Flow Chart: A Poem, page 15
of permissiveness was in the streets, close, like a thick mist
or mitt, on the tongue, leading in some instances to crushes.
Little was ever made of the anomaly that we grew up here; indeed
it was never factored into the partial account that we succeeded only after
many demands in having read aloud, in a halting tone, next to a fountain, so that the tumbling
of pebbles obscured our larger words, in some cases replicating them in miniature,
obsequious to a fault. The ham-handed rendition made a botch of the layers
of meaning and the layers of bread, satisfying neither reporters nor hierophants.
We all returned home anxious
to get the night over with.
And end it did, yet scarcely
in the ways one had imagined, but with a finality as
inexplicable as its itinerant birth some years back down the creek. First,
there was a lot of hammering. Then a blonde woman got out of the car to take pictures.
H’mm, this must be the night, a lot of people mistakenly assumed. Then the thunder
again—I can’t possibly tell you what was in it for me, so rounded
were its periods, like an architecture erupting from the earth;
like a repertory of trees, from which emerged cries,
or so it seemed. That these were the damned of the earth
in whose look colorful arcs beat the meaning down
to size, proud of being duly noted, was acknowledged by no one of rank.
Feathers first, then dust, then flourishes
in a signature, with the bad taste to insist on the letter of personality lessons
taken at some charm school in hell, were the note struck, and that you
were a few years older than me, and that sufficed to bring the argument
to a graceful dead-end near where the coats were. Yet sometimes in the quietism
I miss your cracked precision, knowing it could have taken us this far
in the storm’s well-oiled chariot without making a production number
of it and we should have been well equally, only now
what does it matter? I mean, whose shortcomings are we talking about,
except it’s better to go over at the last
moment and make your peace, whatever that can be.
There was something I liked in the way of beginning
and something also in the way of returning, though it made us sad.
Next spree though, try to find us a different decade: this one’s already full.
The twaddle dispensary’s reopened. The French still say “hailstones big as pigeon’s
eggs,” and poets are retreating into—or is it out of?—academia, beset by the
usual pit-bulls and well-meaning little old ladies in tennis shoes. And discovering
and assimilating new bastions of indifference and comprehension. What else?
That was some storm we had last week. The webs intersect at certain points where baubles
are glued to them; readers think this is nice. What else? Oh, stop badgering—
where were you in the fifties?
Indeed. Alvin and the chipmunks made nice ambient music for what
I was fussing over, or masticating, and I had to find a way out of the woods.
Now, in some cases, this is easy—you just walk straight along a road and pretty soon
you’re out of the woods and there are suburban backlots. In my case,
though, it wasn’t that simple, though it wasn’t extraordinarily demanding either—I
just lay down in a boat and slept, Lady-of-Shalott style. Soon I was gliding among you,
taking notes on your conversations and otherwise making a pest of myself.
I pretended to be angry when onlookers jeered and cows mooed and even the heralds told me to shut up,
yet at bottom I was indifferent. I knew my oracles
for what they were—right about 50% of the time—and I also knew their accuracy wasn’t
an issue. It was the repeating of them that interested me. Repetition makes reputation.
Besides, it’s something you can build with. You need no longer inspect the materials
when you buy them in bulk; they are as a territory. What gets built happens
to be in that territory, though beside it. Your reputation as a builder
is the one interesting thing.
In the sixties new dresses were newer.
The humbler children were clad in dimity, and bird-cheerful. Airlines seldom
overbooked. My imagination was trying to get its act together, I mean really see
itself. But like the site of Carthage, which was circumscribed by strips of some
animal’s hide, it could not really accept itself for all it was because of the
possibility that a trick was involved. And yet, shaking its hair
and staring at its crystal reflection in some drop of dew, it also knew it wasn’t
nothing, and something had to account for this. I think the constant costume changes
caused it to mistrust itself, yet there was a game to be played, and rules to abide by—
so what? It’s true in other walks of life…But it all led rapidly to the crunch
of where the fuck do you think you’re going? This is the frontier.
Beyond lies civility, a paradise of choices—maybe. But it wasn’t made to be tested
by such primitive assaying tools as you, and only you, come equipped with.
I saw your face on some bookjacket. It looked beautiful. May I write to you?
I wouldn’t really swallow poison if I was you. Meanwhile I have the rain
to experience with the others, each of us finding it uncomfortable though seldom
talking about it, as there are more important subjects. Fishing, for example.
I have to get home before the music disappears. I love you.
I thought I said never to come in this café?
Finally all will survive because of fierce determination. I mean,
they’re tough, people are. Hey guys,
what accounts for losses along the way? The house is built,
the beds made, and see how it comes undone, but then an enormous ray of sunlight,
like a minor flood, imbues the room, and once again we are saved from ourselves
as something rings down the curtain on us gloriously. One lived principally by one’s wits
and therefore was not surprised by this sudden reversal: it always has something
of us in it, so I signed it. It wasn’t long in coming, but was just my hope,
ironed and carefully hung on a hanger in a closet, and it was endearing, but that wasn’t
why I loved it. All loves are quite pleasant, and this one, being for myself,
was especially so. Now that so much has simply dropped out of life, more
than one can take the pulse of, one isn’t sure, in this rout, this retreat
from a great city, how much of it is left in there. It seems only yesterday
that one could find cheap walkup apartments in the East 50s, and modest restaurants
such as the Cloisters, with $1.95 complete lunches, or luncheons. When was the last
time you had luncheon? The atmosphere was thinner, but more abundant, and well worth
the few extra cents. Besides, I had begun working on something like
my autobiography, I was going to distill whatever happened to me, not taking into account
the terrific things that didn’t, which were the vast majority, and maybe if I reduced it
all sufficiently, somebody would find it worth his while, i.e., exemplary. And then in the rush
to evacuate I left the precious notebook behind; there simply wasn’t time to look for it;
but I could have reconstructed it, drop by drop, from what I remembered, having
kept close watch over what went in, yet this would in some way have falsified
everything, one of the points being that one makes a show of what one rejects,
the better to flaunt what one enshrines, but that
can only happen once in the way of things happening. Yet that was more than a generation ago,
or more, depending on how you define a generation now. What are you saving it for?
And a horn screeched. Particles turn nasty. The other
is there, besides. We cannot move. The fullness in the house at night
is only a diagram (but cling to it, anyway) of where things were, and though
we can remember what things, they are gone now; only their relation
to one another subsists, and I am as a dog. It seems I can’t think. I remember once under trees
receiving the warm but peculiar and complicated presence, like Leda her swan;
I smiled convulsively and in an instant was left
somehow darkened, though the pressure
was relieved and since then has never been a problem. But I, as the other (as I now
see myself to have been), was no wiser and certainly no better
for the terrible irruption into my life. It has made everything I’ve said since
sound silly, yet I won’t debate the point, which after all is
nothing more than that a light, and some warmth, stood in my life for five minutes once
and ever afterward has remained unto me, though I often
forget it for decades at a time, yet am forgiven
when it turns up again, like a smile. These seem like facts
to me; no politics attaches to it; yet in the stalemate of centuries it could
turn once to me and utter my name. That’s all I ask. I’d be forgiven
then, and focus my energies on something more important like rebuilding our wall,
expecting nothing in return but the verdict, and then I’d go down
into the vicarious city expecting nothing but vibrations, the verdict: the one
you always said you couldn’t stay to see me get, it would be too confusing
and painful to our house, too unexpected: inexcusable. (That word.)
Last night you weren’t so sure. And it goes on:
There was once a shopping mall
at my place. Kids went to it. Mottled houseplants were sold to alert
home-makers, in that light. You could buy quantities of them
and leave them in your yard. Or mix them with others; try to get the most out of
the variety, as it sifts down to you: the great speckled hen
on the lookout, or the hyena I dreamed of last night, or salmon leaping in their beds:
all are abrupt elements in the sum listening leads to, cannot renege on
unless you backtrack, become the slightly less valuable person of a few minutes ago
with the feathered headdress and baubles. That one. But the sum will get lost anyway
in the crowd, unless drastic measures are taken. And who is to take them?
Because you, walking around comparison-shopping, are its infrastructure
and the only one who will bring it to the edge of a cross-section of the people’s imaginings.
See, there might be already a little canopy over the pier
but more likely not; it’s still early in the season; the river’s rank winter smell
still pierces the air’s musky crevices; the grass isn’t right and
there’s too much pre-freshness. The real thing won’t be around
for days, even weeks. And we’re supposed to get on with the project, somehow,
settle down in the logic these lines always left space for, between them, but which
was rarely visited by any save sandwich men and vagrants, more’s the pity when you see how
idle folk get well off and we stand hands clasped to breasts still worrying about the
back taxes that were never paid one year, because this isn’t forgotten by anybody
but becomes one of those rust-colored lots thieves and innocent children hang out in,
like the one where Mercury slew Argus for vulgar reasons,
reasons of his own imagining. Now that the moon’s up
they say there won’t be any rutabagas
till next year. But go on, I have to go out and fight
about it with everybody, even my superiors
in my place of employment
which is dry and casually tidy as the next person’s. Only I do so out of a great fear
the man I entered may not be enough, may thoughtlessly
send me back to the end of the line that meanders
from here to the desolate, reedy horizon. What did I ever do to resent you, open your calm
caresses like oysters? And then is it right to save them? Might I be
reading a magazine when it all happens to me, this time, and now I stand up
baffled by the sandstorm, because how did I know it was zeroing to this
ungainly end, not see any danger signs, not shut off the hose, though I am gifted
with a suit of eyes and can foretell the near future and recall the recent past? Is it
that I’m a sort of jerk?
No, oceans were hiding, waiting
on your bald spot; pencils with chewed points told us all we’d need to know
until the twenty-first century, whereupon we’d all come out of our lairs, mew
and make up. And now that doesn’t seem such a good idea, that stronghold
has got to last. Otherwise midnight and the fires
jabbering, like we were taught, will ruin all chances of an application
before it’s forwarded. And stones come down from trees. No kidding it’s a splendid
series; no way would you want to miss out on it. I have to grow though.
I must go back in time. It’s not the way you heard it
in the alley or over the transom. For though hard work is indeed
a key ingredient, no one can know the outcome until all are banished by ill will
or saved and the mongrel idiot takes the credit for it
and then sleeps, it too, for the path is what you call freckled with blemishes.
No ape nor man stands alone who knows it,
who can recite it backwards. In the orchard, and that’s the least
of my worries. I have to put you on hold again.
But what do we know? We’re not authentic crime-busters,
only pals of the accused from school. When he wrote those
seemingly contradictory rules, he never dreamed we’d end up
following them, and him, into the oblivion he decreed for us.
Now it all seems an antique space in which they talked
much as we do, feared God, forgave
each other the endless trouble someone was always causing—not that
it wasn’t justified in some instances by the confusion of late spring and early summer.
We heard each case. Then, if punishment was in order it was meted out
impartially and the whole business quickly forgotten, in the interests
of the children. Wait, there were arguments on both sides—
but it seems as though a stormy prelude had gotten out of hand; suddenly
everyone was running. But you know what I mean. They were like super-gullible
and had to be made to understand, even through tears, thrashings, moans.
Then I like the idea of coming out at the top
for a brief time to survey what’s happened down below
and retreat, the better to tidy up loose ends, weave reports
around this affair that brought us so much ridicule, so much deserved
attention. Besides, the plaster arches had taken on an air of permanence
long ago and were in danger of being confused with the real thing; one had to
shuffle the cards, put a brave face on it; otherwise we ourselves might have ended up
imagining we stood at the apogee of empire and power and forgotten to go in at night
or take temporary precautions. Then when the collapse finally maneuvered itself
into being we’d have no one to blame but ourselves, and be forced back
into a primary mood of spells and rituals. You didn’t want that. That’s how we
ended up winning, which is another story. Had we
however mistaken the early chirpings for pre-emptive strikes there’s a good chance we
might have ended up contemplating the sky from the other side, its stickers and warnings
looking interchangeable thanks to the tame minority decisions we’d endorsed,
never having run up against any precedents for dealing with superannuated, frayed
systems until they’d been polished to look like the present and were therefore
of no use to us or to anyone else either. How far we’d
strayed from the bend in the stream, but the current
seemed to push us forward, whispering words of encouragement, and the poplars laughed
and danced and smiled seemingly at us, but that was a pathetic fallacy,
of course. They never saw us. Not even once. Not us.
Quick—the medication. But the house had no sense at all, and having
become a limited partner in my own disestablishment, I watched in terror
as it moved on us, dull plumage of another kind,
condensed around doors and windows, with a sense of authority
still, like a wishbone in the throat, the docket
whose very plainness might be
adjudged a virtue. What is this? A frigid sense
of isolation, tarnished beyond knowledge? Yes, and the others tell
it differently, and their version too is the truth, or it is truthful.
And many of these were going up
into the house where he watched the city, and then
these others were below, but they did not matter so much. I was basking
on my sunlit shelf, like a tomato plant. That mattered. And the fact that there were so many
more speaking rationally mattered. And they began to scream, shrieking things like
where were you born, who got you started anyway? And in truth
I fumbled the question now, and the answer came from all over, randomly inclusive.
A ruthless teen dissolves equations you can’t bear to look at
before it’s all over but the shouting, and others prod
