Nothing by Design (5 page)

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Thought at the checkout:

stupid to put five seltzers

in one plastic bag.

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New leather jackets:

hand in hand, the married rich

strolling to MoMA.

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Like an Olympic

torch held aloft: a steaming

latte with no lid.

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What makes them do it—

jaywalkers in dark clothing

at night, in the rain?

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Hailing a taxi—

finally one pulls over.

Proof I must exist.

DR. SYNTAX AND PROSODY

Ms. Martin at Princeton knows firsthand how electronic searches can unearth both obscure texts and dead ends.… She recalled finding a sudden explosion of the words “syntax” and “prosody” in 1832, suggesting a spirited debate about poetic structure. But it turned out that Dr. Syntax and Prosody were the names of two racehorses.

    
“You find 200 titles with ‘Syntax,’ and you think there must be a big grammar debate that year,” Ms. Martin said, “but it was just that Syntax was winning.”

                         —
THE NEW YORK TIMES

                                        December 3, 2010

The sentence, diagrammed,

is a boring one-track course:

Dr. Syntax was a horse.

Prosody enjambed

himself near the finish line.

It happens. Hey, that’s fine.

KITTI’S HOG-NOSED BAT

For some learned people

this creature, whose torso

(a bumblebee’s size)

makes it smallest of all

the thousand-plus species

of bat on the planet,

and the most petite extant

species of mammal—

though some experts cite

the Etruscan shrew—

is worth a life’s study.

Carry on, please do.

But others will care

only who Kitti was

and if he was teased

(as his name meant cat)

when he christened the hog-

nosed horrible bat.

I am numbered with these.

I’m not speaking for you.

FRENCH HAIKU

    1.
Proust, Book One

The elaborate

word ballet whereby Odette

turns into a Swann.

    2.
Mont Sainte-Victoire

Still-life tablecloth

heaped and crumpled: yet Cézanne

lets no stone roll off.

    3.
Concierge

Old and sort of fat,

she thinks she’s sexy: yes, I

want to be like that.

OUR PING-PONG TABLE

Literary, lazy,

unsporty, unoutdoorsy,

and seriously unlikely

to reform our habits much,

we bought it feeling flush

one summer, and resolving

to have more family fun

than whatever we’d been having.

We read the warning:
Some

assembly is required.

The very thought of that

made us cross and tired

but we put our heads together,

tore hunks of Styrofoam,

and built the big, “all-weather,”

eight-legged, hope-green wreck

while watching unmarked, tiny,

essential pieces sent

all the way from China

as placidly they went

irretrievably rolling

through slats in our old deck.

Nothing to do about it.

In a way, that was consoling.

How many years ago

was that? ten?—and how few

games did we play each year?

One day we stopped. But when?

I think I was the first

to notice poison oak

where the balls were prone to land.

After the net frame broke

we knew it was the end,

though there were nights we’d throw

a tablecloth or two

on top for a barbecue.

All-weather? So far it’s stood

as a tottering monument

to the bumblers we remain;

it’s stood there in the rain

and, through the kitchen window

in winter, as an efficient

means to measure snow.

I’ve liked that. That’s been good.

INSTRUMENTAL RIDDLES

Nothing to shake a stick at,

hollow inside, I’m anything but shallow.

The deeper I am, the louder

silence is struck a blow.

                                        
drum

Love often looks like me—

two lovers, and then three—

although, in love, the third stays out of view.

I play upstage. I can be quiet, too.

                                        
triangle

I live on a limited scale.

Homeless, I collapse and wheeze

on the subway. As if you care!

Sorry to be so sentimental,

but buddy, please,

can you spare a dime?

Otherwise you may have to bear

the polka, one more time.

                                        
accordion

Shaped much like an angel’s wing,

like angel hair my lengths of string,

I’m strummed by angels as they sing.

                                        
harp

In nursery school, before you learned to read,

you played like Pan upon a simple reed.

My name says what I do—

I bring your earliest memories back to you.

                                        
recorder

NO SECOND TRY

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery…

                         —
W. B. YEATS
, “No Second Troy”

Why should I blame him that he filled his days

With mistresses, or that he came home late

To meet most ignorant trust with smiling ways,

Such thoughtful gifts, and claims that I looked great—

Whatever that meant, though clearly not desire?

What help if I’d been wiser, with a mind

Simply to hurl his laundry in the fire

Rather than buy his tall tales with a kind

Solicitude and a deluded kiss,

Having cleaned his house from stem to stern?

Why, who else could he use, a guy like this?

Was there another wife for him to spurn?

V

BED OF LETTERS

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

—
WILLIAM BLAKE
,

“A Poison Tree”

STRING OF PEARLS

The pearls my mother gave me as a bride

rotted inside.

Well, not the pearls, but the string.

One day I was putting

them on, about thirty years on,

and they rattled onto the floor, one by one…

I’m still not sure I found them all.

As it happened, I kept a white seashell

on my vanity table. It could serve as a cup

where, after I’d scooped the lost pearls up,

I’d save them, a many-sister

haven in one oyster.

A female’s born with all her eggs,

unfolds her legs,

then does her dance, is lovely, is the past—

is old news as the last

crinkle-foil-wrapped sweet

in the grass of the Easter basket.

True? Who was I? Had I unfairly classed

myself as a has-been? In the cloister

of the ovary, when

released by an extra dose of estrogen,

my chances for love dwindled, one by one.

But am I done?

THE GAZEBO

It’s my last day at the house.

My last time wandering the backyard.

I’m not aware I want to crush anything.

My boots crunch through the desiccated,

frosted grass, a sound like stubbing out

cigarette after cigarette.

I climb to the top of the hill

and unlatch the creaky gate in the fence

that frames the swimming pool.

I don’t see it, but there’s a crust

of ice beneath the canvas cover.

Plus algae, a few dead frogs and bugs,

however things stood last August.

Eons ago. Before I knew.

Another creaky door now, to the gazebo.

An icicle crashes from the roof

as I lower myself

into a plastic Adirondack chair.

Our view: three mountains, shy and local,

that spoke a little of yearning; of gratitude.

Mosquitoes got in through these screens.

And wasps would hover

near nests stuck to the beams and rafters

like harmless mischief; like wads of chewing gum.

There was laughter up here, iced tea, beer.

Paper-plate family meals, tête-à-têtes,

and silent reading alone, and sunsets

one shouldn’t see alone. And a husband

who’d walk up and knock, a little joke,

before he’d let himself in.

I see him smiling. He asks how I am.

He’s wrapped in a towel; he’s been in the pool,

he’s dripping on the floor, we chat,

we’re the luckiest couple you’ve ever met.

But it’s December. And the dripping now

is the sound of melting icicles

sharpening into knives.

DRINKING SONG

He lay with me upon a time,

sweet it was and lemon-lime.

Wedding ring and ringing bell,

Champagne was it never hell.

Coffee tea and morning toast,

none loved more and love was most.

Up we dressed for dinner out,

Prozac and Prosecco, doubt.

Peace in time and time to seethe.

Open wine and let it breathe.

Mix up our imperfect match:

dry martini, olive branch.

Jesus, who agreed the whore

he shall have with him always more?

Econo Lodge and Scottish Inn,

vodka, orange, scotch, and gin.

Years and years they met by day,

nights and nights forgot away

till the thing had not occurred.

Whiskey, whisper not a word.

What knows who was laced with truth,

shaken cocktail? Twist of ruth?

Panic and alarm creep back,

Ativan and Armagnac.

In my mind the slipping gears.

In our come-cries down the years

sometimes was love not sublime?

Another round, and hold the crime.

COMPLAINT FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE

A little something to endorse:

Download attachment, print and sign

Complaint for Absolute Divorce
,

the lawyer wrote with casual force.

Yet why complain? The suit was mine.

A little something to endorse

“Complaint”: sheer poetry, of course,

more lofty than Lament or Whine.

Complaint for Absolute Divorce:

so well-phrased, who could feel remorse?

That “Absolute” was rather fine.

A little something to endorse

the universe as is: for worse,

for better. Nothing by design.

Complaint for Absolute Divorce,

let me salute you, sole recourse!

I put my birth name on the line—

a little something—and endorse

the final word, then, in “Divorce.”

BED OF LETTERS

Propped like a capital

letter at the head

of what was once our bed,

or like a letterhead—

as if your old address

were printed on my face—

I’m writing you this note

folded in sheets you lay

on then, but sleeplessly

night after night, a man

whose life became about

the fear of being found out.

Rarely a cross word

between us, although today

I see the printer’s tray

of your brain, the dormant type

sorted in little rooms

to furnish anagrams,

fresh headlines, infinite

new stories in nice fonts.

Give her what she wants
,

you must have thought, and brought

home seedlings to transplant

in flower beds, unmeant

to bloom into such tall

tales—which even you

can’t unsay or undo.

And yet it’s true that long

ago, two lovers dozed

naked and enclosed

one history between covers.

We woke and, shy and proud,

read our new poems aloud.

VI

THE SEAFARER

a version from the Anglo-Saxon

THE SEAFARER

I can sing my own true story

of journeys through this world,

how often I was tried

by troubles. Bitterly scared,

I would be sick with sorrow

on my night watch as I saw

so many times from the prow

terrible, tall waves

pitching close to cliffs.

My feet were frozen stiff,

seized and locked by frost,

although my heart was hot

from a host of worries.

A hunger from within

tore at my mind, sea-weary.

But men on solid ground

know nothing of how a wretch

like me, in so much pain,

could live a winter alone,

exiled, on the ice-cold sea

where hail came down in sheets,

and icicles hung from me

while friendly hall companions

feasted far away.

The crashing sea was all

I heard, the ice-cold wave.

I made the wild swan’s song

my game; sometimes the gannet

and curlew would cry out