Adventure-free, Odysseus
Amusement Park. The sirens sing
To la-di-da policemen cars
Surveilling everything in sight.
The vendors have been turned to swine,
And dressed in kale and collard greens,
A one-eyed guide eats hot dogs whole.
A madman in a sandwich board
Proclaims an epic fail, predicts
The fall of toys, a wooden hearse
To ferry us to Neverland.
The line advances one by one,
Extended to the violet hills,
Towering braggadocio.
Nothing more gorgeous than her gardening,
Which needs no barge or poop, just steer manure
And leafmeal crumble. Mulch is promised us,
Not always promptly. What we grow takes time,
Then flowers in the night. Conservators
Have failed their catalogues; Linneans weep,
Knowing somehow they've given it no name.
Ignis fatuus, some pink scholar said,
But he cared more about the Amazon,
One-breasted warbler, clear cut first, then mute.
She works the soil, not knowing if the fruits
Will see her, call her by her name, or care.
Beside
the Canterbury Gate
Starbucks
offers up caffeine
To
pardoners and well-bathed wives
And
those who've flown from other lives,
Guilt
and pottage on a plate,
To
worship where a Lord has been.
My
host explains that caramel
And
latte make a lovely pair.
And
an anti-oxidizing scone
Will
help me keep on keeping on.
He
patters his tale very well,
Better
than Mr Clark can bear:
“My,
aren't we posh. Those charabancs
Of
spivs and chavs just bought a ton
Of
stuff they never read nor will.
So
put you sweetener in their swill—
The
inhumanity of gangs—
And
offer them a Cinnabon.”
He’d
smoke, but it is not allowed.
He’d
drink, but it is half past eight.
His
sallow fingers touch his nose
And
Geoff’s his uncle when he goes
To
worship in a bumptious crowd
The
spivs and chavs who died in state.
The
same stone that his father walked
Bears
his weight now. The changing chimes
Tell
the same time his father heard,
A
very parfait gentle bird.
He
talks the talk Old Adam talked,
Grimm’s
Law excepted, crops and crimes.
The spirits circled high above the house
And dropped surprising words like fennel seed.
Never before, he thought, and could not write
Fast enough to keep up. There slipped away
An observation on the rites of men
With women and a pun on Little John,
And still the spirits strewed the house with verbs
He did not know he knew, until, at last,
He called it finished, although it couldn’t be;
And then the tutelary angels left
For Calgary, by typo drawn away.
Not one agreed to read a word he wrote.
I’m growing heroes this year, each with vim
And rectitude. Too proud to wear their masks
Or call themselves The Spanielled Cavaliers,
They will be known by what they do: The Lute,
My Sugar Beet, The Man from Polymath.
Muscles are nothing, candyland. Their feats
Are vitamins and tiny nebulae
And comfort for the shopworn. And the seeds,
Like starfish in a cup of broth, their shapes
Superfluous to what they will become,
Wait till it rains. Wait till the worms have made
Them room to move. Once they have sprung their shoots,
Who know if you can bear to watch them work
Or how many widows lay an extra place.
No Hope, No Hoopla: this is Low-Key Hell,
Where Glum’s the Word, the cocktail hour comes,
But the town is dry, the duck who guards the gate
Has three heads, as he ought, and devils are made
Of cooking oil and pink asbestos fluff.
There’s no spare change. There is no change at all,
Only the psalms of praise for other folks,
The ones who did not care enough to fight
For White After Labor Day or Rules Against
Perpetuities for everyone.
It isn’t fair, which, really, is the point.
for Douglas Wilson
Listen, he said, the sound of flies
Above the riffle, that bodes well.
The old man sat, in sad surmise,
And thought of revolution. Hell,
He told us, when the world was new
And we ran guns and gerunds sang,
I watched the mountains turning blue.
Ecclesiastics never rang,
And girls were disappointed I
Moved them along. Now I can hope
That when my grey habiliments die,
The Queen will wear a dab of crêpe.
The music of satiety,
Which has no wings and does not grow
In memory, plays endlessly
And only strikes the notes we know.
The poems no one heard of populate
This verbosphere, invisible and bleak,
Dottering incoherently in dry
And crumby cupboards, turning bedsheets gray
On sleepovers, making little girls pale,
Afraid that they have accidentally bled.
Elegiac, embarrassed, and full of tropes
Disparaged by Seleucian kings, they tell
Stories of unrequited jealousy
Engraved on stone with sponges, vetted by
The underappreciated and the fat
Recipients of Golden Books and schmaltz.
A few are goodbye letters, never signed.
A few are tax returns, unaudited.
Some lisp. Some swoon. Some have these wild ideas
About the immanence of outer space.
They drool. They belch. Complain. Complain. Complain.
They like a mirror, write they backwards verse.
This appeared in Life & Legend. I have changed it a bit since then.
Some nights I can't get home before the dark.
I can't quite make it. Some nights I brave the streets,
And I'm afraid. Who isn't? There are ex-
Acquaintances, role models, and the police
In every hole, the shadows of themselves
Awaiting the day when hair loss is reversed.
Arise, I tell them, and I say, Not now,
But after I've passed and left you where you were.
I hear them rustle in the deep-down beds,
Less than they were, more than they ever will be,
Until the day when fallen arches rise
And all their triumphs, mute so many years
Still in the gladstone bags they kept close by,
Rise to the surface, fried by benignant sun.
The peckerwoods are blossoming—this heat
Is perfect for them, clears their rosy limbs,
A scent of gravy with a hint of lime,
Creaking with all the weight of special sauce.
Me, I just can't transport a whole lot more
Compressed into this stringy frame, a touch
Of spirit in a wealth of this-and-that.
I'm thinking chastely of a new frontier,
Out where the rumpus rooms are naugahyde,
With attic vases all the way downstairs,
Where Indians bear cobras in their packs,
And landsmen dance the shabbos hully-gully.
It's just a myth, a brackish aspiration.
I'll choogle to the fridge, but nothing more.
Next year the Thousand Islands and a hope
At long last I can be consumed with relish.
Leaving a lot to be filled in, it took
Less space than a person ought. The garden floor
Was filled with hippopotamus and mice,
With rhododendrons and Rhode Island Reds—
The irony of which is clear, even to me—
So maybe it was good that it was spare.
He did okay without it, anyway;
And she built quite a suite of space around it:
Organs to make the windpipe sound, a gut
Deep enough for a cello; and her loins—
Well, he needed no instruction as to those,
Which seemed a little strange, when he reflected.
It served, the rib did. In his view it made
The Venus de Milo look like cottage cheese.
They had no seasons, so there was no fall.
They made a paradise and called it peace.
And Adam never wished he had a dog,
Not more than once or twice. And so did she.
What with the locusts and the twirling spray,
It hasn't been the best of days. Old blood
Pumps through the holes and sewers of the town.
Oh, that is what I'm smelling, people say,
But what they mean is, Holy shit. I'm leaving
The final days behind and going now.
Those purple hazes may not be the best,
However sonorous, for telling time,
Of which we have unlimited supplies,
Not each of us, of course, or one by one,
Just lots of foggy, vulgar chunks of loss.
And locust shells, lying around like bones.
Antipathy dropped by last night, the heat
Escaping through his bowler hat, a brush
Mustache above the toothy grin, cravat
In old-school colors, much askew. He stood
Half again as wide as tall. So it seemed.
He hadn’t a sweet sound to make. A few
Blasts of opprobrium and then all gone.
I sprayed air freshener and lit an old
Pumpkin-scented candle, then I returned
To sweeping up the letters I had dropped,
Overseas mail, the most of them, from times
I promised I would not forget, though some
Contained an odd surprise I’d overlooked.
And now, spent by Antipathy, I found
A rhythm I was better off without.
Urgent to divest—
Oppression and undressed —
Afforded scant relief
By grocery belief —
To bed—too soon—and met
Specimens of regret —
Leaves like colored labels —
Descending on our tables.
Here
is the world on fire,
Sun
or flames at morning,
Roofs
ignited dawning,
Cries
in bedrooms, smoke
At
short-order breakfast windows.
Pity
the children, widows,
The
crippled aunts with one hand free,
And
the anxious dogs barking, Liar! Liar!
And
the diving ducks breaking the lake.
All
the new men aflame,
Nothing
the sun will see
Set
them aboil and aburn.
Look,
from laburnum and briar
Smoke
is getting away,
And
the sun clears the jacketed hills,
And
the wild aunts concluding their tea
Pray
for rain and cull their banished yards.
The
railway is escaping.
The
broken chapel rooftop, sleeping
Doves
enough for level spirits,
Shines
as good as gold.
Water
is on the move.
The
aunts are dressing, according to their merits,
And
the roadway coils into the wood,
At
least as good as gold and old
Enough
for kestrels born to love
A
tamed town, a tired, to remove
The
sun with drapes and scrub the singing floor.
You
hear, the slam of every door,
And
the aunts march, visiting the cold.
The houseplant leaves the room. It twirls a leaf
Around the door to see who's coming. Green
The grass outside the window. What it's seen
Of vegetation grown and come to grief
At mowers' hands is not to be believed.
The ficus argues, "Leave a leaf deceived.
No one who's known is better off." But Phil-
Odendron needs to know. He snakes the hall,
Heads for the door. He gets there by the fall.
The frost has stolen all the chlorophyll;
He dies upon the jamb, cold and enlightened.
The leaves lie blown in stacks, then wet, then whitened.
I feel a moral coming on. The sun
Will give us back our green. Out of the mire
Come kudzu with the energy of fire
And clover till the field is overrun.
There will be philodendron by the dozens
In music rooms. But not him. Just his cousins.
Men are like fish, you say. There'll always be
Another in a minute. I have no
Idea, but, Filly, if you let me go,
There will be more, but never more of me.
The dying plants are rich in latter plants;
But Philodendron gets no second chance.
The fat squirrels have surrendered.
Nuts, I say: they had no other course.
The chickadees complain until they’re hoarse.
I feel for them as though they had been rendered,
Or would if I were nature’s friend;
But I’ve made other, safer plans for fall.
I shall not be at home when ill winds call.
Spring is the goal here; winter is the end.
The trees are sure they will awake.
The frozen grass has done it all before.
Clematis clings to hopes there will be more.
But they're all botany. There's no mistake.
No cyclic show for me; but, oh,
I think of warmth and someone whom I knew,
Someone who spoke in cadences, as you
Burst with excitement at the sight of snow.
At first I thought I should work "hauberk" in
and "Holy Sepulcher" or maybe "paynim."
But as I tried, they grew less glittery,
less Coeur-de-Lionish, being as they were
mere bloodstained souvenirs, like pigges bones.
Instead I told the Stations of the Cross
of Peter the Hermit, who made Europe shift
eastwards, and who today, on 16th St.,
would be a menace to himself and others,
thus thorazined and forcibly confined.
With such tools is the course of Empire shot.
And all those little paynim nippers who
neglected to be born as French Provincials
may hope a Savior comes to save them, too.
Down by the river the trout are laying bets
Per croquet hoop. They swear like Fielding fish--
Damme this and Bloody that. They're old ones
With cheeks that frogs would eat. Here unafraid,
They list to port and pass it to the left
And praise the neighbors' sheep and curse the day
Electric lights infested county skies.
Crooks, not hooks, still in the adverse flow,
They praise monogamy, but that's a joke
Told when women go the separate way
Appropriate. They do not fear the fly,
A thumb upon their scales, or lemon sauce.
These are the myths told small fry. They are men.
I threw the golden apples all at once.
I might have hit her once or twice, but mostly
They landed where I meant them to. She stopped
And picked one up, glistening like the sun
On cutlery. The apple looked good, too.
You think I’m Eve, she said, and passionfruit
A golden bauble wrapped around a core
Of propagation and distraction? Run,
You fleet-foot son of Adam. I got far
Enough to watch her curve around the curve
The highway made, the fruit of all my labor,
Some knowledge maybe—Good, Better, and Gone.
But crocus is what they mean, and inching through
A yard like iron, just before the daffs,
They make a spring. The spring remembers you
Under the cherry, blossoms in your hair
And dress too small to make a handkerchief.
It's you, and you are never ever there.
Some jocund flowers beggar all belief.
Let summer burn them down. Let the sweet grass
Give itself up to desiccate and dirt.
All memories decay, and cherries pass.
Bof'us, they say, and laugh until they hurt.
The ice is melting, all that broken glass
A spring in motion and the past inert.
Ants,
they may whisper, but they’re hoping for
Something
preposterous, something more the size
Of
Cincinnati, something which can catch
A
mortgage in mid-air and snap its neck.
They
may say shadows, even in the dark,
But
what they mean are little men with knives,
Carving
their names in the venetian blinds,
Altering
light. Dressed up they may exude
The
confidence of snipers, but they wear
An
amulet of frog hair on each wrist,
Boasting
that they walked miles to cure DTs.
Under
the bed the suitcase is packed, the tag
Tied
with a chain cased in a plastic sleeve,
Directing
it
to
To Whom It May Concern.
On the east coast of that unheated isle
A tribe of girls survives whose creed consists
Chiefly of singing Happy Fathers' Day
To someone else's father. No males found,
Which makes their culture something of a glitch.
Essentially they beat their boys and float
Young women out to sea at menstruation.
They mate with wind. We do not understand.
The central islanders claim their descent
From great Odysseus. Their Bronze Age rites
Are pure enough to justify their claim,
They know so many chanties about axe-
Hacked thews of sailors; but they haven’t heard
Of boats, making their worship of wet gods
Ironical and plausible and high
Fun for the Left Coast credit-carding clans
Who hold their wives in common, but who keep
Their cowries to themselves. The wives have heard
Reports of the East Coast; though misinformed,
They yearn to ship their kids to school back there.
1 Angels think of little of consequences
on mornings like this, cold like steel thawing.
Singing chorales so old they sound avant-
us to mortal tympani, they rejoice
all over my clean walk. If snow could sing,
it would sing like this, crooning in low brass.
2 The Wise Men travelled in 3s. Stooges, too,
and Blind Mice. Whereas, the Angels keep watch
in companies, recruit the clergy, old
old women whose grandsons went up in flames,
and pods, squads, prides, and bright congregations.
We are well cared for in our ignorance.
3 You write from the Berkshires that all is well,
your husband having found a new wife, more
than 1/3 his age, and your sleep unmarred
by magic realism. An Angel, dressed
as a weather vane, surmounts your peaked roof
and chortles. Alleluia. All is Clear.
4 Through these white nights we trail crimson roses,
Ariadne's string. The Angels retrieve
them, smell them, watch them fade, flowers bestowed
on cheek and breast, but temporarily.
Our sin was not forever, but will do.
Steel gives way. And snow, caught by the great spruce.
Either because you're visiting
other, meritless versifiers
or because you’re trapped in a holding
pattern on your quills, I haven’t heard
much from you lately. The lamp’s been on,
my study casement has been unlatched;
but you’ve been off, I guess, teaching gaunt
refugees new names for old sorrows
or at Oxbridge again, haunting quads,
looking for lost honors. The floor’s swept
here, cushions plumped, and the bedskirts tucked
up. Warm milk, thick port, cheesy biscuits,
all are handy, but the oak bookshelves
are warping, and the old bindings crack
in this backwater clime. As for you,
my pretty, what else have I to do
but wait for a slot to open up
in your grey kidskin Life At A Glance?
