long past.
Strange we should be continually waking up
To a barbaric calm that has probably
Always supported us, while still
Apologizing to the off-white walls we saw through
Years ago. But it stays this way.
SHE
What happened was you had finished
Nine-tenths of it before the great explosion,
The meteorite or whatever it was that tore out the
Huge crater eight miles in diameter.
Then somehow you spliced the bleeding wires,
Made it presentable long enough for
Inspection, then collapsed and slept until
The part where she takes the bus. And all
Because someone in a department store made some
Cryptic allusion, or so you thought as that person
Passed by, reducing the architecture of a life
To a minus quantity. There was no way
Back out of this because it wasn’t a departure.
HE
I once stole a pencil, but now the list with my name in it
Disgusts me. It is the horizon, tilted like the deck
Of a ship. And beyond, what must be the real
Horizon congeals into a blue roebuck whose shadow
Hardens every upturned face it trails across
And sets a blister there. If there was still time
To turn back, you must not follow me, but rather
Stay in your living, in your time,
Sizing up the future as accurately as the woman
In the old photograph, and, like her, turn away,
Your hand barely grazing the top of the little doric column.
Anything outside what the sheaf of rays delineates
For the moment is pain and at least illusion,
A piece of not very good news.
SHE
Then we must be like each other, because this afternoon’s
Ballast barely holds back the rising landscape
Of premonitions against that now distant (yet all too
Contemporaneous) magnesium flare in which
The habits of a moment, like wrinkles in a piece of backcloth,
Plummeted into the space under the stage
Through a trapdoor carelessly left open,
Joining other manifestations of human stick-to-itiveness
In a “semi-retirement” which has its own rewards
Except the solution only comes about much later, and then
Won’t entirely fit all the clues of the atmosphere
(Books, dishes and bathrooms), but is
Empty and vigilant, but too late to make the train,
And at night stands like tall buildings, disembodied,
Vaporous, rhapsodic, going on and on about something
That happened in the past, at the point where the recent
Past ends and the darker one begins.
HE
But since “we know what we are, but know not
What we may be,” and it’s later now, the romance
Of moderation takes over again. Something has to be
Living, not everyone can afford the luxury of
Just being, not alive but being, at the center,
The perfumed, patterned center. Perhaps it’s all fun
But we won’t know till we see it, as on a windless day
It suddenly becomes obvious how wonderful the fields are
Before it all sickens and fades to a mélange
Of half-truths, this gray dump. Then double trouble
Arrives, Beppo and Zeppo confront one
Out of a hurricane of colored dots, twin
Windshield wipers dealing the accessories:
Woe, wrack, wet—probably another kingdom.
SHE
I was going to say that the sky
Could never become that totally self-absorbed, bachelor’s-
Button blue, yet it has, and nothing is any safer for it,
Though the outlines of what we did stay just a second longer
On the etching of the forest, and we know enough not
To go there. If brimstone were the same as the truth
A gate deep in the ground would unlock to the fumbling
Of a certain key and the dogs at the dog races
Would circumambulate each in his allotted groove
Casting an exaggeratedly long shadow, while other
Malcontents, troublemakers, esprits frondeurs moved up
To dissolve in the brightness of the footlights. I would
Withstand, bow in hand, to grieve them. So it is time
To wake up, to commingle with the little walking presences, all
Somehow related, to each other and through each other to us,
Characters in the opera The Flood, by the great anonymous composer.
HE
Mostly they are
Shoals, even
Strange we should be continually waking up
To a barbaric calm that has probably
Always supported us, while still
Apologizing to the off-white walls we saw through
Years ago. But it stays this way.
SHE
What happened was you had finished
Nine-tenths of it before the great explosion,
The meteorite or whatever it was that tore out the
Huge crater eight miles in diameter.
Then somehow you spliced the bleeding wires,
Made it presentable long enough for
Inspection, then collapsed and slept until
The part where she takes the bus. And all
Because someone in a department store made some
Cryptic allusion, or so you thought as that person
Passed by, reducing the architecture of a life
To a minus quantity. There was no way
Back out of this because it wasn’t a departure.
HE
I once stole a pencil, but now the list with my name in it
Disgusts me. It is the horizon, tilted like the deck
Of a ship. And beyond, what must be the real
Horizon congeals into a blue roebuck whose shadow
Hardens every upturned face it trails across
And sets a blister there. If there was still time
To turn back, you must not follow me, but rather
Stay in your living, in your time,
Sizing up the future as accurately as the woman
In the old photograph, and, like her, turn away,
Your hand barely grazing the top of the little doric column.
Anything outside what the sheaf of rays delineates
For the moment is pain and at least illusion,
A piece of not very good news.
SHE
Then we must be like each other, because this afternoon’s
Ballast barely holds back the rising landscape
Of premonitions against that now distant (yet all too
Contemporaneous) magnesium flare in which
The habits of a moment, like wrinkles in a piece of backcloth,
Plummeted into the space under the stage
Through a trapdoor carelessly left open,
Joining other manifestations of human stick-to-itiveness
In a “semi-retirement” which has its own rewards
Except the solution only comes about much later, and then
Won’t entirely fit all the clues of the atmosphere
(Books, dishes and bathrooms), but is
Empty and vigilant, but too late to make the train,
And at night stands like tall buildings, disembodied,
Vaporous, rhapsodic, going on and on about something
That happened in the past, at the point where the recent
Past ends and the darker one begins.
HE
But since “we know what we are, but know not
What we may be,” and it’s later now, the romance
Of moderation takes over again. Something has to be
Living, not everyone can afford the luxury of
Just being, not alive but being, at the center,
The perfumed, patterned center. Perhaps it’s all fun
But we won’t know till we see it, as on a windless day
It suddenly becomes obvious how wonderful the fields are
Before it all sickens and fades to a mélange
Of half-truths, this gray dump. Then double trouble
Arrives, Beppo and Zeppo confront one
Out of a hurricane of colored dots, twin
Windshield wipers dealing the accessories:
Woe, wrack, wet—probably another kingdom.
SHE
I was going to say that the sky
Could never become that totally self-absorbed, bachelor’s-
Button blue, yet it has, and nothing is any safer for it,
Though the outlines of what we did stay just a second longer
On the etching of the forest, and we know enough not
To go there. If brimstone were the same as the truth
A gate deep in the ground would unlock to the fumbling
Of a certain key and the dogs at the dog races
Would circumambulate each in his allotted groove
Casting an exaggeratedly long shadow, while other
Malcontents, troublemakers, esprits frondeurs moved up
To dissolve in the brightness of the footlights. I would
Withstand, bow in hand, to grieve them. So it is time
To wake up, to commingle with the little walking presences, all
Somehow related, to each other and through each other to us,
Characters in the opera The Flood, by the great anonymous composer.
HE
Mostly they are
Shoals, even
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