Flow Chart: A Poem, page 18
down the road, paginate them. You’ll see bluebells and cowslips on every hill; even
dragonflies will have become a thing of wonder, as long
as you don’t get too close, and let water run through it all. What the hell! We’re
in here having a fine time, our satisfaction pierces heaven’s summit, and there are only
a few more who need to be drugged or convinced. As long as we’re on this planet
the thrill never ceases. Even a garage can be a propitious place; a mechanic’s
whistle from under a car can add to the spectrum of consternation suspended, and
making faces in the weeds. As long as we are never who we are ever going to be
the bind obtains and life on the edge of a knife has its own kind of remuneration,
so tenuous is the balance that keeps one foot caught in a misunderstanding
of someone’s making. On the other
hand to walk away from it is the grave good face to austerity and fundamental
decisions that were reached long ago in the childhood of ambassadors in the nursery
of stars, and we can’t avoid our reflection in these. It’s come to get us, to take us
to the ceremony.
To the “newness” then, all subscribe, albeit with a few reservations. We have been living
in Herkimer for some time. The quiet plenitude exuded by fat, lettuce-colored stalks
is one thing, a haven, yet always in the imagination a hasp is loose,
something catches. One might, it is true, have preferred isles edged for miles and miles
with seabirds’ feathers, and a smart-looking interior. But to give up what
has been offered is not a man’s way. Similarly, when a drunken interlocutor
gets you and your best friend mixed up, the question is not whether to proceed into
the misunderstanding, but how to extend the frame
more or less grouping us as we sat before.
There was no luster then. But the suggestiveness
of both, blowhard and gawker, made it seem that a real element of choice
were sequestered, down there, near the root, as the shadow of an elegy fanned out
over the slag, enormous to this day. And just as one can remember a foreign
word but not the synonym for it in one’s own language, it became a misleading
index of one’s intelligence, just a little too imposing to be taken home
and placed on exhibit there. I talked to the governor’s men
but though I could make myself understood in any language, it was without the foundation
that hope supplies when something is going well. Further negotiations were useless.
Besides, it seemed that the cinnabar headlands were not now a convergence;
that trophies other than this one would be talked about when the time came for that,
that no more daunting voyage could have shaken the recruit’s resolve; meanwhile the press-gang
cheered on the puny efforts at repeal that I and my wimpish cohorts advocated, then
resolved to push through the ratification process. And, unfortunately, we all looked alike; hence,
no one took us seriously or thrust chicken sandwiches on us. It was all a sad day,
though a merry one insofar as we were going home, albeit unwillingly. “Unwillingly,
O queen, I left your shore.” Yet she saw that none of us left empty-handed; I still have
that souvenir, and therefore cannot decry the fate that brought me to this pass, alone,
untended, with still some forty miles to go before I can call my journey ended.
There were some who mocked us, and some that threw pebbles at our backs. But these
we scarcely noticed, buckled into our seats, laughing at the dream that took us back to the
foundations of real fear where the story must be lived if it is to matter at all to others.
That of course was no concern of ours; we thought we were the others, observing
our exemplary adventures through a wall
of water that splits from time to time, revealing the real nature of the operation, that it is not
a place of entertainment, rather a swamp, from which one emerges,
before lying on the grass for a long time, getting one’s bearings and indeed doing anything
to buy time and fool our jailers until the moment that becomes a nocturne and precipitates
the glabrous drop that will satiate us and send us home, muttering
of the winds and suchlike. Inside this privileged attitude a revolutionary spark asserted
its rights; a trail of powder blazed there where but a moment before cool arches
led from one to the other and the view of hillsides wavered as in a bath
of sodium silicate, and seemed permanent. But that was the governor’s trick to trip you up,
make you confess what he already knew, before returning
overwhelmed to your alcove. All these officials had a stake in the matter, and it was
moreover their tactic to give you rope enough to hang yourself; if you wanted to braid a ladder
with it, why that was all right too, provided somebody saw it and wrote about it. So for
sixteen years I dazzled the constituents with sayings of a country I had never seen; they knew I
raved but thought it must always be so when men dreamed, but my darker
purpose never surfaced. And on the day when I was set free on the sand
and told to run no one could remember my name; as soon as I realized I was beyond
the range of their small arms I could relax and saunter, or, as the mood progressed,
bury my face in my hands trying to remember what it was, what gable had afflicted me now, or
how I should be caring about the move across the ever-shrinking circles, as though
I was going to enter ’em, and not let the enemy hear of any further predicament
regarding me or those I formerly associated with as long as everyone kept silent as
their part of the bargain, and I too dreamed, loosely, because I didn’t want the
landscape and hares to remember they’d once seen me if asked. And the landmark decision I
helped instigate came tolling through the last several years of thatch and plaster and was as
my trademark; everybody knew me and I had only to walk through a hole
for it to become named as a piece of the life I was hoping to publish. No there were some
who were unhappy with this, and not content with tormenting me, actually made me see
there was no difference, no other way I could have gone on being
what once I had been. But the echoes of my calm egocentricity rolled over them too;
it was as if I had never held on to the blank stubs of my raffle tickets; in my composure
anything odd I said turned over and was revealed as the reverse of a truth that was something else,
and in such wise I was able to live for close to a year, in my
caboose, and no one suspected my ruse or fatal intelligence; they had other things to do,
and besides it was obvious I wasn’t such a bad sort, we should all have to cotton to each other
and in so doing satisfy the chain destiny had prepared for us, the note
about to fall due. And I laughed
at the leaves floating in the cistern, that they too were my reward, and someday
all of us would come together in joyful earnest, for what it could do, and then my plans
would be better laid, and the daughters of those that were around us
would thrive specially too, and in becoming lead me into the cloud of chaff that was
to be my recompense, besides anything I really cared to do,
which could always be arranged, and anyway the future would be better for it
if I could just take my feet off the pedals and keep them there awhile.
And behold it all became good, and everybody recognized it. And the historians have had their say,
only now is too much done about it, and there is defeat, and fears about not
remembering. And so it will not pass away.
V
Nothing is required of you, yet all must render an accounting.
I said I was out hunting in the forest. How can it be that a man
can sup his fill, and still all around him find emptiness and drowsiness,
if he must go to the grave this way, unattended? Yet certainly
there are some bright spots, and when you listen to the laughter
in the middle of these it makes for more than a cosmetic truth, an invitation
to chivalry ringed by the dump fires of our deliberate civilization that has
got some things going for it—that invented neighborliness, for instance?
Then the paltry painted guest goes away, leaving behind the screed
she omitted to read. What’s in it for us? Out of this school was sucked a philosophy
that didn’t impel to action. A back-burner sort of thing. But if people had but
kept track of it that would have been something, someone could have framed
a memorandum. But they quickly find out what the traffic will bear
and are soon asleep in the midst of it, and the next call to action is considered passé
and no one will believe you represent the right cause. A piece of webbing
is nailed to the ground; ring-grass
invades its orient extremity; even these criteria have to be put away
until later. The hangar gets unbearably hot and very smelly.
Meanwhile the new green cascades silently and as it were invisibly.
Something has been said. You’re right about that. But no two people
can agree on what it means, as though we were sounding boards
for each childish attempt at wireless communication the gods can invent,
and so return to our refectory. But I didn’t know but what if I
didn’t hang around a little longer the thrust
would be vouchsafed to me this time and of course as its public
repository I would use it to further the interests of all men and women,
not just some. And it left the same message. It was as though
it never got my previous message. Sure, I’m still not yet compromised
but there was so much in those fierce screens that ought to have lived
as an example to conceal more and then to have it break out of control and be put
down again if ever I could will myself to wish it, instead of lingering
like a daisy on muck. Take out my tricycle for a spin and return it
before anyone missed me. Yet, as I said, I didn’t know. The old men at the urinal
spat, not wanting word to get out. All my links with a certain past were severed.
I let fall the book I had been reading, The Radiator Girls at Strapontin Lodge,
as so much gift to the giver of idiosyncrasies which when adopted
sift down like bran on rutted earth to accumulate
in whorls, and I thought how I could give no account
of these latest days. It was as though I had gone through a bout of amnesia.
Now I was ready to put the gloves on again, but wasn’t it too late?
Wasn’t the amnesty or amnesia of my own decreeing and applicable not even
to one, to me, and in that case weren’t we all excused
from class? And yet the board of governors certified me; I became a vicious citizen,
not even to blame for what ills dunces harbored
in God knows what unimaginable slums, for as long as I chose to occupy my seat
cooperating with the forces of eternal law and order yet unwilling
to compromise friends, neighbors, orderlies, the giraffe at the zoo,
who even now moves toward me on unbending legs,
though his designs are far from clear. From whatever is happy and not
unholy, lead: the plan of the porch is quite an obvious one, and you know
what sliding doors mean and wherefore gutters conduct rain
to the abject earth, and turn around and absorb the shock of hearing the truth
told, once more, on an unforgettable day in early June,
which shall be all we need ever know of hearing quarrels inside out and then
reversing them so the abstract argument is pure and just again, a joy to many.
How much luckier I am, though, than they, who can see where I’m stumbling to during the day
and can rein in at night, between hedges. It’s like
dangling far above the city streets, a kind of peace if you don’t spoil it
by losing patience. Sure enough, other fun began while I was gone, a kind of imaginative
recycling of the days I’d crumpled and tossed out, and then their
dated shenanigans came to
seem crisp and well-presented, focussed, cropped; none of the “careful draftsman” in me could
cavil at that. Besides it was nice just being outdoors with something to say. An excuse
like a birthmark arose and flowered, still swimming upward past
the layers of the different civilizations, to Sun Lake. I could trundle my shopping cart past
the wicket and still be there, off the hook. I don’t mind being mesmerized even for
fairly long periods but this was like playing tic-tac-toe with an automated
stone saint; the mock-orange note in it was strong and I’d come, I
remembered, chiefly to see my own reflection. Now, where was I? Where’d I put that
ticket of readmission to the bathers, who by this time were streaming out
in twos and threes. “Show us how to open a book like that.” We gave them coffee
when it didn’t go fast enough. Things seemed to pick up after that, though I felt a twinge:
was it going to do it for me, this time, and them? Might we be forced to split up,
and if so, which half of the ladder is left standing? You don’t want to hear it. And still
the cloister extends, deeper and deeper into the dream of everyday life that was our
beginning, and where we still live, out in the open, under clouds stacked up in a holding pattern
like pictures in a nineteenth-century museum: forgive us
our stitch of frivolity in the fabric of eternity if only so that others
can see how shabby the truth isn’t and make their depositions accordingly, regulating
the paths over which we have no control now, speaking out of concentrated
politeness into an ear which wishes to hear, but once we have finished
what we had to say (and we have nothing to say) the moment and any afterthoughts are scooped up
as though by a steam shovel and deposited over there, not out of sight.
And the contentious are sometimes with us as a smooth pavane on glassy but profoundly
turbulent waters. How to keep it going
when all is trembling violently anyway, the air and all things in it? Shouldn’t we
abandon them? But no these are
pointlessly fussy caveats sunk, so as to test one, in the great gray
fabric of the unwinding highway: don’t let its apparent dignity fool you, and besides
they’re free, and can and do say whatever they want to you; that doesn’t
mean you have to respond in kind, but it helps. Someone is working on it,
providing heat in summer and air conditioning in winter, and get-well
notes arrive in every post; the top
of the volcano has been successfully glued back on, and who is to say we aren’t
invited? The invitation, after all, arrived too, that was your name
beautifully chiselled into it. And ideas like fire
struck too quickly from flint seem to matter: your house or my house,
this time?
I really think it’s my turn,
but the variations don’t let you proceed along one footpath normally; there are
too many ways to go. I guess that’s what I meant. Why I was worried,
all along, I mean, though I knew it was superfluous and that you’d love me for it
or for anything else as long as I could sort out the strands that brought us together
and dye them for identification purposes further on, but you
didn’t have to remain that generalized. A few anomalies
are a help sometimes, confetti that gets lost in the cracks
of some conversation and then you have to take it back again to the beginning
and start all over again, but that’s normal, it’s no cause for alarm, there are
more people out there than before. If you can think constructively, cogently,
on a spring morning like this and really want to know the result in advance, and can
accept the inroads colorful difficulties can sometimes make as well as all the
fortunate happening, the unexpected pleasures and all that, then there’s no reason not to
rejoice in the exterior outcome, sudden
mountain-face, the abrupt slide
into somewhere or other. It will all twist us
closer together, under heaven, and I guess that’s what you came about. See these
polished stones? I want them and I want you to have them. It’s time, now.
So that’s it, really. How all that fluff got wedged in with the diamonds in the star chamber
makes for compelling reading, as does the heading “Eyesores,” though what comes under it,
e.g., “Nancy’s pendant,” is a decidedly mixed bag. The proper walk must be aborted
and tangled hope restored to its rightful place in the hierarchy of dutiful devotions
for it to matter at all to “the likes of” us, and get booted to the rear
of the compartment. We were talking about cats. I said you should have one
not so much for companionship as for the extreme urgency of not letting it out of the bag,
if you should be so lucky as to possess one of those too. You always thank me
for my suggestions even when I can see they haven’t gone over too well, and this
was one of those times. We chatted some more about cats and other pets
