Flow Chart: A Poem, page 8
Long ago the earth rendered this pablum unholy or at least unappetizing.
Then the men began to speak in unison: why not sacrifice something
ordinary, such as a hairnet, and if that doesn’t work one can consider what steps
are to be taken, but usually it suffices to
part with some insignificant possession. That leaves nothing to sniff at, later
when details are to be worked out, and as a matter of fact in most cases
the god will make you a gift of it or forget about it, going about his business, casehardened,
even as we humans do in strange lands. Of course the troublesome minority of
plaintiffs sometimes chases him back to his hole, and, oddly enough, often celebrates this
“triumph” with a drinking feast, little suspecting
how the god likes to wait and catch his enemies off balance, and then, woe to the litigious
and even their associates when he hits the comeback trail, nostrils aflare, only
it was funny this time, nobody seemed anxious to stir up hostilities on either side.
A few warning shots were fired, in the air, but even these might easily have been produced
by a car backfiring, or random firecrackers—that sort of thing.
Meanwhile the god licks his wounds, fiercely abiding: or so, at any rate, we have been taught
to believe, hunkered down in the fallout shelter, awaiting pestilence, a rain of arrows, or whatever
the chef may have whipped up for us today.
Yet in fact nothing of the kind has ever happened. We even feel pure and not devoid
of merit; our neighbors are nice as pie to us; even strangers salute us decorously in the street,
beautifully dressed, for this is indeed a secular feast day.
Shouts, the smoke from campfires almost drown it out. We have almost leveled off;
there is so much to say, but cisterns enclose the precious substance, not much will escape.
Oddly, under giant trees we seem smaller to each other, though the hopes the great race kindled
burn even more majestically than before the roll-call
that went on so many centuries to the accompaniment of battle-axes and cats-o’-nine-tails,
before such courtesies as we now command became acceptable to that god, the dew-weeper, and civilization began to grovel
in the dust for torn sausage-casings and bits of shrimp. But any pedigree
is by definition a long one, so that now it must seem to some called to be aristocrats as if
the whole shining night were stitched together to hide their port-wine stains
and even gnomes have some inner sense of nobility that will save the world
when it does begin to fall apart as, at last report, it hadn’t yet done, the boiler-plate
contradictions ennobled in it being such as can last millenniums without exhibiting the slightest signs of wear,
though we have only ourselves to thank for that. When the convention finally assembles
there may be flak to take on that score. In which case we can always plead ignorance of the law,
that noblest, since most artless, of defenses, and dig our heels in and ask the cliff
to explain itself and the ferns erupting from its crevices: I too
have stood here faceless and seemingly angry for a long time, yet for all that
don’t feel it time to intimidate someone, make him or her feel lonesome just because there is
indeed a horizon, but prefer to sit back on my haunches, contemplating my navel to see what good
if any will come of it. Frightening noises are in poor taste; silence must be sorted out
however, its path followed back to where the tucks gather, and each random furrow
be gaily explored in a spirit of setting out to conquer the world someday. That’s all.
I have no further bread and cheese for you; these days I count little
but the linens folded in my scented cedar closets, folded up against time, in case
I ever have a use for them; and you, you others, have only to break away
like chunks of ice from the much larger iceberg to accomplish your destiny, that day in court
the monkeys and jesters seemed to promise you—or was it a bad dream? But now, surely,
your mettle has been tested; let the perfume of burning archives
assault our olfactory sense once more as radically as the grape hyacinth in the fond gullies of spring.
Access to the poll-takers is limited, yet there are times, I feel, when this artificial barrier
along with so many others ought to be rescinded. Once in the booby hatch the setting sun
drilled its powerful horizontal rays, as strong as any you’d ever want to see at noon, through my
window just above the sill, striking this sheet of paper with the shadows of a flower pot
and an old faucet, that were lying there, with so much force that they seemed about to be embedded in it,
like a sentiment above a door. At such times, one gathers
that gravity isn’t about to save us, that it wasn’t installed as some sort of built-in smoke alarm
to discourage us from rash actions. We evolve naturally in its aura, there is so much
to say it gets weighted down like a pear tree with fruit, so that when the branch
breaks and the fruit must be harvested at once or discarded, we get stage fright and do imitations
of opera singers or anything to break the monotony of the pace
set for us by its metronome. And yes, it’s like living in an atmosphere one can breathe, but
at the same time one can never take it for granted; like air, it slips by too easily
for anyone to care, once the dust has settled, what that minor commotion betokened. The giant
umbrella creations of our history of knowledge have that disconcerting side-effect. So one
concentrates on the line tangential to the thick, pebbled bulge of the fruit’s skin: know it and
one can understand everything’s the theory, though in practice
things don’t go as smoothly as that. The top of a tower that is visible one minute
may be only a straw blowing across a courtyard the next; so, at any rate, has patience, deduction’s
handmaid, taught us, and when we go out of doors, we never exhibit bad manners or any kind of feeling,
envy in particular. What enters your gate is my own inference, not some
colossal steed pawing the dust in a protracted spasm of preparedness, for what voyage
can any of us undertake until the lotus moon has risen to vanquish
squibs or rumors concerning its eligibility that blew up while one was seated, somewhat
taken aback, disinclined to candor that day, or anything that might compromise intelligent
speculation about the origin of dreams. So one sees couples
turn back from the altar, it not being quite right for them, and as quickly, cities,
ghouls, ghost ships bite the bullet and plunge from sight, to be resuscitated in some more
“normal” atmosphere where telling tall tales comes under the head of bystander entertainment,
a special budget item subsumed under crass though meticulous ganders at what the staff
has been up to in one’s absence, how it looks, what it feels like.
And the dark mahogany
of his mood, how one loved all that! Why is it too late to be simple,
out riding, pointing at something, when all you loved was there anyway? Too late
to be inventoried or caressed, as one lays in a stock of family anecdotes for the future,
poses to assume, frippery, harmless tomfoolery, until in a cocoon
made of commas it will all seem to come right, but the ashes have been left far behind
on a nameless road, in whose ruts glass still flashes magisterially,
not merrily short-circuited as when we were among people, but a thing on its own now,
to weep over rather than think of saving? If only we could get the message out further,
yet here all kinds of sacred cows hinder one, so there is no longer any point
in pursuing the implications today. Tomorrow will be good enough for that. The stationary
saraband of our considering it but deciding not to put it to a vote absorbs any
hint of the disorder that highmindedness sometimes trails in its wake like a wisp of
something in the sky, and in any case, our hands, our faces are clean, our plates empty
and brimming with moonlight, a pious reminder to the unwashed and unready that we will come
again someday and make sense of this arbitrary and tangled forest of misplaced
motives and other shades of imperfect sympathies that do not compromise us perhaps
as yet, yet I feel their aura, Mother, like a water table ascending,
and I haven’t the answer, don’t know if I’ll ever have it, yet it looks so young,
pitiful and hopeless in morning light that one tries to suppress the intuition that to go
forward will be to do battle with some angry titan, sooner or later, and all one’s
bad reactions will confront at every one of the house’s apertures: slay me and then
leave me here, if that’s going to help; just don’t stand around
looking at me that way, that’s all. Am I some kind of a freak? No. Am I disingenuous? Maybe,
but the case hasn’t been proved; only an executioner could decide it, and besides I feel too well
to get into other feral arrangements when the night and its night-light are still
not far off. And besides other people are too interested right now, the ambiance can never
be gauged accurately enough in the feverish commotion that surrounds this, and our other
travel plans. There is no point in giving them the slip. It is never too late to mend
no matter how we clamor to redo everything from the ground up; the chatter never subsides
but like the tide of dust of the oceans, returns and retreats, forever opaque, forever itself:
a longing one does not subdue.
Yet time, for all that, hadn’t abandoned
the grotty little amusement park though the wind now seethed through every rent
in its shell, and others now had plans which didn’t take it into account:
in the foundry he sang it once and here was this sudden magnificent opportunity
to create a forum, an audience for oneself! Gosh, it’s so long ago! Still, one must hold back,
feigning disinterest until the proper moment, and then, and then,
it shall fall into our hands and seem what the Lord probably meant for us, would have,
without a doubt, if we were known to Him. Which brings up…But anyway, it would all get
fixed up and then we’d hold a contest and people would learn about it through that, and we’d have
more people than we knew what to do with queuing up and asking questions, wanting to get involved,
to pledge something, anything, even a nickel a week, it’s the thought that counts
and don’t you ever forget that. Try sleeping on it. And then we’d have a nice car
and options about things to do; we’d entertain beggars and watch them come back for more,
and that’s part of the fun, forgetting just what you have done, have given someone, in
the intoxication of your and everyone else’s finally winning something in the free-for-all
of life just like Betty and your father said, only please don’t release it all over me now,
I have to think some. Here, this chair ought to mean something, if I intuit
your philosophy correctly, or maybe it’s me, maybe I’m a chair, that’s what you
meant isn’t it? Swift as a missile the cloud leaves the horizon, rising
in our direction to blanket the city in a minute, and sure, somebody will think of something;
sunlight does continue to drizzle on us, but by God we
haven’t any right to it, we haven’t figured out one thing, and
darkness will too arrive soon and be more unexpectedly lascivious than you thought. How do
you wriggle out of the knowledge that we shall all have to answer separately
for our truths if such they are when dying, and meanwhile music wants to take the load
off our chests and point the way to a possible recreation period? Oh, but there were nights…
Your father and I were away much of the time;
it was like not having a home, string, and wads of serge to stuff in the cracks,
yet there were so many of them! I don’t wonder now that it all didn’t get done,
that practically nothing did, and I don’t blame anyone or myself either. At this time in one’s
life it’s permissible not to point the finger, and if we are cautionary, then to hell with it.
I’d like some more too yet don’t feel I’ll get any, and that’s OK because I wasn’t the only one
engaged in tearing down the gnarled structure, exposing the pores of the evidence
for all to see and I won’t be the most unsurprised when it rattles and will have evidently all
taken place on the sly, at once, and no beekeepers mourn the autumnal splendor of our robes
or come to visit when snow stains them with its truth, a truth like another, yet it’s
all strangeness, into solitude, and woebegone one sees so little
of what is passing that it’s like a show of truth, merely an ad, that spoke volumes
however and would let no one off the hook, even if one were on special assignment: that probably
triggered it all anyway. So grouches reform, the day shakes cracked emeralds out of its lap
into grooves at the edge of the pavement. Probably this is a true story of how we were united.
If so we shouldn’t resent ourselves, not until the new moon
has bent its playful bow at least, and this moment too passes with a special suddenness, for showing
us what it’s like. And other cares will unravel while one is dressing so that the differences
more or less cancel each other at the moment of presentation: it’s like candy, like a star
that doesn’t matter, like one’s feet bouncing to a joyful rhythm, a warning next time to any who might think of writing.
No one has to re-invent himself at each new encounter with something different or slightly new.
Nowhere does it say that results will issue from a recent overhauling.
We don’t know what hamlets lie in our path, or how much grumbling will occur
when we knock over something metallic and it makes a loud clang, audible on the stairs below,
or whether there will be a comic ending to this. We can see into the future
as into a dimple, and nothing says not to proceed, to go on planning,
though we know this cannot be taken as an authorization, even less as approval of the morass
of projects like half-assembled watches, that surrounds us. No but there is a logic
to be used in such situations, and only then: a curl of smoke or fuzziness in distant trees
that tempts one down the slope, and sure enough, there is a village, festive preparations,
a votive smile on the face of each inhabitant that lets you pass through
unquestioned. And we thought we were lucky back there in the silence! Here, civilization takes over,
at its highest, a new trope that dazzles without intimidating, like a scroll, is ready for us
and however many more of us it takes to change moods, build the palace of reason our
inconsequence has promised for so long now, out of trued granite blocks fired with chips of mica,
and so get over feeling oppressed, so as to be able to construct the small song, our prayer
at the center of whatever void we may be living in: a romantic, nocturnal place
that must sooner or later go away. At that point we’ll have lived, and the having done so would
be a passport to a permanent, adjacent future, the adult equivalent of innocence
in a child, or lost sweetness in a remembered fruit: something to tell time by.
By then we’ll know, as surely as if parents catechized us, the empty drum that offers itself
to any yearning, the daily quotient, the resolution, but also bare facts scattered on a plain
of fires, data that cannot be checked, dictates to live by, unlikely as it now seems.
And scattered over these, the dust of heavens that incorporates some of the good things and others
you’ll most likely want to avoid, if you can, otherwise torpor builds up in plumes
on the horizon, and when you go
to convert your notes into hard currency, something will be lacking though the columns
of figures add up correctly, and there seems to be no mystery
to it, beyond a pleasant, slightly numbed sense of wonderment which was in any case
on your original want list. Although we mattered as children, as adults we’re somehow counterfeit
and not briefed as to what happened in the intervals to which this longing led us,
which turns out to be not so tragic after all, but merely baroque, almost functional.
Yet there can be no safety in numbers: each of us wants and wants to be
in the same way, so that in the end none of us matters, and in different ways
we cannot understand, as though each spoke a different language with enough cognates
to make us believe in deafness—their deafness—as well as in our own reluctance
to dramatize, leaving our speech just sitting there, unrinsed, untasted, not knowing us,
or caring to. Each day the ball is in our court, and worse,
this is probably unromantic and proper procedure, fons et origo, nemine dissentiente.
Hours, years later, we were together.
The moon unbarred its hold, the thickness of brambles was compacted
just in time to prevent the closing of the door as if by magic—“It always
happens that way, and then no one can find it. Pretty please,
not in the terrarium, but outdoors, that vague nest,
