New and Selected Poems (4 page)

 

•

 

As if I shut my eyes
In order to peek

 

At the world unobserved,
And saw

 

The nameless
In its glory.

 

And knew no way
To speak of it,

 

And did, nevertheless,
And then said something else.

 

•

 

What are you up to, smart-ass?
I turn on my tongue's skewer.

 

What do you baste yourself with?
I cough bile laced with blood.

 

Do you use pepper and salt?
I bite words as they come into my mouth.

 

And how will you know you're done?
My eyes will burn till I see clear.

 

What will you carve yourself with?
I'll let my tongue be the knife.

 

•

 

In the inky forest,
In its maziest,

 

Murkiest scribble
Of words

 

And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse

 

Of the blossomlike
White erasure

 

Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.

 

•

 

I can't say I'm much of a cook,
If my heart is in the fire with the onions.

 

I can't say I'm much of a hero,
If the weight of my head has me pinned down.

 

I can't say I'm in charge here,
If the flies hang their hats in my mouth.

 

I can't say I am the smart one,
If I wait for a star to answer me.

 

Nor can I call myself good-for-nothing.
Thanks to me the worms will have their dinner.

 

•

 

One has to make do.
Make ends meet,

 

Odds and ends.
Make no bones about it.

 

Make a stab in the dark.
Make the hair curl.

 

Make a door-to-nowhere.
Make a megaphone with one's hands,

 

And call and make do
With the silence answering.

 

•

 

Then all's well and white
All day and all night.

 

The highways are snowbound.
The forest paths are hushed.

 

The power lines have fallen.
The windows are dark.

 

Nothing but starlight
And the snow's dim light

 

And the wind wildly
Preaching in the pine tree.

 

•

 

In an unknown year
Of an evil-eyed century,

 

On a day of biting wind,
A tiny old woman,

 

One foot in the grave,
Met a boy playing hooky.

 

She offered him a sugar cube
In a hand so wizened

 

His tongue leapt back in fear
Saying thanks.

 

•

 

Do you take this line
Stretching to infinity?

 

I take this white paper
Lying still before me.

 

Do you take this ring
Of unknown circumference?

 

I take this breath
Slipping in and out of it.

 

Then you may kiss the place
Where your pencil went faint.

 

•

 

Had to get through me
On its long, long trek

 

To and from nowhere.
Woe to every heartbeat

 

That stood in its way,
Woe to every thought . . .

 

Time's white ants hurrying,
The rustle of their feet.

 

Gravedigger ants.
Village idiot ants.

 

•

 

I haven't budged from the start.
Five fingers crumpled up

 

Over the blank page
As if composing a love letter,

 

Do you hear the white night
Touching down?

 

I hear its ear trumpets,
The holy escutcheons

 

Turning golden
In the dying light.

 

•

 

Psst. The white hair
Fallen from my head

 

On the writing paper
Momentarily anonymous.

 

I had to bend down low
And put my eye next to it

 

To make sure,
Then nudge it, ever so slowly

 

With the long tip of my pencil
Over the edge of the table.

Because I'm nothing you can name,
I knew you long before you knew me.
Some days you keep your hand closed
As if you've caught me,
But it's only a fly you've got there.
No use calling on angels and devils
In the middle of the night.
Go ahead, squint into the dregs on the bottom
Of your coffee cup, for all I care.
I do not answer to your hocus-pocus,
For I'm nearer to you than your own breath.
One sun shines on us both
Through the slit in your eyelids.
Your empty hand shows me off
To the four white walls of your room,

While with my horse's tail I wave the fly away,
But there's no tail, and the fly
Is a white thought buzzing in your head.

 

Because I'm nothing you'll ever name,
You sharpen your tongue hoping to skewer me.
The ear that rose in the night
To hear the truth inside the word
love
.
Listen to this, my beloved,
I'm the great nothing that tucked you in,
The finger placed softly on your lips
That made you sit up in bed wide awake.
Still, this riddle comes with no answer.
The same mother left us on your doorstep.
The same high ceiling made us insomniac.
Late-night piano picking out blue notes
In the empty ballroom down the hall,
We've fallen in the gaps between the notes.
And still you want me to say more?
Time has stopped. Your shadow,
With its gallowslike head and neck,
Has not stirred on the wall.

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.

 

Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door

Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

 

A glass of ice water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

 

And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.

It occurs to me now
that all these years
I have been
the idiot pupil
of a practical joker.

 

Diligently
and with foolish reverence
I wrote down
what I took to be
his wise pronouncements
concerning
my life on earth.
Like a parrot
I rattled off the dates
of wars and revolutions.

I rejoiced
at the death of my tormentors.
I even became convinced
that their number
was diminishing.

 

It seemed to me
that gradually
my teacher was revealing to me
a pattern,
that what I was being told
was an intricate plot
of a picaresque novel
in installments,
the last pages of which
would be given over
entirely
to lyrical evocations
of nature.

 

Unfortunately,
with time,
I began to detect in myself
an inability
to forget even
the most trivial detail.
I lingered more and more
over the beginnings:
The haircut of a soldier
who was urinating
against our fence;
shadows of trees on the ceiling,
the day
my mother and I

had nothing to eat . . .
Somehow,
I couldn't get past
that prison train
that kept waking me up
every night.
I couldn't get that whistle
that rumble
out of my head . . .

 

In this classroom
austerely furnished
by my insomnia,
at the desk consisting
of my two knees,
for the first time
in this long and terrifying
apprenticeship,
I burst out laughing.
Forgive me, all of you!
At the memory of my uncle
charging a barricade
with a homemade bomb,
I burst out laughing.

So many crutches. Now even the daylight
Needs one, even the smoke
As it goes up. And the shacks—
One per customer—they move off
In a single file with difficulty,

 

I said, with a hell of an effort . . .
And the trees behind them about to stumble,
And the ants on their toy crutches,
And the wind on its ghost crutch.

 

I can't get any peace around here:
The bread on its artificial legs,
A headless doll in a wheelchair,
And my mother, mind you, using
Two knives for crutches as she squats to pee.

They ask for a knife
I come running
They need a lamb
I introduce myself as the lamb

 

A thousand sincere apologies
It seems they require some rat poison
They require a shepherd
For their flock of black widows

 

Luckily I've brought my bloody
Letters of recommendation
I've brought my death certificate
Signed and notarized

 

But they've changed their minds again
Now they want a songbird, a bit of springtime
They want a woman
To soap and kiss their balls

 

It's one of my many talents
(I assure them)
Chirping and whistling like an aviary
Spreading the cheeks of my ass

A bear who eats with a silver spoon.
Two apes adept at grave-digging.
Rats who do calculus.
A police dog who copulates with a woman,
Who takes undertaker's measurements.

 

A bedbug who suffers, who has doubts
About his existence. The miraculous
Laughing dove. A thousand-year-old turtle
Playing billiards. A chicken who
Cuts his own throat, who bleeds.

 

The trainer with his sugar cubes,
With his chair and whip. The evenings
When they all huddle in a cage,
Smoking cheap cigars, lazily
Marking the cards in the new deck.

With only his dim lantern
To tell him where he is
And every time a mountain
Of fresh corpses to load up

 

Take them to the other side
Where there are plenty more
I'd say by now he must be confused
As to which side is which

 

I'd say it doesn't matter
No one complains he's got
Their pockets to go through
In one a crust of bread in another a sausage

 

Once in a long while a mirror
Or a book which he throws
Overboard into the dark river
Swift and cold and deep

so that's what it's like to be a wheel
so that's what it's like to be tied to one of its spokes
while the rim screeches while the axle grinds
so that's what it's like to have the earth and heaven confused
to speak of the stars on the road
of stones churning in the icy sky
to suffer as the wheel suffers
to bear its unimaginable weight

 

if only it were a honing wheel
I would have its sparks to see by
if only it were a millstone
I would have bread to keep my mouth busy
if only it were a roulette wheel
my left eye would watch its right dance in it

 

so that's what it's like
to be chained to the wounded rib of a wheel
to move as the hearse moves
to move as the lumber truck moves
down the mountains at night

 

•

 

what do you think my love
while the wheel turns

 

I think of the horse out in front
how the snowflakes are caught in his mane
how he shakes his beautiful blindfolded head
I think how in the springtime
two birds are pulling us along as they fly
how one bird is a crow