The Cinnamon Peeler (11 page)

And what were you

carrying? in your head

that night Miss

Souri? Miss Kansas?

while I put my hands

sweating

on the cold

window

on the edge

of the trough of this city?

Breaking down after logical rules

couldn’t be the hit and run driver

I wanted Frank Sinatra

I was thinking blue pyjamas

I was brought up on movies and song!

I could write my suite of poems

for Bogart drunk

six months after the departure at Casablanca.

I see him lying under the fan

at the Slavyansky Bazar Hotel

and soon he will see the truth

the stupidity of his gesture

he’ll see it in the space

between the whirling metal

                         Stupid fucker

he says to himself, stupid fucker

and knocks the bottle

leaning against his bare stomach

onto the sheet. Gin stems

out like a four leaf clover.

I used to be lucky he says

I had white suits black friends

who played the piano …

                                        and that

was a movie I saw just once.

What about Burt Lancaster

limping away at the end of
Trapeze?

Born in 1943. And I saw that six times.

(I grew up knowing I could never fly)

That’s me. You. Educated

at the
Bijou
. And don’t ask me

about my interpretation of ‘Madame George.’

That’s a nine minute song

a two hour story

So how do we discuss

the education of our children?

Teach them to be romantics

to veer towards the sentimental?

Toss them into the air like Tony Curtis

and make ’em do the triple somersault

through all these complexities

and commandments?

Oh, Rilke, I want to sit down calm like you

or pace the castle, avoiding the path of the cook, Carlo,

who believes down to his turnip soup

that you speak in the voice of the devil.

I want the long lines my friend spoke of

that bamboo which sways muttering

like wooden teeth in the slim volume I have

with its childlike drawing of Duino Castle.

I have circled your book for years

like a wave combing

the green hair of the sea

kept it with me, your name

a password in the alley.

I always wanted poetry to be that

but this solitude brings no wisdom

just two day old food in the fridge,

certain habits you would not approve of.

If I said all of your name now

it would be the movement

of the tide you soared over

so your private angel

could become part of a map.

I am too often busy with things

I wish to get away from, and I want

the line to move slowly now, slowly

like a careful drunk across the street

no cars in the vicinity

but in his fearful imagination.

How can I link your flowing name

to geckoes or a slice of octopus?

Though there are Rainier beer cans,

magically, on the windowsill.

And still your lovely letters

January 1912 near Trieste.

The car you were driven in

‘at a snail’s pace’

through Provence. Wanting

‘to go into chrysalis …

to live by the heart and nothing else.’

Or your guilt—

                         ‘I howl at the moon

                         with all my heart

                         and put the blame

                         on the dogs’

I can see you sitting down

the suspicious cook asleep

so it is just you

and the machinery of the night

that foul beast that sucks and drains

leaping over us sweeping our determination

away with its tail. Us and the coffee,

all the small charms we invade it with.

As at midnight we remember the colour

of the dogwood flower growing

like a woman’s sex outside the window.

I wanted poetry to be walnuts

in their green cases

but now it is the sea

and we let it drown us,

and we fly to it released

by giant catapults

of pain loneliness deceit and vanity

O lady hear me. I have no

other

voice left
.

ROBERT CREELEY

2 a.m. The moonlight

in the kitchen

Will this be

testamentum porcelli?

Unblemished art and truth

whole hog the pig’s testament

what I know of passion

having written of it

seen my dog shiver

with love and disappear

crazy into trees

                         I want

the woman whose face

I could not believe in the moonlight

her mouth forever as horizon

                         and both of us

grim with situation

now

suddenly

we reside

near the delicate

heart

of Billie Holiday

You said, this

doesn’t happen so quick

I must remind you of someone

                         No,

though I am seduced

by this light, and

frantic arguments

on the porch,

I ain’t subtle

you run rings

round me

               but this quietness

white dress long legs

arguing your body

away from me

and I with all the hunger

I didn’t know I had

On the warm July river

head back

upside down river

for a roof

slowly paddling

towards an estuary between trees

there’s a dog

learning to swim near me

friends on shore

my head

dips

back to the eyebrow

I’m the prow

on an ancient vessel,

this afternoon

I’m going down to Peru

soul between my teeth

a blue heron

with its awkward

broken backed flap

upside down

one of us is wrong

he

in his blue grey thud

thinking he knows

the blue way

out of here

or me

Summer night came out of the water

climbed into my car and drove home

got out of the car still wet towel round me

opened the gate and walked to the house

Disintegration of the spirit

no stars

leaf being eaten by moonlight

The small creatures who are blind

who travel with the aid

of petite white horns

take over the world

Sound of a moth

The screen door in its suspicion

allows nothing in, as I allow nothing in.

The raspberries my son gave me

wild, cold out of the fridge, a few I put

in my mouth, some in my shirt pocket

and forgot

I sit here

in a half dark kitchen

the stain at my heart

caused by this gift

The three trunks

of the walnut

the ceremonial ducks

who limbo under the fence

and creep up the lawn

Apple tree Blue and white house

I know this is beautiful

I wished to write today

about small things

that might persuade me

out of my want

The lines I read

about ‘cowardice’ and ‘loyalty’

I don’t know

if this is drowning

or coming up for air

               At night

I give you my hand

like a corpse

out of the water

Night and its forces

step through the picket gate

from the blue bush

to the kitchen

Everywhere it moves

and we cannot sleep we cannot sleep

we damn the missionaries

their morals thin as stars

we find ourselves

within the black

circus of the fly

all night long

his sandpaper

tabasco leg

The dog sleepwalks

into the cupboard

into the garden and heart attacks

hello

I’ve had a dog dream

wake up and cannot find

my long ears

Nicotine caffeine

hungry bodies

could put us to sleep

but nothing puts us to sleep

How many windows have I broken?

And doors and lamps, and last month

a tumbler I smashed into a desk

then stood over the sink

digging out splinters

with an awkward left hand

I have beaten my head with stones

pieces of fence

tried to tear out my eyes

these are not exaggerations

they were acts when words failed

the way surgeons

hammer hearts gone still

now this

small parallel pain

in my finger

the invisible thing inside

circling

               glass

               on its voyage out

               to the heart

If you love me and think only of me

lift your robe and ford the river Chen

catch

               ‘the floating world’

8.52 from Chicago

lift your skirt

through customs,

kiss me in the parking lot

Another deep night

with the National Enquirer

like the unseen

arms of a bat

the book

falls open

to sadness

– dead flowers, dead

horses who carried

lovers to a meeting

On my last walk

through the kitchen

I see it

               I lift

huge arms of a cobweb

out of the air

and carry its Y

slowly to the porch

as if alive

as if it was a wounded bird

or some terrible camouflaged insect

that could damage children

The distance between us

and then this small map

of stars

               a concentrated

ocean of the night

when lovers worship heavens

they are worshipping

a lack of distance

my brother the moon

the lofty mattress

of nebula,

rash and spray of love

                         It is all

as close as my palm

on your body

                                        so you

among pillows and moonlight

look up, search

for the jewellery

bathing in darkness

satellite hunger, remote control,

‘the royal we’

                         and find

your own dark hand

What were the names of the towns

we drove into and through

               stunned lost

having drunk our way

up vineyards

and then Hot Springs

boiling out the drunkenness

What were the names

I slept through

               my head

on your thigh

hundreds of miles

of blackness entering the car

                         All this

                         darkness and stars

but now

under the Napa Valley night

a star arch of dashboard

the ripe grape moon

we are together

and I love this muscle

I love this muscle

that tenses

               and joins

the accelerator

to my cheek

And sometimes

I think

women in novels are too

controlled by the adverb.

As they depart

a perfume of description

‘She rose from the table

and left her shoe

behind,
casually
’

‘Let’s keep our minds

clear, she said drunkenly,’

the print hardly dry

on words like that

My problem tonight

is this landscape.

Like the Sanskrit lover

who sees breasts in the high clouds,

testicles on the riverbed

(‘The soldiers left their balls

behind, crossing into Bangalore

she said, mournfully’)

Every leaf bends

I can put my hand

into various hollows, the dogs

lick their way up the ditch

swallow the scent

of whatever they eat