And the Stars Were Shining Read online

  while she adjusts her stocking in the mirror of a weighing machine.

  But here it is winter, and wrong

  to speak of other seasons as though they exist.

  Time has only an agenda

  in the wallet at his back, while we

  who think we know where we are going unfazed

  end up in brilliant woods, nourished more than we can know

  by the unexpectedness of ice and stars

  and crackling tears. We’ll just have to make a go of it,

  a run for it. And should the smell of baking cookies appease

  one or the other of the olfactory senses, climb down

  into this wagonload of prisoners.

  The meter will be screamingly clear then,

  the rhythms unbounced, for though we came

  to life as to a school, we must leave it without graduating

  even as an ominous wind puffs out the sails

  of proud feluccas who don’t know where they’re headed,

  only that a motion is etched there, shaking to be free.

  TWO PIECES

  I

  Edith and Julian

  waiting, awaited by others

  in the hills, yes.

  But by what unobstructed parade

  ground do I reach that hill?

  For it is

  simple to say

  the coordinates when they greet you,

  not like getting on with life,

  not the street.

  II

  When the cauldron is

  tipped, whatever

  is in it flows outward

  like the mouth of a river

  taking out its dentures.

  No obit, more socks.

  And a stray whoosis

  that knew your name once

  now sits on the floor.

  Now no aftershocks.

  The horse’s mane tears—

  THE FRIENDLY CITY

  Unless you put it away

  he can never play with it again,

  the marimba, and you know what that means.

  Our city bemoans us, or does it

  only seem to? Showers that come in shifts,

  light poles guarded in air,

  the dry cackle of trees in the Botanical Gardens?

  Was it for this suburban marketplace

  you wrote, and are writing still

  in that wire-bound notebook?

  Things like: “Man cannot stand what he has become

  but he loves to lap up his own vomit”?

  In that case the city will probably stay around

  for most of the day. It likes your sleeping sound,

  not the bad silence of the others

  who are even now clogging its approaches,

  giving the place a bad name.

  Oh if it was a name he wanted

  why didn’t somebody say something?

  We could have found him one so easily

  like “Elector of Brandenburg,”

  and the city could have seen its reflection

  finally, a ducal palace, upended.

  THE DESPERATE HOURS

  The man, someone’s uncle, went down

  to where the barrier said to him why

  do you disturb a corner of the universe

  that is yours that had been yours

  before either of us was invented?

  He said truly I did not know I snore.

  He said truly I invented a hoof medication.

  But these are tangible, lazy things—

  what about the uncertain, pallid ones

  they gave you at birth to play with?

  Why did not the city centers

  come to be called what is this town?

  He said I never saw any but chaste cheeks reflected

  in her armor. The tower leans

  O more desperately than it has done

  these twenty centuries past.

  Why is it my dungheap, my rosary?

  And in this true saying all are warehoused,

  the flatirons, the jib, even the two horses

  not paying any real attention.

  But it is your watch fob,

  your crenellated bow window, bent

  indeed like a bow, that’s why they call them that,

  your small town, your farm of about forty acres

  outside it. Your wart. Your five-year diary.

  Your intention to have made this once it had passed.

  THE DECLINE OF THE WEST

  O Oswald, O Spengler, this is very sad to find!

  My attic, my children

  ignore me for the violet-banded sky.

  There are no clean platters in the cupboard

  and the milkman’s horse tiptoes by, as though

  afraid to wake us.

  What! Our culture in its dotage!

  Yet this very poem refutes it,

  springing up out of the collective unconscious

  like a weasel through a grating.

  I could point to other extremities, both on land

  and at sea, where the waves will gnash your stark theories

  like a person eating a peanut. Say, though,

  that we are not exceptional,

  that, like the curve of a breast above a bodice,

  our parabolas seek and find the light, returning

  from not too far away. Ditto the hours

  we’ve squandered: daisies, coins of light.

  In the end he hammered out

  what it was not wanted we should know.

  For that we should be grateful,

  and for that patch of a red ridinghood

  caught in brambles against the snow.

  His book, I saw it somewhere and I bought it.

  I never read it for it seemed too long.

  His theory though, I fought it

  though it spritzes my song,

  and now the skateboard stops

  impeccably. We are where we exchanged

  positions. O who could taste the crust of this love?

  THE ARCHIPELAGO

  Well, folks, and how

  about a run for the sister islands?

  You can see them from where you stand—

  will you barter vision for the sinking feeling

  of lumps of clay?

  The daffodils

  were out in force, as were, improbably, the nasturtiums,

  which come along much later, as a rule. But so help me,

  there they were.

  She said, may I offer you some?

  His tangling so flummoxed him,

  all he said was “Boats along the way.”

  Really, there are so many kinds of everything

  it halts you when you think about it,

  which is all the time, really—oh, not consciously,

  that would be a waste, but in sly corners,

  like a rabbit sitting up straight, waiting for what?

  We can study drawing and arithmetic, and the signs

  are still far away, like a painted sign

  fading on the side of a building. Oh, there is so much to know.

  If only we weren’t old-fashioned, and could swallow

  one word like a pill, and it would branch out thoughtfully

  to all the other words, like the sun following behind the cloud shadow

  on a hummock, and our basket would be full,

  too ripe for the undoing, yet too spare for sleep,

  and the temperature would be exactly right.

  Miserere! Instead I am browsed on by endless students,

  clumps of them, receding to this horizon and the next one—

  all the islands have felt it,

  have had their rest disturbed by the knocking knees of foals,

  by kites’ shrieking. And to think I could have had it

  for the undoing of it,

  snug in the tree house, my plans

  open to the world’s casual inspection, like an unzipped fly�
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  but tell us, you must have had more experiences than that?

  Oh the cross-hatched rain, fanning out from my crow’s-feet,

  the angry sea that always calms down,

  the argument that ended in a smile.

  These are tracks that lovers’ feet fit.

  But at the end they flag you down.

  GUMMED REINFORCEMENTS

  Insame, trapped together in a …

  How would you like one?

  Growing up is what it is,

  leaning into the wind, without a cent.

  We had the most beautiful childhood

  and lunch—that’s even better.

  I only paid $4.75 for mine.

  An embarrassment, considering

  it would be an embarrassment for me too.

  Then he frolicked and said, whatever happens

  happens in a dream,

  eleven, twelve, fifteen times a day.

  Sometimes when you are away

  it happens at night,

  all night.

  Children we had lost once

  know how to keep repeating the piece

  they learned, knew the way back to us,

  us, as grave robbers, of an old candy store

  with a cake as centerpiece: a wild,

  fragile one. Therefore read this:

  a sun, mild as any, with diamond-tipped consequences

  somewhere. An atmosphere of brooding, perhaps …

  Yes! And the cake was square!

  How did you guess? And all along, a

  stork was creeping up the stair

  to its bower, injured by the furniture

  and last-minute preparations. Nobody

  came to sign its register.

  There was no one in the large drum

  a canker folded over, looking

  at you real mean-like.

  And I and the dream are still only acquaintances

  after all this time, a century, it seems,

  from Arkansas. Did the goats get milked in time

  for your hand to graze it? Was the squall over then?

  Those who paint the heavenly porch

  put a damper on all our ideas, extreme creations

  like love. You heard me, ladies—

  past and pure truth, swaying,

  light out over the land.

  The crowd of robbers doesn’t go away.

  It would rather be sunset, if that were inexorable

  enough. But it’s not. Count the pigeons, the people,

  townspeople, running fast in all directions.

  Sign here for the blanket of furze, please.

  SPOTLIGHT ON AMERICA

  I must proceed unflustered.

  I should have shopped around.

  After all, comparison shopping is what this place’s

  all about. I think. These are very crisp.

  Nothing like a big stranger in the dark

  “to concentrate the mind,” as Dr. Johnson said.

  Venetian blinds are for keeping close watch on—

  there goes another one!

  And if there is no peace in declarations

  they may become ornaments. After all, superstitions

  did once, and aren’t they very like history,

  even the same thing as?

  Back then when someone said “Pigs in a blanket,”

  these shifting animals in nordic drapery

  would coalesce. Today, other pieces of statuary

  from far and near, near and far,

  are hastening toward the whirlpool of history.

  Well, let them try it. And if a few old pros

  want it, let them try it too. Let this frangible

  passing moment be the last to know, as usual.

  WHAT DO YOU CALL IT WHEN

  The fire betokened it

  as a woman means many things

  in this deck—

  that’s why unsavory characters

  He knew that out of hiding

  the fire would burn fast at last

  providing the smooth yet crinkled edge

  so much flatness requires

  that from savannas

  the kitchen landscape may begin:

  amazed quinces

  the drink on the corner

  so everything would be a red or a blue sign

  Crowders-out of old age

  assassins of youth

  gentlemen walking:

  the trustees of this enterprise.

  It is not difficult to single out one pearl in a bushel of them. What’s needed is to set us back on the track, having gently peed, and that for some orpheum other than ourselves. Some shelter that is not us.

  They laughed and began to dance in a ring, heads bobbing, ankles sweeping, the same old private dance that is remorse for not having blossomed sooner and the poison of this day, under vines, to correct that stance.

  Fairs and cupolas notwithstanding it is a tray of cameos to be brushed past, the invisible seizure, as when crowds don’t find what they are looking for.

  So I came at last to you for the comedy of it, and in this I have no regrets, only silences, secrets, and the mask that was sent me long ago. I repeat it in paragraphs in these parts and am not ready to go home yet.

  PLEASURE BOATS

  Wash it again

  and yet again.

  The equation drifts.

  Wallowing in penguins,

  she was wallowing in penguins.

  With fiendish cleverness

  the foreground closes in.

  The four-leaf clover loses.

  PRETTY QUESTIONS

  The two parks interfaced,

  of summer earth,

  of shroud and color,

  red hope.

  Are you growing up to write your novel now?

  He’d been waiting on tables for several years,

  lost without a stinger.

  Should travel agents travel less?

  The girls can never be free of the volcanoes’ might.

  Anybody not having any?

  See, it was like tar between the boards,

  outlines, though without force or purpose—

  just things to drag

  along, carry along, to meet a fee

  with. And the damage

  during the minute was requested:

  that it was over last night

  before quitting was necessary,

  in a certain way that I was going to tell you about.

  They came at me with ice-cream implements.

  You read it first here.

  Why you are all blue,

  your shoes are too,

  so is the barrel of space that encloses us.

  Maybe everything is.

  We should want it to be.

  Help. I have to go to the bathroom.

  Why, there’s your difference, of course,

  your having to come down

  from the park, gorse-scented,

  and the pleasing treetops.

  Not much of this was ever mine

  but some of it had to be for

  me to invest it with a shine.

  Go on. I’ll go on doing that

  if we can stay together, play together.

  The two mountains were all mine.

  They are yours now.

  That is, you can have them if you want them

  and the day that comes with them.

  PATHLESS WANDERINGS

  Whereas I, efficacious ruin,

  in former times a ladder, no quarter

  gave to the bullies as they were emptying out

  of school, in the time of roses.

  It seems I grew exceeding tall.

  There was something wrong with most men.

  Women, however, were overcome with sympathy

  where the last lawn tennis had been.

  In my sleep I shared tears and bread

  with my loving companions. We were three,

  stamped with the brav
ura of those times.

  I can tell you not one swatch matters now.

  The tide has come in once too often.

  We kneel to say our prayers

  to an enormous kettledrum. The reeds’ stance

  perfects the searchlight’s curving grasp,

  sleeps behind things.

  Which is what we all …

  Then when I saw the ball descending

  and felt the air crisped for the packaging of me

  I did what others before you have done:

  appeared to you as a raven in a dream

  that washed away all landscapes, now and to come.

  Too bad the birds don’t like their bath.

  I like it cheaper,

  and to have the exact change,

  teeth for this meat.

  ON FIRST LISTENING TO SCHREKER’S Der Schatzgräber

  The woman with the confused soul keeps calling.

  Was gibt es? Now that you’re in Honolulu you’ve got to live it up

  no matter what kind of grub they throw at you

  on Main Street. O but my past is operatic

  you see, the glitter, wink and shimmer,

  all are in my bones. The hegemony of irrational

  behavior always leaves the by-then-very-determined hoplites astonished,

  they moan in groves. Or do you prefer

  the sea? How about this empty, gravel-encrusted courtyard?

  The sea please. A time of increased understanding.

  Such things as male bonding didn’t exist.

  En revanche, ponytails were something small horses wore.

  Asses in gear, we frisked in salt-air sunlight. Obviously a whole lot

  aren’t going to exist today; we should be thankful for it

  and pick up our rooms, for tonight the night will be bright,

  fewer of us than can stand it will be chosen,

  examined, tossed cruelly into corners like rag dolls

  missing one or more limbs. Say, then,

  what did you want when you came here?

  Was it to subvert our cunning, our lust,

  and turn them back on us, reflections in a chipped pocket mirror?

  And if so why then utilize us

  as indicators? Our auras are unsafe,

  or so we think, so we have been taught. And those who graze them

  invariably come to grief.

  But that’s just what life’s about, isn’t it?

  So your coming sped our just deserts.

  One is off with a nerd in a pothole somewhere.

  And we can have, have, I say,

  whatever surplus barriers come our way.