Map (5 page)

wherever you've been hiding,

in time for me to say:

You've gotten rusty, friend!

 

Downpours of affidavits,

permits and questionnaires,

rain down and I will say:

I see the sun behind you.

 

My watch, dropped in a river,

bob up and let me seize you—

then, face to face, I'll say:

Your so-called time is up.

 

And lastly, toy balloon

once kidnapped by the wind—

come home, and I will say:

There are no children here.

 

Fly out the open window

and into the wide world;

let someone else shout “Look!”

and I will cry.

 

 

So these are the Himalayas.

Mountains racing to the moon.

The moment of their start recorded

on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.

Holes punched in a desert of clouds.

Thrust into nothing.

Echo—a white mute.

Quiet.

 

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,

bread, and alphabets.

Two times two is four.

Roses are red there,

and violets are blue.

 

Yeti, crime is not all

we're up to down there.

Yeti, not every sentence there

means death.

 

We've inherited hope—

the gift of forgetting.

You'll see how we give

birth among the ruins.

 

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.

Yeti, we play solitaire

and violin. At nightfall,

we turn lights on, Yeti.

 

Up here it's neither moon nor earth.

Tears freeze.

Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,

turn back, think again!

 

I called this to the Yeti

inside four walls of avalanche,

stomping my feet for warmth

on the everlasting

snow.

 

 

Alack and woe, oh song: you're mocking me;

try as I may, I'll never be your red, red rose.

A rose is a rose is a rose. And you know it.

 

I worked to sprout leaves. I tried to take root.

I held my breath to speed things up, and waited

for the petals to enclose me.

 

Merciless song, you leave me with my lone,

nonconvertible, unmetamorphic body:

I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.

 

 

The hour between night and day.

The hour between toss and turn.

The hour of thirty-year-olds.

 

The hour swept clean for roosters' crowing.

The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.

The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.

The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

 

Empty hour.

Hollow. Vain.

Rock bottom of all the other hours.

 

No one feels fine at four
A.M.

If ants feel fine at four
A.M.
,

we're happy for the ants. And let five
A.M.
come

if we've got to go on living.

 

 

The forest in the Vosges Mountains shines.

Don't come near me.

Foolish, foolish,

I've been consorting with the world.

 

I've eaten bread, I've drunk water,

the wind stroked me, the rain soaked me,

so beware and leave me.

And cover up your eyes.

 

Leave me, leave, but not by land.

Swim off, swim, but not by sea.

Fly off, fly away, my dear,

but don't go near the air.

 

Let's see each other through closed eyes.

Let's talk together through closed mouths.

Let's hold each other through a thick wall.

 

We don't make a pretty pair of clowns,

the forest, not the moon, is shining down,

and a gust tears from your lady thus

her radioactive coat, oh Pyramus.

 

 

They were or they weren't.

On an island or not.

An ocean or not an ocean

swallowed them up or it didn't.

 

Was there anyone to love anyone?

Did anybody have someone to fight?

Everything happened or it didn't

there or someplace else.

 

Seven cities stood there.

So we think.

They were meant to stand forever.

We suppose.

 

They weren't up to much, no.

They were up to something, yes.

 

Hypothetical. Dubious.

Uncommemorated.

Never extracted from air,

fire, water, or earth.

 

Not contained within a stone

or drop of rain.

Not suitable for straight-faced use

as a story's moral.

 

A meteor fell.

Not a meteor.

A volcano exploded.

Not a volcano.

Someone summoned something.

Nothing was called.

 

On this more-or-less Atlantis.

 

 

I'm working on the world,

revised, improved edition,

featuring fun for fools,

blues for brooders,

combs for bald pates,

tricks for old dogs.

 

Here's one chapter: The Speech

of Animals and Plants.

Each species comes, of course,

with its own dictionary.

Even a simple “Hi there,”

when traded with a fish,

makes both the fish and you

feel quite extraordinary.

 

The long-suspected meanings

of rustlings, chirps, and growls!

Soliloquies of forests!

The epic hoots of owls!

Those crafty hedgehogs drafting

aphorisms after dark,

while we blindly believe

they're sleeping in the park!

 

Time (Chapter Two) retains

its sacred right to meddle

in each earthly affair.

Still, time's unbounded power

that makes a mountain crumble,

moves seas, rotates a star,

won't be enough to tear

lovers apart: they are

too naked, too embraced,

too much like timid sparrows.

 

Old age is, in my book,

the price that felons pay,

so don't whine that it's steep:

you'll stay young if you're good.

Suffering (Chapter Three)

doesn't insult the body.

Death? It comes in your sleep,

exactly as it should.

 

When it comes, you'll be dreaming

that you don't need to breathe;

that breathless silence is

the music of the dark

and it's part of the rhythm

to vanish like a spark.

 

Only a death like that. A rose

could prick you harder, I suppose;

you'd feel more terror at the sound

of petals falling to the ground.

 

Only a world like that. To die

just that much. And to live just so.

And all the rest is Bach's fugue, played

for the time being

on a saw.

 

 

 

 

SALT

 

1962

 

 

Evicted from the Garden long before

the humans: he had such infectious eyes

that just one glance around old Paradise

made even angels' hearts feel sad and sore,

emotions hitherto unknown to them.

Without a chance to say “I disagree,”

he had to launch his earthly pedigree.

Today, still nimble, he retains his charme

with a primeval “e” after the “m.”

 

Worshiped in Egypt, pleiades of fleas

spangling his sacred and silvery mane,

he'd sit and listen in archsilent peace:

What do you want? A life that never ends?

He'd turn his ruddy rump as if to say

such life he neither bans nor recommends.

 

In Europe they deprived him of his soul

but they forgot to take his hands away;

there was a painter-monk who dared portray

a saint with palms so thin, they could be simian.

The holy woman prayed for heaven's favor

as if she waited for a nut to fall.

 

Warm as a newborn, with an old man's tremor,

imported to kings' courts across the seas,

he whined while swinging on his golden chain,

dressed in the garish coat of a marquis.

Prophet of doom. The court is laughing? Please.

 

Considered edible in China, he makes boiled

or roasted faces when laid upon a salver.

Ironic as a gem set in sham gold.