Becoming Light (6 page)

(fumbling with our lunchbags,

handkerchiefs

& secret cheeks of bubblegum)

were graver than any

in the schoolroom:

the dangers of a life

frozen into poses.

Trilobites in their

petrified ghettos,

lumbering dinosaurs

who’d outsized themselves

told how nature was

an endless morality play

in which the cockroach

(& all such beadyeyed

exemplars of adjustment)

might well recite the epilogue.

No one was safe

but stagnation was

the surest suicide.

To mankind’s Hamlet,

what six-legged creature would play

Fortinbras? It made you scratch

your head & think

for about two minutes.

Going out, I remember

how we stopped to look at

Teddy Roosevelt,

(Soldier, Statesman, Naturalist,

Hunter, Historian,

et cetera, et cetera).

His bronze bulk (four times life size)

bestrode Central Park West

like a colossus.

His monumental horse

snorted towards the park.

Oh, we were full of Evolution & its lessons

when (the girls giggling madly,

the boys blushing) we peeked

between those huge legs to see

those awe-inspiring

Brobdingnagian balls.

Boswell—you old rake—I have tried to imitate

your style; but it is no use; my dialogues are

all between my selves: and though I sit up late,

make endless notes and jottings that I hope will jar

my memory—it is in vain—for in the end

I have no Dr. Johnson but myself.

The difference is (I think) between our lives. You spend

the morning at the coffee house, nourish yourself

with talk and kippers before proceeding on to dine.

A ramble across London perks the appetite.

Every step is an adventure; the written line

distills itself from life. How can you help but write?

I consort with books while you see men, haunt the shelves

where your London lies buried. Your book once opened,

I become the ghost, a pale phantom who delves

into your life to borrow moments penned

two hundred years ago. I roam your world ignored—

while my own life, waiting outside, questions my motives.

A man should never live more than he can record

you say; but what if he records more than he
lives?

My journal swarms with me and even I am bored.

I am all my personae—children, lovers, wives,

philosophers and country-wenches. Though I give them

different robes and wigs to wear, all converse alike;

all reason falsely with the same stratagem;

each suspects the logic of the other, dislikes

him, yet cannot prove him wrong. Petty cavils

grow to monstrous issues, belabored arguments

resolve themselves only in sleep; darkness prevails.

Only the living find solace in common sense.

Safe, preserved from the rape of the world, I grow

dishonest, and pen my crooked words, for one can lie

with ease about those things the world will never know.

Conversation—that clearinghouse for thoughts—denied,

the mind gets gouty and the conscience needs a cane.

Notions unuttered seem to echo through the brain—

and our monologues are doomed to the same end.

We all think better—interrupted by a friend.

He died in Rome, in all that sunlight,

the Spanish Steps full of trysting lovers,

Bernini’s watery boat still sinking

in the fountain in the square below.

And even if they weren’t lovers

who crowded the burning steps that day—

but businessmen complaining of the heat,

tired tourists or prowling gigolos—

he had to bear his dark delirium

while the world breathed and sweated outside.

It was no day to die—his tongue dumb

with fever, and all his senses raging

out of tune—The slow continuo

of fountains, weakly pulsing,

a disembodied rhythm robbed of song—

and all that unexpected, wide-flung sky

shattered hourly by bells, the frenzied

flapping of a lone bird’s wings

—determined—in a wilderness of air.

The sunlight fades now, eyes bound burning

within their fleshy lids—they close to see

kaleidoscopes of light, the spectrum suns,

—those fiery self-consuming hearts that blaze

one final time, against finality

like embers flaring in a gust of breath

—when death—the silent, steadfast muse,

the faithful lover—comes to consummate

a long flirtation.

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:

di doman non c’e certezza
.

—Lorenzo di Medici

In the poplars’ lengthening shadows on this hill,

amid the rows of marigolds and earth,

and through the boxhedge labyrinth we walk,

together, to the choiring twilight bells.

Their fugue of echoes echoes through the hills

and sings against this time-streaked, flowering wall

where breezes coax the potted lemon trees,

the pendant, yellow fruit and shiny leaves.

Beneath the flaming watercolor sky,

the cultivated, terraced drop of hill,

a gleaming city with its towers and domes,

the Arno shimmering as it drowns the sun.

Chameleon-like, I am transformed by light,

and wine has blurred the edges of the night.

What gifts I give on this or any night

may be refracted in another light.

You understand this in a foreign tongue,

but vaguely, for these things will not translate.

I feel it in the cadence of your walk:

you are not one whom moonlight can create.

And you will think the loosening of these thighs,

the sudden, urging whiteness of the throat

are muted but distinctly pagan cries

and in your triumph you will fairly gloat.

Tonight the unplucked lemons almost gleam.

And with their legs, the crickets harmonize.

The trees are rustling an uncertain hymn,

and unseen birds contribute trembling cries.

When did the summer censor choiring things?

We know the blood is brutal though it sings.

There is a white wood house near Hampstead Heath

in whose garden the nightingale still sings.

Though Keats is dead, the bird who sang of death

returns with melodies, on easeful wings.

A lock of hair the poet’s love received

remains in the room where first it was shorn;

An heirloom, its history half-believed,

its strands now faded and its ribbon worn.

On polished floors, through squares of summer sun

I felt his footsteps move, as if the elf

—deceiving elf, he called her—had not done

with making mischief to amuse herself.

I saw him clip that tousled lock of hair,

and though he did not offer it to me,

I felt that I was privileged, standing there,

and took his gesture for my legacy.

Apologists blame it on the English

temperament, which “unable to conceive

the monumental,” called for stylish

portraits of the rich. The critics forgive

Gainsborough, considering the bad taste

of his patrons: if you squint and pretend

that the satin isn’t satin, a feast

of color awaits you, they recommend.

The stoop-shouldered young men with knotted brows

walk through the English gallery sullenly,

still denying the sun-dappled meadows

of a vanished upper class. A lady

Lawrence painted dangles gloves of amber

suede between fingers slim from idleness;

Her satin cape blowing in October

wind is heavy, silvery white and soundless,

addressing itself to clouds of similar

stuff. She looks away unmindful that she

is not profound, or even popular.

Across from her a rake whose pedigree

is told in the knowing curl of his lip,

slaps the sleek rump of his burnished brown mare.

He holds a leather crop and at his hip

his watch fob glints; he waits and on a dare

he’d take the pasture at a gallop, jump

the highest fences, hooves making hollows

in the echoing air. Three children, plump

with laughter, are busy feeding sparrows

on another canvas. They toss their heads

to shake their curls with sunlight, stretch their arms

to show their puckered hands. The boy who spreads

the bread crumbs on the ground, quietly disarms

us, though we know he probably grew old,

deserved his gout, had a borough in each

pocket, and unknowing died a cuckold.

It is his splendid childhood we reproach

by thinking of the vices he was heir to;

envy calling history as witness

to taint the boyish smile the artist drew.

Oh leave the poor aristocrats in peace!

No one is fooled, for Hogarth painted too;

and though not democratic, art can please—

the cavil is absurd, the colors true.

I hear you will not fall in love with me

because I come without a guarantee,

because someday I may depart at whim

and leave you desolate, abandoned, grim.

If that’s the case, what use to be alive?

In loving life you love what can’t survive:

and if you grow too fond and lose your head,

it’s all for nought—for someday you’ll be dead.

Maintain a cool detachment through the years.

Wear blinders, dear, put cotton in your ears.

Since worms will taste the tongue that tastes the wine,

burst not the grape against your palate fine.

With care, your puny heart will still be whole

the day they come to fetch your tepid soul.

And as that strumpet, Life, deals her last blow,

you’ll have this final consolatio:

you’ll snap your flippant fingers as you fall,

and say, “I never cared for her at all!”

I.

He was content to speak of little things—

the sound of raindrops on a roof, the scent

of spring, a field of haystacks, a hill

of cherry trees, a pebble’s smoothness

or a thrush’s wings; nor ever seemed to care

that nations fought, that men and women loved,

that young men died, that scholars quarreled,

that politicians lied, that children hungered

while their mothers cried. But what he spoke of

(it cannot be denied) he spoke of sweetly

and he never falsified. With all good cheer

he took his limitation, and never risked

his pen on any side. His silence was

the bulk of his creation: he held his tongue

too much, perhaps, but then, he never lied.

II.

By birth, upbringing, inclination,

he made his task the mastery of words,

became the spokesman for his generation,

and reaped from that the double-edged rewards.

Through two world wars he railed against the lie

that bloodshed ever serves a noble cause,

saw anarchy invade, and made reply,

by praising order, harmony and law.

Likewise when famine struck, when children died,

when innocents were sentenced without trial,

he always let his conscience be his guide—

though critics claimed it much impaired his style.

Throughout a long career of writing verse,

he often changed his mind; men have the right:

exchanged his benedictions for a curse,

transformed his politics from left to right.

Although his prophet’s cape did not quite fit,

although he made mistakes because he dared,

he chronicled his age with biting wit,

and though he did not change the world, he cared.

III.

He had no complex notion of aesthetics.

He liked his food well-spiced, his women fair;

he had a kind of passion for athletics,

and at the age of sixty, all his hair.

He worshipped music and he liked to drink,

was fond of travel, company, long walks;

he could not bear to be alone to think,

and best of all, he dearly loved to talk.

It’s doubtful how he chose his occupation;

he thought that routine work was Adam’s curse.

He had some money, and a talent for narration

and one day tried his hand at writing verse.

His ear for words was almost never wrong;

he liked applause and reveled in his fame.

Whatever crossed his mind became a song,

and yet he half-conceived his craft a game.

In all his poems there seemed to be the hint

that had his stay on earth been better timed,

he would have rushed to battle, not to print,

but since there was no Troy to fight, he rhymed.

1

Goodbye, he waved, entering the apple.

That red siren,

whose white flesh turns brown

with prolonged exposure to air,

opened her perfect cheeks to receive him.

She took him in.

The garden revolved

in her glossy patinas of skin.

Goodbye.

2

O note the two round holes in onion.

3

Did I tell you about

my mother’s avocado?

She grew it from a pit.