Flow Chart: A Poem (24 page)

for my suggestions even when I can see they haven’t gone over too well, and this

was one of those times. We chatted some more about cats and other pets

and then parted on an amiable note, what I would call one. And all during the succeeding

weeks there was no word, nothing on the radio, what we call the wireless. You’d think a line

like “
HUNT MISSING GIRL
” might have turned up in the papers, but the actual situation

was otherwise. A standoff. A phantom so strange in its implications it defies

…classification. Otherwise, how his beans were cooked

made absolutely no difference to him. In fact he seemed to lose interest in his surroundings

daily. I remember including that in one of my reports. If he asked for a nail file

it would be to stab playfully at the pillow, or occasionally to clean his nails,

never to file them. Once I even saw him reading a detective novel upside down.

I was too upset to include
that
in my report, as you may imagine. And secretly he

wheedles favors out of us; the older nurses are more susceptible. If he wants to

wind up sidelined, in the dugout, that is OK with me, but I don’t see why
I
should be expected

to sign the warrant for his release. I have other, more important, things to do, besides.

Getting that bit of lacquer repaired is just one of them, but you get my drift,

I fear, then too I’ve traditionally been the indulgent, mild-mannered one,

who thought nothing of taking an afternoon off to play golf if the weather was right

as it is so seldom in this inclement land. When I asked about the new monitors

someone brought in I wasn’t expecting a sermon on the necessity of staking out one’s

territory the very same day, but there it came, with a hurricane in its pocket for good measure.

And when no one was betting on horses, there were the nags to feed,

the grooms’ quarters to be kept in proper order, liveries to be pressed—it all came

gushing down on me like a bushel of affectionate children. It is lucky I am

old enough to keep my head, faced with the demands on my time. Even a computer

would get riled sometimes. Now I am more interested in “easy living,”

though more than ever feeling a need to keep up appearances, impress the neighbors

with the latest electronic
trouvaille
. Yet I never let down my defenses

for a moment. I am what some people would call “hard,” though

I’m really a pussycat underneath the austere façade. Speaking of cats, when was the last

time you spoke to one, calling it by its name? Out here on the prairie things are much too quiet

though we all know each other and share memories and stratagems

for coping with loneliness and disloyalty from time to time. In some ways

it’s a life, or something you’d have no difficulty recognizing as such, but I wonder,

how are they going to fit me in at the end? Will my birdcage be draped

with some expensive Liberty fabric to suggest eternal peace, just as I was getting used

to the lively round of tea-parties and exhibits

some are over-attached to, but when you think

about it, what’s wrong with a little pudding? Sprinkled with coconut, perhaps?

And then in the evening you get down to business, but you can’t think clearer then.

Here there is no mist to admonish one, no pretzel sticks either,

and one knows very well what one wants to be

and can imagine a fancier existence anywhere. This has to get broken off here

for the reason things do get broken off: it’s amusing. Love,

The Human Pool Table.

Sometimes to stimulate interest in other titles we

try to encourage a different angle such as the Near East with its walled, secret gardens,

jacaranda petals that fall all day into the basin. And the hours,

peeled off one after the other like onion skin, yet there is always more:

some curve up ahead. In fact

we never see all there is to see

which is good for business too: keeps the public returning

these days of swiftly eroding brand loyalty, so you can say: I beat him up,

my competitor, and now I’m ready to do business with him again: such

is the interesting climate we live in, all

shocks one minute, all smiles and surprises the next. I think I’ll have the chicken salad oriental. I’ll

wager you haven’t one client in seven who can identify this, though the whole world knows of it,

this quite tiny key to success I hold in my hand. When the codger

returns I’ll brusquely bring the question up again and you’ll see. It’s cooler

over here; the light forms a film at the windows

I first took for a curtain, a rash that won’t wear off. Wait, now

he’s ready to talk business. I have, sir, a handle on the truth

that could be of keen interest to you, a matter of considerable importance.

You can feel it when the lake is up and swans go flapping off

on various absurd errands, or when the phone rings and you hear his voice

before picking up the receiver, saying, It’s me, I’m glad I waited

till you were in a different frame of mind, for truly this makes all the difference; no one

calls the woman who walks silently away, but later in the night

there are twists of tears and it seems as if someone shares your nervousness

about the awkward pauses that might ensue and has arrived at a plan of drastic action:

whisking the tablecloth off the laden table without disturbing a spoon is only part of it.

Giving up habits like compulsive hand-washing is another. Because you have no idea how

imperious their demands are; nothing can get closer to you as long as they are in the car-port

even though they too have nothing to say

and cannot justify their existence.

Other pleasures are folding the pillow and gazing mournfully into the face of the electric clock

when everything springs apart quite naturally and scrawled forms of people

are seen pacing the square in different directions; sometimes

one will hold on to another’s head and then let go: it’s my Sonata

of Experience, and I wrote it for you. Here’s how it goes: the first theme is announced,

then fooled around with for a while and goes and sits over there. Soon the second

arrives, less appealing than the first or so it seems but after you get to know it you find

it deeper and somehow more human, like the plain face of an old lady who has seen much

but who has never been known to utter an opinion on anything that happens to her: quite

extraordinary, in fact. Then comes a hiatus in the manuscript:

the last bits of it keep seeming to move farther and farther away, like houses

on a beach one is leaving in a speeding motorboat: wait, though!

isn’t that them we’re approaching now? Of course—we had been going around in a circle

all the time, and now we have arrived at the place of resolution. The stakes are high

now, but you couldn’t tell it from the glum air of things: bored crows, seedlings.

And then, what passion

brought you to your knees? Suddenly your whole face is bathed in tears, though no one

saw you cry. This kind of makes me review my whole plan of action up to now; fishing around

for a handkerchief to hand someone does that to a person, I think, don’t you?

And it will mean staying up later which in turn will screw up

tomorrow’s well-laid plans, and then suddenly everything ends in a climax, or a cataract.

I think this
is
the way it was supposed to be, though I can’t be sure now, so much has happened;

it will look better on a cassette, which is where I wanted it anyway, so I guess

we can go home now, each to his own bed, for each of us has one: that’s what “calling it a night” means.

But I never meant to disturb anything, or harm a hair on your head: that would have been false

to our beginnings, and nothing could stand up to that, nothing good I mean.

As it builds, the power changes too, but in the

same direction it was carelessly aimed in long ago, before any of us got involved

with what we now consider our living, when it was free. And the strain grows, steadily,

though there are many scenes played for comic relief and the classic agendas are still

re-enacted when people get together. Not quite late-twentieth-century panic, but sobering in its

simple difference which can scarcely be demonstrated. All the people we knew and the songs

we sang are on our side, sinking imperceptibly

along with us into Old Home Week. Except it’s not. And we cannot see the bottom

of these issues; they have outgrown us; which made the eye in the church shine even brighter

when it finally opened. Meanwhile, over the scruffy skies of New York, a doubt hangs

like a jewel, a melancholy melon-color that could be the correct shade of mourning

in heaven, pitting all that we said against us. Why, it’s right there in the
procès verbal,

only I don’t feel too good. I just want to be absorbed in countries you were never

allowed to develop a taste for, yet I have no reason to go anywhere,

to be at your side, every place seems as mortally insipid

as every other place, and I’ve got used to living, like a toothache; I can stand

what’s coming, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to like it. Some mornings are quite pleasant:

a Florentine wonderment drips from the sky as putti with picnic baskets descend

to the enameled sward, and I don’t have to ask you how near you think that lighthouse is,

or the blond warehouse: you find me in them. Is it asking too much

to want to be loved, just a little, and then to be satisfied with that? Of course not,

but the police are everywhere. You can’t even order a drink without feeling one of them breathing

down your neck. And you apologize profusely, like the ridiculous twit you are.

Where is it written that men must go out in the afternoon without a hat?

In the real world things were going along about as well as could be expected, that is,

not quite satisfactorily. We were deceived in our reckoning,

but could still salvage some things like a decent emolument and self-respect. But in many ways

things were different now. Even the coastline had changed,

and the protective vacuum-packing around long-established major confrontations was no longer

mandatory. One sat at a kind of grillwork that used to be the kitchen table,

while outside hives exploded and buzzing insects darkened the air and we thought we knew

the year we graduated from high school, yet everything was suspended in an agitated trance.

Only, I knew where I wanted to go: to some mountains in the south covered with pine forests

and creeper. There, the silence causes you to will what you wanted to know without

exactly knowing if it was OK.

Here, curvaceous rocks brandish us; the squeals of “Put me
down
!”

are mere grace-notes in this battle of stupid titans. Strangely, a few amenities do survive,

enough to seem to give the lie to so much stinking chaos which, since it hasn’t overturned

everything, is therefore perhaps not what its pennant in the sky proclaims it to be:

walks by creeks, for instance. Yet by enabling all creatures to become something different,

not necessarily their opposite, the proposed bifurcating leads in time to impossible

extremities one could never apostrophize anticipating a benign outcome due to the dreamlike

imaginings at the center that produced them. Waves, like weather currents on the map,

drift and coagulate above us, like “the swan-winged horses of the skies,

with summer’s music in their manes,” absolving the map of all responsibility to present itself,

to be read as a guide, and offering in its stead only the inane fumes of incense

spiritual masturbation set alight, long ago, and this is the bread, the palaces of the present,

a time that cannot tend itself. Each year the summer dwindles noticeably, but the Reagan

administration insists we cannot go to heaven without drinking caustic soda on the floor

of Death Valley as long as others pay their rent and have somewhere to go without thinking,

behind the curtain of closing down all operations. It’s all right, I

like doing the housework naked and can see nothing wrong with it,

nor do I feel ashamed of it. I’ll be all right when the government goes away; its

police state may not recognize me, or, if it does, may just shrug. What can I want,

anyway? Besides cashing in my federal insurance policy, that is. But as usual life is a dream

of blackbirds slowly flying, of people who come to your door needing help or merely

wanting to attack you so they can go away and say contact was made and it’s

your day in the barrel.

Those of us who did manage to keep control over our personal affairs

before it was all over are obviously not going to testify anyway. What would we have said?

That we confronted the monster eyeball to eyeball and blinked first but only

after a decent interval had elapsed and were then excused from completing the examination

before defenestration became an issue? I thought I knew all about you and everything

everybody could do to me but this hiatus is sui generis and I know not how to read it

like braille and must forever remain behind in my solicitations, derelict in my duties,

until a child explains it all to me. And then I’ll weep

at mountainscapes, if it isn’t too late. But say,

where are you going, and why do you walk that way? Oh, I’ll be all right, provided