Alone and Not Alone (6 page)

Zot

In de Kooning's painting, the word
zot
.

I thought
sot?

Then learned that
zot

is Dutch for
foolish
. So

foolish
and
drunk
swirled around

and separated out

into the Dutch
foolish
and the English
drunk
.

He wasn't such a big drinker

when he did that painting,

but maybe he felt like a fool sometimes

—of course he did.

He was
zot
and he knew it

and he told you so, you

being almost nobody,

so almost nobody you were

even more
zot
than he!

Zot
is vat I tink.

Alone and Not Alone

Out of the water

came the one

who reached back

into the water

and pulled out the zero.

The time is now.

The time is now 8:15 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time.

In Beijing Lan Lan

is getting up

tomorrow.

I see her pretty, smiling face

as she curls back the covers.

Tonight I

will get under the covers

and think of her face

not because I

am in love with her

but because I

like her face

though I

do not want it

on my head.

Out of the water

came my head,

head first, whoosh!

A person's head

does not belong

underwater.

Look at fish!

Who wants to be one?

I would

for a moment

or two. Then

back to me.

It would be terrible

to alternate

being fish

and person

every few seconds.

We inhale

then exhale

every few seconds.

Lan Lan's

two daughters

are inhaling and exhaling,

still asleep—

it is Sunday

in Beijing.

Lan Lan's husband

is sitting at a table

in the kitchen

thinking

about the poetry

of Alexander Blok.

Alexander Blok

is pouring hot water

into the teapot.

Out of the water

came the tea

and out of the tea

came the scent of jasmine.

And then Alexander Blok

was not there.

He had to go away

and die again.

He exhaled and then

exhaled, and then

was like a dead fish,

wrapped in a newspaper

whose headline says

BLOK DEAD
.

He reached back

and pulled himself

out of life

and into those two words.

Lan Lan's husband

looks up confused—

his mind is in Russian

but everything else

is in Chinese

when she comes in

and the jasmine is deeper

and more of you now.

It is 8:33.

What happened?

You were not alone

in thinking you were alone.

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Allan Kornblum, 1949–2014

RON PADGETT grew up in Tulsa and has lived mostly in New York City since 1960. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Padgett's
How Long
was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his
Collected Poems
won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the best poetry book of 2013. In addition to being a poet, he is a translator of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, and Blaise Cendrars. His own work has been translated into eighteen languages.