Flow Chart: A Poem, page 9
and others will conspire to push the lawnmower, make coffee, as long as these
and ours are spared and stand along the walk in rows. We might never
get out alive otherwise. Besides, there’s all that to see,
all that and more, you see, not including
the glint in someone’s eye when you tell them that, and afterwards, well, it’s back to
your tunnel or whatever you care to call where it is you stay
in the afternoons, then morning, if all goes well. And if we two inhabit
a daffy teacup, are adept at crowd-pleasing, then what about the rest,
star-gazers in their midst, who make up the electorate? Say it was long ago,
say nothing further need be said, that even a memory will traipse
across the crossed hairs and be shot down, only the comfort in it
will be, will not have been
for many years, and though these die
with a sheen on them there is not very much to mark
of that past, no stones to leave on the trail, which isn’t the same
as having an alderman in your living room and cats wherever you look,
fond George.”
Then it said it was supposed to come back
to an eyrie or some sort of enclosed space, it wasn’t too clear
about that, but definitely would walk to meet us
whether we were here, or far. It would meet us. And so on. If living
was going to be like that, give me back my clothes, my crown
of gold, and just let me out before I have had a chance to put them on,
regal when partially naked, and you can bet the next one that comes along
will have his say, and then we are gay, and be under a mushroom
the livelong day, because no one wants to play
any more. The mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck one, and it all lurched
into motion again like an ancient conveyor belt an unseen hand flicks on. And trials,
pumpkin-colored ships in the street, disturb the busman’s accident long ago,
having no sense of humor, or just barely. The frightened sleep in parks,
though motionless palm fronds announce a quiet evening. You can get over
bouts of humor best by not going indoors
when the moon is full. The lion stood by the bridge
so long it might have been a sculpture, but in the end loped sheepishly away.
And we have to figure out what these coins mean, not knowing the language.
It might be—still, there’s no point in being greedy
before one means to—has to—but if it was a game in the beginning
it must be still, despite inertia. It’s getting to be the end of a dance marathon
and though people keep cutting in, they do so with an air of resignation.
No point in taking further lessons, just at the moment anyway.
An enormous sense of release hushes the impatience
in the grass, the wayward chirruping about something. One can still stand up,
and that’s plenty, under the circumstances. Besides, we’ll not leave you alone yet;
the bench you warmed for us looks inviting; soon stars will be out
and you can walk home peering into the distance, hoping
someone will pick us up. Easy now, the stair treads
have come along again, and soon, soon
the bed will drench us with sleep and the surprising leap into the middle of a dream,
striking pennants, pavilions, bringing all natural activity to a halt as it wonders
about this, tests the current, supposes everything
must be OK or we’d have heard. In the next town there’s a grist mill and a blacksmith,
or was that part of a dream, or did it really exist in a past
one can focus on, extracting its kernel until, like a ship, the shell turns round,
advances on us and speculation is undone for today. And we sobbed into those sails
sometimes, yet the gryphon never wavered until the third blast of a trombone
soothed it and it fell asleep. Now the dangers were tiny ones, but everywhere;
it would have been a good time to stay home, but alas that was a concept
foreign to these steep, peripheral times, these crags like sandpaper
dividing a no-good, swamp-green sky, and all the while
you were just a bit younger, enough to complain and not understand
why all the women stifled sobs and I was appointed to meet you
and bring you to this place, locus of many diagonals
without beginning or end except for the sense of them a place of confluence
provides. So, as is the custom here, I pulled the hood down to cover most of my face.
In a twinkling the mood had changed. The hiatus in the manuscript
buttoned itself up.
And there were many sets of fraternal twins on earth
to share in a new sense of disparity and reward everyone for what they would have
done anyway, inasmuch as there always comes a time when congratulations fall
just short of the doormat, loved ones are sorely tried, and associates
go blindly about their business, some business at any rate, all to keep the shelving
from imminent collapse by destroying relationships
that were good in the past but have now come to naught
as we see each day in the papers. And if one swoons, another will follow suit
until the entire populace is restive. And surely no one can locate the good in that
except by poring over miles of yellowing folios, which seems unlikely, so it’s back
into bed with us again, and that’s the way it has to keep happening
for any of us to remain unaware very long of secret provisions and codicils
in the charter it is imperative not to mention—not, you understand, out of a spirit
of fair play but in the ultimate interests of a deeper yet darker strain of being
we have to live toward if anyone is to get any good out of the colossal, foundering
experiment, the braintrust of fiends and werewolves who lie perched just out of
the reach of sleep, ready to reclaim territories surrendered in a moment
of temporary insanity, and others as well that were never in question
until they became bones of contention just seconds ago in the new climate
of sharpened political awareness that hungers always for new victims
like a minotaur, and whose mad thirst for the blood of innocent bystanders can never
be slaked, least of all by tepid gestures toward understanding
seen in a mirror and wrongly interpreted, or lives entirely given over to sacrifice
and austerity, for it is there, cautions the tome, that the greatest losses, the worst
atrocities will be instigated and immediately tallied. For such is the life of a young man
these days; there is still time to leave the boat, which at last report
was committed to its moorings, but of course to quit now
would be to miss the whole spectacle, and that, after all, is what
we came for, and shall insist on staying for, once the dirt has settled
and the bats flown back into the trees. And the cicadas stopped stuttering.
As dead wood floats, the expanding afternoon exhales
its mousy fragrance, battening on the memory of countless similar
ones it thinks are in the heads of those going about in this one,
and so the structure stands, without any apparent support. Doors are left open
as in spring, and beyond them float tunnel-vision landscapes
brought from somewhere else, and none recognizes the clever substitution.
Here a man carries bags
out to his truck, and makes the same trip over and over. There, windows shine.
And on a far-off hilltop someplace a living sacrifice gleams, red
in the puddled haze, and all eyes are cast downward, defrocked,
speechless. And though one can hear the traffic’s swish
as it cuts from one side of the island to the other, one is transfixed,
facing an army of necessary revisions. “How would it be if I said it this way,
or would so-and-so’s way be better, easy on the adjectives?” And if I told you
this was your life, not some short story for a contest, how would you react?
Chances are you’d tell me to buzz off and continue writing, except
it’s so difficult; we barely begin and paralysis takes over, forcing us out
for a breath of fresh air. Meanwhile the vengeful deity whose acts
are being recorded has all the time in the world. “OK, that’s it for today,” as if
one weren’t busy on other fronts too, such as writing letters
to friends in Panama and Hawaii. Not to mention keeping track of expenses
in a ledger acquired for just this purpose. But though reams of work do get done,
not much listens. I have the feeling my voice is just for me,
that no one else has ever heard it, yet I keep mumbling the litany
of all that has ever happened to me, childish pranks included, and when the voluminous
sun sets, its bag full, one can question these and other endeavors silently:
how far wrong did I go? Indeed, one can almost see the answers spelled out
in quires of the sky: Why? it enthuses, and immediately some of the metal trim
falls off, the finish has gotten gooey, but we persevere, and just as the forms
begin to float away like mesmerized smoke, the resolution, or some resolution, occurs.
We are no longer on that island. Here, the inmates
treat us harshly, but like adults, and though as usual no rest is authorized,
one can without too much difficulty keep pace with the majority of them
and see one’s old clothes reflected in that mirror. And shoots keep popping up;
birds are pecking excitedly in the dirt for something, and your shoes
have grown too small; it will be time to change them soon. Of course, one is too old
to be a waif, yet that issue never surfaces; one is judged fairly
though without this set of complex circumstances being taken into account,
and that’s something, more than you think, for by evening
the pronounced moan will have been deadened, and we are free to take our ease,
reveling in the glow, the surface of things, like water nourished on fading light.
You see, we have escaped. But one always goes back voluntarily
before the next roll-call, and that bittersweet dream of complete and utter
laziness is postponed once again, confirmed and postponed. And I write my diary
by street-light, because it’s better that way; I may not have to look too closely
at my handwriting, yet I can feel it, all around and on me
like a garment or a sheet, and this too seems like a good idea. Well, doesn’t it?
It does. But remember, one isn’t obliged to love everything
and everybody, though one ought to try. One way is to accept the face they
present to you, but on consignment. Then you may find yourself falling in love
with the lie, sinister but endearing, they fabricated to win acceptance
for themselves as beings that are crisp and airy, with an un-self-conscious note of rightness
or purpose that just fits, and only later take up the guilt behind the façade
in the close, humid rooms of whatever goes down in their struggle (or hundreds
of struggles) against fate, and perhaps buy that too someday
when their manners are out of the way. I have obtained gratifying results in both instances
but I know enough not to insist, to keep sifting a mountain of detritus
indefinitely in search of tiny yellow blades of grass. Enough
is surely enough, in spite of what religion teaches us. I’m happy to be back with others
at the fairgrounds, without disparaging them too much, and when someone asks me
what I think of him or her, reply without false naïveté that I really love them
very much, but it might be time to take other factors into account, my own
well-being, for example, and how far along the path to survival my unselfish
instincts have moved me. Usually it’s both farther and not as far as we imagine,
i.e., taking a wrong turning and then after a fretful period emerging in some nice
place we didn’t know existed, and would never have found without being misled
by the distracted look in someone’s eyes. It’s mostly green then; the waves are peaceful;
rabbits hop here and there. And the landscape you saw from afar, from the tower,
really is miniature, it wasn’t the laws of perspective that made it seem so,
but for now one must forgo it in the interests of finding an open, habitable space,
which isn’t going to be easy. In fact it’s the big problem one was being led
up to all along under the guise of being obliged to look out for oneself
and others: the place isn’t hospitable, though it can support itself and one or two
others, but really it would be best to start all over again from the beginning
and find some really decent area that reflects a commitment to oneself.
But where? In a bubble under the surface of the ocean? Isn’t it all going to be a fiction
anyway, and if so, what does it matter where we decide to settle down?
III
That was the first time you washed your hands,
and how monumental it seems now. Those days the wind blew only from one quarter;
one was forced to make snap judgments, though the norms unfolded naturally enough,
constructing themselves, and it wasn’t until you found yourself inside a huge pen
or panopticon that you realized the story had disappeared like water into desert sand,
although it still continued. I guess that was the time I understood enough
to seize one of the roles and make it mine, and knew what I heard myself saying,
but not whose yellow hair it was. Mélisande? Oh, I’d
come before to let you in, and saw only a chipmunk, and so…But now it’s nice
to sing along, and read the newspapers together, and try on funny hats: only
be aware that at daybreak there must be no trace of you, or the cock might not crow
and there’d be hell to pay. Besides, you wouldn’t wish it
even if we were together, as someday we may be. I say “someday”
for the sound of it, like a drop of water landing, but I also meant it, but now I’m
standing just outside unafraid, listening. So much is wrapped in soot,
that now I’m no longer blind
and can denounce any aggressor, but I won’t, because I’m afraid to, and besides,
what if the attic door slammed shut? Much remains unknown
in these calm countries. A bridge erects itself into the sky, all trumpets and twisted steel,
but like the torso of a god, too proud to see itself, or lap up
the saving grace of small talk. And when these immense structures go down, no one hears:
a puff of smoke is emitted, a flash, and then it’s gone,
leaving behind a feeling that something happened there once,
like wind tearing at the current, but no memory and no crying either: it’s just
another unit of space reduced to its components. An empty salute.
It’s like the wind has taken over,
except that one can be aware of, keep an eye on oneself in that medium:
this one is more like a pock-marked wall, in which spalling occurs due to stress
and anxiety at regular, key points in one’s career
(if it can be called that—“progress” is a better word, implying a development
but not necessarily a resolution at the end), and which enfolds you even as you
marvel at its irregular surface before you feel yourself beginning to sink into it,
toes first. Then, usually, one wakes up and everything seems ordinary.
Which is no miracle either, only one’s daily ration
of satisfaction after a plenitude of endurance, even as it puts springiness in the gait
and a deceptive, fleeting zest for life until one encounters it again, muddied
and forgotten on the side of a hill above a large city. Which way did they go, it wonders,
and horsemen ride up as though on cue, and the rustlers disappear over the ridge,
and the spring trash is freighted with penance yet there is a satisfaction in knowing it
all comes true again and I wave into the flag. How many knives in the corridor
of them one traverses at the rate of one inch per minute, and do those in charge know
what to do with them? Do they even know where they are? Not at the last point where speech coincided
with the much-embraced hem of someone’s robe as it swept by too fast for compliments
to occur in near-zero-degree temperature with a wind-chill factor of minus 51 degrees Fahrenheit
but too slow for cognitions relative to our positive but neutral, spreadeagled stance
re the conniption chambers of this world and our frequent encounters with them,
give or take a year or two, and then it’s gone, again. There was no one to tell us what it meant
when it meant what it did; we had to rely on quasi-secret details of costume encoded
into the larger blank that would do us harm but remains stalled off the coast, O
sister of my worst enemy, to know how it talked back to us when we were no longer there
to receive the ice cream and the short shrift, but when we did get back there was nothing
but a well-dressed old gentleman waiting in the lobby who told us we ought to apply
for an emigration visa but did nothing to help us solve the vexed question of directions,
oil the bureaucratic wheels; thus in one kind of mess one dreams of others, perhaps
more serious, but which have the attraction of occupying the middle distance; meanwhile
