As We Know Read online

  Admit impressions of traceries of leaves

  And shallow birds among memories.

  The climate seceded then,

  The glad speculation about what clothes

  They wore stacked like leaves,

  Speckled behind the eye of what

  Consumer, what listener?

  And the praise is lascivious

  To the onyx ear at evening

  But not forwarded

  Into the ring with the other shouting,

  The desperate competitions willed

  Until darkness, dripping toward death

  By late morning.

  She circles plainly away

  From it in wider and wider loops,

  And what have you to say? What account

  To give? Of the season’s vast

  Storehouse of agendas, bales

  Of items for discussion dwindling

  Down to a last seed on the stone doorstep?

  If this was the season only of death

  That licorice blast would not keep only

  In its retelling the unfurled

  Question-mark of the shaved future but redound

  To us waiting here against the spike fence

  In pleasant attitudes from which the waiting

  Is forgotten like thorns in the memory

  Of laced paths merging on

  Extinct, ultimate slopes,

  But trap us in the game of two flavors

  (A rising shout some distance away,

  The tabac alike in resisting

  Terribilità

  Yet basing it on us, all the same

  A knowledge of its measure, its

  Proportion, until the end is sought

  Dryly, among stringent grasses).

  To have sought it any more, mining

  Its anfractuosities, is to bear witness,

  The living getting trampled

  Underfoot always the same way

  And as surely one desiccated spike of

  Sea-oats rises quizzically after the

  Hordes have passed over, the film

  Slips over the cogs

  That brought us to this unearthly spot.

  So death is really an appetite for time

  That can see through the haze of blue

  Smoke-rings to the turquoise ceiling.

  She said this once and turned away

  Knowing we wanted to hear it twice,

  But knowing also as we knew that speculation

  Raves and raves as on a mirror

  To the outlandish accompaniment of its own death

  That reads as life to the toilers

  And potboys who make up these blond

  Coils of citizenry which are life in the abstract.

  What it was like to be mouthing those

  Solemn abstractions that were crimson

  And solid as beefsteak. One

  Shouldn’t be surprised by

  The smell of mignonette and the loss

  As each stands still, and the softness

  Of the land behind each one,

  Where each one comes from.

  Because it is the way of the personality of each

  To blush and act confused, groping

  For the wrong words so that the

  Coup de théâtre

  Will unfold all at once like shaken-out

  Lightning and no one

  Will have heard anything. The gray,

  Fake Palladian club buildings will

  Still stand the next moment, at their grim

  Business: empty entablatures, oeils-de-boeuf,

  Gun-metal laurels, the eye

  Revolving slowly in the empty socket

  That the bronze visor shades: there was

  Never anything but this,

  No footfalls on the mat-polished marble floor,

  No bird-dropping, no fates, no sanctuary.

  The sheet slowly rises to greet you.

  The asters are reflected

  Simultaneously in ruby drops of the wine

  The morning after the great storm

  That swept our sky away, leaving

  A new muscle in its place: a relaxed, far-away

  Tissue of scandal and dreams like noon smoke

  Lingering above horizon roofs.

  But what difference did any of it make

  Woven on death’s loom as indeed

  All of it was though divided into

  Chapters each with its ornamental

  Capital at the beginning, and its polished

  Sequel? You knew

  You were coming to the end by the way the other

  Would be beginning again, so that nobody

  Was ever lonesome, and the story never

  Came to its dramatic conclusion, but

  Merely leveled out like linen close up

  In the mirror. So that the roundness

  Was all around to be appreciated, yet somehow flat

  As well, and could never be trusted

  Even though the rushes slanted all one way

  In the autumn wind, and the leaves

  And branches tried to slant with them

  In a poem of harmonious dejection, but it was

  Only picture-making. Under

  The intimate light of the lantern

  One really felt rather than saw

  The thin, terrifying edges between things

  And their terrible cold breath.

  And no one longed for the great generalities

  These seemed to preclude. Each thought only

  Of his private silence, and hungered

  For the promised moment of rest.

  II

  I photographed all things,

  All things as happening

  As prelude, as prelude to the impatience

  Of enormous summer nights opening

  Out farther and farther, like the billowing

  Of a parachute, with only that slit

  Of starlight. The old, old

  Wonderful story, and it’s all right

  As far as it goes, but impatience

  Is the true ether that surrounds us.

  Without it everything would be asphalt.

  Now that the things of autumn

  Have been sequestered too in their chain

  The other part of the year become

  Visible

  And the summer night is like a goldfish bowl

  With everything in full view, yet only parts

  Are what is actually seen, and these supply

  The rest. It’s not like cheating

  Since it is all there, but more like

  Helping the truth along a little:

  The artifice lets it become itself,

  Nestling in truth. These are long days

  And we need all the help we can get.

  We are to become ashamed only much later,

  Much later on, under the long bench.

  And it is not like the old days

  When we used to sing off-key

  For hours in the rain-drenched schoolroom

  On purpose. Here, whatever is forgotten

  Or stored away is imbued with vitality.

  Whatever is to come is too.

  How can I explain?

  No matter how raffish

  The new clients moving slowly along,

  Taking in the sights, placing bets,

  There comes a time when the moment

  Is full of, knows only itself.

  Like a moment when a tree

  Is seen to tower above everything else,

  To know itself, and to know everything else

  As well, but only in terms of itself

  Without knowing or having a clear concept

  Of itself. This is a moment

  Of fast growing, of compounding myths

  As fast as they can be thrown off,

  Trampled under, forgotten. The moment

  Not made of itself or any other

  Substance w
e know of, reflecting

  Only itself. Then there are two moments,

  How can I explain?

  It was as though this thing—

  More creature than person—

  Lumbered at me out of the storm,

  Brandishing a half-demolished beach umbrella,

  So that there might be merely this thing

  And me to tell about it.

  It was awful. And I too have no rest

  From the storm that is always something

  To worry about. Really. My unworthiness

  Like a loose garment or cape of some sort

  Constantly sliding off the shoulders,

  Around the elbows ... I cannot keep it on,

  Even as I am invisible in the eye

  Of the storm, we two are blind,

  And blind to the inaudible repercussions,

  The strange woody aftertaste.

  After that the wave came

  And left no mark on the shore.

  The waves advanced as the tide withdrew.

  There was nothing for it but to

  Retreat from the edge of the earth,

  In that time, that climate expecting rain,

  Behind some brackish business

  On the margin intuiting cataclysms of light.

  All that fall I wanted to be with you,

  Tried to catch up to you in the streets

  Of that time. Needless to say,

  Although we were together a good part of the time

  I never quite made it to the thunder.

  The boy who cried “wolf” used to live there.

  This place of islands and slow reefs,

  Like petals of mercury, that fold up

  Whenever that allusion is made.

  It falls off the others like

  Water off piled-up stones at the base

  Of a waterfall, and the petals

  Curl up, injured, into themselves.

  Only the frozen emphasis

  On a single thing that was out of sight

  When the allusion was made, remains.

  We all bought tickets to the allusion

  And are disappointed, of course.

  But what can you do? Events have

  A way of snapping off like that, like

  The glassblower’s striped candy canes

  Of glass at a moment he knows is coming,

  Is there, even. The old,

  Wonderful story. Not yet ended.

  You who approach me,

  All grace and linearity,

  With my new crayons I think I’ll

  Do a series of box-sprays—stippled

  Cobalt on the gold

  Of a sun-pure afternoon

  In October when things change over.

  There is no longer time for a line

  Or rather there are no lines in the time

  Of ripeness that is past,

  Yet still pausing on the ridge

  Stealing into permanence.

  It was all French horns

  And oboes and purple vetch:

  That was what it was all about, but

  What it came to be came later

  And other—a scene, a

  Simple situation, something as

  Basic as two people sitting in the sun

  With no thought of the morrow, or of today,

  As the whispers mingled in a choir outlining them

  And we took a lesson away from this,

  A lesson like a piece of cloth.

  It’s going to be different in the future

  But now the now is what matters,

  Knowing itself old, and open to vengeance,

  And, in short, up to nobody’s expectations

  For it, as dank and empty

  As an old Chevy parked under the trees

  Amid dead leaves and dogshit, everybody’s

  Idea of what was coming true for them

  Which is now burning in lava-like letters

  In the sky, a piece of good news

  If you agree that good news is what

  Is happening at this very instant.

  The California sun turned its back on us

  So we chose New England and the more vibrant

  Violet light of tame tempests,

  Dreams of sleeping watchdogs,

  And the whole house was full of people

  Having a good time, and though

  No one offered you a drink and there were no

  Clean glasses and the supper

  Never appeared on the table, it was

  Strangely rewarding anyway.

  It gave one an idea of what they thought of one:

  Even the ocean that came crashing almost

  Into the back yard did not seem ill-disposed

  And that was something. Presently

  Out of this near-chaos an unearthly

  Radiance stood like a person in the room,

  The memory of the host, perhaps. And all

  Fell silent, or stayed at their musings, silent

  As before, and no one any longer

  Offered words of advice or misgiving, but drank

  The silence that had been silence before,

  On this scant strip of slag,

  Basking in the same light as before,

  Inhabiting the same thought:

  A shelf of breasts and underwear packaging

  Rumored in the dark ages.

  These people, you see,

  Had to come to appear to thrive

  And somewhat later sidestep the destiny

  That pretended not to see them.

  It was all necessary so that some source,

  An origin of the present, might

  In the scent of verbena and dreams of

  Combat locked in the sky over the mid-ocean

  Gradually give less and less of itself

  And in so dying bequeath the manner

  Of its being to the sidewalk shrubbery

  And so enable it to become itself

  Even though that self is only the sometimes-noticed

  Backdrop for ourselves and all

  We wondered whether we would become,

  Pockmarked flecks of polluted matter

  Infrequently visible in the hail of ventilated indifference

  Or seconds of radiation, our own very special

  Thing we had been trying to get our hands

  On for so many years.

  Honey, it’s all Greek to me, I—

  (And just to make sure you get

  It: the thought crossed my mind

  That I would do well to take up my studies again,

  I seemed to have become less averse to laughter

  And less disinclined for certain small pleasures,

  And I began quietly to reason with myself

  About this matter, as I usually do about others,

  So that I regretfully concluded

  That I would soon again be the same man as before—)

  Meaning: the same nausea when I heard cheerful talk,

  The same grief, the same deep and prolonged meditation,

  And almost the same frenzy and oppression.

  Supposing that you are a wall

  And can never contribute to nature anything

  But the feeling of being alongside it,

  A certain luxury, and now,

  They come to you with the old matter

  Of your solidity, that firmness,

  That way you have of squaring off

  The maps of distant hills, so that nature

  Seems farther apart from itself because of you.

  Is it this you have done?

  And a certain grassy look, the color

  Of old semiprecious stones, has to be

  What’s coming out of you, for the two of you.

  And the mechanical reverie is cut up by fits

  Of blaring trumpets and alarms, in the night.

  Forward then into the yellow villages.

  Despite the
eerie setbacks

  Of our subpolar ambience, we are

  Living, we are dwelling on a network

  Of insane desires handled frugally.

  Passport in hand, we arrive in the morning

  At the station, the dumb train

  Vaults you along into forests of

  Broccoli, or tracts of leathery

  Tundra, one eye on the digital watch.

  The tonal purity grows, and dissipates,

  But meanwhile the plateau remains staunch,

  It’s only the towers that dot it that tend

  To look pierced by the sky

  Or fade away absentmindedly, altogether.

  The naked report arrived vividly

  In the night.

  Groaning for the latter day brought us

  To this place, a trough of silent chatter

  Between two notable waves. And we must arrange

  These filaments of silence as an elephant trap

  Over the grid of city conversations and background doings.

  The quietude

  Of the future to be built, beside which

  Today’s valors and sighs must appear

  As vanished suburbs beside some eighteenth-century

  Metropolis, or stairs rolling down to a sea

  Of urgent scrolls and torsades:

  A Baltic commonplace riven by tremendous

  Hairline fissures as deep as the heavens.

  In other words, leave it alone.

  That’s interesting. In my diary

  I have noted down all kinds of exceptional

  Things to go with the rest

  As one who naps beside a chasm

  Swollen with the hellish sound of wind

  And torrents, and never chooses

  To play back the tape. Waking

  Refreshed if not alert, he steps forth

  Into the centuries that grew like shadows

  Under tall trees while he slept;

  The days rub off like scales, the years

  Like burrs or briars plucked

  Patiently from the sleeve, and never sees

  Or hears the havoc wrought by his passing,

  Abysses that open up behind

  His perilous, beribboned journey, the jalopy

  Disappearing deep into vales

  To re-emerge suddenly on heights, through

  The tunnel of a giant sequoia. And always

  An old-time mannerliness and courtesy informs

  The itinerary, leaving us

  Without much to go on.

  Once it becomes fatality,

  Of course,

  The journey is at an end, and it is just beginning—

  Innate—

  A moody performance.

  The critics hated it.

  Now one borrows money from his friends,

  In double time, the consequences

  Blur the motives. The contours of the figures

  Are curved and fat. He goes out among the trees,

  Sees the lights in the valley far below.

  Up here the air is black, ice-cold, of a

  Terrifying purity, doubled over somehow.