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Poets are poetry, writers are prose—

 

Prose can hold anything including poetry,

but in poetry there's only room for poetry—

 

In keeping with the poster that announces it

with a fin-de-siècle flourish of its giant P

framed in a winged lyre's strings

I shouldn't simply walk in, I should fly—

 

And wouldn't I be better off barefoot

to escape the clump and squeak

of cut-rate sneakers,

a clumsy ersatz angel—

 

If at least the dress were longer and more flowing

and the poems appeared not from a handbag but by sleight of hand,

dressed in their Sunday best from head to toe,

with bells on, ding to dong,

ab ab ba—

 

On the platform lurks a little table

suggesting séances, with gilded legs,

and on the little table smokes a little candlestick—

 

Which means

I've got to read by candlelight

what I wrote by the light of an ordinary bulb

to the typewriter's tap tap tap—

 

Without worrying in advance

if it was poetry

and if so, what kind—

 

The kind in which prose is inappropriate

or the kind which is apropos in prose—

 

And what's the difference,

seen now only in half-light

against a crimson curtain's

purple fringe?

 

 

A new star has been discovered,

which doesn't mean that things have gotten brighter

or that something we've been missing has appeared.

 

The star is large and distant,

so distant that it's small,

even smaller than others

much smaller than it.

Small wonder, then, if we were struck with wonder;

as we would be if only we had the time.

 

The star's age, mass, location—

all this perhaps will do

for one doctoral dissertation

and a wine-and-cheese reception

in circles close to the sky:

the astronomer, his wife, friends, and relations,

casual, congenial, come as you are,

mostly chat on earthbound topics,

surrounded by cozy earthtones.

 

The star's superb,

but that's no reason

why we can't drink to the ladies

who are incalculably closer.

 

The star's inconsequential.

It has no impact on the weather, fashion, final score,

government shakeups, moral crises, take-home pay.

 

No effect on propaganda or on heavy industry.

It's not reflected in a conference table's shine.

It's supernumerary in the light of life's numbered days.

 

What's the use of asking

under how many stars man is born

and under how many in a moment he will die.

 

A new one.

“At least show me where it is.”

“Between that gray cloud's jagged edge

and the acacia twig over there on the left.”

“I see,” I say.

 

 

Well, my poor man,

seems we've made some progress in my field.

Millennia have passed

since you first called me archeology.

 

I no longer require

your stone gods,

your ruins with legible inscriptions.

 

Show me your whatever

and I'll tell you who you were.

Something's bottom,

something's top.

A scrap of engine. A picture tube's neck.

An inch of cable. Fingers turned to dust.

Or even less than that, or even less.

 

Using a method

that you couldn't have known then,

I can stir up memory

in countless elements.

Traces of blood are forever.

Lies shine.

Secret codes resound.

Doubts and intentions come to light.

 

If I want to

(and you can't be too sure

that I will),

I'll peer down the throat of your silence,

I'll read your views

from the sockets of your eyes,

I'll remind you in infinite detail

of what you expected from life besides death.

 

Show me your nothing

that you've left behind

and I'll build from it a forest and a highway,

an airport, baseness, tenderness,

a missing home.

 

Show me your little poem

and I'll tell you why it wasn't written

any earlier or later than it was.

 

Oh no, you've got me wrong.

Keep your funny piece of paper

with its scribbles.

All I need for my ends

is your layer of dirt

and the long-gone

smell of burning.

 

 

We call it a grain of sand,

but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.

It does just fine without a name,

whether general, particular,

permanent, passing,

incorrect, or apt.

 

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.

It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.

And that it fell on the windowsill

is only our experience, not its.

For it, it is no different from falling on anything else

with no assurance that it has finished falling

or that it is falling still.

 

The window has a wonderful view of a lake,

but the view doesn't view itself.

It exists in this world

colorless, shapeless,

soundless, odorless, and painless.

 

The lake's floor exists floorlessly,

and its shore exists shorelessly.

Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry

and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.

They splash deaf to their own noise

on pebbles neither large nor small.

 

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless

in which the sun sets without setting at all

and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.

The wind ruffles it, its only reason being

that it blows.

 

A second passes.

A second second.

A third.

But they're three seconds only for us.

 

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that's just our simile.

The character is invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

 

 

You take off, we take off, they take off

coats, jackets, blouses, double-breasted suits,

made of wool, cotton, cotton-polyester,

skirts, shirts, underwear, slacks, slips, socks,

putting, hanging, tossing them across

the backs of chairs, the wings of metal screens;

for now, the doctor says, it's not too bad,

you may get dressed, get rested up, get out of town,

take one in case, at bedtime, after lunch,

show up in a couple of months, next spring, next year;

you see, and you thought, and we were afraid that,

and he imagined, and you all believed;

it's time to tie, to fasten with shaking hands

shoelaces, buckles, velcro, zippers, snaps,

belts, buttons, cuff links, collars, neckties, clasps

and to pull out of handbags, pockets, sleeves

a crumpled, dotted, flowered, checkered scarf

whose usefulness has suddenly been prolonged.

 

 

It can't take a joke,

find a star, make a bridge.

It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,

building ships, or baking cakes.

 

In our planning for tomorrow,

it has the final word,

which is always beside the point.

 

It can't even get the things done

that are part of its trade:

dig a grave,

make a coffin,

clean up after itself.

 

Preoccupied with killing,

it does the job awkwardly,

without system or skill.

As though each of us were its first kill.

 

Oh, it has its triumphs,

but look at its countless defeats,

missed blows,

and repeat attempts!

 

Sometimes it isn't strong enough

to swat a fly from the air.

Many are the caterpillars

that have outcrawled it.

 

All those bulbs, pods,

tentacles, fins, tracheae,

nuptial plumage, and winter fur

show that it has fallen behind

with its halfhearted work.

 

Ill will won't help

and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'état

is so far not enough.

 

Hearts beat inside eggs.

Babies' skeletons grow.

Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves

and sometimes even tall trees far away.