Nine Horses (4 page)

Hamlet noticed them in the shapes of clouds,

but I saw them in the furniture of childhood,

creatures trapped under surfaces of wood,

one submerged in a polished sideboard,

one frowning from a chair-back,

another howling from my mother’s silent bureau,

locked in the grain of maple, frozen in oak.

I would see these presences, too,

in a swirling pattern of wallpaper

or in the various greens of a porcelain lamp,

each looking so melancholy, so damned,

some peering out at me as if they knew

all the secrets of a secretive boy.

Many times I would be daydreaming

on the carpet and one would appear next to me,

the oversize nose, the hollow look.

So you will understand my reaction

this morning at the beach

when you opened your hand to show me

a stone you had picked up from the shoreline.

“Do you see the face?” you asked

as the cold surf circled our bare ankles.

“There’s the eye and the line of the mouth,

like it’s grimacing, like it’s in pain.”

“Well, maybe that’s because it has a fissure

running down the length of its forehead

not to mention a kind of twisted beak,” I said,

taking the thing from you and flinging it out

over the sparkle of blue waves

so it could live out its freakish existence

on the dark bottom of the sea

and stop bothering innocent beachgoers like us,

stop ruining everyone’s summer.

At home, the jazz station plays all day,

so sometimes it becomes indistinct,

like the sound of rain,

birds in the background, the surf of traffic.

But today I heard a voice announce

that Eric Dolphy, 36 when he died,

has now been dead for 36 years.

I wonder—

did anyone sense something

when another Eric Dolphy lifetime

was added to the span of his life,

when we all took another

full Dolphy step forward in time,

flipped over the Eric Dolphy yardstick once again?

It would have been so subtle—

like the sensation you might feel

as you passed through the moment

at the exact center of your life

or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat.

I never gave it another thought,

but could that have been the little shift

I sensed a while ago

as I walked down in the rain to get the mail?

Before it was over

I took out a pencil and a notepad

and figured out roughly what was left—

a small box of Octobers, a handful of Aprils,

little time to waste reading a large novel

on the couch every evening,

a few candles flaming in the corners of the room.

A fishbowl of Mondays, a row of Fridays—

yet I cannot come up with anything

better than to strike a match,

settle in under a light blanket,

and open to the first sentence of
Clarissa
.

Look at me setting off on this long journey

through ink and tears,

through secrecy and distress,

anticipation and swordplay.

As the darkness thickens

and the morning glory puts down its trumpet,

as worms begin to sing in the garden,

and Christ looks down from the wall,

I will begin inching toward the end—

page one thousand five hundred and thirty-three

in this paperback Penguin edition,

introduction and notes by one Angus Ross.

As I sat on the sunny side of train #241

looking out the window at the Hudson River,

topped with a riot of ice,

it appeared to the untrained eye

that the train was whizzing north along the rails

that link New York City and Niagara Falls.

But as the winter light glared

off the white river and the snowy fields,

I knew that I was as motionless as a man on a couch

and that the things I was gazing at—

with affection, I should add—

were really the ones that were doing the moving,

running as fast as they could

on their invisible legs

in the opposite direction of the train.

The rocky ledges and trees,

blue oil drums and duck blinds,

water towers and flashing puddles

were dashing forever from my view,

launching themselves from the twigs

of the moment into the open sky of the past.

How unfair of them, it struck me,

as they persisted in their flight—

evergreens and electrical towers,

the swing set, a slanted fence,

a tractor abandoned in a field—

how unkind of them to flee from me,

to forsake an admirer such as myself,

a devotee of things—

their biggest fan, you might say.

Had I not taken a hound’s interest in this world,

tipped my hat to the first magpie,

shouted up to the passing geese?

Had I not stopped enough times along the way

to stare diligently

into the eye of a roadside flower?

Still, as I sat there between stations

on the absolutely stationary train

somewhere below Albany,

I was unable to hide my wonderment

at the uniformity of their purpose,

at the kangaroo-like sprightliness of their exits.

I pressed my face against the glass

as if I were leaning on the window

of a vast store devoted to the purveyance of speed.

The club car would open in fifteen minutes,

came the announcement

just as a trestle bridge went flying by.

I knew James Whistler was part of the Paris scene—

the café awning and the wicker chair—

but I was surprised when I discovered the painting

of his mother among all the colored dots

and jumpy brushstrokes

of the French Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay.

And I was even more surprised

after a period of benevolent staring

to notice how the stark profile of that woman,

fixed forever in her chair,

began to resemble my own ancient mother

now fixed forever in the earth, the stars, the air.

I figured Whistler titled the painting

Arrangement in Gray and Black

instead of what everyone else calls it

to show he was part of the Paris scene,

but when I strolled along the riverbank,

after my museum tour,

I imagined how the woman’s heart

could have broken

by being demoted from mother

to mere arrangement, a composition without color.

The summer couples leaned into each other

along the quay, and the wide boats

teeming with spectators slid up and down the Seine,

their watery reflections

lapping under the stone bridges,

and I thought to myself:

how fatuous, how off base of Whistler.

Like Botticelli calling
The Birth of Venus

“Composition in Blue, Ocher, Green, and Pink,”

or the other way around,

like Rothko labeling one of his sandwiches of color

“Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn.”

Or—as I scanned the menu at the café

where I had come to rest—

it would be like painting something droll,

say, a chef being roasted on a blazing spit

before an audience of ducks

and calling it “Study in Orange and White.”

By that time, though, a waiter had appeared

with Pernod and a pitcher of water,

and so I sat thinking of nothing—

just watching the women and men

who were passing by,

mothers and sons walking their fragile dogs—

and of course, about myself,

a kind of composition in blue and khaki,

and, once I had poured

some water into the glass of anise—milky green.

After three days of steady, inconsolable rain,

I walk through the rooms of the house

wondering which would be best to die in.

The study is an obvious choice

with its thick carpet and soothing paint,

its overstuffed chair preferable

to a doll-like tumble down the basement stairs.

And the kitchen has a certain appeal—

it seems he was boiling water for tea,

the inspector will offer, holding up the melted kettle.

Then there is the dining room,

just the place to end up facedown

at one end of its long table in a half-written letter

or the bedroom with its mix of sex and sleep,

upright against the headboard,

a book having slipped to the floor—

make it
Mrs. Dalloway
, which I have yet to read.

Dead on the carpet, dead on the tiles,

dead on the stone cold floor—

it’s starting to sound like a ballad

sung in a pub by a man with a coal red face.

It’s all the fault of the freezing rain

which is flicking against the windows,

but when it finally lets up

and gives way to broken clouds and a warm breeze,

when the trees stand dripping in the light,

I will quit these dark, angular rooms

and drive along a country road

into the larger rooms of the world,

so vast and speckled, so full of ink and sorrow—

a road that cuts through bare woods

and tangles of red and yellow bittersweet

these late November days.

And maybe under the fallen wayside leaves

there is hidden a nest of mice,

each one no bigger than a thumb,

a thumb with closed eyes,

a thumb with whiskers and a tail,

each one contemplating the sweetness of grass

and the startling brevity of life.

For my birthday,

my wife gave me nine horse heads,

ghostly photographs on squares of black marble,

nine squares set in one large square,

a thing so heavy that the artist himself

volunteered to hang it

from a wood beam against a white stone wall.

Pale heads of horses in profile

as if a flashcube had caught them walking in the night.

Pale horse heads

that overlook my reading chair,

the eyes so hollow they must be weeping,

the mouths so agape they could be dead—

the photographer standing over them

on a floor of straw, his black car parked by the stable door.

Nine white horses,

or one horse the camera has multiplied by nine.

It hardly matters, such sadness is gathered here

in their long white faces

so far from the pasture and the cube of sugar—

the face of St. Bartholomew, the face of St. Agnes.

Odd team of horses,

pulling nothing,

look down on these daily proceedings.

Look down upon this table and these glasses,

the furled napkins,

the evening wedding of the knife and fork.

Look down like a nine-headed god

and give us a sign of your displeasure

or your gentle forbearance

so that we may rejoice in the error of our ways.

Look down on this ring

of candles flickering under your pale heads.

Let your suffering eyes

and your anonymous deaths

be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other

be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day

as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night.

You are the bread and the knife
,

The crystal goblet and the wine
.

Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass,

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is no way you are the pine-scented air.