The Lunatic (2 page)

Dragging his gaze along as they do.

MEET EDDIE

Whose life is as merry as a beer can

Hurtling down a mountain stream

Giving some rocks a wide berth,

Bumping head-on into the others,

And going into a head-spinning twirl

Like a little girl on a piano stool,

The water shouting as it rushes past:

Are you ready to meet your Maker?

As the woods around him begin to thin

And the trees don their fright wigs

As he prepares to go over the falls

Like a blind man strapped to an accordion.

OUR GANG

Like moths

Around a streetlamp

In hell

We were.

Lost souls,

One and all.

If found,

Return to sender.

WHAT THE OLD LADY TOLD ME

He sawed my head off every night

And twice a week at a matinee performance.

Some spectators would faint,

Others would rise and applaud.

It was summer. The city was emptying

For the long holiday weekend ahead.

A newly married couple, the radio said,

Were stuck for hours in an elevator.

God’s hearing aid needs a new battery,
she told me.

There were cries for help and shouts

In the street last night, a woman

Pleading with a man to stop beating her.

It’s because she sits at her window

Long after everyone else has gone to sleep

That she overhears and sees such things,

And many others too awful to mention.

NEW HAIRCUT

In a head this old and thick there are all sorts of ideas,

Some of them cockeyed, of course.

They saw wood four to a bed under a rope

Tied into a noose dangling from the ceiling.

In a head this old there is a woman undressing,

A radio singing softly to itself,

A small dog running in circles.

There’s a house detective making his rounds,

Wearing a funny hat as if it were New Year’s Eve.

O mysteries! Nina Delgado, the greatest of all,

Whose name I saw spray-painted on a factory wall,

And who like a leaf that has fallen far from a tree

Is now floating serenely out to sea, or back to me.

To have so many screws loose in one’s head—

Is that what God and the Devil wrought?

In a head this old, there’s also someone

Who every now and then peeks into a mirror

And shudders because there’s no one there.

SOME LATE-SUMMER EVENING

When the wind off the lake

Stirs the trees’ memories

And their dark leaves swell

Against the fading daylight

With an outpouring of tenderness—

Or could it be anguish?

Making us all fall silent

Around the picnic table,

Unsure now whether to linger

Over our drinks or head home.

II

LET US BE CAREFUL

More could be said

Of a dead fly

In the window

Of a small shed,

And of an iron typewriter

That hasn’t

Lifted a key in years,

Both in delight

And dark despair.

AS YOU COME OVER THE HILL

You’ll see cows grazing in a field

And perhaps a chicken or a turtle

Crossing the road in their sweet time,

And a small lake where a boy once

Threw a girl who couldn’t swim,

And many large maple and oak trees

Offering ample shade to lie in,

Their branches to hang yourself from,

Should you so desire,

Some lazy afternoon or evening

When something tells the birds to hush,

And the one streetlight in the village

To keep a few moths company

And the large old house put up for sale

With some of its windows broken.

ONCE DECEMBER COMES

There’s another kind of sky,

Another kind of light

Over the wintry fields,

Some other kind of darkness

Following in its footsteps,

Eager to seek our company

In these frostbitten little homes,

Standing bravely

With no dog in sight.

BARE TREES

One of my thoughts

Eloped with a leaf

The wind blew off a tree,

With two crows

Setting forth from another

In hot pursuit

Across the bleak landscape,

Like a frantic father

With a minister in tow.

THE LIGHT

Our thoughts like it quiet

In this no-bird dawn,

Like the way the early light

Takes the world as it finds it

And makes no comment

About the apples the wind

Has blown off a tree,

Or the horse broken loose

From a fenced field grazing

Quietly among the tombstones

In a small family graveyard.

NIGHT MUSIC

Little brook, running past my house,

I like the tune you hum to yourself

When night comes,

And only the two of us are awake.

You keep me company

So I don’t fear

The darkness round my bed

And the thoughts in my head

Flying crookedly like bats

Between the old church and the graveyard.

DON’T NAME THE CHICKENS

Let them peck in the yard

As they please,

Or walk over to stand

At the edge of the road.

The rooster strutting about

Will keep an eye on them,

Till it’s time

To withdraw under a tree,

And wait for the heat

To pass and the children

To return to the toys

They left lying in the dust.

For, come Sunday,

One of the chickens may lose its head

And hang by its feet

From a peg in the barn.

PASTORAL

Is that an uprooted root of a tree,

Or a dentist’s chair in the meadow?

The cow grazing may be the nurse,

But I don’t see the doc,

Unless, it’s that mutt running their way

With ears flapping, wagging his tail.

AS I WAS SAYING

That fat orange cat

Slipping in and out

Of the town jail

Whenever it pleases,

How about that?

SINBAD THE SAILOR

On dark winter nights in the country,

The poor and the old keep

A single light lit in their homes,

Weak and not easy to see,

Like someone who had rowed his boat

Beyond the sight of land,

And had lowered his oars

To rest and light a cigarette

With the sea quiet around him—

Or would they be dark fields

Made quiet by the falling snow?

THE EXECUTION

It was the earliest of sunrises

And the quietest.

The birds, for reasons of their own,

Kept mum in the trees

Whose leaves remained

Calm throughout

With only a small number

In the upper branches

Sprinkled with fresh blood.

THREE COWS

These must be the cows who prayed

   to be born again

   and graze side by side

   on this pretty meadow.

And did so all summer long,

   lifting their heads only

   to look with their sad eyes

   at some poor devil like you,

who has stopped by their fence,

   wearied by some thought or other,

   and has now roused himself

   discovering he has company.

THE MISSING HOURS

Even time took a rest

On such summer afternoons

Sunning itself on a lawn

Like an unknown woman

Lying half-naked

Wearing dark glasses,

Long into the evening,

Which never seemed to come.

Only a shadow snuck

A peek now and then

From a church or a tree

And drew back in misery.

THE NEW WIDOW

Weren’t you to be her prisoner for life

In her father’s woodshed once?

Didn’t she make you strip your shorts

And cover your eyes with one hand,

So she could touch you with the other,

Till both of your knees went weak

While a rooster kept crowing in the heat

And deep slumber of the afternoon.

THE WINE

Whatever solace you have for me,

Glass of old red wine,

Whisper it into my ear

With each little sip I take,

And only in my ear,

In this hour made solemn

By the news on the radio,

The dying fires of the sunset,

And the trees in my yard

Putting on their black coats.

IN MY GRANDMOTHER’S TIME

Death asking an old woman

To please sew him a button,

And she agrees, gets out

Of bed and starts looking

For her needle and thread

With a lit candle the priest

Had placed above her head.

BLACK BUTTERFLY

Ghost ship of my life,

Weighed down by coffins

Sailing out

On the evening tide.

III

THE STRAY

One day, chasing my tail here and there,

I stopped to catch my breath

On some corner in New York,

While people hurried past me,

All determined to get somewhere,

Save a few adrift like lost children.

What ever became of my youth?

I wanted to stop a stranger and ask.

“It went into hiding,” said an old woman

Who’d read my mind.