Hotel Lautréamont Read online

  the scansions of tree to tree, of house to house, and how

  almost every other one had something bright to add

  to the morass of conversation: not much, just a raised eyebrow

  or skirt. And we all take it in, even laughing in the right places,

  which get to be few and far between. Still it is a way of saying,

  a meaning that something has been done, a thing, and hearing always

  comes afterward. And once you have heard, you know,

  the margin can excuse you. We all go back to being attentive

  then, and the right signals concur. It stops, and smarts.

  NOTES FROM THE AIR

  A yak is a prehistoric cabbage: of that, at least, we may be sure.

  But tell us, sages of the solarium, why is that light

  still hidden back there, among house-plants and rubber sponges?

  For surely the blessed moment arrived at midday

  and now in mid-afternoon, lamps are lit,

  for it is late in the season. And as it struggles now

  and is ground down into day, complaints

  are voiced at the edges of darkness: look, it says,

  it has to be this way and no other. Time that one seizes

  and takes along with one is running through the holes

  like sand from a bag. And these sandy moments

  accuse us, are just what our enemy ordered,

  the surly one on his throne of impacted

  gold. No matter if our tale be interesting

  or not, whether children stop to listen and through the rent

  veil of the air the immortal whistle is heard,

  and screeches, songs not meant to be listened to.

  It was some stranger’s casual words, overheard in the wind-blown

  street above the roar of the traffic and then swept

  to the distant orbit where words hover: alone, it says,

  but you slept. And now everything is being redeemed,

  even the square of barren grass that adjoins your doorstep,

  too near for you to see. But others, children and others, will

  when the right time comes. Meanwhile we mingle, and not

  because we have to, because some host or hostess

  has suggested it, beyond the limits of polite

  conversation. And we, they too, were conscious of having

  known it, written on the flyleaf of a book presented as a gift

  at Christmas 1882. No more trivia, please, but music

  in all the spheres leading up to where the master

  wants to talk to you, place his mouth over yours,

  withdraw that human fishhook from the crystalline flesh

  where it was melting, give you back your clothes, penknife,

  twine. And where shall we go when we leave? What tree is bigger

  than night that surrounds us, is full of more things,

  fewer paths for the eye and fingers of frost for the mind,

  fruits halved for our despairing instruction, winds

  to suck us up? If only the boiler hadn’t exploded one

  could summon them, icicles out of the rain, chairs enough

  for everyone to be seated in time for the lesson to begin.

  STILL LIFE WITH STRANGER

  Come on, Ulrich, the great octagon

  of the sky is passing over us.

  Soon the world will have moved on.

  Your love affair, what is it

  but a tempest in a teapot?

  But such storms exude strange

  resonance: the power of the Almighty

  reduced to its infinitesimal root

  hangs like the chant of bees,

  the milky drooping leaves of the birch

  on a windless autumn day—

  Call these phenomena or pinpoints,

  remote as the glittering trash of heaven,

  yet the monstrous frame remains,

  filling up with regret, with straw,

  or on another level with the quick grace

  of the singing, falling snow.

  You are good at persuading

  them to sing with you.

  Above you, horses graze forgetting

  daylight inside the barn.

  Creeper dangles against rock-face.

  Pointed roofs bear witness.

  The whole cast of characters is imaginary

  now, but up ahead, in shadow, the past waits.

  HOTEL LAUTRÉAMONT

  I/

  Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society

  working as a team. They didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

  The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

  We see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well.”

  Working as a team, they didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

  The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

  We see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well,”

  or, on a more modern note, in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

  The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

  The world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé,

  or in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

  Not to worry, many hands are making work light again.

  The world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé.

  In any case the ruling was long overdue.

  Not to worry, many hands are making work light again,

  so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure.

  2/

  In any case, the ruling was long overdue.

  The people are beside themselves with rapture

  so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure

  and the solution problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

  The people are beside themselves with rapture

  yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria,

  and the solution: problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

  The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained.

  Yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria.

  In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.

  The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained,

  And night like black swansdown settles on the city.

  In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel

  Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward,

  and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

  If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

  3/

  Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward.

  Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside.

  If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

  And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

  Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside,

  when all we think of is how much we can carry with us.

  And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

  All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

  When all we think of is how much we can carry with us

  Small wonder that those at home sit, nervous, by the unlit grate.

  All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

  It remains for us to come to terms with our commonalty.

  Small wonder that those at home sit nervous by the unlit grate.

  It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

  It remains for us to come to terms with our commonalty

  And in so doing deprive time of further hostages.

  4/

 
It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

  Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

  and in so doing deprive time of further hostages,

  to end the standoff that history long ago began.

  Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

  but it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.

  To end the standoff that history long ago began

  Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

  But it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.

  You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.

  Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

  Only night knows for sure; the secret is safe with her.

  You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.

  Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society;

  Only night knows for sure. The secret is safe with her:

  the people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

  ON THE EMPRESS’S MIND

  Let’s make a bureaucracy.

  First, we can have long lists of old things,

  and new things repackaged as old ones.

  We can have turrets, a guiding wall.

  Soon the whole country will come to look over it.

  Let us, by all means, have things in night light:

  partly visible. The rudeness that poetry often brings

  after decades of silence will help. Many

  will be called to account. This means that laundries

  in their age-old way will go on foundering. Is it any help

  that motorbikes whiz up, to ask for directions

  or colored jewelry, so that one can go about one’s visit

  a tad less troubled than before, lightly composed?

  No one knows what it’s about anymore.

  Even in the beginning one had grave misgivings

  but the enthusiasm of departure swept them away

  in the green molestation of spring.

  We were given false information on which

  our lives were built, a pier

  extending far out into a swollen river.

  Now, even these straws are gone.

  Tonight the party will be better than ever.

  So many mystery guests. And the rain that sifts

  through sobbing trees, that excited skiff …

  Others have come and gone and wrought no damage.

  Others have caught, or caused darkness, a long vent

  in the original catastrophe no one has seen.

  They have argued. Tonight will be different. Is it better for you?

  THE PHANTOM AGENTS

  We need more data re our example, earth—how it would behave in a

  crisis, under pressure,

  or simply on a day no one had staked out for unrest

  to erupt. What season would fit its lifestyle

  most naturally? Who would the observers, the control group be?

  For this we must seek the answer in decrepit cinemas

  whose balconies were walled off decades ago: on the screen

  (where, in posh suburbia, a woman waits),

  under the seats, in the fuzz and ancient vomit and gumwrappers;

  or in the lobby, where yellowing lobby cards announce

  the advent of next week’s Republic serial: names

  of a certain importance once, names that float

  in the past, like a drift of gnats on a summer evening.

  Who in the world despises our work

  as much as we do? I was against campaigning again,

  then my phone started ringing off the hook. I tell you …

  But to come back to us, sanded down to the finer grain

  and beyond—this is what books teach you, but also

  what we must do. Make a name, somehow,

  in the wall of clouds behind the credits, like a

  twenty-one-vehicle pileup on a fog-enclosed highway.

  This is what it means to be off and running, off

  one’s nut as well. But in a few more years,

  with time off for good behavior …

  FROM ESTUARIES, FROM CASINOS

  It’s almost two years now.

  The theme was articulated, the brightness filled in.

  And when we tell about it

  no wave of recollection comes gushing back—

  it’s as though the war had never happened.

  There’s a smooth slightly concave space there instead:

  not the ghost of a navel. There are pointless rounds to be made.

  No one who saw you at work would ever believe that.

  The memories you ground down, the smashed perfection:

  Look, it’s wilted, but the shape of a beautiful table remains.

  There are other stories, too ambiguous even for our purposes,

  but that’s no matter. We’ll use them and someday,

  a name-day,

  a great event will go unreported.

  All that distance, you ask, to the sun?

  Surely no one is going to remember to climb

  where it insists, poking about

  in an abstract of everyday phrases? People have better

  things to do with their lives than count how many

  bets have been lost, and we all know the birds were here once.

  Here they totter and subside, even in surviving.

  In history, the best bird catchers were brought before the king,

  and he did something, though nobody knows when.

  That was before you could have it all

  by just turning on the tap, letting it run

  in a fiery stream from house to garage—

  and we sat back, content to let the letter of the thing notice us,

  untroubled by the spirit, talking of the next gull to fly away

  on the cement horizon, not quibbling, unspoken for.

  We should all get back to the night that bore us

  but since that is impossible a dream may be the only way:

  dreams of school, of travel, continue to teach and unteach us

  as always the heart flies a little away,

  perhaps accompanying, perhaps not. Perhaps a familiar spirit,

  possibly a stranger, a small enemy whose boiling point

  hasn’t yet been reached, and in that time

  will our desire be fleshed out, at any rate

  made clearer as the time comes

  to examine it and draw the rasping conclusions?

  And though I feel like a fish out of water I

  recognize the workmen who proceed before me,

  nailing the thing down.

  Who asks anything of me?

  I am available, my heart pinned in a trance

  to the notice board, the stone

  inside me ready to speak, if that is all that can save us.

  And I think one way or perhaps two; it doesn’t matter

  as long as one can slip by, and easily

  into the questioning but not miasmal dark.

  Look, here is a stance—

  shall you cover it, cape it? I

  don’t care he said, going down all those stairs

  makes a boy of you. And I had what I want

  only now I don’t want it, not having it, and yet it defers

  to some, is meat and peace and a wooden footbridge

  ringing the town, drawing all in after it. And explaining the way to go.

  After all this I think I

  feel pretty euphoric. Bells chimed, the sky healed.

  The great road unrolled its vast burden,

  the climate came to the rescue—it always does—

  and we were shaken as in a hat and distributed on the ground.

  I wish I could tell the next thing. But in dreams I can’t,

  so will let this thing stand in for it, this me

&nbs
p; I have become, this loving you either way.

  COP AND SWEATER

  It’s about this undulation thing,

  how we were all beginners to get in on it when it began.

  Once that had happened, there was another face on things:

  trees no longer came to the door; the seasons

  were always “forgetting” to include you in the list—

  that sort of thing.

  Now those homeless hirsutes we call men

  are on our backs, there is no breath out of the kingdom.

  Sometimes a plan will come

  to take one of them away

  but there are long pauses in which grass grows tall

  above the elementary wall

  behind which bricks, adders and valuable prizes are combined.

  It is that we have no mind:

  each of us has sampled so many of the others’,

  and now the concert is sick.

  No rain to stay away from any more,

  only a darkling yew

  that lets pass a few

  into the waiting cemetery

  to mingle with the military

  whose buttons are celebratory.

  A man could smash through this, drain the Slough of Despond,

  build individual habitats for bird and person,

  suitable, and folly too.

  I believe it already happened

  in some oasis of desert sand

  where they are only waiting to know now

  what went on back here, so as to leave

  and plant other destinies in the star-filled track

  the moon makes on water. Then release

  happiness to the wineries and rain barrels

  where so much could have happened, and does,

  even today! Peace to the fawns,

  the tied-back curtains. This is the living,

  and if we are to be more than music, the waving

  shawls and fanlights of a greater possibility

  than mine, than us. So we see always.

  From the universal boutique each of us stumbles on.

  MUSICA RESERVATA

  Then I reached the field and I thought

  this is not a joke not a book

  but a poem about something—but what? Poems are such odd little jiggers.

  This one scratches himself, gets up, then goes off to pee

  in a corner of the room. Later looking quite

  stylish in white jodhpurs against the winter