Flow Chart: A Poem, page 13
walls; in short it was a jungle in there, and though for some reason one sometimes felt
tempted to stay, it was obvious that no discussion of the circumstances would ever
be possible. That’s when I happened in, wearing a hat, with some sweet breath
of the streets perhaps still clinging to me, and had my say, without being too brusque
about it either, and afterward was shown the tremendous walk-in closets
they build in those climates, those conditions, conditions
which, I want you to understand, aren’t all that real. But what’s a poor penguin to do?
Meanwhile, fate was simmering down below in its cauldron like some delicious stew
that would never be ready in time; signs of haste in the form of bitten fingernails
and scribbled messages were everywhere apparent, and I have this thing
I must do without knowing what it is or whether anyone
will be helped or offended by it. Should I do it? And there, it was gone.
It will never be printed on a banner in a political demonstration
or fed to rabbits first to see whether they die, and as I live in a house,
am so bound to its principles, in the corners, that coming and going
are very much the same thing to me, in which I no doubt resemble the baby-boomers
who have not let me in peace a single moment since I was thirty years old. Oh,
the good old days! If only we could have received permission to stay a little longer!
But it wasn’t to be. So, sadly, I changed into my plain woollen suit
and moved off toward the crest, attitude upgraded. It was a kind of lumber
room, full of boxes filled with papers (“John’s report cards”) and branches
of artificial holly from Christmases past. It seemed the ghosts
had taken a particular dislike to this room; it felt colder than the others,
though the cold was the result of natural causes. Sunlight, however, warmed the sill.
And I thought of all my lost days and how much more I could have done with them,
if I had known what I was doing. But does one ever? Perhaps it’s best
this way, and a riper, more rounded you could only be the product
of so much inefficiency, hence these pear-shaped tones; conversely,
too much planning could have produced a meticulous but dry outline
of what my speech sketches in the rooms, ghost-like, like clouds of steam
on a day of bitter cold, and the minimal progress beyond life’s friendly mess
would have meant a severe reckoning and probably an audit
later when it doesn’t matter, when only sleep seems of any importance.
At least, that’s my reading of it. But what if there were other,
adjacent worlds, at one’s very elbow, and one had had the sense to ignore one’s
simulacrum and actually wade into the enveloping mirror, the shroud
of a caress, and so end up imbued with common sense but on a slightly higher level,
one step above this one, and then everything you were going to say and
everything they were going to say to you in reply would erupt
in lightning, a steely glitter chasing shadows like a pack
of hounds, once they tasted the flavor of blood, and then this light would gradually
form prickly engraved letters on a page—but who would read that!
Who, indeed, would want to know what could have been if one had made the slightest
exertion in another direction? So it is always a relief to come back
to the beloved home with its misted windows, its teakettle, its worn places on the ceiling,
for better or worse, to the end where battle will be joined
cum frumentum, and heaven commingle in the wide smile of its disheveled
tolerance, and the inspectors, at last, be called in,
though the point was to be done with it without diluting it.
How far does that take you? For the whole
is so pasted over with rags of old posters that only a Bedouin could intuit any rationale,
if then, in its insalubrious confusion. Yet, viewed on another day, there does seem to
be the beginning of a point in how it’s boxed in, the hidden partitions commenting help-
lessly on what game of linings and the scarcely appreciable removes that make them the undersides
this was starting to become. Just as one longs for a solitary hole to call one’s own,
so one is horrified at the prospect of being immured in it: that, at any rate,
was my take on the setup this winter. Once past March, the addition
seems not to be complete, to be rambling on to the horizon. So one can lose a good idea
by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asides
it knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations
are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does
recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.
When all is
demented, no one individual stands out as enormously opinionated. So it goes, and my
goodness, I don’t see how we are expected to live with it, but the fact of the matter
is we do and might even consider ourselves improved in respect to the way we were
quite recently, if only we could remember how we looked even this morning, forget
last year or even two or more years ago, so quickly do they pass even in the formal
chronologies and chronicles, I’m
not even talking about the sloppy kind of record-keeping that goes on all the time
without anyone there to be aware of or compliment it.
So seven years passed in whose hollows small, twinkling lights could sometimes be perceived
on dark and stormy nights, and the farther one proceeded from one’s destination
the closer it seemed and in fact was, though most people took no notice of it
and read newspapers and glanced at swallows exactly as if in Sezession Vienna and there
was nothing to think about except one’s bowels and the miserable climate.
Breakfasts were consumed; houses were put up for sale; and the whole sad, bad shimmer of it
charmed viewers the way a cobra is mesmerized and waves deliciously to and fro
in the temperate breeze, the while sinkholes open up, and K Marts fall into them,
as icebergs are delivered up to the whims of oceans. It wasn’t bad while one stood,
but as soon as you sat down you appeared vulnerable; issues were raised; and from feeling
it all a mild annoyance but a mere formality, as when a stranger stops you to ask directions
and begins asking pointed questions about your religion, it quickly escalated
into a nightmare that waking would not heal. Retreat, retreat! was all they ever
said, and seemed sometimes not to know what they meant. Thus night
appears to have existed always, and to one’s surprise one finds oneself
adapting to it as though one had never known anything else, and growing fangs and howling
at the moon and avoiding questions from loved ones and overreacting.
Now it was time to be tall too, a further complication. But we were taught that everything
is unexpected. Yes, but this is not the moment for recollecting that and even less
to be pondering the reasons for it. Besides we are merely in the middle of it
and can turn our heads to left and right like weathercocks, in deaf amazement
at all that anyone was ever going to do for us and then stopped mentioning.
The orchard that was right for you has stiffened, another autumn is coming
to place its hand across the sun; geese ruffle their feathers and there are whitecaps on the pond
and daybreak still eludes us. What could be the point of counting, or counting on anything?
The rich facture of the trusses and supports is admirable, of course,
knew what it was doing, and burgeoned suddenly, before one had any inkling of it,
drawing alarmed gasps of admiration from the besotted throng. Anyway, it was life,
one had to agree, but all the same could have been better written, with more attention
to niceties of style and fewer obscure references, though the concept,
always, was beyond reproach.
Wrapped in shawls, was it? And beyond the wharf where sometimes a rope of water
twisted though not for long, the password leading into danger
was “crotchet”—none of us was too sure of what it meant. We knew the reception
we’d get with it, though—a pattern of smiles opening down along the body,
gentle acquiescence to our most childish demands. We came there to be pampered
once in a while, and weren’t disappointed. But the lips of the fish, speaking
out of fog, told us another story, which we were bound to recall afterwards
when fires blazed and groups, both sitting and standing, collected around them.
There was this well you looked down into and saw shadows
of bodies caught in trees or washed up on the beach, but the townspeople
never acknowledged anything was amiss: they’d look fixedly at you
if you hinted otherwise, and walk swiftly away muttering something about pearls
or children down there, and how long it takes to really mature anyhow
and who is to be the judge of that? Years later you’d run into one of them at a party,
recall what it was, and there’d be only that odd, dank furor of attention,
a glimmer, and then the time frame would change.
In some way the woman knew she was the pivot here, yet it was enough just
being adorable in the sun. A memory of a wish would pass over, but it was a bird-shadow,
giving way to frank sunlight the next moment, wholesome in its steady decline
as all things that seek a way out must be—fresh as radishes or Lucerne.
It is time I explained certain tenets of the land
to you, but you see we can never revel in passing back and forth across it:
the understanding has got to be dumb so that others
will think there is a settlement here, and condone development and repairs,
until one day it will be just another paved-over place without sensors:
there is no cause for alarm in this, nor for complacency either, yet it must give way.
Negatively, the posthorn striates the morning gloom since all things have a beginning
in something, and it falls back on itself, to material shores, clusters
of formal and market gardens, and there there ought to be an end to it
while the firm old peasant stands, head bowed, cap in hand, but the shrill voices
of children run past him into the near wilderness, and all is scattered again.
My fear is like a small house: you can come visit me
but it will not go away, or will itself into an education; the bonds are loosed,
the pattern lost, and who is to say if I made it up
or someone who was here before and departed, leaving no trace
of his passing, no flicker of ashes in the grate? Or by that time
the note has changed; hereditary enemies greet each other
like long-lost friends; snows melt; the incomprehensible messages
of tree-frogs explicate each other; perspectives, by shifting, have subtly changed
the profiles that stand inside them, and we may not be put to the test
until further legal angles have been explored and resolved, a long way
from here, at some distant point in eternity. Then it will be time
to live off one’s resources, but for now one must do battle
with the elements, and stereotypes, and not expect to be called on the carpet
of others’ anxious dreams of what is best for us. Go back inside;
it’s still chilly out here; the fruit is unripe, and no one knows what time it is.
Pity the seer who gets it right, for he only abideth long,
but at the end is shut out or becomes the toy of others of like condition,
persistent animator. Do, and as I say, so shall the city even
take up the cry and track that one to his lair which is nowhere,
not even eight miles away. The drive, the lunch,
cost more than we knew then, bleary mountain ranges mobilized
against the flight of capital, yet it was hard to see how they could cost more even at home
and remain the same, nurse of the arcades to warn the soldiers of potential defeat,
for they came on, blinded by water. The day arrives for him to begin
to grow, but others
in the habitat are puzzled. Wasn’t it just such a gentleman, once,
who made the transition from scarecrow to sergeant at arms without anyone’s
being the wiser? Has he returned now to sup, yes you too get on with it as you must;
a place is made for him at the table, ere conversation is stilled and a heavy black hand
float above on the wall—no! for if it was my error it was a smallish one, he too then beside
us at the deck water pours into. For the one and only is a flower
of the mountaintop and cannot imagine the wrong we have done. They handed us over to it
and we were alone.
Soon all the animals acclaimed the victor, still in bed with pilgrims, drunk
with the wine of defeat, and easygoing, like the hero he never had the wisdom
to set out to be. And the line of supplicants led down to some graceless bushes
on fire, for virtue wears many masks. And when it came time to ask him
for the antidote, the dolmens appeared robed in white, and backlit,
and they thought it was an optical illusion. But it was a joke as old as the centipede
at the base of the morass. And seven questioners came, but they too fell to gazing
at the hearty snack he had left untouched, and were troubled. Then before you knew it
urchins ran screaming away, it had all been a prank! But some, I believe, were convinced,
and to this day swear that a beast had come out of that lair and looked around
and wandered apathetically away, seeing no reason to stay
on and become a weightlifter or ouvreuse, but the rest saw it for what it
was, a charade in which they had no part, and began backtracking. And great viaducts crashed
of their own accord; supertankers were upended; the cotillion was cancelled
in favor of life-saving exercises, but nobody knew how many, or where the implicit tone
or structure was leading. And they turned away stiff-necked. So we were able
to buy a few provisions from the locals, and that is how we got here, and why
we can’t stay but a minute, but will see you
on the other side, after the rain, God willing.
And so revived, forgotten, into the long day
angling its shadows at a wider denouement
each time. What would it think of us, if it could think:
mere signers of petitions, names in a long list? Are we tractable
or blotted into the day’s fabric like new boys’ shouts, the careless exhaust?
Will our pain matter too, and if so, when?
For one pesky minute the wilderness stuck out its tongue
and that was all. Too schooled in its ways to feel adrift for long, I sat
naked and disconsolate at a corner of a crevice, hat in hand, fishing,
for who can tell what God intends for us next? And if a little girl can call
and run, her dog twirl, why not be able to slide a leg over the board
barrier that disconnects us from all that is really happening, that hive
of activity as you think of it? From funky, overexposed moments to plain truths, it is
all there, actually, which isn’t to say you desire it yet.
Once the teeth have smiled and the lights been doused yet again, though, it’s like
stones caring, and you think, what if that big one up there fell on my head?
Life, read my life, would be over, the jig up, so what’s the point
even of moving off somewhere else? Something else could always trigger it.
But I don’t want to back off, partly because it isn’t
my nature. I think I’ll wait behind this old counter, maybe a noise
will remind me a thing isn’t right and I’ll get
in the groove again. Besides, the wind is a punisher. Tonight
all the old ghosts are back on the radio. How sad that some people have to be unhappy
to keep the rest of us barely alive, breathing, I think. I was
in my dressing room and didn’t hear it. It must have gone through the house like a bird’s swoop
yet I am innocent, my clothes, the ones I’ve hardly worn, barely on.
Now the official announcement, probably. These dustcatchers …Look, if you’re going to swear
you may as well leave, you can come with me, I’m leaving this place.
I’ve had it. Twenty centuries is too much. Just drifting, like a leaf, is more
than I bargained for, at the beginning when the tin was new, the smoke clean, and
a bramble’s red could scorch your heart, leaving you alone, and now it’s too late
for pie and others. All’s stranded. The pergola in the plaza beckons
still but it’s the smile
of a latecomer, all candy and cigarettes, no more insulation for the cheers and puffery
we assumed would be forthcoming until he sets down his tray and it was empty
except for a dirty napkin and an orange stick; whose business are you playing
with now, in front of the old microphone? Painted
a bit more lugubriously now, true, but the busboys, the brunch crowd want danger; zero in
on sloth; what’s a poor old fright to do? Suicide? No, I don’t think you…
It was then I discovered the pavements were made of the same flagstones found underseas
