Flow Chart: A Poem, page 16
the old trunk, wanting some credit, like graffiti artists, shouting too.
I thought I was immune to it, having been stung once,
but I’m not. And I ask you, in the name of all that’s reasonable…
Others were shot. As I see it the main difficulty is getting used
to the gradual increase in light increments, walking home in the early evening
after a day at the office, and being back
in the apartment again, if only for the night.
And the mounting green. Each year, spring is more powerful,
gaps in its front are fewer, sizable runs on the arsenal at the observatory more remarked.
And the truth sits rigid. What does it have to contribute after all?
No charm, certainly. And precious little of the bread one weeps eating
having taken the cross, and all else is “nice” or “interesting” in that lurch
before one sees. Truly sees, that is when it is too late
even for memories and rumors, the starched ballgown, the paymaster’s slips,
and when it’s too late, it’s too good too. Otherwise they’d follow us
into this dawn, ask us misleading questions, like liars. Well,
some of us have to be. We’d see about that. “Anon.” I asked about the witches’ society
but you’ll have to grovel, to find out where they put it, where they’re
off to next, unless a lucky blight disclose as a side-effect the thrust
of its situation we’re leading down to. Yes, the harvest home had no walls at all.
And I got off at the corner. I hear America snowing. I want it to
confront me, not my fate, with the possibilities of the next change, but we pretend there are
reasons not to blur the wall between them and us, not to step down,
and become one in a group of opportunists like ourselves, and so matter peculiarly
before tomorrow’s decision, the battle of compromise. Yes, and you took over.
Not that I think for a moment that…And grasping that quiddity like an ox’s neck, without
warning he came at me. Relentlessly the minutes, some of them golden, touched.
His task force inserted itself. It was almost lazy how the spars of flame floated
down, and continued to burn on the grass, but this was a kind
of joke, a celebration. The hundred-year-old ivy marked the ridges on the tegument
where nodules of revolutionary thought were beginning to form, and splinter, leaving
the dark, obdurate mass of negative energy, confined in a ball, to point to
having its day in the near future—quite soon, mind you—and bill collectors
in an outer room. Reading, apparently. Then a wolf-moan, in guise of roll-call,
blew up the ammunition dump. There were artificial legs everywhere
and kindly geezers standing under umbrellas, softly asking things
like where is the next scrunched-up ball of paper and can my daughter-in-law, who lives
alone, touch any benefits from the sick behemoth’s collapse, who was
never particularly outgoing in his day but now wants to be part of the birthday celebration
just as kings and princes do. And with that on my mind, I searched the grass
for signs of the coming progress. And they all went back into their houses
and that was all for that day.
But I am prepared now for the drone that submerges grace-notes in the conviction
of its being. To listen only for a moment is to bathe
in it as in a possibility—the first one—and you can shut your ears anyway
from the tirade in its later stages, assuming one wants to
not get off until the sudden unnatural brightness that indicates the last stage of the
voyage has been inaugurated, that we’re in for some fun and enlightenment
now which takes the form of bad dreams—you know that one you’re terrified of having
again, and it always turns out to be rather nice
at the end? Besides, a delegation of schoolchildren has come to thank you for it,
for having it, and thus allowing yet another generation to grow up unmenaced
by the plans of bureaucrats for civilization a few years down the pike, every year
or so. You see it is part of your plan, gestates with you,
because of you, and in you—never mind that it’s too shrill for some ears to pick up
on, that’s what protects us during the periods of ritual slump and restores
some of one’s original dignity like a lost lace christening-robe—besides,
they weren’t very fat in those days, or somebody had to wear those things.
There were governesses and servants then, which seems almost magical now, almost
beyond belief. Simple lives were also led. In short the world was a great
circus ring in which one could witness proud doings and glimpse one’s fellow
spectators on the opposite side, and everything turned to song like fire, hustled
into the furnace of energetic living, and the sad birds
walked away, were seen no more. Thus evening
when it arrived took on an orgiastic purity that was understood as of a piece
with the fabric, dim and buried in spray as it might have appeared
sometimes, until the truth will out, and vociferousness have its day, as is
only right, and we should think about it, and come back to it sometimes, at other times.
I now find it deeper, though quieter, to prepare this
and have come belatedly to realize that sex has very little to do with any of it,
that is directly, except insofar as it makes you do something you hadn’t thought about
because it brought you to a place you hadn’t thought of visiting,
some quiet corner of a garden, unnoticed before, whose perfection of design
no longer now seems a threat, but rather a greeting instead.
I was hurrying on my way as usual, too bored to notice the look of calm self-esteem
of those who circulated near me, nor give back what I had accepted as readily
as a drop of rain, token of the neutral benevolence that waits and pours
at certain corners where the road is taken up again
like a shuttle. There will always be someone to share the burden; even
oxen are true, as under burnished leaves they sidle
forth at morning, or return at evening without much commotion, without
making too much of it. And our dreams are scanned and dissolved in these seemingly
pointless rituals (unless the point is to release us as they smash the perfect design,
for mere symmetry is death, and their rounds would be that if shattered wreaths
didn’t loom in the wake of their indifferent passage). But there I go,
attributing impartial goodness to the coils of superstitious industriousness that shored
me for a moment and let me down easy: bunches of grapes
the fox didn’t even bother to shrug at, passing into the golden dust-clouds,
the clank of arms and clumsy restitutions, of that middle distance
where old man and girl alike play, and the shadow can never creep near enough
to explode the myth of the day we have, the scale to be played.
No matter that it didn’t make me look ridiculous—the point is I could easily have managed
that without assists from bunnies and wood-sprites if something not of my own construing,
something I rejected, hadn’t interposed a feline quickness and fur just before the fatal
gradient, and I stepped back and stared, and in that moment saw myself on a visit to myself,
with quite a few me’s on a road receding sharply into a distance spiked with blue
fantastic crags that had castles perched on them and were honeycombed with grottoes. I could as easily
have missed it and arrived blind at my destination, this room
where I entertain a stranger as dusk deepens and silence settles in,
and never known my own two shoes, what to make of them,
as they scoured hills as well as dales in search of the person they
belonged to instead of staying parked under this plain wooden table.
Something else will break fruitfully
the allotted chain of associations, and it will serve as well—only don’t try to pass it off as
an impulse, sincerity. Too much of the city remains standing for that
and the canker must burn in the memory, red as loganberries, for the lever
to cancel the fulcrum, for a new age of nothing to come into being,
attracting as little attention as possible,
that all may live
to do justice to the gods that set us in motion! Hesperides!
Any day now you must start to dwell in it,
the poetry, and for this, grave preparations must be made, the walks of sand
raked, the rubble wall picked clean of dead vine stems, but what
if poetry were something else entirely, not this purple weather
with the eye of a god attached, that sees
inward and outward? What if it were only a small, other way of living,
like being in the wind? or letting the various settling sounds we hear now
rest and record the effort any creature has to put forth to summon its spirits for a moment and then
fall silent, hoping that enough has happened? Sometimes we do perceive it
this way, like animals that will get up and move somewhere and then drop down
in place again, we hear it and especially we see it—some whitecap curdles
in a leaden expanse of water and we are aware this moment
has done its share, that we shall not be needing this batch of insight again.
Yet other times it all comes stampeding into the foreground, crushing one’s toes, a question
like the question of what to wear, and then we fall back, confused, we know we are not
smart enough, that we can never anticipate all the trials that will have been administered
just now, forget those to come when we and our kind have been forgotten
in some memorial dump of time, with stone lotuses and iron epaulets, and they called you
a wheeler and dealer, and yes that is what fate reserves for the most capable,
even; they called you a leader and here you are, with us in the kingdom of ghosts; only don’t
tarry too long with your inaugural address: others are waiting to mount the lectern.
Yet there are other times as in a quarry where no breeze stirs; nothing
indicates it; poetry scarcely drips from vines, the weather is hugely oppressive, yet
you do know something is at work in you, something else: take death away and still
a vast alteration remains to be made. We know this decade doesn’t fit,
that we can do nothing about it except swear, yet it will do, it will have to. A fly
dies, and then? Who are we to speculate on the delicious paradoxes that will outlive us,
embroiled in street things, squeezing a pimple until some richly satisfying
pus comes out? Were we needed then?
Almost casually, gigantic cardboard cutouts
of mammoths and hydras appear in the wings, and one knows, not having done one’s homework,
that the spells will materialize as dots joined together, and the casual
whirlwind that vaporizes moods and intensity of expression was an astrologer’s error;
here, it sits on a doorstep, waiting for the “back in five minutes” tenant to materialize
with all the lawsuits and indecent percentages in its wake, but that’s no matter,
it’s a river and one must keep up with it.
Another time I was just sitting, on a rung.
Some kids were playing ball. I asked what it meant that we
never did anything, were content to let others do things and play,
as though it were for us. He said, sure thing. I said I’d had a nap,
what I wanted now more than anything was that someone would come and play with me;
I’d then decide whether to or not. She said, but this is all some kind of love ambush.
The boys don’t play with you, they have to play with themselves. You’re supposed to find some
kind of message in it, when the weather takes you away for a day
and delivers you back home, as though from a fishing trip, and no one can say
you are any different, or notice a different twinkle in the eye. But it is all changed
even though you and they would prefer not to admit it.
You’re a grown man now, but must sit in a tub. I agreed that it was so,
but said I’d always imagined that this was how things would be
and therefore wasn’t it a surprise? Things aren’t supposed to happen according
to plan and thus when they do it’s a small dislocation in the universe; clocks
are delayed a millisecond and this causes phenomena to run counter to their usual course,
so I should be washed free of all blame. And even if it were otherwise,
arriving someplace and forgetting one’s speech isn’t such a grand or unique occasion;
it’s like chess. The same things happen over and over again under such different guises,
but you think you’re keeping up with them. That serves to salve
the individual conscience and suppress the crowd’s roar as effectively
as a bell-jar would. I washed the jug in some water, then
wiped it clean with a cloth. I was thinking again about all the suffering and dying
that goes on all around us, in hospitals especially. Somehow the face of the mentally
retarded woman came back to haunt me. “Oh, no, not you again!” But she was all the time
talking quietly to herself and couldn’t have heard me anyway
with that thick partition of glass between us. But even
if she could have it wouldn’t have mattered; it’d have sounded like consolation
or agreement (so there was no point in attempting these either, they’d have
been transformed into static. Best not to hear). But you can never ignore
for long the pain that comes over you from such a person, how all the wishing
in the world would only make things worse. Yes, and you are a voyeur, too,
unfortunately, and the purity of your desire could hardly be extricated
from all that. You are a voyeur with a conscience, the last thing anyone should be,
I swear. No use trying to cover your tracks using archaic words like “leman”; the sense
kills and you have the refrain to remind you. Sure but I was just drifting
anyway, faintly out of tune, nothing scared could have happened to me.
On a treadmill
it would have been different, I’d have had the reward of seeing shining eyes,
knowing them directed at me. How I’d have fulfilled my promise if I’d been let go
or not, but that’s a small cataclysm in a landscape now
that’s no matter. I just want to be left at home—maybe something perky or melodic
will come along, who knows, and in the meantime I can irritate myself without causing
discomfort to others.
As on a darkling strand when the weather improves a bit,
there was a little more to be seen than was apparent at first. The groan of pebbles
lugged back and forth by the undertow, which at first seemed temporary and quickly
turned out to be eternal wasn’t made to displease me, no more than were
the hanks of pubic seaweed deposited at intervals that might well have been
predetermined, though of course they were not, no more than were the houses
irregularly staggered up the street that led away from all this, but not
too far away. I had just been having my first nightmare at the age of 59, and awoke refreshed
to the ordinariness of the way things didn’t want to shake hands with me; it
was pleasant in my sight.
“Wait here a moment, I’ll be right back,” she called
over her shoulder. Things had been regularly falling into place
for some time, but this wasn’t one of them: “Look how
little shore there’s actually left.” But it wasn’t true, there was a broad shelf
spattered with puddles of water extending quite a ways, glittering
in the softly veiled sunlight. Does she think you too
are going to come around to her notion of things, when we touch, and glance
at each other? Or will there positively not be any sequel
to it this time? But songs, yes. They cascade
into one another. It’s getting dark, I fear. We should go back
though not until you—her—have answered the riddle of the miracle, why it crests
just at this point every year, and then ceases to speak, and the silence extends it
even as far as the forever with telling tears and twilights. Tell me, did
I ever come to you, talking like this, and you received me into you, and I dwell
with you? O we were never a couple, but at last
the lantern-light pierces the horn of distress, of mayhem: you may want to
rearrange the facts now that they’re getting scarce. All this points to only one
perpetrator, and that person is—and a shot rang out. The intruder sprawled
in his new pants, a helpless look on his visage, as when one from outdoors rushes in,
sees the truth, and confesses; but surely more is to come, the stain
sang in the wall, and the wall buckled. And it was all up to us co-conspirators: more
even an uncle and an aunt couldn’t ask. And veiled day paled, even
as it drained into the catch basin of our collective unconscious: just who were
we to feel this way anyway, and why had anyone asked? A mystery. The clerk
sharpened his pen and put it away. But as for coming back tomorrow, that was wonderful,
and also in the succeeding days ahead when the losses should be more acutely visible
