for Stuart James
This appeared in Poetry & Audience.
Imagine that it’s been
A century since Yeats.
Imagine, and conclude
How meaningless are dates.
All of time gone by,
And not a second passed
For you who saw him first
And you who read him last.
He stepped outside to say
A line or two. It was
Out of time and place,
But no one cared because
No one had built a wall,
Nobody tore one down.
Beautiful women merged
There in Lissome Town.
When you are given away
Another century hence,
Your comely wisdom combined
Worth a couple pence,
The women still will walk,
And rebels stop and stare,
Nothing much to say.
Helen will not care.
There enters January from the left,
A grinning rush of sudden death. I say,
Says January, You know that’s not true.
I kill the pine-bore beetles, and I spread
The grass with green—potentially. I turn
Away. I have no time for this. I’ve made
Friends with the spring. It promised me a shoot,
A pistil, and the grounds to make them work.
January wears cold around its lungs,
A heart of hoar, the frost that doesn’t care
Who freezes whom. It has its ice on you,
Its arabesques of cars out of control,
Its night where streetlights groan about the dark.
Somewhere the exiled cupids fletch their bows.
We
were a caravan, the score of us,
Camels
and dogs and rugs. We infidels,
We
passed for what we were, a flea-brained bunch
Determined
to be wise, and if we failed,
Experienced
at least. We heard that the sands
Turned
ruby when they were wet, but they were dry.
Advised
that the womenfolk were glorious
Beyond
appraisal, we saw only men,
And
they saw us and were not over pleased.
Far,
far too many stars for urbanites:
We
missed our meals and thought that we were brave.
Perhaps
we were. A little foolishness
Is
necessary for the gentle born.
Four
of us returned, we four who returned,
We
held our tongues and spent a year or two
Deciding
what was dream and what was not.
It
all was dream, the four of us conclude
And
watch TV and nod our grizzled heads,
And
some of them were probably attached.
Some
of the souvenirs began to squirm
As
hibernating gods shook off their sleep.
Their
naps had been profound, their dreams so vague,
They
didn't know where parts of them had gone;
But
shelves in Indonesia and Brazil
Let
down their severed heads; and in Duluth
And
Lower Slaughter little shiny coins
Twirled.
It was more than mildly disconcerting.
Poseidon
had a charley-horse and Dis,
Occluded
vision. Iris saw her dress
Change
colors, as the label, Roy G. Biv,
Turned
inside out and backwards. Down below,
A
village suffered instant disrepute
When
all the hausfraus ran away with birds.
In
Rome the statues changed their legal names,
And
some converted. Venus wept real tears,
The
tiny tears of dolldom, small and briny.
Green,
like the eyes which they obscured, they fell,
But
raised no fruit. It was her elder name
Which
founded Paris, where the horses reared,
And
no one knew what anything meant or cost.
The
souvenirs dissolved, and mighty Zeus
Stroked
his oiled beard, but did not wake. The heads
Of
headless torsos speechified from dust.
The trains still run through small, eccentric towns,
Mostly at night, the children, brave in their beds,
Dreaming of sleeping somewhere else, so young
They think that Indiana is escape—
Trains still pass by the silos, which are not
Mere symbols of desire, and they pass
What used to be a station, but is now
A home for unwed orphans, and they pass
Fireflies making fun of locomotives.
And nobody jumps the train. If it slows down,
That’s so the engineer can take a leak
On Illinois, grateful for the attention.
The children who wake up—well, more or less—
Will check if they are now emancipate.
They’re not; but tracks still run both ways at once.
