

and to the very lenses themselves

because they allow it all to come in, all but you.

How they know the difference

between the green hedges, the stone walls,

and you is beyond me,

yet the schoolbuses flashing in the rain

do come in, as well as the postman waving

and the mother and daughter dogs next door,

and then there is the tea kettle

about to play its chord—

everything sailing right in but you, girl.

Yes, just as the night air passes through the screen,

but not the mosquito,

and as water swirls down the drain,

but not the eggshell,

so the flowering trellis and the moon

pass through my special glasses, but not you.

Let us keep it this way, I say to myself,

as I lay my special glasses on the night table,

pull the chain on the lamp,

and say a prayer—unlike the song—

that I will not see you in my dreams.