New and Selected Poems (17 page)

 

The priest with a flycatcher
On the altar of a church.
The child left as a baby in a shoebox
Now having a haircut in a barbershop.

 

The Emperor and his three-legged dog
Peeking in through the open door.

 

•

 

Make us see what you see in your head,
Emperor.

 

I see toy soldiers under everyone's feet.
I see a house of cards about to fall.
I see a parrot in a cage admiring himself in a mirror.
I see a tall ladder meant to reach the moon
      teeming with demons and men.

 

 

 

VIII

 

Who put canned laughter
Into my crucifixion scene?

In India I was greatly taken up
With a fly in a temple
Which gave me the distinct feeling,
It was possible, just possible,
That we had met before.

 

Was it in Mexico City?
Climbing the blood-spotted, yellow legs
Of the crucified Christ
While his eyes grew larger and larger.
“May God seat you on the highest throne
Of his invisible Kingdom,”
A blind beggar said to me in English.
He knew what I saw.

 

At the saloon where Pancho Villa
Fired his revolvers at the ceiling,
On the bare ass of a naked nymph
Stepping out of a lake in a painting,
And now shamelessly crawling up
One of Buddha's nostrils,
Whose smile got even more secretive,
Even more squint-eyed.

Bumble Bee, Soldier Bug, Mormon Cricket,
They are all there somewhere
Behind Joe's Garage, in the tall weeds
By the snake handler's church,
On the fringe of a beaver pond.

 

Painted Beauty is barefoot and wears shades.
Clouded Wood Nymph has been sightseeing
And has caught a shiver. Book louse
Is reading a book about the battle of Gettysburg.
Chinese Mantid has climbed a leaf to pray.

 

Hermit Beetle and Rat Flea are feeling amorous
And are going to the drive-in movie.
Widow Dragonfly doing splits in the yard
Could use some serious talking to by her children
Before she comes to a tragic end.

Evening sunlight,
Your humble servant
Seeks initiation
Into your occult ways.

 

Out of the late-summer sky,
Its deepening quiet,
You brought me a summons,
A small share in some large
And obscure knowledge.

 

Tell me something of your study
Of lengthening shadows,
The blazing windowpanes
Where the soul is turned into light—
Or don't just now.

 

You have the air of someone
Who prefers to dwell in solitude,
The one who enters, with gravity
Of mien and imposing severity,
A room suddenly rich in enigmas.

 

O supreme unknowable,
The seemingly inviolable reserve
Of your stratagems
Makes me quake at the thought
Of you finding me thus

 

Seated in a shadowy back room
At the edge of a village
Bloodied by the setting sun,
To tell me so much,
To tell me absolutely nothing.

That's the one the butcher
Wraps in a newspaper
And throws on the rusty scale
Before you take it home

 

Where a black cat will leap
Off the cold stove
Licking its whiskers
At the sound of her name.

The pages of all the books are blank.
The late-night readers at the town library
Make no complaints about that.
They lift their heads solely
To consult the sign commanding silence,
Before they lick their finger,
Look sly, appear to be dozing off,
As they pinch the corner of the paper
Ever so carefully,
While turning the heavy page.

 

In the yellow puddle of light,
Under the lamp with green shade,
The star charts are all white
In the big astronomy atlas
Lying open between my bare arms.
At the checkout desk, the young Betelgeuse
Is painting her lips red
Using my sweating forehead as a mirror.
Her roving tongue
Is a long-tailed comet in the night sky.

Befriending an eccentric young woman
The sole resident of a secluded Victorian mansion.
She takes long walks in the evening rain,
And so do I, with my hair full of dead leaves.

 

In her former life, she was an opera singer.
She remembers the rich Neapolitan pastries,
Points to a bit of fresh whipped cream
Still left in the corner of her lower lip,
Tells me she dragged a wooden cross once
Through a leper town somewhere in India.

 

I was born in Copenhagen, I confide in turn.
My father was a successful mortician.
My mother never lifted her nose out of a book.
Arthur Schopenhauer ruined our happy home.
Since then, a day doesn't go by without me
Sticking a loaded revolver inside my mouth.

 

She had walked ahead of me and had turned
Like a lion tamer, towering with a whip in hand.
Luckily, in that moment, the mummy sped by
On a bicycle carrying someone's pizza order
And cursing the mist and the potholes.

He was kneeling down to tie his shoes, which she mistook for a proposal of marriage.
—Arise, arise, sweet man, she said with tears glistening in her eyes while people hurried past them as if stung by bees.
—We shall spend the day riding in a balloon, she announced happily.
—My ears will pop, he objected.
—We'll throw our clothes overboard as we rise higher and higher.
—My cigar that may sputter and cause fireworks.
—Don't worry, my love—she hugged him—even where the clouds are darkest, I have a secret getaway.

The season of lurid wildflowers
Sprawled shamelessly over the meadows,
Drunk with necking and kissing
Every hot breeze that comes along.

 

A small stream opens its legs
In the half-undressed orchard
Teeming with foulmouthed birds
And swarms of smutty fruit flies

 

In scandalous view of a hilltop
Wrapped in pink clouds of debauchery.
The sun peeking between them,
Now and then like a whoremaster.

I never gave them a thought. Years had gone by.
Many years. I had plenty of other things
To worry about. Today I was in the dentist's chair
When his new assistant walked in
Pretending not to recognize me in the slightest
As I opened my mouth most obediently.

 

We were necking in some bushes by the riverbank,
And I wanted her to slip off her bra.
The sky was darkening, there was thunder
When she finally did, so that the first large
Raindrop wet one of her brown nipples.

 

That was nicer than what she did to my mouth now,
While I winced, while I waited for a wink,
A burst of laughter at the memory of the two of us
Buttoning ourselves, running drenched
Past the state prison with its armed guards
Silhouetted in their towers against the sky.

My shadow and your shadow on the wall
Caught with arms raised
In display of exaggerated alarm,
Now that even a whisper, even a breath
Will upset the remaining straws
Still standing on the table

 

In the circle of yellow lamplight,
These few roof beams and columns
Of what could be a Mogul Emperor's palace.
The Prince chews his long nails,
The Princess lowers her green eyelids.
They both smoke too much,
Never go to bed before daybreak.

The teacher sits with eyes closed.
When you play chess alone it's always your move.
I'm in the last row with a firefly in the palm of my hand.
The girl with red braids, who saw the girl with red braids?

 

•

 

Do you believe in something truer than truth?
Do you prick your ears even when you know damn well no one is coming?
Does that explain the lines on your forehead?
Your invisible friend, what happened to her?

 

•

 

The rushing wind slides to a stop to listen.
The prisoner opens the thick dictionary lying on his knees.
The floor is cold and his feet are bare.
A chew toy of the gods, is that him?

 

Do you stare and stare at every black windowpane
As if it were a photo of your unsmiling parents?
Are you homesick for the house of cards?
The sad late-night cough, is it yours?

for E. D.

 

Bride of Awe, all that's left for us
Are vestiges of a feast table,
Levitating champagne glasses
In the hands of the erased millions.

 

Mr. So-and-So, the bridegroom
Of absent looks, lost looks,
The pale reporter from the awful doors
Before our identity was leased.

 

At night's delicious close,
A few avatars of mystery still about,
The spider at his trade,
The print of his vermilion foot on my hand.

 

A faded woman in sallow dress
Gravely smudged, her shadow on the wall
Becoming visible, a wintry shadow
Quieter than sleep.

 

Soul, take thy risk.
There where your words and thoughts
Come to a stop,
Encipher me thus, in marriage.

They dish out the usual excuses to one another:
Don't forget, darling, we saw it coming.
The new rationality inspired by geometry
Was going to do us in eventually. Being immortal
Was not worth the price we paid in ridicule.

 

I feel like I've been wearing a cowbell
Around my neck for two thousand years,
Says one with a shoulder-length blond wig
Raising a champagne glass to her lips
And acknowledging me at the next table,

 

While at her elbow, next to a napkin
Bloodied by her lipstick, I saw a fly crawling
Out of her overflowing ashtray
Like some poor Trojan or Greek soldier
Who's had enough of wars and their poets.

You are the Lord of the maimed,
The one bled and crucified
In a cellar of some prison
Over which the day is breaking.

 

You inspect the latest refinements
Of cruelty. You may even kneel
Down in wonder. They know
Their business, these grim fellows

 

Whose wives and mothers rise
For the early Mass. You, yourself,
Must hurry back through the snow
Before they find your rightful

 

Place on the cross vacated,
The few candles burning higher
In your terrifying absence
Under the darkly magnified dome.

Whose demon are you,
Whose god? I asked
Of the painted mouth
Half buried in the sand.

 

A brooding gull
Made a brief assessment,
And tiptoed away
Nodding to himself.

 

At dusk a firefly or two
Dowsed its eye pits.
And later, toward midnight,
I even heard mice.

With the wind gusting so wildly,
So unpredictably,
I'm willing to bet one or two ants
May have tumbled on their backs
As we sit here on the porch.

 

Their feet are pedaling
Imaginary bicycles.
It's a battle of wits against
Various physical laws,
Plus Fate, plus—
So-what-else-is-new?

 

Wondering if anyone's coming to their aid
Bringing cake crumbs,
Miniature editions of the Bible,
A lost thread or two
Cleverly tied end to end.