Collected Poems (27 page)

It’s midnight, the plane is hours late, for hours she’s been reading, singing, telling stories,

and now, the gluey California summer air filling up the plane like sweat, she finally loses patience,

puts the Snoopy down, an overnight bag, grabs the kid and swats him, to the great relief of all.

Good Mother: The Car

At last he’s being allowed to play in his mother’s car the way he always wants to, by himself.

She’s brushed some choky pale stuff on her cheeks, smeared the shiny red grease on her lips,

made the funny eye-face she makes playing with her lashes, perfume now behind her ears,

her wrists, down along her chest, and now she’s left him here, smiling at him: “Back soon.”

He turns the wheel, fast, left and right, clicks the lights, on, off, scrunches down to the pedals,

then in not at all a long time here she is again, opening the door, kissing him, but, strange,

she puts the makeup on again, exactly as before, no perfume, but the powder and the lips:

even the fleck of scarlet on a tooth, which with a pinky must be precisely fingernailed away.

Good Mother: Out

“I want,” he says again, through his tears, in this unfamiliar voice, again, “I want, I want,”

not even knowing why he says it now, says it yet again, only knowing that he has to say it,

even when she’s told him calmly why he can’t, then hissed the reasons why of course he can’t,

then hit him, on the bottom, hard, again, again, and meaning it, so that he’s crying, sobbing,

but though he sees her growing desperate, though he knows she’ll hit him again, he says again,

“I want, I want, I want,” though he really doesn’t care now, doesn’t even want what might be wanted:

why keep saying it? Tears aflow, sobs like painful stones, why must he keep on with it?

Does he love her less? Is their relationship ever henceforth to be this? Desire, denial, despair?

Good Mother: The Street

He lets the lunch bag fall, he doesn’t mean to, really, but there it is, on the pavement,

and naturally the little jar of applesauce inside is shattered, naturally the paper melts,

and to his horror naturally the gook comes oozing through now, sickly now, filthy now; vile.

His fault, his fault, except today it doesn’t seem to matter, his mother says it doesn’t matter,

she’s been humming to herself this morning, maybe that’s the reason; anyway, she bends to it,

uses pieces of the glass to scoop it, carries it to someone’s trash: all done — she smiles.

Her fingers are still sticky, though; she holds them hanging limply for a moment, then,

one by one, she brings them to her pursed lips and with a tiny smack licks them clean.

Good Mother: The Bus

Mommy and Daddy are having one of their fights, he can tell by the way when Daddy asks something,

Mommy smiles brightly, looking not at Daddy but at him, as though he’d asked the question.

He doesn’t mind that much at first; it’s pleasant being in her arms, being smiled at so nicely.

Daddy looks away, out the window, Mommy looks too, out there, with the same wide-eyed smile,

but when Daddy looks at her again her smile suddenly is back in
his
face, Daddy’s somewhere else,

the smile is on
his
forehead — now Mommy kisses it, and finds a smudge there to be rubbed away.

What Daddy whispers now
makes
Mommy look, but there’s an advertisement to the left of Daddy’s ear,

it’s
that
she smiles at this time, a picture of a
dog
 … How quickly wearisome this gets, how saddening.

Good Mother: Home

It was worse than being struck, that tone, that intensity, that abnegating fervor and furor.

It seemed to open on a kind of limitless irrationality, uncontrollability, chaos, an abyss,

as though no matter what the cause had been, the occasion that released this, there might never be

available to them the new antithesis, the new alignment of former sentiments which would let it stop.

Sometimes he would feel that both of them were bound in it, as in a force beyond either of them;

sometimes he thought he felt beneath her rage anxiety, as though she were frightened by it too.

He wanted to submit, capitulate, atone, if only she would
stop,
but he could never say, “Please stop,”

because somehow he knew that their connection was as firm in this — firmer — as in their affection.

Vehicle: Conscience

That moment when the high-wire walker suddenly begins to falter, wobble, sway, arms flailing,

that breathtakingly rapid back-and-forth aligning-realigning of the displaced center of gravity,

weight thrown this way, no, too far; that way, no, too far again, until the movements themselves

of compensation have their rhythms established so that there’s no way possibly to stop now …

that very moment, wheeling back and forth, back and forth, appeal, repeal, negation,

just before he lets it go and falls to deftly catch himself going by the wire, somersaulting up,

except for us it never ceases, testing moments of the mind-weight this way, back and back and forth,

no re-establishing of balance, no place to start again, just this, this force, this gravity and fear.

Vehicle: Forgetting

The way, playing an instrument, when you botch a passage you have to stop before you can go on again —

there’s a chunk of time you have to wait through, an interval to let the false notes dissipate,

from consciousness of course, and from the muscles, but it seems also from the room, the actual air,

the bad try has to leak off into eternity, the volumes of being scrubbed to let the true resume …

So, having loved, and lost, lost everything, the other and the possibility of other and parts of self,

the heart rushes toward forgetfulness, but never gets there, continuously attains the opposite instead,

the senses tensed, attending, the conductors of the mind alert, waiting for the waiting to subside:

when will tedious normality begin again, the old calm silences recur, the creaking air subside?

Vehicle: Insecurity

The way the voice always, always gives it away, even when you weren’t aware yourself you felt it,

the tightness in the middle range, the hollow hoarseness lower toward the heart that chips, abrades,

shoves against the hindpart of the throat, then takes the throat, then takes the voice as well,

as though you’d lost possession of the throat and then the voice or what it is that wills the voice

to carry thoughtlessly the thought through tone and word, and then the thoughts themselves are lost

and the mind that thought the thoughts begins to lose itself, despairing of itself and of its voice,

this infected voice that infects itself with its despair, this voice of terror that won’t stop,

that lays the trap of doubt, this pit of doubt, this voiceless throat that swallows us in doubt.

Vehicle: Indolence

The way it always feels like the early onset of an illness, the viral armies mobilizing in the breast,

a restlessness of breath as though the air weren’t giving nourishment … and the way, always, it’s not …

Gazing into the indifferently insisting morning, trees, sky, great patches won’t come into focus,

or more exasperatingly come clear, hold a moment, are taken in the moire of lapse and inattention.

The way we know that what is being called for is affirmation, the insertion of the self into the moral:

this is sin, the very throat of luxury; more than sleep it holds us, more than love betrays us …

The way we know that if we step across the sluggish stream to act, our hovering holiness is saved,

if we submit and sink, we’re lost … the way, always, we’re lost, in these irresistible inertias, lost …

Vehicle: Circles

It was like simply wanting to give up at last, the saying fifty times a day, not quite to yourself,

“I’m tired, so tired of this, of everything,” until you’d forgotten somehow what you were tired of,

and realized, unavailingly, hopelessly, that saying it meant something else, to you, to life,

something closer to the “Help me! Please!” you used to want to cry out, aloud, again, to no one,

for no reason, for simply being there, here, baffled by these quantities of need and groundless sorrow …

How could you have gone past that, only to arrive at this, this about which there is nothing whatsoever

you can feel except the certainty of knowing that you’re doing what you’re doing to yourself, but why?

And if you pass this, what will that have meant, what will it have cost to accomplish
this
undoing?

Vehicle: Absence

The way, her father dead a day ago, the child goes in his closet, finds herself inside his closet,

finds herself atop the sprawl of emptied shoes, finds herself enveloped in the heavy emptied odor,

and breathes it in, that single, mingled gust of hair and sweat and father-flesh and father,

breathes it in and tries to hold it, in her body, in her breath, keep it in her breath forever …

so we, in love, in absence, in an absence so much less than death but still shaped by need and loss,

so we too find only what we want in sense, the drive toward sense, the hunger for the actual flesh;

so we, too, breathe in, as though to breathe was now itself the end of all, as though to scent,

to hold the fading traces of an actual flesh, was all, the hungering senses driven toward all …

Vehicle: Violence

The way boxers postulate a feeling to label that with which they overcome the body’s vile fears,

its wish to flinch, to flee, break and run … they call it anger, pride, the primal passion to prevail;

the way, before they start, they glare at one another, try to turn themselves to snarling beasts …

so we first make up something in the soul we name and offer credence to — “meaning,” “purpose,” “end” —

and then we cast ourselves into the conflict, turn upon our souls, snarl like snarling beasts …

And the way the fighters fight, coolly until strength fails, then desperately, wildly, as in a dream,

and the way, done, they fall in one another’s arms, almost sobbing with relief, sobbing with relief:

so we contend, so we wish to finish, wish to cry and end, but we never cry, never end, as in a dream.

III

Le Petit Salvié

for Paul Zweig

1935–1984

1.

The summer has gone by both quickly and slowly. It’s been a kind of eternity, each day spinning out its endlessness, and yet with every look back, less time is left …

So quickly, and so slowly … In the tiny elevator of the flat you’d borrowed on the Rue de Pondicherry,

you suddenly put your head against my chest, I thought to show how tired you were, and lost consciousness,

sagging heavily against me, forehead oiled with sweat, eyes ghastly agape … so quickly, so slowly.

Quickly the ambulance arrives, mewling at the curb, the disinterested orderlies strap you to their stretcher.

Slowly at the clinic, waiting for the doctors, waiting for the ineffectual treatments to begin.

Slowly through that night, then quickly all the next day, your last day, though no one yet suspects it.

Quickly those remaining hours, quickly the inconsequential tasks and doings of any ordinary afternoon.

Quickly, slowly, those final silences and sittings I so regret now not having taken all of with you.

2.

“I don’t think we’ll make the dance tonight,” I mumble mawkishly. “It’s definitely worse,” you whisper.

Ice pack hugged to you, you’re breathing fast; when you stop answering questions, your eyes close.

You’re there, and then you slip away into your meditations, the way, it didn’t matter where,

in an airport, a café, you could go away into yourself to work, and so we’re strangely comforted.

It was dusk, late, the softening, sweetening, lingering light of the endless Paris evening.

Your room gave on a garden, a perfect breeze washed across your bed, it wasn’t hard to leave you,

we knew we’d see you again: we kissed you, Vikki kissed you, “Goodbye, my friends,” you said,

lifting your hand, smiling your old warming smile, then you went into your solitude again.

3.

We didn’t know how ill you were … we knew how ill but hid it … we didn’t know how ill you were …

Those first days when your fever rose … if we’d only made you go into the hospital in Brive …

Perhaps you could have had another year … but the way you’d let death touch your life so little,

the way you’d learned to hold your own mortality before you like an unfamiliar, complex flower …

Your stoicism had become so much a part of your identity, your virtue, the system of your self-regard;

if we’d insisted now, you might have given in to us, when we didn’t, weren’t we cooperating

with what wasn’t just your wish but your true passion never to be dying, sooner dead than dying?

You did it, too: composed a way from life directly into death, the ignoble scribblings between elided.

4.

It must be some body-thing, some species-thing, the way it comes to take me from so far,

this grief that tears me so at moments when I least suspect it’s there, wringing tears from me

I’m not prepared for, had no idea were even there in me, this most unmanly gush I almost welcome,

these cries so general yet with such power of their own I’m stunned to hear them come from me.

Walking through the street, I cry, talking later to a friend, I try not to but I cry again,

working at my desk I’m taken yet again, although, again, I don’t want to be, not now, not again,