Nine Horses (2 page)

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

But this is all I want to do—

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare’s

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

I wondered about you

when you told me never to leave

a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches

lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight

when you twisted the lid down on the round tin

where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?

Who could whisk away the thought

of the one unlikely mouse

padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper

gripping a single wooden match

between the needles of his teeth?

Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,

the sudden flare, and the creature

for one bright, shining moment

suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer

in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid

illuminating some ancient night.

Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,

the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces

of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants

of what once was your house in the country?

In the club car that morning I had my notebook

open on my lap and my pen uncapped,

looking every inch the writer

right down to the little writer’s frown on my face,

but there was nothing to write about

except life and death

and the low warning sound of the train whistle.

I did not want to write about the scenery

that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,

hay rolled up meticulously—

things you see once and will never see again.

But I kept my pen moving by drawing

over and over again

the face of a motorcyclist in profile—

for no reason I can think of—

a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,

leaning forward, helmetless,

his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.

I also drew many lines to indicate speed,

to show the air becoming visible

as it broke over the biker’s face

the way it was breaking over the face

of the locomotive that was pulling me

toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha

for me and all the other stops to make

before the time would arrive to stop for good.

We must always look at things

from the point of view of eternity,

the college theologians used to insist,

from which, I imagine, we would all

appear to have speed lines trailing behind us

as we rush along the road of the world,

as we rush down the long tunnel of time—

the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,

but also the man reading by a fire,

speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book,

and the woman standing on a beach

studying the curve of horizon,

even the child asleep on a summer night,

speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,

from the white tips of the pillowcases,

and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.

Ever since I woke up today,

a song has been playing uncontrollably

in my head—a tape looping

over the spools of the brain,

a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun,

mad fan belt of a tune.

It must have escaped from the radio

last night on the drive home

and tunneled while I slept

from my ears to the center of my cortex.

It is a song so cloying and vapid

I won’t even bother mentioning the title,

but on it plays as if I were a turntable

covered with dancing children

and their spooky pantomimes,

as if everything I had ever learned

was being slowly replaced

by its slinky chords and the puffballs of its lyrics.

It played while I watered the plant

and continued when I brought in the mail

and fanned out the letters on a table.

It repeated itself when I took a walk

and watched from a bridge

brown leaves floating in the channels of a current.

In the late afternoon it seemed to fade,

but I heard it again at the restaurant

when I peered in at the lobsters

lying on the bottom of an illuminated

tank which was filled to the brim

with their copious tears.

And now at this dark window

in the middle of the night

I am beginning to think

I could be listening to music of the spheres,

the sound no one ever hears

because it has been playing forever,

only the spheres are colored pool balls,

and the music is oozing from a jukebox

whose lights I can just make out through the clouds.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,

I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse

the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,

I fell for a seamstress

still at her machine in the tailor’s window,

and later for a bowl of broth,

steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,

without recompense, without gifts,

or unkind words, without suspicion,

or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,

the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—

the love of the miniature orange tree,

the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,

the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—

just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest

on a low branch overhanging the water

and for the dead mouse,

still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up

in a field on its tripod,

ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail

to a pile of leaves in the woods,

I found myself standing at the bathroom sink

gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,

so at home in its pale green soap dish.

I could feel myself falling again

as I felt its turning in my wet hands

and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

This morning as low clouds

skidded over the spires of the city

I found next to a bench

in a park an ivory chess piece—

the white knight as it turned out—

and in the pigeon-ruffling wind

I wondered where all the others were,

lined up somewhere

on their red and black squares,

many of them feeling uneasy

about the saltshaker

that was taking his place,

and all of them secretly longing

for the moment

when the white horse

would reappear out of nowhere

and advance toward the board

with his distinctive motion,

stepping forward, then sideways

before advancing again—

the same move I was making him do

over and over in the sunny field of my palm.

My old typewriter used to make so much noise

I had to put a cushion of newspaper

beneath it late at night

so as not to wake the whole house.

Even if I closed the study door

and typed a few words at a time—

the best way to work anyway—

the clatter of keys was still so loud

that the gray and yellow bird

would wince in its cage.

Some nights I could even see the moon

frowning down through the winter trees.

That was twenty years ago,

yet as I write this with my soft lead pencil

I can still hear that distinctive sound,

like small arms fire across a border,

one burst after another

as my wife turned in her sleep.

I was a single monkey

trying to type the opening lines of my
Hamlet
,

often doing nothing more

than ironing pieces of paper in the platen

then wrinkling them into balls

to flick into the wicker basket.

Still, at least I was making noise,

adding to the great secretarial din,

that chorus of clacking and bells,

thousands of desks receding into the past.

And that was more than can be said

for the mute rooms of furniture,

the speechless salt and pepper shakers,

and the tall silent hedges surrounding the house.

Such deep silence on those nights—

just the sound of my typing

and a few stars singing a song their mother

sang when they were mere babies in the sky.

In the apartment someone gave me,

the bathroom looked out on a little garden

at the bottom of an air shaft

with a few barely sprouting trees,

ivy clinging to the white cinder blocks,

a blue metal table and a rusted chair

where, it would seem, no one had ever sat.

Every morning, a noisy bird

would flutter down between the buildings,

perch on a thin branch and yell at me

in French bird-talk

while I soaked in the tub

under the light from the pale translucent ceiling.

And while he carried on, I would lie there

in the warm soapy water

wondering what shirt I would put on that day,

what zinc-covered bar I would stand at

with my
Herald Tribune
and a cup of strong coffee.

After a lot of squawking, he would fly

back into the sky leaving only the sound

of a metal storefront being raised

or a scooter zipping by outside,

which was my signal

to stand up in the cloudy water

and reach for a towel,

time to start concentrating on which way

I would turn after I had locked the front door,

what shop signs I would see,

what bridges I would lean on

to watch the broad river undulating

like a long-playing record under the needle of my eye.

Time to stand dripping wet and wonder

about the hordes of people

I would pass in the street, mostly people

whose existence I did not believe in,

but a few whom I would glance at

and see my whole life

the way you see the ocean from the shore.

One morning after another,

I would fan myself dry with a towel

and wonder about what paintings

I would stand before that day,

looking forward to the usual—

the sumptuous reclining nudes,

the knife next to a wedge of cheese,

a landscape with pale blue mountains,

the heads and shoulders of gods

struggling with one another,

a foot crushing a snake—

but always hopeful for something new

like yesterday’s white turkeys in a field

or the single stalk of asparagus on a plate

in a small gilded frame,

always ready, now that I am dressed,

to cheer the boats of the beautiful,

the boats of the strange,

as they float down the river of this momentous day.

It was a pleasure to enter by a side street

in the center of the city

a bathhouse said to be 300 years old,

old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale

and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.