All of Us (48 page)
Authors: Raymond Carver
Each evening an eagle soars down from the snowy
Early one Sunday morning everything outside
Every man’s life is a mystery, even as
Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive
Forget all experiences involving wincing
Half asleep on top of this bleak landscape
Hanging around the house each day
He arose early, the morning tinged with excitement
He began the poem at the kitchen table
He buried his wife, who’d died in
He took a room in a port city with a fellow
He was never the same, they said, after that
Her brain is an attic where things
Here is the poem I was going to write
Here my assurance drops away. I lose
His former wife called while he was in the south
His wife. Forty years he painted her
I am sick and tired of the river, the stars (Chekhov)
I ask her and then she asks me. We each
I didn’t want to use it at first
I don’t know the names of flowers
I fished alone that languid autumn evening
I got sleepy while driving and pulled in under a tree (Tranströmer)
I had forgotten about the quail that live
“I have a foreboding.… I’m oppressed (Chekhov)
I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns, and
I have always wanted brook trout
I lay down for a nap. But every time I closed my eyes
I lean over the balcony of the minaret
I look up and see them starting
I looked into the room a moment ago
I love creeks and the music they make
I opened the old spiral notebook to see what I’d been
I see an empty place at the table
I spent years, on and off, in academe
I stalked a cougar once in a lost box-canyon
I think of Balzac in his nightcap after
I took a walk on the railroad track
I wade through wheat up to my belly
I waded, deepening, into the dark water
I want to get up early one more morning
I was nearsighted and had to get up close
I woke up feeling wiped out. God knows
I woke up with a spot of blood
I’m not the man she claims. But
I’ve always wanted brook trout
I’ve wasted my time this morning, and I’m deeply ashamed
If I’m lucky, I’ll be wired every whichway
Imagine a young man, alone, without anyone
In a little patch of ground beside
In June, in the Kyborg Castle, in the canton
In our cabin we eat breaded oysters and fries
In the garden, small laughter from years ago
In the living room Walter Cronkite
In the meadow this afternoon, I fetch
In the trailer next to this one
In those days we were going places. But that Sunday
In winter two kinds of fields on the hills
It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining brightly and (Chekhov)
It was a night like all the others. Empty
It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle
It’s 1974 again, and he’s back once more. Smirking
It’s afternoon when he takes off
It’s either this or bobcat hunting
It’s good to live near the water
Just when he had given up thinking
Last night, alone, 3000 miles away from the one
Last night at my daughter’s, near Blaine
Last night I dreamt a priest came to me
“Lately I’ve been eating a lot of pork
Lighten up, songbirds. Give me a break
Make use of the things around you
Mom said I didn’t have a belt that fit and
My boat is being made to order. Right now it’s about to leave
My dad is at the stove in front of a pan with brains
My mother calls to wish me a Merry Christmas
Naches River. Just below the falls
Nadya, pink-cheeked, happy, her eyes shining with tears (Chekhov)
Narrow-bodied, iron head like the flat side
New snow onto old ice last night. Now
No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy
October.
Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
On my desk, a picture postcard from my son
On the Columbia River near Vantage
On the pampas tonight a gaucho
One minute I had the windows open
Rain hisses onto stones as old men and women
Reading a life of Alexander the Great, Alexander
Reluctantly, my son goes with me
September, and somewhere the last
She lays her hand on his shoulder
She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
She slumps in the booth, weeping
Shortly after three p.m. today a squall
Snow began falling late last night. Wet flakes
So early it’s still almost dark out
So I returned here from the big capitals, (Milosz)
Take Mans Fat and Cats Fat, of each half an Ounce (Chetham)
Talking about her brother, Morris, Tess said
That first week in Santa Barbara wasn’t the worst thing
That painting next to the brocaded drapery
That time I tagged along with my dad to the dry cleaners
The afternoon was already dark and unnatural
The angler’s coat and trowsers should be of cloth (Oliver)
The car with a cracked windshield
The dusk of evening comes on. Earlier a little rain
The fishing in Lough Arrow is piss-poor
The four of us sitting around that afternoon
The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book
The gondolier handed you a rose
The green fields were beginning. And the tall, white
The house rocked and shouted all night
The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the very one (Chekhov)
The man who took 38 steelhead out
The mind can’t sleep, can only lie awake and
The moon, the landscape, the train
The next poem I write will have firewood
The nights are very unclear here
The papal nuncio, John Burchard, writes calmly
The paperboy shakes me awake. “I have been dreaming you’d come”
The people who were better than us were
comfortable
The sad music of roads lined with larches
The seasons turning. Memory flaring
The two brothers, Sleep and Death, they unblinkingly called
The wind is level now. But pails of rain
The woman asked us in for pie. Started
Then I was young and had the strength of ten
Then Pancho Villa came to town
There are five of us in the tent, not counting
There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and (Chekhov)
There is no deceiving the bird-fancier. He sees and Chekhov)
There was always the inside and
They fill their mouths with alcohol
They promised an unforgettable trip
They waited all day for the sun to appear. Then
They were in the living room. Saying their
They withheld judgment, looking down at us
They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s
They’re on a one-way flight, bound from LAX
They’ve come every day this month
This afternoon the Mississippi
This is the fourth day I’ve been here
This morning I began a poem on Hamid Ramouz
This morning I remembered the young man
This morning I woke up to rain
This morning was something. A little snow
This much is clear to me now—even then
This old woman who kept house for them
This rain has stopped, and the moon has come out
This yardful of the landlord’s used cars
Those beautiful days (Seifert)
Through the open window he could see a flock of ducks (Chekhov)
To scream with pain, to cry, to summon help, to call (Chekhov)
To sleep and forget everything for a few hours
Today a woman signaled me in Hebrew
Toward evening the wind changes. Boats
Trolling the coho fly twenty feet behind the boat
Trying to write a poem while it was still dark out
Waking before sunrise, in a house not my own
Walking around on our first day
Water perfectly calm. Perfectly amazing
we have been looking at cars lately
We press our lips to the enameled rim of the cups
We sipped tea. Politely musing
We stand around the burning oil drum
We were five at the craps table
What a rough night! It’s either no dreams at all
What lasts is what you start with (Wright)
Whatever became of that brass ring
When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down (Chekhov)
When he came to my house months ago to measure
When his mother called for the second time
When my friend John Dugan, the carpenter
When you were little, wind tailed you
Where this floated up from, or why
Woke up early this morning and from my bed
Woke up feeling anxious and bone-lonely
Years ago—it would have been 1956 or 1957—when I was a
Yesterday I dressed in a dead man’s
Yesterday, snow was falling and all was chaos
Yet why not say what happened (Lowell)
You are falling in love again. This time
You are served “duck soup” and nothing more. But you (Chekhov)
You don’t know what love is Bukowski said
You simply go out and shut the door
