A Convergence Of Birds (14 page)

A man lovingly fingering a photograph in a shop crowded with bric-a-brac, then moving his hand to the brittle, yellowed leaves of a book.

Dear Miss Emily,

The receipt of your letter, coming as it did through idiosyncratic postal means, was timed magnificently with a lifting of several days of oppressive humidity. Your words move me very much (as they always have in other forms). I am deeply honored by your correspondence, and your visit, which believe it or not was as much a surprise to me as to you. When I constructed the box, Miss Emily, I did not mean for it to disrupt you in any way; I repeat, I only meant to pay you tribute. An artist, it is said, manipulates his world, but I would never dream of manipulating you.

A woman with a newspaper spread before her, rotating it slowly on the table, one quarter-turn to the left, meticulously filling its margins with additional lines of sharply angled letters from her own pen; then, when there is no more white space remaining, supplementing these margins with the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper.

A man meticulously collating small objects, labeling the fronts of file boxes, then writing across the entire width of a brown paper bag, line by line, until he has filled it from top to bottom.

Having grown quite settled in my spirit-cell, how strange it was when the entire edifice somehow tipped on its side, causing me to spin around several times, as the perch became a round seat atop a sturdy metal cylinder jutting out of the floor, and you to whom I had not yet been introduced sat beside me on another exactly its twin, both of us facing a high table, behind which stood a scantily-clad serving girl and an aproned man in full view, cooking. And my blue sky’s window expanded into a window far larger in dimension and far less aesthetically pleasing in its contents. This occurred, I can only surmise, because you summoned me, Mr. Cornell, although even after the fact you remain quite cagy about the matter. I would have thought the episode a dream had I not surrendered the practice of dreaming when I exited life.

A boy in a crowd, wide-eyed, watching a man on a stage extricating himself from chains, emerging from inside a locked vault.

The episode was enough to give one nervous collapse—all over again!—although in a sense it was the opposite of the darkness I first assumed had been my death when I fainted in the kitchen baking. This incident was more like fainting into light—a different, a benign kind of Bright’s disease, you might say.

It was certainly enough to make one marvel, and I continue to ponder it here within the structure I have come to call my rectangle of reflection.

10/3

yesterday met Miss Emily—out of the blue, you might say—there she was at Bick’s. persuaded her after to come to Utopia Parkway to see the work (after initial tentativity she assented; in fact, insisted). in Bick’s she was very suspicious of the fare, dismayed at how I reveled in it, but later let me take her to Shelley’s, too, and the automat—we talked a lot—told me her brother’s nickname: “his highness.” told her mine: Choey by my sisters—Boysey by father. and mentioned Robert. that was only the beginning of the many words exchanged. much shared.

We talked with each other about each other

Though neither of us spoke—

I beg your pardon, sir. Would you be so kind as to inform me where I am?

With pleasure, Madam. A diner called Bickford’s. A county called Queens.

I have been to Washington, to Boston, and to Philadelphia, but never to a place called Queens. And who are you, if I am not too bold?

Will it be the usual, Mr. Cornell? Or should I say, which usual? Oh, pardon, didn’t see the lady. Hey, what is this, a costume party?

Consider yourself indirectly introduced, Mr. Cornell.

Need I ask to whom?

Who am I, but a woman in white, who was heard but not seen, who had no mother, then discovered she did, who walked with her dog and sat with her cat, who had a way with flowers, whose father would eat only her bread, whose Indian rye won a prize, who made more than adequate pudding, who did not care to clean or sew, who hoarded her words for the bureau drawer but barely aired them in the light of day. Don’t you know yet who I am?

What can I order for you, Miss Emily?

I haven’t eaten in so many years; I imbibe the white light of the blue peninsula. I believe you saw to that, Mr. Cornell—arranged for my sustenance.

It’s questions I long to feed you, Miss Emily—hundreds of them.

One banana cream pie, extra whipped.

Do you long for life, Miss Emily?

I admire a man who does not traffic in small talk. If I am not too cryptic, I longed more for the first phase of life during life than I now long for life in the afterlife.

You are not at all cryptic. But maybe you could solve me a riddle or two. For example, Miss Emily, how is it that your Amherst winter blossoms into my Indian summer?—I, who was born on Christmas Eve but find my understanding of you coalesces in that skewed autumn season’s sensibility.

I have fewer clues than you, Mr. Cornell, who are, it appears, the inadvertent author of my afterlife—despite my life having preceded yours! Now that is a paradox more than ripe for poem—but death interrupted the practice.

Of penning, you mean?

Yes. Penning. Poem-ing? Time, one might say, stopped, but that is not entirely accurate; rather, time passes now so differently than in my life—or former life—when we could chart the seasons by consistent reliable signs; when mother came back from walking with a burdock clinging to her shawl, for instance, we celebrated spring—until, of course, the day that mother ceased to walk outside, or walk at all, those seven years.

I understand, Miss Emily, I understand. My brother was, all his years, more or less immobile.

Who cared for him?

I did, mainly.

A brother is the fulcrum of a family.

Yes. Please go on.

Brothers leaven our lives with their playful humor. Mothers, on the other hand, sober one’s life with their needs—as is appropriate, for too much liveliness would not be proper; excess animation would lend a wildness unsuitable to domestic life.

We are in sync, Miss Emily. I’ll confess that when I first thought of you, because I felt so connected to you, I hoped you had a sweet tooth and your brother a handicap.

You are a peculiar man, in more ways than one. Albeit a greatly gifted one. My intuition tells me one of your gifts might be gardening. Do you possess a garden, Mr. Cornell?

Indeed I do, Miss E—a very special one, if small. One with quince tree and birdbath and rabbit.

A woman gathering fruit from a garden, first carefully, then in a frenzy—shaking the trees, until the abundance of their yield overwhelms her: a deluge of apples, peaches, and figs, gathered up in her skirt, nearly burying her—her head and shoulders bobbing above the smaller round objects, until she emerges, steadies herself, and starts to walk, then run, racing after the mail coach with all she can carry of them: “Please, coachman, bring these to Austin with love from his sister!”

Or bore the Garden in the Brain

This Curiosity—

Once I scolded my brother for poaching poetry—his highness had enough accomplishments without usurping mine—but I also scorned his wife for displaying one of my poems. I realize it may seem contradictory. You, I sense, are at home with paradox, Mr. Cornell, as, thanks to your antics, I’ve thoroughly lost track of how many times I died before I died!

10/4

weather today in fact a misty quality similar to that spectre—scrumptious Debussy Preludes by Gieseking augment this feeling—hope I did not insult E.D. when I said I preferred the cupcake to her hand-picked figs. good find in Strand. special treat for Robert too. Mother keeps asking, Who was the polite young woman? I approve of her. will she come again? and that I should bring home proper young ladies like E all the time.

A woman playing the piano, intent, rapturous.

A boy holding his younger sister’s hand, listening with delight as his mother plays the piano and his father sings.

?/?/?

On my honor, Joseph, I shall continue to answer the questions which you have kept, as you say, in storage. I know I have yet to address your positioning of life in opposition to aesthetics—I am still trying to understand it fully. And I could not explain in any logical terms how I recognized you almost immediately as my spiritual architect, shall we say—as if your face matched a photograph I’d looked at all my afterlife. But here is the answer to a question you did not ask me: Were I to make a box for you—had I your unusual gifts and could return the favor, that is—it would consist of the following: quince petals and sugar cubes—the former in opulent heaps, the latter in stacks.

10/5

the visitation of E.D. is truly a marvelous thing—even more so than seeing Mary Baker Eddy on the park bench that day, but must consider implications for current and future boxes. perhaps this is the solution to the malady of being trapped in boxes—that they have the capacity to liberate others.

A man bowing his head in prayer.

A woman doing the same.

My question, Mr. Cornell—for you must allow me a question or two, though perhaps you do not know the answer yourself—concerning The Blue Peninsula: Is this the final destination or an intermediate stage of my eternity?

A boy fervently lining up miniature cakes on a shelf, examining each one as if it were a jewel, inhaling its aroma with eyes closed.

And while you formulate that answer, a simpler question: Is it salubrious, Mr. Cornell, to have dessert before the main course?

But it is the main course, Miss Emily, dessert is always the main course! And we shall have more of it at our next stop: the bakery. Nothing could be more essential!

A man doubled over in pain on a park bench, clutching his stomach.

A woman bending over an invalid, supporting her, raising her torso until she sits up in the bed, then sitting beside her and spooning food from a bowl into her mouth.

A man helping a younger man out of bed, giving him ballast with his body.

How could you refuse a Seckel pear, Mr Cornell? Tell me, when you sit beneath your quince tree in the theatre of nature do you nibble at a bar of candy?

In fact, I often do; my favorite is the Milky Way.

The milky way?

It marries chocolate to the heavens and that, to me, Miss Emily, is a very favorable marriage indeed. The best of both worlds, you might say.

A boy closing a book and opening a window to look up at the stars, then huddling under the covers of his bed, trembling.

After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside

?/?/?

Dear friend,

You needn’t have apologized for the condition of your workspace. I am not fastidious in that respect. After all, a writer need only deal with clutter of the mind, and paper even in accumulation stacks quite neatly. The source of the distress you sensed was something else: the house you had spoken of earlier, with brass and oak and French doors, and the boats on the Hudson River visible from the porch—that was where I thought you were taking me to view your artwork. I felt close to my own memories of Amherst when you rhapsodized about it. This childhood was no fiction, was it? With homemade preserves hidden inside one of two pianos on Christmas morning? (We had only one piano in our mansion, but I could match you if you count my piano in the woods.)

But I want to speak of your current studio. Peering in upon those birds and stars and shells and such, the plethora of curious artifacts, Joseph, I felt I had been to church. I once said to a dear friend (the same to whom I joked about skywriting) that he was my church. But here in this case it is not a human heart and mind’s embrace that offers surrogate worship, but a man-made miniature environment, diminutive, such as only a doll could comfortably enter—yet my entire consciousness now loiters in such a one with impunity—luxuriates, in fact. How could one explain such a phenomenon? Even in a poem?

A boy leaping from his bed, entwined in a white sheet, rolling onto the floor, screaming as if the fabric were instead flames he sought to put out with his slender body.

Is this indulgence in sweetness a mark of your 20th century or is it your personal predilection, Mr. Cornell?

A little of both, I guess. Well, more of the latter, truthfully.

Cakes reign but a day, Mr. Cornell. Heed my words. But in all my days, I’ve never known anyone to refuse a Seckel pear. A ripe one too. But by the time I convince you it will be past its prime. A pity. Yes, I should have brought a Flemish Beauty instead. Or abandoned pears for apples. If only there were room to entertain inside the Blue Peninsula, we could have our fill of Seek-no-furthers: the benign equivalent of Eve’s forbidden fruit, inside my private unsullied Paradise. I do associate them with you, you know, as you have made my seeking obsolete.

A woman tending flowers from her garden: jockey club, sweet clover, day lily.

A man hurling a lovely bouquet to a startled cashier, turning what was meant to be a gracious gesture into an awkward one.

Daphne odora, lemon verbena, sunflower, star of Bethlehem.

She throws up her arms, crosses them before her face, screams. Other men race to her assistance, tackle the flower-giver.

A woman in white supine on the ground, writhing in pain, her white dress soiled with threads of red: a woman whimpering in the grass. What is it, what is it, her sister asks when she crawls home, and all she can reply is to empty a basket of daffodils, shrinking from the petals as if thorns, as if swords.

It is very strange, Mr. Cornell.

On the palms stretched out like shields, she notices each of her sister’s fingers pinched as by a clothespin. Whatever could distort them so? I played scales until ravished by my piano in the woods.

My diet, I admit, causes some bemusement among my acquaintances.

I wasn’t referring to that. It is your own affair, how you eat.

The 20th century, you mean, of course. It is—even to me it is strange, and I am a… temporal native. I must take refuge from it in my boxes, and I meant to give you refuge too, Miss Emily; I didn’t intend for the shock of the 20th century to intrude upon your sensibility—though of course, for my own gratification, this meeting, is… something like paradise, something incredibly special, and equally mysterious.