New and Selected Poems (7 page)

 

When she crosses them on the sofa
It's like the jailer unwrapping a parcel
And in that parcel is a Christmas cake
And in that cake a sweet little file
That gasps her name as it files my chains.

Just as the world was ending
We fell in love,
Immoderately. I had a pair of

 

Blue pinstripe trousers
Impeccably pressed
Against misfortune;

 

You had a pair of silver,
Spiked-heeled shoes,
And a peekaboo blouse.

 

We looked swank kissing
While reflected in a pawnshop window:
Banjos and fiddles around us,

 

Even a gleaming tuba. I said,
Two phosphorescent minute hands
Against the Unmeasurables,

 

Geniuses when it came to
Undressing each other
By slow tantalizing degrees . . .

 

That happened in a crepuscular hotel
That had seen better days,
Across from some sort of august state institution,

 

Rain-blurred
With its couple of fake
Egyptian stone lions.

A rat came on stage
During the performance
Of the school Christmas play.
Mary let out a scream
And dropped the infant
On Joseph's foot.
The three Magi remained
Frozen
In their colorful robes.
You could hear a pin drop
As the rat surveyed the manger
Momentarily
Before proceeding to the wings
Where someone hit him,
In earnest,
Once, and then twice more,
With a heavy object.

On a gray evening
Of a gray century,
I ate an apple
While no one was looking.

 

A small, sour apple
The color of wood fire
Which I first wiped
On my sleeve.

 

Then I stretched my legs
As far as they'd go,
Said to myself
Why not close my eyes now

 

Before the late
World News and Weather.

for Mark and Jules

 

Are these mellifluous sheep,
And these the meadows made twice melliferous by their
      bleating?
Is that the famous mechanical windup shepherd
Who comes with instructions and service manual?

 

This must be the regulation white fleece
Bleached and starched to perfection,
And we could be posing for our first communion pictures,
Except for the nasty horns.

 

I am beginning to think this might be
The Angelic Breeders Association's
Millennial Company Picnic (all expenses paid)
With a few large black dogs as special guests.

 

These dogs serve as ushers and usherettes.
They're always studying the rules,
The exigencies of proper deportment
When they're not reading Theocritus,

 

Or wagging their tails at the approach of
Theodora. Or is it Theodosius? Or even Theodoric?
They're theomorfic, of course. They theologize.
Theogony is their favorite. They also love theomachy.

 

Now they hand out the blue ribbons.
Ah, there's one for everyone!
Plus the cauldrons of stinking cabbage and boiled turnips
Which don't figure in this idyll.

Just so that each stark,
Spiked twig,
May be even more fierce
With significance,

 

There are these birds
As further harbingers
Of the coming wintry reduction
To sign and enigma:

 

The impatient way
In which they shook snow
Off their wings,
And then remained, inexplicably

 

Thus, wings half-open,
Making two large algebraic
X
's
As if for emphasis,
Or in the mockery of . . .

The one who lights the wood stove
Gets up in the dark.

 

How cold the iron is to the hand
Groping to open the flue,
The hand that will draw back
At the roar of the wind outside.

 

The wood that no longer smells of the woods;
The wood that smells of rats and mice—
And the matches that are always so loud
In the glacial stillness.

 

By its flare you'll see her squat;
Gaunt, wide-eyed;
Her lips saying the stark headlines
Going up in flames.

Where the elevated subway slows down,
A row of broken windows,
Only a single one still intact
Open and thickly curtained.

 

That's where I once saw a thin arm
Slip out between the slits,
The hand open to feel for drops of rain,
Or to give us a papal blessing.

 

Another time, there were two—
Chopped off at the elbows
Raising a small, naked baby
For a breath of evening air

 

Above the sweltering street
With a gang of men partying
Out of brown paper bags,
One limping off, seemingly, in a huff.

From the heel
Of a half-loaf
Of black bread,
They made a child's head.

 

Child, they said,
We've nothing for eyes,
Nothing to spare for ears
And nose.

 

Just a knife
To make a slit
Where your mouth
Ought to be.

 

You can grin,
You can eat,
Spit the crumbs
Into our faces.

While Marquis de Sade had himself buggered—
Oh just around the time the Turks
Were roasting my ancestors on spits,
Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther.

 

It was chilly, raw, down-in-the-mouth
We were slurping bean soup thick with smoked sausage,
On Second Avenue, where years before I saw an old horse
Pull a wagon piled up high with flophouse mattresses.

 

Anyway, as I was telling my uncle Boris,
With my mouth full of pig's feet and wine:
“While they were holding hands and sighing under parasols,
We were being hung by our tongues.”

 

“I make no distinction between scum,”
He said, and he meant everybody,
Us and them: A breed of murderers' helpers,
Evil-smelling torturers' apprentices.

 

Which called for another bottle of Hungarian wine,
And some dumplings stuffed with prunes,
Which we devoured in silence
While the Turks went on beating their cymbals and drums.

 

Luckily we had this Transylvanian waiter,
A defrocked priest, ex–dancing school instructor,
Regarding whose excellence we were in complete agreement
Since he didn't forget the toothpicks with our bill.

I like it when
Achilles
Gets killed
And even his buddy Patroclus—
And that hothead Hector—
And the whole Greek and Trojan
Jeunesse dorée
Are more or less
Expertly slaughtered
So there's finally
Peace and quiet
(The gods having momentarily
Shut up)
One can hear
A bird sing
And a daughter ask her mother
Whether she can go to the well
And of course she can
By that lovely little path
That winds through
The olive orchard

Most ancient Metaphysics (poor Metaphysics!),
All decked out in imitation jewelry.
We went for a stroll, arm in arm, smooching in public
Despite the difference in ages.

 

It's still the nineteenth century, she whispered.
We were in a knife-fighting neighborhood
Among some rundown relics of the Industrial Revolution.
Just a little farther, she assured me,
In the back of a certain candy store only she knew about,
The customers were engrossed in the
Phenomenology of
     
the Spirit.

 

It's long past midnight, my dove, my angel!
We'd better be careful, I thought.
There were young hoods on street corners
With crosses and iron studs on their leather jackets.
They all looked like they'd read Darwin and that
      madman Pavlov,
And were about to ask us for a light.

No sooner had I left A.
Than I started doubting its existence:
Its streets and noisy crowds;
Its famous all-night cafés and prisons.

 

It was dinnertime. The bakeries were closing:
Their shelves empty and white with flour.
The grocers were lowering their iron grilles.
A lovely young woman was buying the last casaba melon.

 

Even the back alley where I was born
Blurs, dims . . . O rooftops!
Armadas of bedsheets and shirts
In the blustery, crimson dusk . . .

 

•

 

B. at which I am destined
To arrive by and by
Doesn't exist now. Hurriedly
They're building it for my arrival,

 

And on that day it will be ready:
Its streets and noisy crowds . . .
Even the schoolhouse where I first
Forged my father's signature . . .

 

Knowing that on the day
Of my departure
It will vanish forever
Just as A. did.

 

 

 

II

 

            It snows
and still the derelicts
            go
carrying sandwich boards—

 

            one proclaiming
the end of the world
            the other
the rates of a local barbershop

for Don and Jane

 

The weight of tragic events
On everyone's back,
Just as tragedy
In the proper Greek sense
Was thought impossible
To compose in our day.

 

There were scaffolds,
Makeshift stages,
Puny figures on them,
Like small indistinct animals
Caught in the headlights
Crossing the road way ahead,

 

In the gray twilight
That went on hesitating
On the verge of a huge
Starless autumn night.
One could've been in
The back of an open truck
Hunkering because of
The speed and chill.

 

One could've been walking
With a sidelong glance
At the many troubling shapes
The bare trees made—
Like those about to shriek,
But finding themselves unable
To utter a word now.

 

One could've been in
One of these dying mill towns
Inside a small dim grocery
When the news broke.
One would've drawn near the radio
With the one many months pregnant
Who serves there at that hour.

 

Was there a smell of
Spilled blood in the air,
Or was it that other,
Much finer scent—of fear,
The fear of approaching death
One met on the empty street?

 

Monsters on movie posters, too,
Prominently displayed.
Then, six factory girls,

Arm in arm, laughing
As if they've been drinking.
At the very least, one
Could've been one of them.

 

The one with a mouth
Painted bright red,
Who feels out of sorts,
For no reason, very pale,
And so, excusing herself,
Vanishes where it says
Rooms for Rent,
And immediately goes to bed,
Fully dressed, only

 

To lie with eyes open,
Trembling, despite the covers.
It's just a bad chill,
She keeps telling herself
Not having seen the papers
Which the landlord has the dog
Bring from the front porch.

 

The old man never learned
To read well, and so
Reads on in that half-whisper,
And in that half-light
Verging on the dark,
About that day's tragedies
Which supposedly are not
Tragedies in the absence of
Figures endowed with
Classic nobility of soul.