compliment.
Anyway, we got here. Somehow. Now the question
is losing relevance since water is everywhere,
like a transparent mine. I lost my voice a long time ago.
Voices of children ripple endlessly,
endorsing new products. The lizard-god explodes.
The lady on the next bar-stool
but one didn’t seem to understand
you when you spoke of “old dark house” movies—
she thought there must be an old dark house somewhere
and you wanted to take her there.
Still, my arrival flabbergasted her,
since it suggested you had no such thing in mind,
at least for the present.
And today I am a mad Chinese monk
chasing after his temple. Which way did it go?
Around that corner of bushes? Or was there ever
a temple? It seemed more and more likely
that it was a figment of your imagination, a figment
perhaps like many another, only a little more underripe.
Undeterred, I chase it in the madness of the gathering dusk
that crashes into ponds, trees, scared bridges.
It had to have been back here somewhere—
As if the air were pure lightning
and the earth, its consort, benevolent thunder,
I can stand and finally breathe.
Light shrinks from the edges of my fingernails
and armpits. This is a page that got bound in the diary
by mistake. It seems we were so happy once, just for a minute.
Then the sky got clouded, no one was happy or unhappy
forever, and the dream of the oppressor had come true.
HOW DANGEROUS
Like a summer kangaroo, each of us is a part
of the sun in its tumbling commotion. Like us
it made no move to right things, basking where the spent stream
trickled into the painted grotto.
Yes, and the snow-covered steppe, part of the same opera,
stretched into dimness, awaiting the tenor’s aria
of hopelessness. Yet no shadow fell across any of it.
It might have been real. Perhaps it was. Stranger tales
have been spun by travelers in unreassuring inns
while the last embers collapse one into the other, waking
no riposte. “It was at a garrison in central Tadzhikistan.”
And then sort of get used to it, and then not be there.
Each noted with pleasure that the other had aged,
realizing as well that new scenery would have to be sent for
and transported thousands of miles over narrow-gauge railroads—
a fountain in a park, a comforting school interior,
a happy hospital—and that, yes, it would be worth waiting for.
HUMBLE PIE
Various flavors recite us.
Meanwhile the inevitable Casper David Friedrich painting
of a ship pointing somehow upward has slipped in like fog,
surrounding us with vowels of regret
for the things we did not do
rising like a great shout above the barrel.
I was going to say I kissed you once
when you were asleep, and that you took no notice.
Since that day I have been as a traveler
who scurries to and fro among nettles, never sure
of where he wants to end up, a Wandering Jew
with attitude.
All this time the sun had its eye on us
as it was going down. Finally, when it hit the horizon,
it had something to say. Something like pick up your two weeks’ salary
on your way out
and don’t ever let me catch you on this planet again.
Fine, but on what token shore
are we to be misted? We all have to end up somewhere together.
Might as well be in last week’s parish newsletter
or in the elbows of a nubian concubine.
I mean, we are right, somehow right, which is the same
thing only more so. Sticks and tokens
are my hymn to the sun that has gone,
never to return, it seems,
though.
MORE HOCKETING
The fear was that they would not come.
The sea is getting rougher.
There is a different language singing from the wall.
No singing from the wall.
The fear was that they would come.
Here, have one of these.
Have this one. No, have this one.
To have followed an adage
almost from the beginning of life, through
suburban pleats and undergrowth shrugged
off like underwear on a dinner plate.
Then to emerge fast
into where it’s taken you:
no more figs, pretzels.
Anyway, we got here. Somehow. Now the question
is losing relevance since water is everywhere,
like a transparent mine. I lost my voice a long time ago.
Voices of children ripple endlessly,
endorsing new products. The lizard-god explodes.
The lady on the next bar-stool
but one didn’t seem to understand
you when you spoke of “old dark house” movies—
she thought there must be an old dark house somewhere
and you wanted to take her there.
Still, my arrival flabbergasted her,
since it suggested you had no such thing in mind,
at least for the present.
And today I am a mad Chinese monk
chasing after his temple. Which way did it go?
Around that corner of bushes? Or was there ever
a temple? It seemed more and more likely
that it was a figment of your imagination, a figment
perhaps like many another, only a little more underripe.
Undeterred, I chase it in the madness of the gathering dusk
that crashes into ponds, trees, scared bridges.
It had to have been back here somewhere—
As if the air were pure lightning
and the earth, its consort, benevolent thunder,
I can stand and finally breathe.
Light shrinks from the edges of my fingernails
and armpits. This is a page that got bound in the diary
by mistake. It seems we were so happy once, just for a minute.
Then the sky got clouded, no one was happy or unhappy
forever, and the dream of the oppressor had come true.
HOW DANGEROUS
Like a summer kangaroo, each of us is a part
of the sun in its tumbling commotion. Like us
it made no move to right things, basking where the spent stream
trickled into the painted grotto.
Yes, and the snow-covered steppe, part of the same opera,
stretched into dimness, awaiting the tenor’s aria
of hopelessness. Yet no shadow fell across any of it.
It might have been real. Perhaps it was. Stranger tales
have been spun by travelers in unreassuring inns
while the last embers collapse one into the other, waking
no riposte. “It was at a garrison in central Tadzhikistan.”
And then sort of get used to it, and then not be there.
Each noted with pleasure that the other had aged,
realizing as well that new scenery would have to be sent for
and transported thousands of miles over narrow-gauge railroads—
a fountain in a park, a comforting school interior,
a happy hospital—and that, yes, it would be worth waiting for.
HUMBLE PIE
Various flavors recite us.
Meanwhile the inevitable Casper David Friedrich painting
of a ship pointing somehow upward has slipped in like fog,
surrounding us with vowels of regret
for the things we did not do
rising like a great shout above the barrel.
I was going to say I kissed you once
when you were asleep, and that you took no notice.
Since that day I have been as a traveler
who scurries to and fro among nettles, never sure
of where he wants to end up, a Wandering Jew
with attitude.
All this time the sun had its eye on us
as it was going down. Finally, when it hit the horizon,
it had something to say. Something like pick up your two weeks’ salary
on your way out
and don’t ever let me catch you on this planet again.
Fine, but on what token shore
are we to be misted? We all have to end up somewhere together.
Might as well be in last week’s parish newsletter
or in the elbows of a nubian concubine.
I mean, we are right, somehow right, which is the same
thing only more so. Sticks and tokens
are my hymn to the sun that has gone,
never to return, it seems,
though.
MORE HOCKETING
The fear was that they would not come.
The sea is getting rougher.
There is a different language singing from the wall.
No singing from the wall.
The fear was that they would come.
Here, have one of these.
Have this one. No, have this one.
To have followed an adage
almost from the beginning of life, through
suburban pleats and undergrowth shrugged
off like underwear on a dinner plate.
Then to emerge fast
into where it’s taken you:
no more figs, pretzels.
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