Map (14 page)

and works to seize this swaying world

by stretching out the arms he has conceived—

 

beautiful beyond belief at this passing

at this very passing moment that's just passed.

 

 

The Great Mother has no face.

Why would the Great Mother need a face.

The face cannot stay faithful to the body,

the face disturbs the body, it is undivine,

it disturbs the body's solemn unity.

The Great Mother's visage is her bulging belly

with its blind navel in the middle.

 

The Great Mother has no feet.

What would the Great Mother do with feet.

Where is she going to go.

Why would she go into the world's details.

She has gone just as far as she wants

and keeps watch in the workshops under her taut skin.

 

So there's a world out there? Well and good.

It's bountiful? Even better.

The children have somewhere to go, to run around,

something to look up to? Wonderful.

So much that it's still there while they're sleeping,

almost ridiculously whole and real?

It keeps on existing when their backs are turned?

That's just too much—it shouldn't have.

 

The Great Mother barely has a pair of arms,

two tiny limbs lie lazing on her breasts.

Why would they want to bless life,

give gifts to what has enough and more!

Their only obligation is to endure as long as earth and sky

just in case

of some mishap that never comes.

To form a zigzag over essence.

The ornament's last laugh.

 

 

There's nothing on the walls

except for dampness.

It's cold and dark in here.

 

But cold and dark

after a burnt-out fire.

Nothing, but nothing remaining

from a bison drawn in ocher.

 

Nothing—but a nothing left

after the long resistance

of the beast's lowered brow.

So, a Beautiful Nothing.

Deserving a capital letter.

A heresy against humdrum nothingness,

unconverted and proud of the difference.

 

Nothing—but after us,

who were here before

and ate our hearts

and drank our blood.

 

Nothing, to wit:

our unfinished dance.

Your first thighs, arms, necks, faces

by the fire.

My first sacred bellies

filled with minuscule Pascals.

 

Silence, but after voices.

Not a sluggish sort of silence.

A silence that had its own throats once,

its flutes and tambourines.

Grafted here like a wilding

by laughter and howls.

 

 

You're crying here, but there they're dancing,

there they're dancing in your tear.

There they're happy, making merry,

they don't know a blessed thing.

Almost the glimmering of mirrors.

Almost candles flickering.

Nearly staircases and hallways.

Gestures, lace cuffs, so it seems.

Hydrogen, oxygen, those rascals.

Chlorine, sodium, a pair of rogues.

The fop nitrogen parading

up and down, around, about

beneath the vault, inside the dome.

Your crying's music to their ears.

Yes,
eine kleine Nachtmusik.

Who are you, lovely masquerader.

 

 

So he's got to have happiness,

he's got to have truth, too,

he's got to have eternity—

did you ever!

 

He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking;

only just realized that he is he;

only just whittled with his hand né fin

a flint, a rocket ship;

easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon,

not even funny enough to tickle the void;

sees only with his eyes;

hears only with his ears;

his speech's personal best is the conditional;

he uses his reason to pick holes in reason.

In short, he's next to no one,

but his head's full of freedom, omniscience, and the Being

beyond his foolish meat—

did you ever!

 

For he does apparently exist.

He genuinely came to be

beneath one of the more parochial stars.

He's lively and quite active in his fashion.

His capacity for wonder is well advanced

for a crystal's deviant descendant.

And considering his difficult childhood

spent kowtowing to the herd's needs,

he's already quite an individual indeed—

did you ever!

 

Carry on, then, if only for the moment

that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!

One wonders what will become of him,

since he does in fact seem to be.

And as far as being goes, he really tries quite hard.

Quite hard indeed—one must admit.

With that ring in his nose, with that toga, that sweater.

He's no end of fun, for all you say.

Poor little beggar.

A human, if ever we saw one.

 

 

 

 

COULD HAVE

 

1972

 

 

It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened earlier. Later.

Nearer. Farther off.

It happened, but not to you.

 

You were saved because you were the first.

You were saved because you were the last.

Alone. With others.

On the right. The left.

Because it was raining. Because of the shade.

Because the day was sunny.

 

You were in luck—there was a forest.

You were in luck—there were no trees.

You were in luck—a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,

a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.

You were in luck—just then a straw went floating by.

 

As a result, because, although, despite.

What would have happened if a hand, a foot,

within an inch, a hairsbreadth from

an unfortunate coincidence.

 

So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve?

One hole in the net and you slipped through?

I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.

Listen,

how your heart pounds inside me.

 

 

Magic is dying out, although the heights

still pulse with its vast force. On August nights

you can't be sure what's falling from the sky:

a star? or something else that still belongs on high?

Is making wishes an old-fashioned blunder

if heaven only knows what we are under?

Above our modern heads the dark's still dark,

but can't some twinkle in it explain: “I'm a spark,

I swear, a flash that a comet shook loose

from its tail, just a bit of cosmic rubble;

it's not me falling in tomorrow's news,

that's some other spark nearby, having engine trouble.”

 

 

At midnight, in an empty, hushed art gallery

a tactless telephone spews forth a stream of rings;

a human sleeping now would jump up instantly,

but only sleepless prophets and untiring kings

reside here, where the moonlight makes them pale;

they hold their breath, their eyes fixed on some nail

or crack; only the young pawnbroker's bride

seems taken by that odd, ringing contraption,

but even she won't lay her fan aside,

she too just hangs there, caught in mid-nonaction.

Above it all, in scarlet robes or nude,

they view nocturnal fuss as simply rude.

Here's more black humor worthy of the name

than if some grand duke leaned out from his frame

and vented his frustration with a vulgar curse.

And if some silly man calling from town

refuses to give up, put the receiver down,

though he's got the wrong number? He lives, so he errs.

 

 

For me the tragedy's most important act is the sixth:

the raising of the dead from the stage's battlegrounds,

the straightening of wigs and fancy gowns,

removing knives from stricken breasts,

taking nooses from lifeless necks,

lining up among the living

to face the audience.

 

The bows, both solo and ensemble—

the pale hand on the wounded heart,

the curtsies of the hapless suicide,

the bobbing of the chopped-off head.

 

The bows in pairs—

rage extends its arm to meekness,

the victim's eyes smile at the torturer,

the rebel indulgently walks beside the tyrant.

 

Eternity trampled by the golden slipper's toe.

Redeeming values swept aside with the swish of a wide-brimmed hat.

The unrepentant urge to start all over tomorrow.

 

Now enter, single file, the hosts who died early on,

in Acts 3 and 4, or between scenes.