John Ashbery
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face, which swims
Toward and away like the hand
Except that it is in repose. It is what is
Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set
himself
To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose
In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . .
He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made
By a turner, and having divided it in half and
Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself
With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass,"
Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection once removed.
The glass chose to reflect only what he saw
Which was enough for his purpose: his image
Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle.
The time of day or the density of the light
Adhering to the face keeps it
Lively and intact in a recurring wave
Of arrival. The soul establishes itself.
But how far can it swim out through the eyes
And still return safely to its nest? The surface
Of the mirror being convex, the distance increases
Significantly; that is, enough to make the point
That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept
In suspension, unable to advance much farther
Than your look as it intercepts the picture.
Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"
By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission
That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.
But there is in that gaze a combination
Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts,
Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,
Has no secret, is small, and it fits
Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
That is the tune but there are no words.
The words are only speculation
(From the Latin speculum, mirror):
They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music.
We see only postures of the dream,
Riders of the motion that swings the face
Into view under evening skies, with no
False disarray as proof of authenticity.
But it is life englobed.
One would like to stick one's hand
Out of the globe, but its dimension,
What carries it, will not allow it.
No doubt it is this, not the reflex
To hide something, which makes the hand loom large
As it retreats slightly. There is no way
To build it flat like a section of wall:
It must join the segment of a circle,
Roving back to the body of which it seems
So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face
On which the effort of this condition reads
Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark
Or star one is not sure of having seen
As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose
Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its
Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.
Francesco, your hand is big enough
To wreck the sphere, and too big,
One would think, to weave delicate meshes
That only argue its further detention.
(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,
Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom
In relation to the tiny, self-important ship
On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim
That everything is surface. The surface is what's there
And nothing can exist except what's there.
There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves,
And the window doesn't matter much, or that
Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even
As a gauge of the weather, which in French is
Le temps, the word for time, and which
Follows a course wherein changes are merely
Features of the whole. The whole is stable within
Instability, a globe like ours, resting
On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball
Secure on its jet of water.
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure
Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.
The balloon pops, the attention
Turns dully away. Clouds
In the puddle stir up into sawtoothed fragments.
I think of the friends
Who came to see me, of what yesterday
Was like. A peculiar slant
Of memory that intrudes on the dreaming model
In the silence of the studio as he considers
Lifting the pencil to the self-portrait.
How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand,
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you. Those voices in the dusk
Have told you all and still the tale goes on
In the form of memories deposited in irregular
Clumps of crystals. Whose curved hand controls,
Francesco, the turning seasons and the thoughts
That peel off and fly away at breathless speeds
Like the last stubborn leaves ripped
From wet branches? I see in this only the chaos
Of your round mirror which organizes everything
Around the polestar of your eyes which are empty,
Know nothing, dream but reveal nothing.
I feel the carousel starting slowly
And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us. Long ago
The strewn evidence meant something,
The small accidents and pleasures
Of the day as it moved gracelessly on,
A housewife doing chores. Impossible now
To restore those properties in the silver blur that is
The record of what you accomplished by sitting down
"With great art to copy all that you saw in the
glass"
So as to perfect and rule out the extraneous
Forever. In the circle of your intentions certain spars
Remain that perpetuate the enchantment of self with self:
Eyebeams, muslin, coral. It doesn't matter
Because these are things as they are today
Before one's shadow ever grew
Out of the field into thoughts of tomorrow.
Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,
Desolate, reluctant as any landscape
To yield what are laws of perspective
After all only to the painter's deep
Mistrust, a weak instrument though
Necessary. Of course some things
Are possible, it knows, but it doesn't know
Which ones. Some day we will try
To do as many things as are possible
And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful
Of them, but this will not have anything
To do with what is promised today, our
Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear
On the horizon. Today enough of a cover burnishes
To keep the supposition of promises together
In one piece of surface, letting one ramble
Back home from them so that these
Even stronger possibilities can remain
Whole without being tested. Actually
The skin of the bubble-chamber's as tough as
Reptile eggs; everything gets "programmed" there
In due course: more keeps getting included
Without adding to the sum, and just as one
Gets accustomed to a noise that
Kept one awake but now no longer does,
So the room contains this flow like an hourglass
Without varying in climate or quality
(Except perhaps to brighten bleakly and almost
Invisibly, in a focus sharpening toward death--more
Of this later). What should be the vacuum of a dream
Becomes continually replete as the source of dreams
Is being tapped so that this one dream
May wax, flourish like a cabbage rose,
Defying sumptuary laws, leaving us
To awake and try to begin living in what
Has now become a slum. Sydney Freedberg in his
Parmigianino says of it: "Realism in this portrait
No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . .
.
However its distortion does not create
A feeling of disharmony . . . . The forms retain
A strong measure of ideal beauty," because
Fed by our dreams, so inconsequential until one day
We notice the hole they left. Now their importance
If not their meaning is plain. They were to nourish
A dream which includes them all, as they are
Finally reversed in the accumulating mirror.
They seemed strange because we couldn't actually see them.
And we realize this only at a point where they lapse
Like a wave breaking on a rock, giving up
Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.
The forms retain a strong measure of ideal beauty
As they forage in secret on our idea of distortion.
Why be unhappy with this arrangement, since
Dreams prolong us as they are absorbed?
Something like living occurs, a movement
Out of the dream into its codification.
As I start to forget it
It presents its stereotype again
But it is an unfamiliar stereotype, the face
Riding at anchor, issued from hazards, soon
To accost others, "rather angel than man"
(Vasari).
Perhaps an angel looks like everything
We have forgotten, I mean forgotten
Things that don't seem familiar when
We meet them again, lost beyond telling,
Which were ours once. This would be the point
Of invading the privacy of this man who
"Dabbled in alchemy, but whose wish
Here was not to examine the subtleties of art
In a detached, scientific spirit: he wished through them
To impart the sense of novelty and amazement to the
spectator"
(Freedberg). Later portraits such as the Uffizi
"Gentleman," the Borghese "Young
Prelate" and
The Naples "Antea" issue from Mannerist
Tensions, but here, as Freedberg points out,
The surprise, the tension are in the concept
Rather than its realization.
The consonance of the High Renaissance
Is present, though distorted by the mirror.
What is novel is the extreme care in rendering
The velleities of the rounded reflecting surface
(It is the first mirror portrait),
So that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection
Isn't yours. You feel then like one of those
Hoffmann characters who have been deprived
Of a reflection, except that the whole of me
Is seen to be supplanted by the strict
Otherness of the painter in his
Other room. We have surprised him
At work, but no, he has surprised us
As he works. The picture is almost finished,
The surprise almost over, as when one looks out,
Startled by a snowfall which even now is
Ending in specks and sparkles of snow.
It happened while you were inside, asleep,
And there is no reason why you should have
Been awake for it, except that the day
Is ending and it will be hard for you
To get to sleep tonight, at least until late.
The shadow of the city injects its own
Urgency: Rome where Francesco
Was at work during the Sack: his inventions
Amazed the soldiers who burst in on him;
They decided to spare his life, but he left soon after;
Vienna where the painting is today, where
I saw it with Pierre in the summer of 1959; New York
Where I am now, which is a logarithm
Of other cities. Our landscape
Is alive with filiations, shuttlings;
Business is carried on by look, gesture,
Hearsay. It is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking glass of the
Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants
To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has been temporarily stalled
But something new is on the way, a new preciosity
In the wind. Can you stand it,
Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?
This wind brings what it knows not, is
Self--propelled, blind, has no notion
Of itself. It is inertia that once
Acknowledged saps all activity, secret or public:
Whispers of the word that can't be understood
But can be felt, a chill, a blight
Moving outward along the capes and peninsulas
Of your nervures and so to the archipelagoes
And to the bathed, aired secrecy of the open sea.
This is its negative side. Its positive side is
Making you notice life and the stresses
That only seemed to go away, but now,
As this new mode questions, are seen to be
Hastening out of style. If they are to become classics
They must decide which side they are on.
Their reticence has undermined
The urban scenery, made its ambiguities
Look willful and tired, the games of an old man.
What we need now is this unlikely
Challenger pounding on the gates of an amazed
Castle. Your argument, Francesco,
Had begun to grow stale as no answer
Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now
Into dust, that only means its time had come
Some time ago, but look now, and listen:
It may be that another life is stocked there
In recesses no one knew of; that it,
Not we, are the change; that we are in fact it
If we could get back to it, relive some of the way
It looked, turn our faces to the globe as it sets
And still be coming out all right:
Nerves normal, breath normal. Since it is a metaphor
Made to include us, we are a part of it and
Can live in it as in fact we have done,
Only leaving our minds bare for questioning
We now see will not take place at random
But in an orderly way that means to menace
Nobody--the normal way things are done,
Like the concentric growing up of days
Around a life: correctly, if you think about it.
A breeze like the turning of a page
Brings back your face: the moment
Takes such a big bite out of the haze
Of pleasant intuition it comes after.
The locking into place is "death itself,"
As Berg said of a phrase in Mahler's Ninth;
Or, to quote Imogen in Cymbeline, "There cannot
Be a pinch in death more sharp than this," for,
Though only exercise or tactic, it carries
The momentum of a conviction that had been building.
Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it
Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains
The white precipitate of its dream
In the climate of sighs flung across our world,
A cloth over a birdcage. But it is certain that
What is beautiful seems so only in relation to a specific
Life, experienced or not, channeled into some form
Steeped in the nostalgia of a collective past.
The light sinks today with an enthusiasm
I have known elsewhere, and known why
It seemed meaningful, that others felt this way
Years ago. I go on consulting
This mirror that is no longer mine
For as much brisk vacancy as is to be
My portion this time. And the vase is always full
Because there is only just so much room
And it accommodates everything. The sample
One sees is not to be taken as
Merely that, but as everything as it
May be imagined outside time--not as a gesture
But as all, in the refined, assimilable state.
But what is this universe the porch of
As it veers in and out, back and forth,
Refusing to surround us and still the only
Thing we can see? Love once
Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,
Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.
But we know it cannot be sandwiched
Between two adjacent moments, that its windings
Lead nowhere except to further tributaries
And that these empty themselves into a vague
Sense of something that can never be known
Even though it seems likely that each of us
Knows what it is and is capable of
Communicating it to the other. But the look
Some wear as a sign makes one want to
Push forward ignoring the apparent
NaÏveté of the attempt, not caring
That no one is listening, since the light
Has been lit once and for all in their eyes
And is present, unimpaired, a permanent anomaly,
Awake and silent. On the surface of it
There seems no special reason why that light
Should be focused by love, or why
The city falling with its beautiful suburbs
Into space always less clear, less defined,
Should read as the support of its progress,
The easel upon which the drama unfolded
To its own satisfaction and to the end
Of our dreaming, as we had never imagined
It would end, in worn daylight with the painted
Promise showing through as a gage, a bond.
This nondescript, never-to-be defined daytime is
The secret of where it takes place
And we can no longer return to the various
Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory
Of the principal witnesses. All we know
Is that we are a little early, that
Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.
I used to think they were all alike,
That the present always looked the same to everybody
But this confusion drains away as one
Is always cresting into one's present.
Yet the "poetic," straw-colored space
Of the long corridor that leads back to the painting,
Its darkening opposite--is this
Some figment of "art," not to be imagined
As real, let alone special? Hasn't it too its lair
In the present we are always escaping from
And falling back into, as the waterwheel of days
Pursues its uneventful, even serene course?
I think it is trying to say it is today
And we must get out of it even as the public
Is pushing through the museum now so as to
Be out by closing time. You can't live there.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how:
Secrets of wash and finish that took a lifetime
To learn and are reduced to the status of
Black-and-white illustrations in a book where colorplates
Are rare. That is, all time
Reduces to no special time. No one
Alludes to the change; to do so might
Involve calling attention to oneself
Which would augment the dread of not getting out
Before having seen the whole collection
(Except for the sculptures in the basement:
They are where they belong).
Our time gets to be veiled, compromised
By the portrait's will to endure. It hints at
Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.
We don't need paintings or
Doggerel written by mature poets when
The explosion is so precise, so fine.
Is there any point even in acknowledging
The existence of all that? Does it
Exist? Certainly the leisure to
Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,
Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives
Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,
Indistinguishable. "Play" is something else;
It exists, in a society specifically
Organized as a demonstration of itself.
There is no other way, and those assholes
Who would confuse everything with their mirror games
Which seem to multiply stakes and possibilities, or
At least confuse issues by means of an investing
Aura that would corrode the architecture
Of the whole in a haze of suppressed mockery,
Are beside the point. They are out of the game,
Which doesn't exist until they are out of it.
It seems like a very hostile universe
But as the principle of each individual thing is
Hostile to, exists at the expense of all the others
As philosophers have often pointed out, at least
This thing, the mute, undivided present,
Has the justification of logic, which
In this instance isn't a bad thing
Or wouldn't be, if the way of telling
Didn't somehow intrude, twisting the end result
Into a caricature of itself. This always
Happens, as in the game where
A whispered phrase passed around the room
Ends up as something completely different.
It is the principle that makes works of art so unlike
What the artist intended. Often he finds
He has omitted the thing he started out to say
In the first place. Seduced by flowers,
Explicit pleasures, he blames himself (though
Secretly satisfied with the result), imagining
He had a say in the matter and exercised
An option of which he was hardly conscious,
Unaware that necessity circumvents such resolutions.
So as to create something new
For itself, that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being. Parmigianino
Must have realized this as he worked at his
Life-obstructing task. One is forced to read
The perfectly plausible accomplishment of a purpose
Into the smooth, perhaps even bland (but so
Enigmatic) finish. Is there anything
To be serious about beyond this otherness
That gets included in the most ordinary
Forms of daily activity, changing everything
Slightly and profoundly, and tearing the matter
Of creation, any creation, not just artistic creation
Out of our hands, to install it on some monstrous, near
Peak, too close to ignore, too far
For one to intervene? This otherness, this
"Not-being-us" is all there is to look at
In the mirror, though no one can say
How it came to be this way. A ship
Flying unknown colors has entered the harbor.
You are allowing extraneous matters
To break up your day, cloud the focus
Of the crystal ball. Its scene drifts away
Like vapor scattered on the wind. The fertile
Thought-associations that until now came
So easily, appear no more, or rarely. Their
Colorings are less intense, washed out
By autumn rains and winds, spoiled, muddied,
Given back to you because they are worthless.
Yet we are such creatures of habit that their
Implications are still around en permanence, confusing
Issues. To be serious only about sex
Is perhaps one way, but the sands are hissing
As they approach the beginning of the big slide
Into what happened. This past
Is now here: the painter's
Reflected face, in which we linger, receiving
Dreams and inspirations on an unassigned
Frequency, but the hues have turned metallic,
The curves and edges are not so rich. Each person
Has one big theory to explain the universe
But it doesn't tell the whole story
And in the end it is what is outside him
That matters, to him and especially to us
Who have been given no help whatever
In decoding our own man-size quotient and must rely
On second-hand knowledge. Yet I know
That no one else's taste is going to be
Any help, and might as well be ignored.
Once it seemed so perfect--gloss on the fine
Freckled skin, lips moistened as though about to part
Releasing speech, and the familiar look
Of clothes and furniture that one forgets.
This could have been our paradise: exotic
Refuge within an exhausted world, but that wasn't
In the cards, because it couldn't have been
The point. Aping naturalness may be the first step
Toward achieving an inner calm
But it is the first step only, and often
Remains a frozen gesture of welcome etched
On the air materializing behind it,
A convention. And we have really
No time for these, except to use them
For kindling. The sooner they are burnt up
The better for the roles we have to play.
Therefore I beseech you, withdraw that hand,
Offer it no longer as shield or greeting,
The shield of a greeting, Francesco:
There is room for one bullet in the chamber:
Our looking through the wrong end
Of the telescope as you fall back at a speed
Faster than that of light to flatten ultimately
Among the features of the room, an invitation
Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"
Syndrome, though the "all" tells tersely
Enough how it wasn't. Its existence
Was real, though troubled, and the ache
Of this waking dream can never drown out
The diagram still sketched on the wind,
Chosen, meant for me and materialized
In the disguising radiance of my room.
We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant. One feels too confined,
Sifting the April sunlight for clues,
In the mere stillness of the ease of its
Parameter. The hand holds no chalk
And each part of the whole falls off
And cannot know it knew, except
Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time.
Into the Dusk-Charged Air
Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near where it joined the Cher.
The St. Lawrence prods among black stones
And mud. But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson's
Surface. The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber
Is contained within steep banks. The Isar
Flows too fast to swim in, the Jordan's water
Courses over the flat land. The Allegheny and its boats
Were dark blue. The Moskowa is
Gray boats. The Amstel flows slowly.
Leaves fall into the Connecticut as it passes
Underneath. The Liffey is full of sewage,
Like the Seine, but unlike
The brownish-yellow Dordogne.
Mountains hem in the Colorado
And the Oder is very deep, almost
As deep as the Congo is wide.
The plain banks of the Neva are
Gray. The dark Saône flows silently.
And the Volga is long and wide
As it flows across the brownish land. The Ebro
Is blue, and slow. The Shannon flows
Swiftly between its banks. The Mississippi
Is one of the world's longest rivers, like the Amazon.
It has the Missouri for a tributary.
The Harlem flows amid factories
And buildings. The Nelson is in Canada,
Flowing. Through hard banks the Dubawnt
Forces its way. People walk near the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away;
The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main
Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks
And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.
The Loir bursts its frozen shackles
But the Moldau's wet mud ensnares it.
The East catches the light.
Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes
And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.
The Po too flows, and the many-colored
Thames. Into the Atlantic Ocean
Pours the Garonne. Few ships navigate
On the Housatonic, but quite a few can be seen
On the Elbe. For centuries
The Afton has flowed.
If the Rio Negro
Could abandon its song, and the Magdalena
The jungle flowers, the Tagus
Would still flow serenely, and the Ohio
Abrade its slate banks. The tan Euphrates would
Sidle silently across the world. The Yukon
Was choked with ice, but the Susquehanna still pushed
Bravely along. The Dee caught the day's last flares
Like the Pilcomayo's carrion rose.
The Peace offered eternal fragrance
Perhaps, but the Mackenzie churned livid mud
Like tan chalk-marks. Near where
The Brahmaputra slapped swollen dikes
And the Pechora? The São Francisco
Skulks amid gray, rubbery nettles. The Liard's
Reflexes are slow, and the Arkansas erodes
Anthracite hummocks. The Paraná stinks.
The Ottawa is light emerald green
Among grays. Better that the Indus fade
In steaming sands! Let the Brazos
Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden
Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must
Find a way to freeze it hard. The Ural
Is freezing slowly in the blasts. The black Yonne
Congeals nicely. And the Petit-Morin
Curls up on the solid earth. The Inn
Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's
Galvanized. The Ganges is liquid snow by now;
The Vyatka's ice-gray. The once-molten Tennessee s
Curdled. The Japurá is a pack of ice. Gelid
The Columbia's gray loam banks. The Don's merely
A giant icicle. The Niger freezes, slowly.
The interminable Lena plods on
But the Purus' mercurial waters are icy, grim
With cold. The Loing is choked with fragments of ice.
The Weser is frozen, like liquid air.
And so is the Kama. And the beige, thickly flowing
Tocantins. The rivers bask in the cold.
The stern Uruguay chafes its banks,
A mass of ice. The Hooghly is solid
Ice. The Adour is silent, motionless.
The lovely Tigris is nothing but scratchy ice
Like the Yellowstone, with its osier-clustered banks.
The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little
And the Donets gurgles beneath the
Huge blocks of ice. The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound. Somewhere
The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's
Frozen. The Oka is frozen solider
Than the Somme. The Minho slumbers
In winter, nor does the Snake
Remember August. Hilarious, the Canadian
Is solid ice. The Madeira slavers
Across the thawing fields, and the Plata laughs.
The Dvina soaks up the snow. The Sava's
Temperature is above freezing. The Avon
Carols noiselessly. The Drôme presses
Grass banks; the Adige's frozen
Surface is like gray pebbles.
Birds circle the Ticino. In winter
The Var was dark blue, unfrozen. The
Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice;
The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.
Paradoxes and Oxymorons (1981)
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
"The Skaters" (1966)
(from "Rivers and Mountains", 1966)
I
These decibels
Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
Into which being enters, and is apart.
Their colors on a warm February day
Make for masses of inertia, and hips
Prod out of the violet-seeming into a new kind
Of demand that stumps the absolute because not new
In the sense of the next one in an infinite series
But, as it were, pre-existing or pre-seeming in
Such a way as to contrast funnily with the unexpectedness
And somehow push us all into perdition.
Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard.
The answer is that it is novelty
That guides these swift blades o’er the ice,
Projects into a finer expression (but at the expense
Of energy) the profile I cannot remember.
Colors slip away from and chide us. The human mind
Cannot retain anything except perhaps the dismal two-note theme
Of some sodden “dump” or lament.
But the water surface ripples, the whole light changes.
We children are ashamed of our bodies
But we laugh and, demanded, talk of sex again
And all is well. The waves of morning harshness
Float away like coal-gas into the sky.
But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives?
The articles we’d collect—stamps of the colonies
With greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate,
Or funny-looking dogs we’d see in the street, or bright remarks.
One collects bullets. An Indianapolis, Indiana man collects slingshots of all
epochs, and so on.
Subtracted from our collections, though, these go on a little while, collecting
aimlessly. We still support them.
But so little energy they have! And up the swollen sands
Staggers the darkness fiend, with the storm fiend close behind him!
True, melodious tolling does go on in that awful pandemonium,
Certain resonances are not utterly displeasing to the terrified eardrum.
Some paroxysms are dinning of tambourine, others suggest piano room or
organ loft
For the most dissonant night charms us, even after death. This, after all, may be
happiness: tuba notes awash on the great flood, ruptures of xylophone,
violins, limpets, grace-notes, the musical instrument called serpent, viola da
gambas, aeolian harps, clavicles, pinball machines, electric drills, que sais-je
encore!
The performance has rapidly reached your ear; silent and tear-stained, in the
post-mortem shock, you stand listening, awash
With memories of hair in particular, part of the welling that is you,
The gurgling of harp, cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, temple block, English
horn and metronome! And still no presentiment, no feeling of pain before
or after.
The passage sustains, does not give. And you have come far indeed.
Yet to go from “not interesting” to “old and uninteresting,”
To be surrounded by friends, though late in life,
To hear the wings of the spirit, though far. . . .
Why do I hurriedly undrown myself to cut you down?
“I am yesterday,” and my fault is eternal.
I do not expect constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your
present demands
And I have a dim intuition that I am that other “I” with which we began.
My cheeks as blank walls to your tears and eagerness
Fondling that other, as though you had let him get away forever.
The evidence of the visual henceforth replaced
By the great shadow of trees falling over life.
A child’s devotion
To this normal, shapeless entity. . . .
Forgotten as the words fly briskly across, each time
Bringing down meaning as snow from a low sky, or rabbits flushed from a
wood.
How strange that the narrow perspective lines
Always seem to meet, although parallel, and that an insane ghost could do this,
Could make the house seem so much farther in the distance, as
It seemed to the horse, dragging the sledge of a perspective line.
Dim banners in the distance, to die. . . . And nothing put to rights. The pigs in
their cages
And so much snow, but it is to be littered with waste and ashes
So that cathedrals may grow. Out of this spring builds a tolerable
Affair of brushwood, the sea is felt behind oak wands, noiselessly pouring.
Spring with its promise of winter, and the black ivy once again
On the porch, its yellow perspective bands in place
And the horse nears them and weeps.
So much has passed through my mind this morning
That I can give you but a dim account of it:
It is already after lunch, the men are returning to their positions around the
cement mixer
And I try to sort out what has happened to me. The bundle of Gerard’s letters,
And that awful bit of news buried on the back page of yesterday’s paper.
Then the news of you this morning, in the snow. Sometimes the interval
Of bad news is so brisk that . . . And the human brain, with its tray of images
Seems a sorcerer’s magic lantern, projecting black and orange cellophane
shadows
On the distance of my hand . . . The very reaction’s puny,
And when we seek to move around, wondering what our position is now, what
the arm of that chair.
A great wind lifted these cardboard panels
Horizontal in the air. At once the perspective with the horse
Disappeared in a bigarrure of squiggly lines. The image with the crocodile in it
became no longer apparent.
Thus a great wind cleanses, as a new ruler
Edits new laws, sweeping the very breath of the streets
Into posterior trash. The films have changed—
The great titles on the scalloped awning have turned dry and blight-colored.
No wind that does not penetrate a man’s house, into the very bowels of the
furnace,
Scratching in dust a name on the mirror—say, and what about letters,
The dried grasses, fruits of the winter—gosh! Everything is trash!
The wind points to the advantages of decay
At the same time as removing them far from the sight of men.
The regent of the winds, Aeolus, is a symbol for all earthly potentates
Since holding this sickening, festering process by which we are cleansed
Of afterthought.
A girl slowly descended the line of steps.
The wind and treason are partners, turning secrets over to the military police.
Lengthening arches. The intensity of minor acts. As skaters elaborate their
distances,
Taking a separate line to its end. Returning to the mass, they join each other
Blotted in an incredible mess of dark colors, and again reappearing to take the
theme
Some little distance, like fishing boats developing from the land different
parabolas,
Taking the exquisite theme far, into farness, to Land’s End, to the ends of the
earth!
But the livery of the year, the changing air
Bring each to fulfillment. Leaving phrases unfinished,
Gestures half-sketched against woodsmoke. The abundant sap
Oozes in girls’ throats, the sticky words, half-uttered, unwished for,
A blanket disbelief, quickly supplanted by idle questions that fade in turn.
Slowly the mood turns to look at itself as some urchin
Forgotten by the roadside. New schemes are got up, new taxes,
Earthworks. And the hours becomes light again.
Girls wake up in it.
It is best to remain indoors. Because there is error
In so much precision. As flames are fanned, wishful thinking arises
Bearing its own prophets, its pointed ignoring. And just as a desire
Settles down at the end of a long spring day, over heather and watered shoot
and dried rush field,
So error is plaited into desires not yet born.
Therefore the post must be resumed (is being falsified
To be forever involved, tragically, with one’s own image?).
The studio light suddenly invaded the long casement—values were what
She knows now. But the floor is being slowly pulled apart
Like straw under those limpid feet.
And Helga, in the minuscule apartment in Jersey City
Is reacting violet to the same land of dress, is drawing death
Again in blossoms against the reactionary fire . . . pulsing
And knowing nothing to superb lambent distances that intercalate
This city. Is the death of the cube repeated. Or in the musical album.
It is time now for a general understanding of
The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting, etc.
A description of the blues. Labels on bottles
And all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.
But can one ever be sure of which ones?
Isn’t this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in
So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or a piano-legged girl
And the whole house of cards comes dinning down around one’s ears!
But this is an important aspect of the question
Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to,
This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what’s novel
Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention
To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention
Isn’t the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not ready
To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not,
Will not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous
Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves
presence, but still.
Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off
themselves.
This, thus is a portion of the subject of this poem
Which is in the form of falling snow:
That is, the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole’s
becoming so much of a truism
That their importance is again called in question, to be denied further out, and
again and again like this.
Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
Nor the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what
it is,
But the rhythm of the series of repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and
back to a slightly less diluted abstract.
Mild effects are the result.
I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here
With my quiet schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over
Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips
And the teeth the most distinct part of the whole business.
It is this madness to explain. . . .
What is the matter with plain old-fashioned cause-and-effect?
Leaving one alone with romantic impressions of the trees, the sky?
Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phony explanations,
Think them important? So back we go to the old, imprecise feelings, the
Common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional
glimpses
Of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert’s lieder. I am fascinated
Though by the urge to get out of it all, by going
Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But am afraid I’ll
Be of no help to you. Good-bye.
As balloons are to the poet, so to the ground
Its varied assortment of trees. The more assorted they are, the
Vaster his experience. Sometimes
You catch sight of them on a level with the top story of a house,
Strung up there for publicity purposes. Or like those bubbles
Children make with a kind of ring, not a pipe, and probably using some
detergent
Rather than plain everyday soap and water. Where was I? The balloons
Drift thoughtfully over the land, not exactly commenting on it;
These are the range of the poet’s experience. He can hide in trees
Like a hamadryad, but wisely prefers not to, letting the balloons
Idle him out of existence, as a car idles. Traveling faster
And more furiously across unknown horizons, belted into the night
Wishing more and more to be unlike someone, getting the whole thing
(So he believes) out of his system. Inventing systems.
We are a part of some system, thinks he, just as the sun is part of
The solar system. Trees brake his approach. And he seems to be wearing but
Half a coat, viewed from one side. A “half-man” look inspiring the disgust of
honest folk
Returning from chores, the milk frozen, the pump heaped high with a chapeau
of snow,
The “No Skating” sign as well. But it is here that he is best,
Face to face with the unsmiling alternatives of his nerve-wracking existence.
Placed squarely in front of his dilemma, on all fours before the lamentable
spectacle of the unknown.
Yet knowing where men are coming from. It is this, to hold the candle up to
the album.
II
Under the window marked “General Delivery” . . .
This should be a letter
Throwing you a minute to one side,
Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance,
Like sea or the tops of trees, and how
Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable.
It can be held in the hand.
All this must go into a letter.
Also the feeling of being lived, looking for people,
And gradual peace and relaxation.
But there’s no personal involvement:
These sudden bursts of hot and cold
Are wreathed in shadowless intensity
Whose moment saps them of all characteristics.
Thus beginning to rest you at once know.
For it is you I am parodying,
Your invisible denials. And the almost correct impressions
Corroborated by newsprint, which is so fine.
I call to you there, but I do not think that you will answer me.
For I am condemned to drum my fingers
On the closed lid of this piano, this tedious planet, earth
As it winks to you through the aspiring, growing distances,
A last spark before the night.
There was much to be said in favor of storms
But you seem to have abandoned them in favor of endless light.
I cannot say that I think the change much of an improvement.
There is something fearful in these summer nights that go on forever. . . .
We are nearing the Moorish coast, I think, in a bateau.
I wonder if I will have any friends there
Whether the future will be kinder to me than the past, for example,
And am all set to be put out, finding it to be not.
Still, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to
mention.
Not that I am not afraid, but there is very little time left.
You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling.
Suddenly, one morning, the little train arrives in the station, but oh, so big
It is! Much bigger and faster than anyone told you.
A bewhiskered student in an old baggy overcoat is waiting to take it.
“Why do you want to go there,” they all say. “It is better in the other direction.”
And so it is. There people are free, at any rate. But where you are going no one
is.
Still there are parks and libraries to be visited, “la Bibliothèque Municipale,”
Hotel reservations and all that rot. Old American films dubbed into the foreign
language,
Coffee and whiskey and cigar stubs. Nobody minds. And rain on the bristly
wool of your topcoat.
I realize that I never knew why I wanted to come.
Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic,
Its sailboats are perhaps more beautiful than these, these I am leaning against,
Spangled with diamonds and orange and purple stains,
Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are life itself to me.
I heard a girl say this once, and cried, and brought her fresh fruit and fishes,
Olives and golden baked loaves. She dried her tears and thanked me.
Now we are both setting sail into the purplish evening.
I love it! This cruise can never last long enough for me.
But once more, office desks, radiators—No! That is behind me.
No more dullness, only movies and love and laughter, sex and fun.
The ticket seller is blowing his little horn—hurry before the window slams
down.
The train we are getting onto is a boat train, and the boats are really boats this
time.
But I heard the heavens say—Is it right? This continual changing back and
forth?
Laughter and tears and so on? Mightn’t just plain sadness be sufficient for him?
No! I’ll not accept that any more, you bewhiskered old caverns of blue!
This is just right for me. I am cozily ensconced in the balcony of my face
Looking out over the whole darn countryside, a beacon of satisfaction
I am. I’ll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing but ever
beginning
My perennial voyage, into new memories, new hope and flowers
The way the coasts glide past you. I shall never forget this moment
Because it consists of purest ecstasy. I am happier now than I ever dared believe
Anyone could be. And we finger down the dog-eared coasts. . . .
It is all passing! It is past! No, I am here,
Bellow the coasts, and even the heavens roar their assent
As we pick up a lemon-colored light horizontally
Projected into the night, the night that heaven
Was kind enough to send, and I launch into the happiest dreams,
Happier once again, because tomorrow is already here.
Yet certain kernels remain. Clouds that drift past sheds—
Read it in the official bulletin. We shan’t be putting out today.
The old stove smoked worse than ever because rain was coming down its
chimney.
Only the bleary eye of fog accosted one through the mended pane.
Outside, the swamp water lapped the broken wood step.
A rowboat was moored in the alligator-infested swamp.
Somewhere, from deep in the interior of the jungle, a groan was heard.
Could it be . . .? Anyway, a rainy day—wet weather.
The whole voyage will have to be canceled.
It would be impossible to make different connections.
Anyway the hotels are all full at this season. The junks packed with refugees
Returning from the islands. Sea-bream and flounder abound in the muddied
waters. . . .
They in fact represent the backbone of the island economy.
That, and cigar rolling. Please leave your papers at the desk as you pass out,
You know. “The Wedding March.” Ah yes, that’s the way. The couple descend
The steps of the little old church. Ribbons are flung, ribbons of cloud
And the sun seems to be coming out. But there have been so many false
alarms. . . .
No, it’s happened! The storm is over. Again the weather is fine and clear.
And the voyage? It’s on! Listen everybody, the ship is starting,
I can hear its whistle’s roar! We have just time enough to make it to the dock!
And away they pour, in the sulfurous sunlight,
To the aqua and silver waters where stands the glistening white ship
And into the great vessel they flood, a motley and happy crowd
Chanting and pouring down hymns on the surface of the ocean. . . .
Pulling, tugging us along with them, by means of streamers,
Golden and silver confetti. Smiling, we laugh and sing with the revelers
But are not quite certain that we want to go—the dock is so sunny and warm.
That majestic ship will pull up anchor who knows where?
And full of laughter and tears, we sidle once again with the other passengers.
The ground is heaving under foot. Is it the ship? It could be the dock. . . .
And with a great whoosh all the sails go up. . . . Hideous black smoke belches
forth from the funnels
Smudging the gold carnival costumes with the gaiety of its jet-black soot
And, as into a tunnel the voyage starts
Only, as I said, to be continued. The eyes of those left standing on the dock are
wet
But ours are dry. Into the secretive, vaporous night with all of us!
Into the unknown, the unknown that loves us, the great unknown!
So man nightly
Sparingly descends
The birches and the hay all of him
Pruned, erect for vital contact. As the separate mists of day slip
Uncomplainingly into the atmosphere. Loving you? The question sinks into
That mazy business
About writing or to have read it in some book
To silently move away. At Gannosfonadiga the pumps
Working, argent in the thickening sunset, like boys’ shoulders
And you return to the question as to a calendar of November
Again and again consulting the surface of that enormous affair
I think not to have loved you but the music
Petting the enameled slow-imagined stars
A concert of dissatisfaction whereby gutter and dust seep
To engross the mirrored image and its landscape:
As when
through darkness and mist
the pole-bringer
demandingly watches
I am convinced these things are of some importance.
Firstly, it is a preparing to go outward
Of no planet limiting the enjoyment
Of motion—hips free of embarrassment etc.
The figure 8 is a perfect symbol
Of the freedom to be gained in this kind of activity.
The perspective lines of the barn are another and different kind of example
(Viz. “Rigg’s Farm, near Aysgarth, Wensleydale,” or the “Sketch at Norton”)
In which we escape ourselves—putrefying mass of prevarications etc.—
In remaining close to the limitations imposed.
Another example is this separate dying
Still keeping in mind the coachmen, servant girls, duchesses, etc. (cf. Jeremy
Taylor)
Falling away, rhythm of too-wet snow, but parallel
With the kind of rhythm substituting for “meaning.”
Looked at from this angle the problem of death and survival
Ages slightly. For the solutions are millionfold, like waves of wild geese
returning in spring.
Scarcely we know where to turn to avoid suffering, I mean
There are so many places.
So, coachman-servile, or scullion-slatternly, but each place is taken.
The lines that draw nearer together are said to “vanish.”
The point where they meet is their vanishing point.
Spaces, as they recede, become smaller.
But another, more urgent question imposes itself—that of poverty.
How to excuse it to oneself? The wetness and coldness? Dirt and grime?
Uncomfortable, unsuitable lodgings, with a depressing view?
The peeled geranium flowering in a rusted tomato can,
Framed in a sickly ray of sunlight, a tragic chromo?
A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters
Reflect the fly-specked calendar—with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips—
On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an old velvet hat with a tattered bit of
veiling—last remnant of former finery.
The bed well made. The whole place scrupulously clean, but cold and damp.
All this, wedged into a pyramidal ray of light, is my own invention.
But to return to our tomato can—those spared by the goats
Can be made into a practical telephone, the two halves being connected by a
length of wire.
You can talk to your friend in the next room, or around corners.
An American inventor made a fortune with just such a contraption.
The branches tear at the sky—
Things too tiny to be remembered in recorded history—the backfiring of a bus
In a Paris street in 1932, and all the clumsy seductions and amateur paintings
done,
Clamber to join in the awakening
To take a further role in my determination. These clown-shapes
Filling up the available space for miles, like acres of red and mustard pom-poms
Dusted with a pollen we call “an air of truth.” Massed mounds
Of Hades it is true. I propose a general housecleaning
Of these true and valueless shapes which pester us with their raisons d’être
Whom no one (that is their weakness) can ever get to like.
There are moving parts to be got out of order,
However, in the flame fountain. Add gradually one ounce, by measure, of
sulphuric acid
To five or six ounces of water in an earthenware basin. Add to it, also gradually,
about three-quarters of an ounce of granulated zinc.
A rapid production of hydrogen gas will instantly take place. Then add,
From time to time, a few pieces of phosphorus the size of a pea.
A multitude of gas bubbles will be produced, which will fire on the surface of
the effervescing liquid.
The whole surface of the liquid will become luminous, and fire balls, with jets
of fire,
Will dart from the bottom, through the fluid with great rapidity and a hissing
noise.
Sure, but a simple shelter from this or other phenomena is easily contrived.
But how luminous the fountain! Its sparks seem to aspire to reach the sky!
And so much energy in those bubbles. A wise man could contemplate his face
in them
With impunity, but fools would surely do better not to approach too close
Because any intense physical activity like that implies danger for the unwary
and the uneducated. Great balls of fire!
In my day we used to make “fire designs,” using a saturated solution of nitrate
of potash.
Then we used to take a smooth stick, and using the solution as ink, draw with
it on sheets of white tissue paper.
Once it was thoroughly dry, the writing would be invisible.
By means of a spark from a smoldering match ignite the potassium nitrate at
any part of the drawing,
First laying the paper on a plate or tray in a darkened room.
The fire will smolder along the line of the invisible drawing until the design is
complete.
Meanwhile the fire fountain is still smoldering and welling,
Casting off a hellish stink and wild fumes of pitch
Acrid as jealousy. And it might be
That flame writing might be visible right there, in the gaps in the smoke
Without going through the bother of the solution-writing.
A word here and there—”promise” or “beware”—you have to go the long way
round
Before you find the entrance to that side is closed.
The phosphorescent liquid is still heaving and boiling, however.
And what if this insane activity were itself a kind of drawing
Of April sidewalks, and young trees bursting into timid leaf
And dogs sniffing hydrants, the fury of spring beginning to back up along their
veins?
Yonder stand a young boy and girl leaning against a bicycle.
The iron lamppost next to them disappears into the feathery, unborn leaves
that suffocate its top.
A postman is coming up the walk, a letter held in his outstretched hand.
This is his first day on the new job, and he looks warily around
Alas not seeing the hideous bulldog bearing down on him like sixty, its hellish
eyes fixed on the seat of his pants, jowls a-slaver.
Nearby a young woman is fixing her stocking. Watching her, a chap with a hat
Is about to walk into the path of a speeding hackney cabriolet. The line of
lampposts
Marches up the street in strict array, but the lamp-parts
Are lost in feathery bloom, in which hidden faces can be spotted, for this is a
puzzle scene.
The sky is white, yet full of outlined stars—it must be night,
Or an early springtime evening, with just a hint of dampness and chill in the
air—
Memory of winter, hint of the autumn to come—
Yet the lovers congregate anyway, the lights twinkle slowly on.
Cars move steadily along the street.
It is a scene worthy of the poet’s pen, yet it is the fire demon
Who has created it, throwing it up on the dubious surface of a phosphorescent
fountain
For all the world like a poet. But love can appreciate it,
Use or misuse it for its own ends. Love is stronger than fire.
The proof of this is that already the heaving, sucking fountain is paling away
Yet the fire-lines of the lovers remain fixed, as if permanently, on the air of the
lab.
Not for long though. And now they too collapse,
Giving, as they pass away, the impression of a bluff,
Its craggy headlands outlined in sparks, its top crowned with a zigzag
Of grass and shrubs, pebbled beach at the bottom, with flat sea
Holding a few horizontal lines. Then this vision, too, fades slowly away.
III
Now you must shield with your body if necessary (you
Remind me of some lummox I used to know) the secret your body is.
Yes, you are a secret and you must NEVER tell it—the vapor
Of the stars would quickly freeze you to death, like a tear-stiffened
handkerchief
Held in liquid air. No, but this secret is in some way the fuel of
Your living apart. A hearth fire picked up in the glow of polished
Wooden furniture and picture frames, something to turn away from and move
back to—
Understand? This is all a part of you and the only part of you.
Here comes the answer: is it because apples grow
On the tree, or because it is green? One average day you may never
know
How much is pushed back into the night, nor what may return
To sulk contentedly, half asleep and half awake
By the arm of a chair pointed into
The painting of the hearth fire, or reach, in a coma,
Out of the garden for foreign students.
Be sure the giant would know falling asleep, but the frozen droplets
reveal
A mixed situation in which the penis
Scored the offer by fixed marches into what is.
One black spot remained.
If I should . . . If I said you were there
The . . . towering peace around us might
Hold up the way it breaks—the monsoon
Move a pebble, to the plumbing contract, cataract.
There has got to be only—there is going to be
An accent on the portable bunch of grapes
The time the mildewed sea cast the
Hygrometer too far away. You read into it
The meaning of tears, survey of our civilization.
Only one thing exists: the fear of death. As widows are a prey to loan
sharks
And Cape Hatteras to hurricanoes, so man to the fear of dying, to the
Certainty of falling. And just so it permits him to escape from time to
time
Amid fields of boarded-up posters: “Objects, as they recede, appear to
become smaller
And all horizontal receding lines have their vanishing point upon the
line of sight,”
Which is some comfort after all, for our volition to see must needs
condition these phenomena to a certain degree.
But it would be rash to derive too much confidence from a situation
which, in the last analysis, scarcely warrants it.
What I said first goes: sleep, death and hollyhocks
And a new twilight stained, perhaps, a slightly unearthlier periwinkle
blue,
But no dramatic arguments for survival, and please no magic
justification of results.
Uh . . . stupid song . . . that weather bonnet
Is all gone now. But the apothecary biscuits dwindled.
Where a little spectral
Cliffs, teeming over into irony’s
Gotten silently inflicted on the passages
Morning undermines, the daughter is.
Its oval armor
Protects it then, and the poisonous filaments hanging down
Are armor as well, or are they the creature itself, screaming
To protect itself? An aggressive weapon, as well as a plan of defense?
Nature is still liable to pull a few fast ones, which is why I can’t
emphasize enough
The importance of adhering to my original program. Remember,
No hope is to be authorized except in exceptional cases
To be decided on by me. In the meantime, back to dreaming,
Your most important activity.
The most difficult of all is an arrangement of hawthorn leaves.
But the sawing motion of desire, throwing you a moment to one side . . .
And then the other, will, I think, permit you to forget your dreams for a little
while.
In reality you place too much importance on them. “Frei aber Einsam” (Free
but Alone)
Ought to be your motto. If you dream at all, place a cloth over your face:
Its expression of satisfied desire might be too much for some spectators.
The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down;
What matter now whether I wake or sleep?
The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down;
A vast design shows in the meadow’s parched and trampled grasses.
Actually a game of “fox and geese” has been played there, but the real
reality,
Beyond truer imaginings, is that it is a mystical design full of a certain
significance,
Burning, sealing its way into my consciousness.
Smooth out the sad flowers, pick up where you left off
But leave me immersed in dreams of sexual imagery:
Now that the homecoming geese unfurl in waves on the west wind
And cock covers hen, the farmhouse dog slavers over his bitch, and
horse and mare go screwing through the meadow!
A pure scream of things arises from these various sights and smells
As steam from a wet shingle, and I am happy once again
Walking among these phenomena that seem familiar to me from my
earliest childhood.
The gray wastes of water surround
My puny little shoal. Sometimes storms roll
Tremendous billows far up on the gray sand beach, and the morning
After, odd tusked monsters lie stinking in the sun.
They are inedible. For food there is only
Breadfruit, and berries garnered in the jungle’s inner reaches,
Wrested from scorpion and poisonous snake. Fresh water is a problem.
After a rain you may find some nestling in the hollow trunk of a tree, or in
hollow stones.
One’s only form of distraction is really
To climb to the top of the one tall cliff to scan the distances.
Not for a ship, of course—this island is far from all the trade routes—
But in hopes of an unusual sight, such as a school of dolphins at play,
A whale spouting, or a cormorant bearing down on its prey.
So high this cliff is that the pebble beach far below seems made of gravel.
Halfway down, the crows and choughs look like bees.
Near by are the nests of vultures. They cluck sympathetically in my direction,
Which will not prevent them from rending me limb from limb once I have
keeled over definitively.
Further down, and way over to one side, are eagles;
Always fussing, fouling their big nests, they always seem to manage to turn their
backs to you.
The glass is low; no doubt we are in for a storm.
Sure enough: in the pale gray and orange distances to the left, a
Waterspout is becoming distinctly visible.
Beautiful, but terrifying;
Delicate, transparent, like a watercolor by that nineteenth-century Englishman
whose name I forget.
(I am beginning to forget everything on this island. If only I had been allowed
to bring my ten favorite books with me—
But a weathered child’s alphabet is my only reading material. Luckily,
Some of the birds and animals on the island are pictured in it—the albatross,
for instance—that’s a name I never would have remembered.)
It looks as though the storm-fiend were planning to kick up quite a ruckus
For this evening. I had better be getting back to the tent
To make sure everything is shipshape, weight down the canvas with extra
stones,
Bank the fire, and prepare myself a little hardtack and tea
For the evening’s repast. Still, it is rather beautiful up here,
Watching the oncoming storm. Now the big cloud that was in front of the
waterspout
Seems to be lurching forward, so that the waterspout, behind it, looks more like
a three-dimensional photograph.
Above me, the sky is a luminous silver-gray. Yet rain, like silver porcupine
quills, has begun to be thrown down.
All the lightning is still contained in the big black cloud however. Now thunder
claps belch forth from it,
Causing the startled vultures to fry forth from their nests.
I really had better be getting back down, I suppose.
Still it is rather fun to linger on in the wet,
Letting your clothes get soaked. What difference does it make? No one will
scold me for it,
Or look askance. Supposing I catch cold? It hardly matters, there are no nurses
or infirmaries here
To make an ass of one. A really serious case of pneumonia would suit me fine.
Ker-choo! There, now I’m being punished for saying so. Aw, what’s the use.
I really am starting down now. Good-bye, Storm-fiend. Good-bye, vultures.
In reality of course the middle-class apartment I live in is nothing like a desert
island.
Cozy and warm it is, with a good library and record collection.
Yet I feel cut off from the life in the streets.
Automobiles and trucks plow by, spattering me with filthy slush.
The man in the street turns his face away. Another island-dweller, no doubt.
In a store or crowded café, you get a momentary impression of warmth:
Steam pours out of the espresso machine, fogging the panes with their modern
lettering
Of a kind that has only been available for about a year. The headlines offer you
News that is so new you can’t realize it yet. A revolution in Argentina! Think of
it! Bullets flying through the air, men on the move;
Great passions inciting to massive expenditures of energy, changing the lives of
many individuals.
Yet it is all offered as “today’s news,” as if we somehow had a right to it, as
though it were a part of our lives
That we’d be silly to refuse. Here, have another—crime or revolution? Take
your pick.
None of this makes any difference to professional exiles like me, and that
includes everybody in the place.
We go on sipping our coffee, thinking dark or transparent thoughts . . .
Excuse me, may I have the sugar. Why certainly—pardon me for not having
passed it to you.
A lot of bunk, none of them really care whether you get any sugar or not.
Just try asking for something more complicated and see how far it gets you.
Not that I care anyway, being an exile. Nope, the motley spectacle offers no
charms whatsoever for me—
And yet—and yet I feel myself caught up in its coils—
Its defectuous movement is that of my reasoning powers—
The main point has already changed, but the masses continue to tread the water
Of backward opinion, living out their mandate as though nothing had
happened.
We step out into the street, not realizing that the street is different,
He throws the whole business into the flames: books, notes, pencil diagrams,
everything.
No, the only thing that interests him is day
And its problems. Freiheit! Freiheit! To be out of these dusty cells once and for
all
Has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of the universe.
His day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that’s the way he tells it.
Only the crater of becoming—a sealed consciousness—resists the profaning
mass of the sun.
You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own
work, of course,
Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,
A part of you the minute they appear. It is as though workmen in blue overalls
Were constantly bringing on new props and taking others away: that is how
you feel the drama going past you, powerless to act in it.
To have it all be over! To wake suddenly on a hillside
With a valley far below—the clouds—
That is the penance you have already done:
January, March, February. You are living toward a definition
Of the peaceful appetite, then you see
Them standing around limp and hungry like adjacent clouds.
Soon there is to be exchange of ideas and
Far more beautiful handshake, under the coat of
Weather is undecided right now.
Postpone the explanation.
The election is to be held tomorrow, under the trees.
You felt the months keep coming up
And it is December again,
The snow outside. Or is it June full of sun
And the prudent benefits of sun, but still the postman comes.
The true meaning of some of his letters is slight—
Another time I thought I could see myself.
This too proved illusion, but I could deal with the way
I keep returning on myself like a plank
Like a small boat blown away from the wind.
It all ends in a smile somewhere,
Notes to be taken on all this,
And you can see in the dark, of which the night
Is the continuation of your ecstasy and apprehension.
IV
The wind thrashes the maple seed-pods,
The whole brilliant mass comes spattering down.
This is my fourteenth year as governor of C province.
I was little more than a lad when I first came here.
Now I am old but scarcely any wiser.
So little are white hair and a wrinkled forehead a sign of wisdom!
To slowly raise oneself
Hand over hand, lifting one’s entire weight;
To forget there was a possibility
Of some more politic movement. That freedom, courage
And pleasant company could exist.
That has always been behind you.
An earlier litigation: wind hard in the tops
Of the baggy eucalyptus branches.
Today I wrote, “The spring is late this year.
In the early mornings there is hoarfrost on the water meadows.
And on the highway the frozen ruts are papered over with ice.”
The day was gloves.
How far from the usual statement
About time, ice—the weather itself had gone.
I mean this. Through the years
You have approached an inventory
And it is now that tomorrow
Is going to be the climax of your casual
Statement about yourself, begun
So long ago in humility and false quietude.
The sands are frantic
In the hourglass. But there is time
To change, to utterly destroy
That too-familiar image
Lurking in the glass
Each morning, at the edge of the mirror.
The train is still sitting in the station.
You only dreamed it was in motion.
There are a few travelers on Z high road.
Behind a shutter, two black eyes are watching them.
They belong to the wife of P, the high-school principal.
The screen door bangs in the wind, one of the hinges is loose.
And together we look back at the house.
It could use a coat of paint
Except that I am too poor to hire a workman.
I have all I can do to keep body and soul together
And soon, even that relatively simple task may prove to be beyond my powers.
That was a good joke you played on the other guests.
A joke of silence.
One seizes these moments as they come along, afraid
To believe too much in the happiness that might result
Or confide too much of one’s love and fear, even in
Oneself.
The spring, though mild, is incredibly wet.
I have spent the afternoon blowing soap bubbles
And it is with a feeling of delight I realize I am
All alone in the skittish darkness.
The birch-pods come clattering down on the weed-grown marble pavement.
And a curl of smoke stands above the triangular wooden roof.
Seventeen years in the capital of Foo-Yung province!
Surely woman was born for something
Besides continual fornication, retarded only by menstrual cramps.
I had thought of announcing my engagement to you
On the day of the first full moon of X month.
The wind has stopped, but the magnolia blossoms still
Fall with a plop onto the dry, spongy earth.
The evening air is pestiferous with midges.
There is only one way of completing the puzzle:
By finding a hog-shaped piece that is light green shading to buff at one side.
It is the beginning of March, a few
Russet and yellow wallflowers are blooming in the border
Protected by moss-grown, fragmentary masonry.
One morning you appear at breakfast
Dressed, as for a journey, in your worst suit of clothes.
And over a pot of coffee, or, more accurately, rusted water
Announce your intention of leaving me alone in this cistern-like house.
In your own best interests I shall decide not to believe you.
I think there is a funny sand bar
Beyond the old boardwalk
Your intrigue makes you understand.
“At thirty-two I came up to take my examination at the university.
The U wax factory, it seemed, wanted a new general manager.
I was the sole applicant for the job, but it was refused me.
So I have preferred to finish my life
In the quietude of this floral retreat.”
The tiresome old man is telling us his life story.
Trout are circling under water—
Masters of eloquence
Glisten on the pages of your book
Like mountains veiled by water or the sky.
The “second position”
Comes in the seventeenth year
Watching the meaningless gyrations of flies above a sill.
Heads in hands, waterfall of simplicity.
The delta of living into everything.
The pump is busted. I shall have to get it fixed.
Your knotted hair
Around your shoulders
A shawl the color of the spectrum
Like that marvelous thing you haven’t learned yet.
To refuse the square hive,
postpone the highest . . .
The apples are all getting tinted
In the cool light of autumn.
The constellations are rising
In perfect order: Taurus, Leo, Gemini.
