Flow Chart: A Poem (23 page)

There were some who mocked us, and some that threw pebbles at our backs. But these

we scarcely noticed, buckled into our seats, laughing at the dream that took us back to the

foundations of real fear where the story must be lived if it is to matter at all to others.

That of course was no concern of ours; we thought
we
were the others, observing

our exemplary adventures through a wall

of water that splits from time to time, revealing the real nature of the operation, that it is not

a place of entertainment, rather a swamp, from which one emerges,

before lying on the grass for a long time, getting one’s bearings and indeed doing anything

to buy time and fool our jailers until the moment that becomes a nocturne and precipitates

the glabrous drop that will satiate us and send us home, muttering

of the winds and suchlike. Inside this privileged attitude a revolutionary spark asserted

its rights; a trail of powder blazed there where but a moment before cool arches

led from one to the other and the view of hillsides wavered as in a bath

of sodium silicate, and seemed permanent. But that was the governor’s trick to trip you up,

make you confess what he already knew, before returning

overwhelmed to your alcove. All these officials had a stake in the matter, and it was

moreover their tactic to give you rope enough to hang yourself; if you wanted to braid a ladder

with it, why that was all right too, provided somebody saw it and wrote about it. So for

sixteen years I dazzled the constituents with sayings of a country I had never seen; they knew I

raved but thought it must always be so when men dreamed, but my darker

purpose never surfaced. And on
the
day when I was set free on the sand

and told to run no one could remember my name; as soon as I realized I was beyond

the range of their small arms I could relax and saunter, or, as the mood progressed,

bury my face in my hands trying to remember what it was, what gable had afflicted me now, or

how I should be caring about the move across the ever-shrinking circles, as though

I was going to enter ’em, and not let the enemy hear of any further predicament

regarding me or those I formerly associated with as long as everyone kept silent as

their part of the bargain, and I too dreamed, loosely, because I didn’t want the

landscape and hares to remember they’d once seen me if asked. And the landmark decision I

helped instigate came tolling through the last several years of thatch and plaster and was as

my trademark; everybody knew me and I had only to walk through a hole

for it to become named as a piece of the life I was hoping to publish. No there were some

who were unhappy with this, and not content with tormenting me, actually made me see

there was no difference, no other way I could have gone on being

what once I had been. But the echoes of my calm egocentricity rolled over them too;

it was as if I had never held on to the blank stubs of my raffle tickets; in my composure

anything odd I said turned over and was revealed as the reverse of a truth that was something else,

and in such wise I was able to live for close to a year, in my

caboose, and no one suspected my ruse or fatal intelligence; they had other things to do,

and besides it was obvious I wasn’t such a bad sort, we should all have to cotton to each other

and in so doing satisfy the chain destiny had prepared for us, the note

about to fall due. And I laughed

at the leaves floating in the cistern, that they too were my reward, and someday

all of us would come together in joyful earnest, for what it could do, and then my plans

would be better laid, and the daughters of those that were around us

would thrive specially too, and in becoming lead me into the cloud of chaff that was

to be my recompense, besides anything I really cared to do,

which could always be arranged, and anyway the future would be better for it

if I could just take my feet off the pedals and keep them there awhile.

And behold it all became good, and everybody recognized it. And the historians have had their say,

only now is too much done about it, and there is defeat, and fears about not

remembering. And so it will not pass away.

Nothing is required of you, yet all must render an accounting.

I said I was out hunting in the forest. How can it be that a man

can sup his fill, and still all around him find emptiness and drowsiness,

if he must go to the grave this way, unattended? Yet certainly

there are some bright spots, and when you listen to the laughter

in the middle of these it makes for more than a cosmetic truth, an invitation

to chivalry ringed by the dump fires of our deliberate civilization that has

got some things going for it—that invented neighborliness, for instance?

Then the paltry painted guest goes away, leaving behind the screed

she omitted to read. What’s in it for us? Out of this school was sucked a philosophy

that didn’t impel to action. A back-burner sort of thing. But if people had but

kept track of it that would have been something, someone could have framed

a memorandum. But they quickly find out what the traffic will bear

and are soon asleep in the midst of it, and the next call to action is considered passé

and no one will believe you represent the right cause. A piece of webbing

is nailed to the ground; ring-grass

invades its orient extremity; even these criteria have to be put away

until later. The hangar gets unbearably hot and very smelly.

Meanwhile the new green cascades silently and as it were invisibly.

Something has been said. You’re right about that. But no two people

can agree on what it means, as though we were sounding boards

for each childish attempt at wireless communication the gods can invent,

and so return to our refectory. But I didn’t know but what if I

didn’t hang around a little longer the thrust

would be vouchsafed to
me
this time and of course as its public

repository I would use it to further the interests of all men and women,

not just some. And it left the same message. It was as though

it never got my previous message. Sure, I’m still not yet compromised

but there was so much in those fierce screens that ought to have lived

as an example to conceal more and then to have it break out of control and be put

down again if ever I could will myself to wish it, instead of lingering

like a daisy on muck. Take out my tricycle for a spin and return it

before anyone missed me. Yet, as I said, I didn’t know. The old men at the urinal

spat, not wanting word to get out. All my links with a certain past were severed.

I let fall the book I had been reading,
The Radiator Girls at Strapontin Lodge
,

as so much gift to the giver of idiosyncrasies which when adopted

sift down like bran on rutted earth to accumulate

in whorls, and I thought how I could give no account

of these latest days. It was as though I had gone through a bout of amnesia.

Now I was ready to put the gloves on again, but wasn’t it too late?

Wasn’t the amnesty or amnesia of my own decreeing and applicable not even

to one, to me, and in that case weren’t we all excused

from class? And yet the board of governors certified me; I became a vicious citizen,

not even to blame for what ills dunces harbored

in God knows what unimaginable slums, for as long as I chose to occupy my seat

cooperating with the forces of eternal law and order yet unwilling

to compromise friends, neighbors, orderlies, the giraffe at the zoo,

who even now moves toward me on unbending legs,

though his designs are far from clear. From whatever is happy and not

unholy, lead: the plan of the porch is quite an obvious one, and you know

what sliding doors mean and wherefore gutters conduct rain

to the abject earth, and turn around and absorb the shock of hearing the truth

told, once more, on an unforgettable day in early June,

which shall be all we need ever know of hearing quarrels inside out and then

reversing them so the abstract argument is pure and just again, a joy to many.

How much luckier I am, though, than they, who can see where I’m stumbling to during the day

and can rein in at night, between hedges. It’s like

dangling far above the city streets, a kind of peace if you don’t spoil it

by losing patience. Sure enough, other fun began while I was gone, a kind of imaginative

recycling of the days I’d crumpled and tossed out, and then their

dated shenanigans came to

seem crisp and well-presented, focussed, cropped; none of the “careful draftsman” in me could

cavil at that. Besides it was nice just being outdoors with something to say. An excuse

like a birthmark arose and flowered, still swimming upward past

the layers of the different civilizations, to Sun Lake. I could trundle my shopping cart past

the wicket and still be there, off the hook. I don’t mind being mesmerized even for

fairly long periods but this was like playing tic-tac-toe with an automated

stone saint; the mock-orange note in it was strong and I’d come, I

remembered, chiefly to see my own reflection. Now, where was I? Where’d I put that

ticket of readmission to the bathers, who by this time were streaming out

in twos and threes. “Show us how to open a book like that.” We gave them coffee

when it didn’t go fast enough. Things seemed to pick up after that, though I felt a twinge:

was it going to do it for me, this time, and them? Might we be forced to split up,

and if so, which half of the ladder is left standing? You don’t want to hear it. And still

the cloister extends, deeper and deeper into the dream of everyday life that was our

beginning, and where we still live, out in the open, under clouds stacked up in a holding pattern

like pictures in a nineteenth-century museum: forgive us

our stitch of frivolity in the fabric of eternity if only so that others

can see how shabby the truth isn’t and make their depositions accordingly, regulating

the paths over which we have no control now, speaking out of concentrated

politeness into an ear which wishes to hear, but once we have finished

what we had to say (and we have nothing to say) the moment and any afterthoughts are scooped up

as though by a steam shovel and deposited
over there
, not out of sight.

And the contentious are sometimes with us as a smooth pavane on glassy but profoundly

turbulent waters. How to keep it going

when all is trembling violently anyway, the air and all things in it? Shouldn’t we

abandon them? But no these are

pointlessly fussy caveats sunk, so as to test one, in the great gray

fabric of the unwinding highway: don’t let its apparent dignity fool you, and besides

they’re free, and can and do say whatever they want to you; that doesn’t

mean you have to respond in kind, but it helps. Someone is working on it,

providing heat in summer and air conditioning in winter, and get-well

notes arrive in every post; the top

of the volcano has been successfully glued back on, and who is to say we aren’t

invited? The invitation, after all, arrived too, that was your name

beautifully chiselled into it. And ideas like fire

struck too quickly from flint seem to matter: your house or my house,

this time?

I really think it’s my turn,

but the variations don’t let you proceed along one footpath normally; there are

too many ways to go. I guess that’s what I meant. Why I was worried,

all along, I mean, though I knew it was superfluous and that you’d love me for it

or for anything else as long as I could sort out the strands that brought us together

and dye them for identification purposes further on, but you

didn’t have to remain that generalized. A few anomalies

are a help sometimes, confetti that gets lost in the cracks

of some conversation and then you have to take it back again to the beginning

and start all over again, but that’s normal, it’s no cause for alarm, there are

more people out there than before. If you can think constructively, cogently,

on a spring morning like this and really want to know the result in advance, and can

accept the inroads colorful difficulties can sometimes make as well as all the

fortunate happening, the unexpected pleasures and all that, then there’s no reason not to

rejoice in the exterior outcome, sudden

mountain-face, the abrupt slide

into somewhere or other. It will all twist us

closer together, under heaven, and I guess that’s what you came about. See these

polished stones? I want them and I want you to have them. It’s time, now.

So that’s it, really. How all that fluff got wedged in with the diamonds in the star chamber

makes for compelling reading, as does the heading “Eyesores,” though what comes under it,

e.g., “Nancy’s pendant,” is a decidedly mixed bag. The proper walk must be aborted

and tangled hope restored to its rightful place in the hierarchy of dutiful devotions

for it to matter at all to “the likes of” us, and get booted to the rear

of the compartment. We were talking about cats. I said you should have one

not so much for companionship as for the extreme urgency of not letting it out of the bag,

if you should be so lucky as to possess one of those too. You always thank me