The Double Dream of Spring (2 page)

We have rolled into another dream.

No use charging the barriers of that other:

It no longer exists. But you,

Gracious and growing thing, with those leaves like stars,

We shall soon give all our attention to you.

Silly girls your heads full of boys

There is a last sample of talk on the outer side

Your stand at last lifts to dumb evening

It is reflected in the steep blue sides of the crater,

So much water shall wash over these our breaths

Yet shall remain unwashed at the end. The fine

Branches of the fir tree catch at it, ebbing.

Not on our planet is the destiny

That can make you one.

To be placed on the side of some mountain

Is the truer story, with the breath only

Coming in patches at first, and then the little spurt

The way a steam engine starts up eventually.

The sagas purposely ignore how better off it was next day,

The feeling in between the chapters, like fins.

There is so much they must say, and it is important

About all the swimming motions, and the way the hands

Came up out of the ocean with original fronds,

The famous arrow, the girls who came at dawn

To pay a visit to the young child, and how, when he grew up to be a man

The same restive ceremony replaced the limited years between,

Only now he was old, and forced to begin the journey to the sun.

Barely tolerated, living on the margin

In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued

On the brink of destruction, like heroines in
Orlando Furioso

Before it was time to start all over again.

There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,

And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering

The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting

The whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.

And then there always came a time when

Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile

Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,

Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused

About how to receive this latest piece of information.

Was
it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out

For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind

With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),

Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?

To reduce all this to a small variant,

To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau—

This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.

Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,

A moment and it is gone. And no longer

May we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.

Our star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.

Now there is no question even of that, but only

Of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,

With an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across

The upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away

And cannot quite see, or a wound will flash

Against the sweet faces of the others, something like:

This is what you wanted to hear, so why

Did you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers

It is true, but underneath the talk lies

The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose

Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

These then were some hazards of the course,

Yet though we knew the course
was
hazards and nothing else

It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,

The clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.

They
were the players, and we who had struggled at the game

Were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes

And moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.

Night after night this message returns, repeated

In the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,

Yet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,

The being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,

Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes

To be without, alone and desperate.

But the fantasy makes it ours, a kind offence-sitting

Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,

Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,

But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression

Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day

When it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering

Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning

Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that

Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,

That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint

None of us ever graduates from college,

For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up

Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.

And you see, both of us were right, though nothing

Has somehow come to nothing; the avatars

Of our conforming to the rules and living

Around the home have made—well, in a sense, “good citizens” of us,

Brushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept

The charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,

For this is action, this not being sure, this careless

Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,

Making ready to forget, and always coming back

To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.

There is that sound like the wind

Forgetting in the branches that means something

Nobody can translate. And there is the sobering “later on,”

When you consider what a thing meant, and put it down.

For the time being the shadow is ample

And hardly seen, divided among the twigs of a tree,

The trees of a forest, just as life is divided up

Between you and me, and among all the others out there.

And the thinning-out phase follows

The period of reflection. And suddenly, to be dying

Is not a little or mean or cheap thing,

Only wearying, the heat unbearable,

And also the little mindless constructions put upon

Our fantasies of what we did: summer, the ball of pine needles,

The loose fates serving our acts, with token smiles,

Carrying out their instructions too accurately—

Too late to cancel them now—and winter, the twitter

Of cold stars at the pane, that describes with broad gestures

This state of being that is not so big after all.

Summer involves going down as a steep flight of steps

To a narrow ledge over the water. Is this it, then,

This iron comfort, these reasonable taboos,

Or did you mean it when you stopped? And the face

Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water.

It was raining in the capital

And for many days and nights

The one they called the Aquarian

Had stayed alone with her delight.

What with the winter and its business

It had fallen to one side

And she had only recently picked it up

Where the other had died.

Between the pages of the newspaper

It smiled like a face.

Next to the drugstore on the corner

It looked to another place.

Or it would just hang around

Like sullen clouds over the sun.

But—this was the point—it was real

To her and to everyone.

For spring had entered the capital

Walking on gigantic feet.

The smell of witch hazel indoors

Changed to narcissus in the street.

She thought she had seen all this before:

Bundles of new, fresh flowers,

All changing, pressing upward

To the distant office towers.

Until now nothing had been easy,

Hemmed in by all that shit—

Horseshit, dogshit, birdshit, manshit—

Yes, she remembered having said it,

Having spoken in that way, thinking

There could be no road ahead,

Sobbing into the intractable presence of it

As one weeps alone in bed.

Its chamber was narrower than a seed

Yet when the doorbell rang

It reduced all that living to air

As
“kyrie eleison”
it sang.

Hearing that music he had once known

But now forgotten, the man,

The one who had waited casually in the dark

Turned to smile at the door’s span.

He smiled and shrugged—a lesson

In the newspaper no longer

But fed by the ink and paper

Into a sign of something stronger

Who reads the news and takes the bus

Going to work each day

But who was never born of woman

Nor formed of the earth’s clay.

Then what unholy bridegroom

Did the Aquarian foretell?

Or was such lively intelligence

Only the breath of hell?

It scarcely mattered at the moment

And it shall never matter at all

Since the moment will not be replaced

But stand, poised for its fall,

Forever. “This is what my learning

Teaches,” the Aquarian said,

“To absorb life through the pores

For the life around you is dead.”

The sun came out in the capital

Just before it set.

The lovely death’s head shone in the sky

As though these two had never met.

“For the pleasures of the many

May be ofttimes traced to one

As the hand that plants an acorn

Shelters armies from the sun.”

And in places where the annual rainfall is .0071 inches

What a pleasure to lie under the tree, to sit, stand, and get up under the tree!

Im wunderschonen Monat Mai

The feeling is of never wanting to leave the tree,

Of predominantly peace and relaxation.

Do you step out from under the shade a moment,

It is only to return with renewed expectation, of expectation fulfilled.

Insecurity be damned! There is something to all this, that will not elude us:

Growing up under the shade of friendly trees, with our brothers all around.

And truly, young adulthood was never like this:

Such delight, such consideration, such affirmation in the way the day goes ’round together.

Yes, the world goes ’round a good deal faster

When there are highlights on the lips, unspoken and true words in the heart,

And the hand keeps brushing away a strand of chestnut hair, only to have it fall back into place again.

But all good things must come to an end, and so one must move forward

Into the space left by one’s conclusions. Is this growing old?

Well, it is a good experience, to divest oneself of some tested ideals, some old standbys,

And even finding nothing to put in their place is a good experience,

Preparing one, as it does, for the consternation that is to come.

But—and this is the gist of it—what if I dreamed it all,

The branches, the late afternoon sun,

The trusting camaraderie, the love that watered all,

Disappearing promptly down into the roots as it should?

For later in the vast gloom of cities, only there you learn

How the ideas were good only because they had to die,

Leaving you alone and skinless, a drawing by Vesalius.

This is what was meant, and toward which everything directs:

That the tree should shrivel in 120-degree heat, the acorns

Lie around on the worn earth like eyeballs, and the lead soldiers shrug and slink off.

So my youth was spent, underneath the trees

I always moved around with perfect ease

I voyaged to Paris at the age of ten

And met many prominent literary men

Gazing at the Alps was quite a sight

I felt the tears flow forth with all their might

A climb to the Acropolis meant a lot to me

I had read the Greek philosophers you see

In the Colosseum I thought my heart would burst

Thinking of all the victims who had been there first

On Mount Ararat’s side I began to grow

Remembering the Flood there, so long ago

On the banks of the Ganges I stood in mud

And watched the water light up like blood

The Great Wall of China is really a thrill

It cleaves through the air like a silver pill

It was built by the hand of man for good or ill

Showing what he can do when he decides not to kill

But of all the sights that were seen by me

In the East or West, on land or sea,

The best was the place that is spelled H-O-M-E.

Now that once again I have achieved home

I shall forbear all further urge to roam

There is a hole of truth in the green earth’s rug

Once you find it you are as snug as a bug

Maybe some do not like it quite as much as you

That isn’t all you’re going to do.

You must remember that it is yours

Which is why nobody is sending you flowers

This age-old truth I to thee impart

Act according to the dictates of your art

Because if you don’t no one else is going to

And that person isn’t likely to be you.

It is the wind that comes from afar

It is the truth of the farthest star