Map (37 page)

The stores are bursting with those shirts.

The watch is just a regular old watch.

And our names on that ring,

they're only the most ordinary names.

It's good you came. Sit here beside me.

He really was supposed to get back Thursday.

But we've got so many Thursdays left this year.

I'll put the kettle on for tea.

I'll wash my hair, then what,

try to wake up from all this.

It's good you came, since it was cold there,

and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,

him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.

I'll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,

since our names are completely ordinary—

 

 

Bookstores don't provide

a remote control for Proust,

you can't switch

to a soccer match,

or a quiz show, win a Cadillac.

 

We live longer

but less precisely

and in shorter sentences.

 

We travel faster, farther, more often,

but bring back slides instead of memories.

Here I am with some guy.

There I guess that's my ex.

Here everyone's naked

so this must be a beach.

 

Seven volumes—mercy.

Couldn't it be cut or summarized,

or better yet put into pictures.

There was that series called “
The Doll
”

but my sister-in-law says that's some other P.
^*

And by the way, who was he anyway.

They say he wrote in bed for years on end.

Page after page

at a snail's pace.

But we're still going in fifth gear

and, knock on wood, never better.

 

 

Everything seems to agree.

The head's shape, the features, the silhouette, the height.

But there's no resemblance.

Maybe not in that position?

A different color scheme?

Maybe more in profile,

as if looking at something?

What about something in his hands?

His own book? Someone else's?

A map? Binoculars? A fishing reel?

And should he be wearing something different?

A soldier's uniform in '39? Camp stripes?

A windbreaker from that closet?

Or—as if passing to the other shore—

up to his ankles, his knees, his waist, his neck,

deluged? Naked?

And maybe a backdrop should be added?

For example, a meadow still uncut?

Rushes? Birches? A lovely cloudy sky?

Maybe someone should be next to him?

Arguing with him? Joking?

Drinking? Playing cards?

A relative? A chum?

Several women? One?

Maybe standing in a window?

Going out the door?

With a stray dog at his feet?

In a friendly crowd?

No, no, all wrong.

He should be alone,

that suits some best.

And not so familiar, so close up?

Farther? Even farther?

In the furthermost depths of the image?

His voice couldn't carry

even if he called?

And what in the foreground?

Oh, anything.

As long as it's a bird

just flying by.

 

 

Despite the geologists' knowledge and craft,

mocking magnets, graphs and maps—

in a split second the dream

piles before us mountains as stony

as real life.

 

And if mountains, then valleys, plains

with perfect infrastructures.

Without engineers, contractors, workers,

bulldozers, diggers, or supplies—

raging highways, instant bridges,

thickly populated pop-up cities.

 

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen—

crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us

and when to vanish.

 

Without architects deft in their craft,

without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers—

on the path a sudden house just like a toy,

and in it vast halls that echo with our steps

and walls constructed out of solid air.

 

Not only the scale, it's also the precision—

a specific watch, an entire fly,

on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers,

a bitten apple with teeth marks.

 

And we—unlike circus acrobats,

conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists—

can fly unfledged,

we light dark tunnels with our eyes,

we wax eloquent in unknown tongues,

talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.

 

And as a bonus, despite our own freedom,

the choices of our heart, our tastes,

we're swept away

by amorous yearnings for—

and the alarm clock rings.

 

So what can they tell us, the writers of dreambooks,

the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,

the doctors with couches for analyses—

if anything fits,

it's accidental,

and for one reason only,

that in our dreamings,

in their shadowings and gleamings,

in their multiplings, inconceivablings,

in their haphazardings and widescatterings

at times even a clear-cut meaning

may slip through.

 

 

My imagination sentenced me to this journey.

Boxes and packages get drenched on the mail coach roof.

Inside crush, hubbub, stuffiness.

There's a stout sweaty hausfrau,

a hunter swathed in pipe smoke with a dead hare,

l'abbé snores, a demijohn of wine clasped in his arms,

a nursemaid holds an infant red from bawling,

a tipsy merchant with relentless hiccups,

a lady irritated for all the reasons above,

furthermore a boy with a trumpet,

a large fleabitten dog,

and a caged parrot.

 

And also the person I got on for,

almost invisible amid the others' bundles,

but he's there, and he's called Juliusz Słowacki.
^*

 

He's clearly none too eager for a chat.

He draws a letter from a crumpled envelope,

it's doubtless been read many times before,

since the pages fray along the edges.

When a dried violet drops from the sheets

ah! we both sigh and seize it in flight.

 

Perhaps it's a good time to tell him

what I've planned long ago in my thoughts.

Excuse me, sir, but it's urgent and important.

 

I've come from the Future and I know how it turns out.

Your poems are loved and admired

and you lie with kings in Wawel Castle.

 

Alas my imagination lacks the power

to make him hear or at least see me.

He doesn't even feel me tug his sleeve.

He calmly slips the violet between the sheets,

which go back into the envelope, and then into a trunk,

glances through the rain-streaked window,

rises, pins his cloak, squeezes to the door,

and what else? Gets off at the next station.

 

I keep him in my sight a few more minutes.

He walks off, so slight with that trunk of his,

plows on, head down,

like one who knows

no one is waiting.

 

Now only the extras remain.

An extended clan beneath umbrellas,

a corporal with a whistle, breathless recruits in tow,

a wagon full of piglets,

and two fresh horses waiting to be hitched.

 

 

She prayed to God

with all her heart

to make her

a happy white girl.

And if it's too late for such changes,

then at least, Lord God, see what I weigh,

subtract at least half of me.

But the good God answered No.

He just put his hand on her heart,

checked her throat, stroked her head.

But when everything is over—He added—

you'll give me joy by coming to me,

my black comfort, my well-sung stump.

 

 

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum

in painted quiet and concentration

keeps pouring milk day after day

from the pitcher to the bowl

the World hasn't earned

the world's end.

 

 

It's been and gone.

It's been, so it's gone.

In the same irreversible order,

for such is the rule of this foregone game.

A trite conclusion, not worth writing

if it weren't an unquestionable fact,

a fact for ever and ever,

for the whole cosmos, as it is and will be,

that something really was

until it was gone,

even the fact

that today you had a side of fries.

 

 

 

 

ENOUGH

 

2011