Wakefulness: Poems (3 page)

as civil, or even territory. I need to subscribe,

now, history will carry me along and as gently leave me

here, in the cave, the enormous well-being

of which we may not speak.

Each is truly a unique piece,

you said, or, perhaps, each

is a truly unique piece.

I sniff the difference.

It’s like dust in an old house,

or the water thereof. Then you come

to an exciting part.

The bandit affianced

to the blind man’s daughter. The mangel-wurzels

that come out of every door, salute the traveler

and are gone. Or the more melting pace of strolling players,

each with a collapsed sweetie on his arm, each

tidy as one’s idea of everything under the sun is tidy.

And the wolverines

return, with their coach, and night,

the black bat night, is blacker than any bat.

Just so you know, this is the falling-off place,

for the water, where damsels stroll and uncles

know a good thing when they see one.

The park is all over.

It isn’t a knee injury, or a postage stamp on Mars.

It is all of the above, and some other things too:

a nameless morning in May fielded by taut observers.

An inner tube on a couch.

Then we floated down the Great Array river, each

in our inner tube, each one a different color:

Mine was lime green, yours was pistachio.

And the current murmured to us mind your back

for another day. Are

you so sure we haven’t passed the goalposts yet? Won’t

you reconsider? Remount me to my source? Egad,

Trixie, the water can speak! Like a boy

it speaks, and I’m not so sure how little all this is,

how much fuss shouldn’t be made about it. When another boy comes

to the edge of the falls, and calls, for it is late,

won’t we be sorry for not having invented this one,

letting him fall by the wayside? Then, sure enough, waves

of heather recuse the bearers of false witness, they fly like ribbons

on the stiff breeze, telling of us: We once made

some mistake, it seems, and now we are to be judged, except

it isn’t so bad, someone tells me you’ll be let off the hook,

we will all be able to go home, sojourn and smile again, be racked

with insidious giggles like guilt. Meantime, jugglers swarm over the volcano’s

stiff sides. We believe it to be Land’s End, that it’s

six o’clock, and the razor fish have gone home.

Once, on Mannahatta’s bleak shore,

I trolled for spunkfish, but caught naught, nothing save

a rubber plunger or two. It was awful,

at that time. Now everything is cheerful.

I wonder, does it make a difference?

Are sailors waving

from the deck of their distraught ship? We aren’t

envious though, life being so full of

so many little commotions, it’s up to

whoever to grab his (or hers). The violin slices life up

into manageable hunks, and the fiddler knows not

who he is moving, or cares why people should be moved;

his mind is on the end, the extraordinary onus of finishing

what’s set out for him. Do you imagine him better off than you?

My feet were numb, I ask him only, how do you carry this from here to over there?

Is there a flat barge? How many feet does a centipede have?

(Answer in tomorrow’s edition.) I heard the weeping cranes,

telling how time was running out. It was Belgian,

they thought. Nobody burns the midnight oil for
this
,

yet I think I shall be a scholar someday, all the same.

The hours suit me. And the rubber corsages the girls wear

in and out of class. Sure, I’ll turn out to be a nerd, and have to sit

in the corner, but that’s part of the exciting adventure. I know things

are different and the same. Now if only I could tell you …

The period of my rest is ended.

I shall negotiate the fall, then go crying

back to you all. In those years peace came and went, our father’s car changed

with the seasons, all around us was fighting and the excitement of spring.

Now, funnily enough, it’s over. I shan’t mind the vacant premise

that vexed me once. I know it’s all too true. And the hooligan

ogles a calla lily: Maybe only the fingertips are exciting,

it thinks, disposing of another bushelful of ripe nostalgia.

Maybe it’s too late,

maybe they came today.

Renewed by everything, I thought

I was a ghost. All we’ve got in the back seat are doors.

I was just thinking

it was time to go back, pick up the pieces,

place them on a stand. You are nearer

to the high-school orchestra.

Youth plays absorbed.

If it had its own way, we’d be

outside. The decision is HERE!

Already they’re taking it down,

distributing the various parts to places built in the ground

just for them. Next, we’d be tiptoeing

up and down the station platform. Look,

I’ve brought you a box of candied chestnuts, for the great voyage

into the technical dream you will learn to read.

For us, it is enough that the grass grows

sideways into the loam,

and that the wind is curious, silent tonight.

Remotely the unnamed keeps up with me.

It must be quite a time

since the last dignitaries visited with you.

Yes, and I’m about out of breath

for all the quiet cells we kept company in.

Must be a zillion years—

Look, here comes one of them.

I know I just met the czar’s brother

in a book report. Soon it was time to return home,

past the midpoint, skipping-place.

Fierce, how that cloud suffocates

the sun, then is gracious for a while

but we can’t go back there

due to the clamor, it’s just as well

that they roll about

on the grass, young ones, old ones, the deer,

the pointer. And when you’ve imbibed as much

of the hurt as likes you, it’s time for tag,

game that rolls down through our lives

over and over. You get what you have

to ask for, which turns out to be enough

to divide with the haphazard, rather ragged

assembly.

We didn’t go near the

windmill again for years, it was as though it had crumbled

in the imagination. Pretty soon six-pointed

purple stars stabbed us awake, and my goodness …

A cup drips air,

peanuts fester. A wallaby streaks for the light,

suspenders down, indeed his pantleg is falling.

A ghost train appears over the snow-shrouded moor,

shoving us into silence. I decline the irregular verbs

of which our life is composed, but I cannot sing.

It stirs in the pencil box.

The ruler is too close for that.

Wind chimes grate against the door,

as though we never had one. Electricity

is named for the first time.

There are tensions. I suggest we try them out,

but the New England steeple looks sourly at us,

all coffins to the wind.

Alas, we are forbidden to worship the tensions,

even to play with them. If the next moon provides the addition,

the hearse its hamper of ham sandwiches, why then we will go,

as I told you we must. We are forever outdoors,

saving people’s lives. The cattails get to see so much of us

that their contempt breeds civility, and the swamp

comes to seem right. Why hadn’t it seemed so all along?

Now that it has gophers to chew on

we can imagine a less festive, more brackish

raison d’être of it. But we like it that our play be long,

and too many overseers crowd the hutch.

It is definitely time to move on.

Yet I had thought all of this was a party.

It is, but only in its duration, that sweeps us

down the stairs and over the side of a hill

where baubles float, and you get to interrogate that special someone.

In a flash, more finches, blue jays and fronds appear,

bronzed with a special effect of light, that says

it only to outdoors. To imagine what lies outside it

you would have to be a king or confidence man. And alas,

we have other plans for you. You are to come to see us

this evening, in the confusion of evening, to test our reflexes,

to speak to the dressmaker’s dummy, and derive of it what comfort you can.

Your horoscope says so. What sign are you? Aw, Libra

with Pisces rising. Then I command you back to the cold

that you like so much, even though I had second thoughts

about it and everything. Can’t you see the bear’s paw

prints? They are elusively alive, held up by the trainer’s

hoop, to be an example

to the ferocious wilderness. Here, take these herbs.

So many things, so many role models.

Their eagerness dances in the firelight.

We can’t just say no to them, they have to live us

too. And in places where the water has ebbed the sky is midnight blue,

like ink spreading from a nib. They’re all here, the catchers,

umpires, men in blue flannel suits, women

with a trace of tears like re-embroidered lace,

dusty with diamonds, seams in place. There is the mother;

she calls to the son. The tortoise and the hare

have come to tolerate us. Out on the lagoon

macaws are coughing. It is important to respect our situation.

One of them tries to get back to “normal,”

but the place is too exaggerated. Madame Nola is here.

And the bishop’s children. And silly Irmgard.

And Rodney’s commando. The teacher’s pet. The cigar baron.

Marshal Tito. The young Eleanor Roosevelt.

If this is july, why does it look like August?

Sadly growing up into the real world

I don’t even ask these questions
myself.

Why are the shutters drawn

over that restaurant?

The moon’s backwash is like a deeply incised

hairnet against the stadium.

Bats drool into the gutter.

If everybody is so intent on illustrating what they
know
,

why is the ant syllabus closed?

Yes, making a point of using it

makes a point, and otherwise all is but fish scales

and fish delivery—the clear-eyed blue trough of song

in whose pit I stumbled. O Lord,

help me to get over it. That’s better, for a minute

there I thought I was a goner

and now I brushed up this interesting world

of lutanists and lunacy, and afterlife

not unlike the one we were used to—

Gosh, it’s so thrilling,

everyone is so nice,

one had almost forgotten chiggers existed,

and bedpans, and dumb ugly coffers

like the one we lived in.

But that is only a sign now.

Be warned. A slight distance.

Or picture an insect struggling.

But it’s going to be all right, I tell you.

We can live in The Heights and conjecture interestingly

about how life is made, how a man is paid

after all the contracts and ledgers are signed, blotted

in the sun. And surely one can stagger then,

get up and stagger to the nearest public telephone

and make slurping sounds at an invisible opponent: gone, warned

away, washed away. This siding came in with a crumpled

building already on it. Now only frogs can compute

the earth-sign that led gradually to dementia and panic.

The storage place is over there. I can see thistles

out of the corners of my eyes. It must be we are waiting

on another’s aggression, handmaidens to the very plot

that would destroy us. We can

manage a giggle or handshake, but in the end the ink seeps through

and the person who did this wants very much to believe it,

has put himself inside us for this purpose. O chilblains,

weather vanes in the aching March wind,

did you want this ending? For this to happen

even as we were sitting all nice inside

the house, and by its hearth, and the brutal call

of the scarecrow fell like a hush over everything?

My friend thinks so—tell
her

the bad news: “up to our ears in debt,” playing a little

on the tidal lawn, abashed by our failure

to keep track of the consequences as they happened, and now a little

girl goes out to the squirrel. Hey, kid,

can I see your—

Sorry, time’s up.

We get to place a small white stone here at the crossroads;

it can be any one you like. Remember to vote. The clothesline has fallen

to the enemy somewhere. Yet the awnings are still prim and conspiratorial.

My chapter met and discussed you. Any number can play, the fleet’s in,

and with the recyclables, our starched T-shirt.

Keeping in mind that all things break,

the valedictorian urged his future plans on us:

Don’t give up. It’s too soon. Things break. Yes, they fail

or they are anchored up ahead, but no one can see that far.

As he was speaking, the sun set. The grove grew silent. There

are more of us taking ourselves seriously now than ever,

one thought. We may never realize about our lives

till it’s too late, and a man with a dog comes to shoot us.

I like to think though that everything is its own reward,

that liars such as we were made to last forever,