The Rain in Portugal (2 page)

It sounded like a chest of drawers

being tipped over, but it turned out to be

the more likely crashing down of a limb,

and there it was crippled on the lawn

in the morning after the storm had passed.

One day you may notice a chip on a vase

or an oddly shaped cloud

or a car parked at the end of a shadowy lane,

but what I noticed that summer day

from a reading chair on the small front porch

was a sparrow who appeared out of nowhere,

as birds often do, then vanished

into the leafy interior of the fallen limb

as if it were still growing from the tree,

budding and burgeoning like all the days before.

Toward evening, two men arrived with a chainsaw

and left behind only a strewing of sawdust

and a scattering of torn leaves

before driving off in their green truck.

But earlier, I had heard chirping

issuing from inside the severed appendage

as if nothing had happened at all,

as if that bird had forever to sing her little song.

And that reminded me of the story of St. Denis,

the third-century Christian martyr,

who reacted to his own decapitation

by picking his head up from the ground,

after it tumbled to a stop, of course,

and using it to deliver to the townspeople

what turned out to be his most memorable sermon.

The ruins were taking their time falling apart,

stones that once held up other stones

now scattered on top of one another

as if many centuries had to pass

before they harkened to the call of gravity.

The few pillars still upright

had nervous looks on their faces

teetering there in the famous sunlight

which descended on the grass and the disheveled stones.

And that is precisely how the bathers appeared

after we had changed at the cliff-side hotel

and made our way down to the rocky beach—

pillars of flesh in bathing suits,

two pillars tossing a colorful ball,

one pillar lying with his arm around another,

even a tiny pillar with a pail and shovel,

all deaf to a voice as old as the surf itself.

Is not poetry a megaphone held up

to the whispering lips of death?

I wrote, before capping my pen

and charging into the waves with a shout.

I am like the Japanese poet

who longed to be in Kyoto

even though he was already in Kyoto.

I am not exactly like him

because I am not Japanese

and I have no idea what Kyoto is like.

But once, while walking around

the Irish town of Ballyvaughan

I caught myself longing to be in Ballyvaughan.

The sensation of being homesick

for a place that is not my home

while being right in the middle of it

was particularly strong

when I passed the hotel bar

then the fluorescent depth of a launderette,

also when I stood at the crossroads

with the road signs pointing in 3 directions

and the enormous buses making the turn.

It might have had something to do

with the nearby limestone hills

and the rain collecting on my collar,

but then again I have longed

to be with a number of people

while the two of us were sitting in a room

on an ordinary evening

without a limestone hill in sight,

thousands of miles from Kyoto

and the simple wonders of Ballyvaughan,

which reminds me

of another Japanese poet

who wrote how much he enjoyed

not being able to see

his favorite mountain because of all the fog.

The halves of the cleaved-open cantaloupe

are rocking toward the violin lying on its back,

and the ruby grapes appear to be moving

a millimeter at a time

in the direction of the inkwell and the furled map,

former symbols of culture and sense.

The china cup cannot be stopped

from advancing subtly toward

the silvery trout on a brown cedar plank

for a reason no one can provide

even if you made the mistake of asking.

But that's the way it goes

when you commit to a painting

after accepting an offering of mushrooms.

I wish that the dull grey pewter jug

were not shifting

toward the crystal bowl of lemons

and that the sunflowers

and the exposed oysters had agreed

at some point to remain in their regular places.

With the skull inching toward the pear,

and the cluster of eggs beginning to wander,

I had to reassure myself

that my mother and father were still alive,

I had a place to stay

and a couple thousand dollars in a savings account.

It was just then that a realistic orange

collided silently with a brass candlestick

in some woman's spacious apartment

on top of one of the many hills of San Francisco.

I never put any stock in that image of the earth

resting on the backs of four elephants

who are standing on a giant sea turtle,

who is in turn supported by an infinite regression

of turtles disappearing into a bottomless forever.

I mean who in their right mind would?

But now that we are on the subject,

my substitute picture would have the earth

with its entire population of people and things

resting on the head of Keith Richards,

who is holding a Marlboro in one hand

and a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the other.

As long as Keith keeps talking about

the influence of the blues on the Rolling Stones,

the earth will continue to spin merrily

and revolve in a timely manner around the sun.

But if he changes the subject or even pauses

too long, it's pretty much curtains for us all.

Unless, of course, one person somehow survives

being hurtled into the frigidity of outer space;

then we would have a movie on our hands—

but wait, there wouldn't be any hands

to write the script or make the movie,

and no theatres either, no buttered popcorn, no giant Pepsi.

So we may as well see Keith standing

on the shoulders of the other Rolling Stones,

who are in turn standing on the shoulders of Muddy Waters,

who, were it not for that endless stack of turtles,

one on top of the other all the way down,

would find himself standing on nothing at all.

Whenever I have a dream about Poetry,

which is not very often

considering how much I think about her,

she appears as a seamstress

who works in the window of a tailor's shop

in a sector of a provincial city

laden with a grey and heavy sky.

I know the place so well

I could find the dimly lit shop

without asking anyone for directions,

though the streets are mostly empty,

except when I saw a solitary man

looking in the window of a butcher's,

his hands in the pockets of his raincoat.

Poetry works long hours

and rarely speaks to the tailor

as she bends to repair the fancy costumes

of various allegorical figures

who were told by Thrift how little she charges.

Maybe the ermine collar on the robe

of Excess has come loose

or a rip in the gown of Abandon

needs mending, and no questions

will be asked about how that came to pass.

A little bell over the door rings

whenever a customer enters or leaves,

but Poetry is too busy thinking about her children

as she replaces a gold button on the blazer of Pride.

The Icarus Auden favored was two tiny legs

disappearing with a splash into a green bay

while everyone else went on with their business,

fisherman and sailor, shepherd and sheep.

But in this version, the plight of the boy

in all his muscular plunging fills the circular canvas

as if he were falling through a hole in the world,

passing through the lens of our seeing him.

It's hard to read the expression on a pair of legs,

but here we have the horrified face

contorted with regret not unlike the beady-eyed

Wile E. Coyote, who pauses in mid-air

to share with us his moment of fatal realization

before beginning his long descent into a canyon.

It's as if Auden's Brueghel had been run

backwards to produce an amazing sight—

a wet boy rising into the sky,

and then a sudden close-up to show the sorrow

or the stupidity, however we like to picture

the consequences of not listening to your father,

of flying too high, too close to the source of heat and light.

And to enhance the mythic drama, this Icarus

is presented as one of “The Four Disgracers”

where he joins Phaeton, who also took the sun lightly,

Ixion, bound to a fire-spoked wheel,

and Tantalus, who served up his son for dinner,

each figure tumbling operatically in a rondo of air.

To think if they were left in the hands of Brueghel,

one might have ended up as a tangle of limbs in an oak,

another as a form face down in a haycock,

and the last just a hole in the roof of a barn.

Every time I listen to a favorite opera,

I close my eyes at some point

and wait in the dark for the note to arrive.

It's the high note I'm expecting,

the one that carries the singer

to the outer limits of his voice

and holds him there, but only in the way

that water is held in the hands,

for even though
tenor

(from the Latin
tenere
) means to hold,

there is no lingering here

at the risky zenith of the possible

where the singer seems suspended

in the bright air of the hall,

stopped at the gate of a city no one

has ever entered and escaped with their voice.

It's the note that awakens with a jolt

the dozing spouses in the upper boxes,

who mistake it for a sound of alarm

as if the heavy, dazzling chandelier

were now breaking free of its moorings.

And even the wakeful can misconstrue

the look on the singer's florid face

as a cry for help, as if someone

could assist him down from such a height.

Of course, after the note has crested,

more of the story remains to be told

of the countess and her suitors,

some meaning well, others in disguise,

and soon enough, a soft aria of doomed love

will return the inattentive to their dreams.

But lingering still for some

is that gooseflesh moment

when the note at the tip of a scale

threatened to overwhelm the plot,

put a match to the corner of the libretto,

plant a rippling flag on a snow-blown summit

somewhere beyond the margins of music and art.

Imagining what the weather will be like

on the day following your death

has a place on that list of things

that distinguish us from animals

as if walking around on two legs

laughing to ourselves were not enough to close the case.

In these forecasts, it's usually raining,

the way it would be in the movies,

but it could be sparkling clear

or grey and still with snow expected in the afternoon.

Much will continue to occur after I die

seems to be the message here.

The rose will nod its red or yellow head.

Sunbeams will break into the gloomy woods.

And that's what was on my mind

as I drove through a gauntlet of signs

on a road that passed through a small town in Ohio:

Bob's Transmissions,

The Hairport, The Bountiful Buffet,

Reggie's Bike Shop, Balloon Designs by Pauline,

and Majestic China Garden to name a few.

When I realized that all these places

could still be in business on the day after I die,

I vowed to drink more water,

to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables,

and to start going to the gym I never go to

if only to outlive

Balloon Designs by Pauline

and maybe even Pauline herself

though it would be enough if she simply

lost the business and left town for good.

It's not a rooster, a horse, or a simple arrow,

nor the ship or whale you might see near a harbor,

but a cat silhouetted in black metal

extending a forepaw downward

in order to reach one of the four metal mice

perched on the arms that indicate the compass points.

A mouse for the east, a mouse for the west,

a mouse for the north, a mouse for the south,

facing in all directions as the vane turns in the wind

and the cat reaches down to snatch a wee one in its hooks.

Like nothing less than the lovers on Keats' urn

or the petrified bodies at Pompeii, here is another

frozen moment in western culture,

for the cat will never consume one of the mice,

and no mouse will ever be disjointed by the black cat

no matter which way the wind is blowing,

no matter how madly the cat swivels on the roof

while you and I are at home, safe from a coming storm,

or far away in another country, as we are now,

thinking about a weathervane in a café in Istanbul.