You Must Remember This (3 page)

the world. Such relentless translation:

a well-trained man with a gun cannot

stop it, neither can a word carved

into a mountain, nor mountain itself.

The Same Bones

the face slack and whiskered in silver

the sag of the curtain beneath the eyes

the crepe-paper crinkle of skin in the hinges

the translucent browning vellum of the pate

the signs have been coming for some time

and now his ridged skull is rising

up through his softening features

like an anchor drawn hand over hand into the light

the clay of his face has grown tired

enough that nothing firm will emerge

until its bones are freed to tumble in the river

he knows me, this man

well enough that I crave his good opinion

we share some version of the same bones

having fathered the same children

with the same woman in a shared bed

though neither of us necessarily knew it

at the time: this is not a new form

of perversity but an old one

a mirror with an unusual time signature

delivered by means of a story

in which I somehow gaze upon the man

I will become

and though I can press my fingers to the glass

there is not a question I can ask that he could answer

without falling into crude pantomime

or mouthing platitudes of the moment

so we simply stare

into what we hope is the intelligence of one another's eyes

as we once did in the primate house

that time the orangutan sidled up to express

what struck us then as such a peculiar interest

tapping persistently from the inside

until at last we understood

and lifted our wristwatch up to the glass—

Some Party

Ah, tomorrow, said the important guest.

Though the day has yet to be seen,

the evidence of its existence

is well documented in the folklore of your people.

Then someone said, Tomorrow is an animal

that can be tracked but never captured.

So this cold night may not end, murmured the hostess.

I sleep deep in these long nights, someone said,

and when I wake I still want more.

The hostess nodded knowingly

and the rest of us went to the window

and watched the moon scrape itself

clean on the snow outside, while bits

of white hair sifted from the chimneys,

signifying an indifferent wind.

Thick candles stood on tables, alongside bowls

of salty nuts stirred by the fingers of strangers.

Someone said shells serve as coffins to the wind

and the white smoke we were watching

was the soul leaving the body of the house.

Some party, I said, actually beginning to wonder

if the night might not end and the whiskey

might run dry. I imagined falling

asleep deep in the upholstered couch

and waking to the darkness of the same party,

candle wax spread on the bookshelves,

embarrassed headaches, raised eyebrows

but then someone said, Look, and pointed

at the table where the important guest

was riding the hostess, her breasts quivering

like twin gelatins above the punch bowl

and I knew the night would end

before I ever saw such beauty again.

The Building

sense of momentum

as he entered the strange city

                            
crowded with buildings

prompted him to lean forward to ask the driver

about one they had just passed

               
painted a pale blue trimmed in white.

It is prison for the insane. (He pronounced it with a hiss:

Priss'n
. Then he shook his head, unhappy.) Not prison. It is—

He knotted his face and paused

then cracked open when he found it, smiling and sighing,

Asylum.

Asylum, he repeated, delighted with the word.

The passenger looked back through the rear window.

The building seemed to glow in the morning light.

The driver held a compass made of cast-off sounds and letters.

The passenger is seeking a hut

a possible place of shelter

some remembered form

of asylum.

               
That evening he takes a ball-

peen hammer smashes the headlights then climbs

in and drives a blind car through blind curves

                                            
on a road above the sea:

airplanes come in low over the water:

the flickering illumination wipes the road clean.

The car has become a song where he knows the melody

but not the words.

It could be a reel about a lamb in a meadow.

It could be a dirge about the loss of a child.

He takes turns in the back seat

as well as behind the wheel, praying

the song will open its eyes so he

can see the white line in the road

and the green eyes of jackals on the shoulder,

floating like fireflies above roadkill

before dipping back down with moist jaws.