Your Name Here: Poems (4 page)

increasingly, I also grew more charitable

with regard to my thoughts and ideas,

thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.

Then a great devouring cloud

came and loitered on the horizon, drinking

it up, for what seemed like months or years.

Out on the terrace the projector had begun

making a shuttling sound like that of land crabs.

On Thursdays, Miss Marple burped, picking up her knitting

again, it’s always Boston Blackie or the Saint—

the one who was a detective

who came from far across the sea

to rescue the likes of you and me

from a horde of ill-favored seducers.

Well, let’s get on with it

since we must. Work, it’s true

suctions off the joy. Autumn’s density moves down

though no one in his right mind would wish for spring—

winter’s match is enough. The widening spaces

between the days.

I sip the sap of fools.

Another time I found some pretty rags

in the downtown district. They’d make nice slipcovers,

my wife thought, if they could be cleaned up.

I don’t hold with that.

Why not leave everything exposed, out in the cold

till the next great drought of this century?

I say it mills me down,

and everything is hand selected here: the cheeses,

oranges wrapped in pale blue tissue paper

with the oak-leaf pattern, letting their tint through

as it was meant to be, not according to the calculations

of some wounded genius, before he limped off

to the woods.

The stair of autumn is to climb

backward perhaps, into a cab.

Dewey took Manila

and soon after invented the decimal system

that keeps libraries from collapsing even unto this day.

A lot of mothers immediately started naming their male offspring “Dewey,”

which made him queasy. He was already having second thoughts about imperialism.

In his dreams he saw library books with milky numbers

on their spines floating in Manila Bay

Soon even words like “vanilla” or “mantilla” would cause him to vomit.

The sight of a manila envelope precipitated him

into his study, where all day, with the blinds drawn,

he would press fingers against temples, muttering “What have I done?”

all the while. Then, gradually, he began feeling a bit better.

The world hadn’t ended. He’d go for walks in his old neighborhood,

marveling at the changes there, or at the lack of them. “If one is

to go down in history, it is better to do so for two things

rather than one,” he would stammer, none too meaningfully.

One day his wife took him aside

in her boudoir, pulling the black lace mantilla from her head

and across her bare breasts until his head was entangled in it.

“Honey, what am I supposed to say?” “Say nothing, you big boob.

Just be glad you got away with it and are famous.” “Speaking of

boobs ...” “Now you’re getting the idea. Go file those books

on those shelves over there. Come back only when you’re finished.”

To this day schoolchildren wonder about his latter career

as a happy pedant, always nice with children, thoughtful

toward their parents. He wore a gray ceramic suit

walking his dog, a “bouledogue,” he would point out.

People would peer at him from behind shutters, watchfully,

hoping no new calamities would break out, or indeed

that nothing more would happen, ever, that history had ended.

Yet it hadn’t, as the admiral himself

would have been the first to acknowledge.

Once after school, hobbling from place to place,

I remember you liked the dry kind of cookies

with only a little sugar to flavor them.

I remember that you liked Wheatena.

You were the only person I knew who did.

Don’t you remember how we used to fish for kelp?

Got to the town with the relaxed, suburban name,

remembering how trees were green there,

greener than a sudden embarrassed lawn in April.

How we would like to live there,

and not in a different life, either. We sweltered

along in our union suits, past signs marked “Answer”

and “Repent,” and tried both, and other things.

Then—surprise! Velvet daylight

came along to back us up, providing the courage

that was always ours, had we but

known how to access it downstairs.

We used to crawl to so many events together: a symphony

of hogs in a lilac tree, and other, possibly more splendid,

things until the eyelid withdrew.

Now I can sample your shorts.

So much more is there for us now—

runnels that threaten to drown the indifferent one

who slicks his toe in them.

Much, much more light.

To whose office shall we go tomorrow?

I’d like to hear the new recording of clavier

variations. Oh, help us someone!

Put out the night and the fire, whose backdraft

is even now humming her old song of antipathies.

Disturbing news emanates from the wind tunnel:

He’s gone, who never lacked for champions,

killed by daylight saving time, or a terrible syllabus accident.

The dead leaves, maple or aspen, are a sign of life.

Let’s leave things as they are,

drying in the sun, soaking up the sweetness

that’s in everything.

This is what taking chances was all about, and look where it’s led us!

To the root, it seems of human misery.

Misery, get up, get down. Your hair is a mess

and your dress a fright. Yet your curdled armpits

speak to us. Sometimes it’s better to have nothing to say

when you are telling about what happened today.

It was so much, after all, that morbid agenda.

Now, why not investigate the way

all this can end up being pretty? Not just the whore

who waits on the corner till the last sliver of taxi is gone,

to be repackaged next night in a department store window

so you can pretend you bought it? I’m up here, Louise,

we’re all up here, waiting for you to step up to home plate

and bat us a cool one. Oh, but

I was supposed to be in the station an hour ago.

That’s the way it gets illustrated:

the four of you in Cincinnati, waving across the plain

to us, the lemon in hot pursuit, leading to student unrest.

We don’t have to worry about that now—

tomorrow or the day after will be just as good.

The fraternity has already waited an eternity. Only coaxing the stars

out could produce the fruit you need to have in your stocking or shorts.

Then this scene too faded away like a fable.

Coldly, we put away the cabin flatware.

Tomorrow, a transport strike. Damaged vacations will result.

What the fuck, we’re already in one and have somehow

got to make it what with the living, you know,

the sport and recreation around. Pious reflexes too.

So now about the apple? You know, what about it?

Vague chintzes all around, her hair caught in the door.

It seemed time when the bus came for Jacques in Vienna

that the other Boston terriers would be having their day too,

but no such luck—the sapphire eyes of one, confused,

were just about it. You could go away, too.

A poseur held up a scroll which, predictably, cascaded to the floor.

Something about an annual charity bazaar. We’d forgotten

it again, in the garden, this year. Why must things emerge

before you’ve finished wisecracking about them. What

does it all mean? In what rut were you born? I’ve got to

fix the baby’s things. I’m on my way to the garret. Don’t come.

I assure you everything is under control. It’s of no importance.

Stop it. I said it’s not that important. What’s not important?

What couldn’t be under the blue sails dripping

as they develop, develop their theories about us,

haunting the ether with memories of clay? We haven’t a stitch

to wear. Rumson’s is having a sale. I thought I’d

got out of that one. Oh no? A car is having its way with her,

carrying us down to the beach, against our will, as if by magic.

The chorus of foresters raises their muskets in a silent

gesture of solidarity with the departed. There, I thought

I’d finish this story before making another mistake and now it’s

happening. Oh, dear! Grace, fetch some ketchup, will you?

Now, there it’s all better. As I was saying ...

Strangers salute you in the street,

brave marquis of many years. What are thy wishes?

A shore dinner would be nice, perhaps on the boat launch

where we could feel for mussels afterwards. I like that,

reminds me of an encyclopedia I once read in an afternoon.

Oh yes, well, there were always a lot of stories

about how you played and who won. Nobody set much

store by any of them, but now you two men are like bricks

in a chimney, nobody is going to separate you or carry you off

or stand by you much longer, once the office closes.

Did it? It’s five o’clock and there are no roses ...

I thought I’d followed that street to the end

but it was only the end of the beginning, the rest was transparent

and needle-pure. “Best have a look at it.” The sun goes down

with a plop in these parts, like an egg falling on a counter,

and who is there to count the endless waterfowl, water ouzels,

beavers with otters on their backs? I’ll take that chessboard.

I mean I want it back now. But the tanks

rolling in the city hinted at another scenario,

another worst-case one. Listen to the pretty snowflakes.

Oh, I love you so much in such a little time.

It seems a shame we have to go on living. I mean,

we could get more loving into it. I’m not quitting.

I mean, I am but I’m not a quitter.

Whoever said you were? Climb up that cello and try to get some rest.

In the morning I’ve got to see the accountant.

So it goes, in the old country as well as in the new.

Pelicans startle us, then some reason for living gapes

in the wall of a building that once housed a bookstore

and is now for sale. The unlikeliest bidders come and go,

pandering to the lower orders shall I say

and the unguents who made all this possible. Let’s give them a hand ...

Hey, you don’t think there’s any more

over the horizon? I’m not sure I could stand it if there was,

I mean their faces. Oh, they’ll all be home for Christmas

sometime, I’m sure. Why don’t you take a little trip

to an aching village? You look tired. Are you OK?

It was just my brother calling from Wichita. He says the downtown’s on fire.

Well if I was you I wouldn’t go there.

No, I have no intention of doing so.

Now, about those missing “fish” cards, did your nanny

take it into her head to “hide” them in her workbasket

or did Sheila abscond with them?

I’m not saying the boys isn’t responsible.

It was two of them to one of us in one box.

After the team finished cheering the fridge opened by itself, violently,

as one thinks of spring tempests tearing into trees,

mindless of viaducts below. People are wearing hound’s-tooth more.

That’s one way you can sense the change

in the average person’s deportment. I’m trying to unpack

these worthless drachmas so as to get the twins off to school,

Hey, some of those could turn out to be valuable.

Says who, and besides it’s raining in the next street and all around town.

Finny creatures lurch by. We must try frying the endive

next time. In the meantime my noggin will sport a red golfing cap

in case there’s anyone around to see, which at this hour is unlikely,

I admit, but I intend to have the old niblicks at the ready

just in case, and it’s sure foul out. Don’t jolt that.

It pertains to me. It’s a stuffed raven given to my great-grandfather by

Edgar Allan Poe himself. Said he was finished with it. It had cost him a poem,

though, a great one. Want to hear ...