Authors: Kevin Young
The Hungry Ear (12 page)
It's like boundless dream here in this
world, nothing anywhere to trouble us.
I have, therefore, been drunk all day,
a shambles of sleep on the front porch.
Coming to, I look into the courtyard.
There's a bird among blossoms calling,
and when I ask what season this is,
an oriole's voice drifts on spring winds.
Overcome, verging on sorrow and lament,
I pour another drink. Soon, awaiting
the bright moon, I'm chanting a song.
And now it's over, I've forgotten why.
Translated by David Hinton
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
“All I want is to have a little fun
Before I die,” says the man next to me
Out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. He says
His name's William but I'm sure he's Bill
Or Billy, Mac or Buddy; he's plain ugly to me,
And I wonder if he's ever had fun in his life.
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday,
In a bar that faces a giant car wash.
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch hours, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts and suits.
They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store,
The genetic engineering lab, but not a single one
Appears to be having fun like Billy and me.
I like a good beer buzz early in the day,
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud and shred them on the bar.
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack,
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers
Before blowing and cursing them out.
A happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close
To one another, like this is a motel,
But they clean up their act when we give them
A Look. One quick beer and they're out,
Down the road and in the next state
For all I care, smiling like idiots.
We cover sports and politics and once,
When Billy burns his thumb and lets out a yelp,
The bartender looks up from his want-ads.
Otherwise the bar is ours, and the day and the night
And the car wash too, the matches and the Buds
And the clean and dirty cars, the sun and the moon
And every motel on this highway. It's ours, you hear?
And we've got plans, so relax and let us inâ
All we want is to have a little fun.
The first one was for the clock
and its one song
which is the song's name.
Then a beer for the scars in the table,
all healed in the shape of initials.
Then a beer for the thirst
and its one song we keep forgetting.
And a beer for the hands
we are keeping to ourselves.
The body's dogs, they lie
by the ashtray and thump
suddenly in their sleep.
And a beer for our reticence,
the true tongue, the one song,
the fire made of air.
Then a beer for the juke box.
I wish it had the recording
of a Marcel Marceau mime performance:
28 minutes of silence,
2 of applause.
And a beer for the phone booth.
In this confessional you can sit.
You sing it your one song.
And let's have a beer for whoever goes home
and sprawls, like the remaining sock,
in the drawer of his bed and repeats
the funny joke and pulls it
shut and sleeps.
And a beer for anyone
who can't tell the difference between
death and a good cry
with its one song.
None of us will rest enough.
The last beer is always for the road.
The road is what the car drinks
traveling on its tongue of light
all the way home.
It's the month of May in my heart as the song
says and everything's perfect: a little too chilly
for April and the chestnut trees are refusing to bloom
as they should refuse if they don't want to, sky
clear and blue with a lot of side-paddle steamers
pushing through to Stockholm where the canals're true-blue
in my spacious quarters on the rue de l'Université
I give a cocktail in the bathroom, everyone gets wet
it's very beachy; and I clear my head staring at the sign
LOI DU 29 JUILLET 1881
so capitalizing on a few memories
from childhood by forgetting them, I'm happy as a finger
of Vermouth being poured over a slice of veal, it's
the new reality in the city of Balzac! praying to be let
into the cinema and become and influence, carried through
streets on the shoulders of Messrs Chabrol and Truffaut
towards Nice
or do you think that the Golden Lion
would taste pleasanter (not with vermouth, lion!)?
no, but San Francisco, maybe, and abalone
                  there is
nothing in the world I wouldn't do foryouforyou (zip!)
and I go off to meet Mario and Marc at the Flore
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
ZIMMER REPUDIATES BEER
It is an idiot's way to die,
Therefore when you next see me
I will look like a cactus needle
Sans body, liquid, and weight,
But keen enough to make you pay.
No more will I raise the glass
And swallow till I see the froth.
I swear by the Muse that I will
Cease this slaughtering of brain cells
And no longer build this stomach
Brick by brick and glass by glass
Until the lights grow dim.
Though in summer it cools me
And in winter it warms my soul,
I herewith deny this perfection.
ZIMMER RESISTING TEMPERANCE
Some people view life as food served
By a psychopath. They do not trust it.
But Zimmer expects always to be happy.
Puzzled by melancholy, he pours a reward
And loves this world relentlessly.
Years ago he saw a snake suck light from
A frog's eyes. Now with his drink in hand,
He swallows and feels his own brain implode,
The vessels in his nose begin to glow.
Each day he plans to end up squatting like
Mahatma Gandhi with a glass of unsweetened tea.
He wishes he looked like a Rouault Christ.
But who says Zimmer should not compensate himself?
Though worn out at both ends,
He regards his happy middle,
His gilded eyes in the mirror.
Someday he may fall face down
In the puke of his own buoyancy,
But while the world and his body
Are breaking down,
Zimmer will hold his glass up.
NUMBER ONE
I slouch in bed.
Beyond the streaked trees of my window,
All groves are bare.
Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women
Sorting slate from anthracite
Between railroad ties:
The yellow-bearded winter of the depression
Is still alive somewhere, an old man
Counting his collection of bottle caps
In a tarpaper shack under the cold trees
Of my grave.
I still feel half drunk,
And all those old women beyond my window
Are hunching toward the graveyard.
Drunk, mumbling Hungarian,
The sun staggers in,
And his big stupid face pitches
Into the stove.
For two hours I have been dreaming
Of green butterflies searching for diamonds
In coal seams;
And children chasing each other for a game
Through the hills of fresh graves.
But the sun has come home drunk from the sea,
And a sparrow outside
Sings of the Hanna Coal Co. and the dead moon.
The filaments of cold light bulbs tremble
In music like delicate birds.
Ah, turn it off.
NUMBER TWO:
I TRY TO WAKEN AND GREET THE WORLD ONCE AGAIN
In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the entire branch will not break.
Mother is drinking to forget a man
Who could fill the woods with invitations:
Come with me he whispered and she went
In his Nash Rambler, its dash
Where her knees turned green
In the radium dials of the '50s.
When I drink it is always 1953,
Bacon wilting in the pan on Cook Street
And mother, wrist deep in red water,
Laying a trail from the sink
To a glass of gin and back.
She is a beautiful, unlucky woman
In love with a man of lechery so solid
You could build a table on it
And when you did the blues would come to visit.
I remember all of us awkwardly at dinner,
The dark slung across the porch,
And then mother's dress falling to the floor,
Buttons ticking like seeds spit on a plate.
When I drink I am too much like herâ
The knife in one hand and in the other
The trout with a belly white as my wrist.
I have loved you all my life
She told him and it was true
In the same way that all her life
She drank, dedicated to the act itself,
She stood at this stove
And with the care of the very drunk
Handed him the plate.
I never remember holding a full drink.
My first look shows the level half-way down.
What next? Ration the rest, and try to think
Of higher things, until mine host comes round?
Some people say, best show an empty glass:
Someone will fill it. Well, I've tried that too.
You may get drunk, or dry half-hours may pass.
It seems to turn on where you are. Or who.
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to itâit's the only way.
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back
and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of
a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that
is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing,
everything that is speaking ⦠ask what time it is and wind, wave,
star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to
be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On
wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”
Translated by Louis Simpson
Muse & Drudge
wine's wicked wine's divine
pickled drunk down to the rind
depression ham ain't got no bone
watermelons rampant emblazoned
island named Dawta
Gullah backwater
she swim she fish
here it be fresh
cassava yucca taro dasheen
spicy yam okra vinegary greens
guava salt cod catfish ackee
fatmeat's greasy that's too easy
not to be outdone she put
the big pot in the little pot
when you get food this good
you know the cook stuck her foot in it
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine
.
âJACQUES 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.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's teacup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet andâsomehowâ
            the wine.
