Map (28 page)

 

There's one thing I won't agree to:

my own return.

The privilege of presence—

I give it up.

 

I survived you by enough,

and only by enough,

to contemplate from afar.

 

 

Happenstance reveals its tricks.

It produces, by sleight of hand, a glass of brandy

and sits Henry down beside it.

I enter the bistro and stop dead in my tracks.

Henry—he's none other than

Agnes's husband's brother,

and Agnes is related

to Aunt Sophie's brother-in-law.

It turns out

we've got the same great-grandfather.

 

In happenstance's hands

space furls and unfurls,

spreads and shrinks.

The tablecloth

becomes a handkerchief.

Just guess who I ran into

in Canada, of all places,

after all these years.

I thought he was dead,

and there he was, in a Mercedes.

On the plane to Athens.

At a stadium in Tokyo.

 

Happenstance twirls a kaleidoscope in its hands.

A billion bits of colored glass glitter.

And suddenly Jack's glass

bumps into Jill's.

Just imagine, in this very same hotel.

I turn around and see—

it's really she!

Face to face in an elevator.

In a toy store.

At the corner of Maple and Pine.

 

Happenstance is shrouded in a cloak.

Things get lost in it and then are found again.

I stumbled on it accidentally.

I bent down and picked it up.

One look and I knew it,

a spoon from that stolen service.

If it hadn't been for that bracelet,

I would never have known Alexandra.

The clock? It turned up in Potterville.

 

Happenstance looks deep into our eyes.

Our head grows heavy.

Our eyelids drop.

We want to laugh and cry,

it's so incredible.

From fourth-grade homeroom to that ocean liner.

It has to mean something.

To hell and back,

and here we meet halfway home.

We want to shout:

Small world!

You could almost hug it!

And for a moment we are filled with joy,

radiant and deceptive.

 

 

They're both convinced

that a sudden passion joined them.

Such certainty is beautiful,

but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

 

Since they'd never met before, they're sure

that there'd been nothing between them.

But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—

perhaps they've passed by each other a million times?

 

I want to ask them

if they don't remember—

a moment face to face

in some revolving door?

perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?

a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—

but I know the answer.

No, they don't remember.

 

They'd be amazed to hear

that Chance has been toying with them

now for years.

 

Not quite ready yet

to become their Destiny,

it pushed them close, drove them apart,

it barred their path,

stifling a laugh,

and then leaped aside.

 

There were signs and signals,

even if they couldn't read them yet.

Perhaps three years ago

or just last Tuesday

a certain leaf fluttered

from one shoulder to another?

Something was dropped and then picked up.

Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished

into childhood's thicket?

 

There were doorknobs and doorbells

where one touch had covered another

beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.

One night, perhaps, the same dream,

grown hazy by morning.

 

Every beginning

is only a sequel, after all,

and the book of events

is always open halfway through.

 

 

One of those many dates

that no longer ring a bell.

 

Where I was going that day,

what I was doing—I don't know.

 

Whom I met, what we talked about,

I can't recall.

 

If a crime had been committed nearby,

I wouldn't have had an alibi.

 

The sun flared and died

beyond my horizons.

The earth rotated

unnoted in my notebooks.

 

I'd rather think

that I'd temporarily died

than that I kept on living

and can't remember a thing.

 

I wasn't a ghost, after all.

I breathed, I ate,

I walked.

My steps were audible,

my fingers surely left

their prints on doorknobs.

 

Mirrors caught my reflection.

I wore something or other in such-and-such a color.

Somebody must have seen me.

 

Maybe I found something that day

that had been lost.

Maybe I lost something that turned up later.

 

I was filled with feelings and sensations.

Now all that's like

a line of dots in parentheses.

 

Where was I hiding out,

where did I bury myself?

Not a bad trick

to vanish before my own eyes.

 

I shake my memory.

Maybe something in its branches

that has been asleep for years

will start up with a flutter.

 

No.

Clearly I'm asking too much.

Nothing less than one whole second.

 

 

Maybe all this

is happening in some lab?

Under one lamp by day

and billions by night?

 

Maybe we're experimental generations?

Poured from one vial to the next,

shaken in test tubes,

not scrutinized by eyes alone,

each of us separately

plucked up by tweezers in the end?

 

Or maybe it's more like this:

No interference?

The changes occur on their own

according to plan?

The graph's needle slowly etches

its predictable zigzags?

 

Maybe thus far we aren't of much interest?

The control monitors aren't usually plugged in?

Only for wars, preferably large ones,

for the odd ascent above our clump of Earth,

for major migrations from point A to B?

 

Maybe just the opposite:

They've got a taste for trivia up there?

Look! on the big screen a little girl

is sewing a button on her sleeve.

The radar shrieks,

the staff comes at a run.

What a darling little being

with its tiny heart beating inside it!

How sweet, its solemn

threading of the needle!

Someone cries enraptured:

Get the Boss,

tell him he's got to see this for himself!

 

 

If there are angels,

I doubt they read

our novels

concerning thwarted hopes.

 

I'm afraid, alas,

they never touch the poems

that bear our grudges against the world.

 

The rantings and railings

of our plays

must drive them, I suspect,

to distraction.

 

Off duty, between angelic—

i.e., inhuman—occupations,

they watch instead

our slapstick

from the age of silent film.

 

To our dirge wailers,

garment renders,

and teeth gnashers,

they prefer, I suppose,

that poor devil

who grabs the drowning man by his toupee

or, starving, devours his own shoelaces

with gusto.

 

From the waist up, starch and aspirations;

below, a startled mouse

runs down his trousers.

I'm sure

that's what they call real entertainment.

 

A crazy chase in circles

ends up pursuing the pursuer.

The light at the end of the tunnel

turns out to be a tiger's eye.

A hundred disasters

mean a hundred comic somersaults

turned over a hundred abysses.

 

If there are angels,

they must, I hope,

find this convincing,