His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

  178

  Above the lindens tops of poplars waved

  in an old French story, according to Henry

  who shook himself & shaved,

  rid of that dream. Rid slowly of all his dreams

  he faced the wicked ordinary day

  in a tumult of seems

  whilst wanderers on coasts lookt for the man

  actual, having encountered all his ghosts

  off & on, by the way.

  Murders occur in rain. Work while you can,

  his hopeless spirit thrived to him to say

  along those treacherous coasts.

  We are struck down, repeat the chroniclers,

  having glowed. Henry from hearsay

  can vouch for most of this.

  Leaving the known world with an awkward kiss

  he haunted, back among his colleagues in this verse

  constructed in angry play.

  179

  A terrible applause pulls Henry’s ear,

  before the stampede: seats on seats collapse,

  they are goring each other,

  I donno if we’ll get away. Who care?

  Why don’t we fold us down in our own laps,

  long-no-see colleague & brother?

  —I don’t think’s time to, time to, Bones.

  Tomorrow be more shows; be special need

  for rest & rehearse now.

  Let’s wander on the sands, with knitting bones,

  while the small waves please the poor seaweed

  so little. —The grand plough

  distorts the Western Sky. Back to lurk!

  We cannot rave ourselves. Let’s hide. It’s well

  or ill,—there’s a bell—so far,

  the history of the Species: work, work, work.

  All right, I’ll stay. The hell with the true knell,

  we’ll meander as far as the bar.

  180

  The Translator—I

  (Scene: Leningrad, the trials of the young poet Joseph Brodsky for ‘parasitism.’ The judge’s name deserves record: one Mme Saveleva. Let her be remembered.)

  Henry rushes not in here. The matter’s their matter,

  and Hart Crane drowned himself some over money,

  but it is Henry’s mutter

  that seldom has a judge so coarse borne herself coarsely

  and often has a poet worked so hard for so small

  but they was not prosecuted

  in this world. It’s Henry’s matter, after all,

  who is ashamed of much of the Soviet world

  in their odium of imagination.

  Translated not just Pole but Serbian

  (a tough one, pal—vreme, vatre, vrtovi)

  & Cuban: O a bevy!

  They flocked to him like women, languages.

  Bees honey but wound—African worst—Pasternak bees,

  whom they not dared to touch

  though after they ruin his friend, like this young man

  who only wanted to walk beside the canals

  talking about poetry and make it.

  181

  The Translator—II

  Because I am not able to forget,

  Henry is dreaming of society,

  one where the gifted & hard-working

  young poet is cherished, kissed as a king

  to come, a prized comer. Ah but see

  them baleful ignorant

  justicer & witnesses, corrupt by purity,

  lacking all sense of others, lacking sense,

  but liars too, pal.

  I snuff the proper vomit of a State

  where every tree is adjudged equal tall,

  in faith without debate.

  I beg to place in evidence, vicious mother:

  That in the west of my land tower Douglas firs,

  taller than others.

  If then a judge grides to one of them ‘You are sick,

  lazy: Siberia!’ what gross metaphors

  shall we invent for this judge?

  (The sentence: forced labour for five years in a ‘distant locality.’)

  182

  Buoyant, chockful of stories, Henry lingered

  at party after party, a bitter-ender.

  Long when the rest were asleep

  he had much to relate, more to debate

  if anyone would keep him company

  toward fragrant dawn.

  The river of his wide mind broke the jam,

  somebody called his wild wit riverine,

  sprayed thought like surf

  assigned to angles none, curve upon curve,

  such he could praise himself— —Mr Bones, you am.

  Let’s have a ritornello.

  —Let’s have a ritornello. You, me, her.

  I loves you both and therefore all are bitter.

  Let’s have a ritornello.

  He loved them many & he loved them well

  and he held the world up like a big sea-shell

  or heather-ale, harkening to follow.

  183

  News of God

  Eastward he longs, before, well, any bad

  the silly fellow did. Then he remembers,

  oh, the worst thing of all.

  But he only remembers it as having been had,

  not as itself—like a list of summers

  surging into Fall.

  High on which list lay one when Love licked him,

  her own ice-cream cone, melting. Honey love:

  again.

  Swung hard a blind, hairy heavy grim

  & unrememberable, over enough

  of all that had been. Then

  they were forever together. Her lip pearled,

  sprang wet his front, for fear, the winning Prince,

  who called back something … a plea?

  Passing out of pity into the New World,

  I amounted up. I sum it at five scents.

  Bid for me.

  184

  Failed as a makar, nailed as scholar, failed

  as a father & a man, hailed for a lover,

  Henry slumped down, pored it over.

  We c-can’t win here, he stammered to himself.

  With his friend Phil and also his friend Ralph

  he mourned across or he wailed.

  His friend Boyd waited, all behind the nurses,

  the simple nurses pretty as you will,

  and emerged, and gave.

  He was as ill as well one can be, ill.

  When he could read he studied for gravestones

  the Geographic, with curses.

  And neither did his friend Boyd haul him up

  entirely, nor did Ralph & Phil succeed

  dispersing his gross fears.

  He leaned on Heaven; no. Black would he bleed

  to tests. Their EEG for months, for years,

  went mad. So did not he.

  185

  The drill was after or is into him.

  Whirr went a bite. He should not feel this bad.

  A truly first-class drill.

  Nothing distinctly hurts. It reminds him.

  —Like it makes you blink, Mr Bones, of was & will?

  —Very much so.

  Conundrums at the gum-line.

  I’ve been jumpy for the last 37 years,

  pal.

  The more I lessen to, the bore I hears.

  Drugging & prodding me! ‘His Majesty,

  the body.’

  ‘Gynecomastia’ the surgeon called,

  ‘the man is old & bald

  and has habits. In this circumstance

  I cannot save him.’ The older you get, at once

  the better death looks and

  the more fearful & intolerable.

  186

  There is a swivelly grace that’s up from grace

  I both remember & know. Into your face

  for summers now—for three—

  I have been looking, and for winters O

  and never at any ti
me have you resembled snow.

  And at the ceremony

  after His Honor swivelled us a judge

  my best friend stood in tears, at both his age

  and undeclining mine.

  In E(e)rie Plaza then we kept on house

  and months O soon we saw that pointy-nose

  was destined to combine

  her blood with Henry’s in a little thing.

  If all went well. It all went better, mingling,

  and Little sprang out.

  The parking-lot tilted & made a dance,

  ditching Jesuits. The sun gave it a glance

  and went about & about.

  187

  Them lady poets must not marry, pal.

  Miss Dickinson—fancy in Amherst bedding hér.

  Fancy a lark with Sappho,

  a tumble in the bushes with Miss Moore,

  a spoon with Emily, while Charlotte glare.

  Miss Bishop’s too noble-O.

  That was the lot. And two of them are here

  as yet, and—and: Sylvia Plath is not.

  She—she her credentials

  has handed in, leaving alone two tots

  and widower to what he makes of it—

  surviving guy, &

  when Tolstoy’s pathetic widow doing her whung

  (after them decades of marriage) & kids, she decided he was queer

  & loving his agent.

  Wherefore he rush off, leaving two journals, & die.

  It is a true error to marry with poets

  or to be by them.

  188

  There is a kind of undetermined hair,

  half-tan, to which he was entirely unable to fail to respond

  in woman, a poisoned

  reminiscence: a kiss, or so; there.

  The lady is not pretty but has eyes,

  and seems to be kind.

  Convulsed with love, who cares? There is that hair

  unbuttoned. Loves unbutton loves, we’re bare,

  somewhere in my mind.

  When this occurs I begin to think in Spanish

  when Miss Cienfuegos, who looked after me

  & after me in Pasadena.

  Murdered the ruses that would quack me clear

  The orchard squeaks. I look less weird

  without my beard

  Cal has always manifested a most surprising affection

  for Matthew Arnold,—who is not a rat but whom

  I can quite take or leave.

  189

  The soft small snow gangs over my heavy house.

  My ladies are well gone—but gone where? to Iowa!

  the worst of them many states.

  Bless the state of man of the man in Iowa.

  One lady’s left, the dog. She & I for days

  have here to hang out.

  My lady tucked our Twissy on a train,

  stepped up herself, and they were off, for friends.

  Their taxi wobbled away.

  Our car won’t start. It’s twelve below. It won’t rain

  is the sole good news. Maybe in Ioway

  it’s worse. They’ll get the ‘bends’

  as ladies & gentlemen do coming from Iowa,

  pal. The gross snow hoods on the useless car.

  We can’t & must have that,

  Bhuvaneswar Dog & I, spared Iowa.

  The almost empty house in a tit for tat

  is becoming a genuine bat.

  190

  The doomed young envy the old, the doomed old the dead young.

  It is hard & hard to get these matters straight.

  Keats glares at Yeats

  who full of honours died & being old sung

  his strongest. Henry appreciated that hate,

  but what now of Yeats’

  lucky of-Fanny-free feeling for Keats

  who doomed by Mistress Gonne proved barren years

  and saw his friends all leave,

  stale his rewards turn, & cut off then at his peak,

  promising in his seventies! all fears

  save that one failed to deceive.

  I scrounge ensamples violent by choice.

  In most what matters, Henry wondered. Let’s lie.

  All we fall down & die

  after a course worse of a stoppage of voice

  so terrible I have no more to say

  but best is the short day.

  191

  The autumn breeze was light & bright. A small bird

  flew in the back door and the beagle got it

  (half-beagle) on the second try.

  My wife kills flies & feeds them to the dog,

  five last night, plus one Rufus snapped herself.

  This is a house of death

  and one of Henry’s oldest friends was killed,

  it came on a friend’ radio, this week,

  whereat Henry wept.

  All those deaths keep Henry pale & ill

  and unable to sail through the autumn world & weak,

  a disadvantage of surviving.

  The leaves fall, lives fall, every little while

  you can count with stirring love on a new loss

  & an emptier place.

  The style is black jade at all seasons, the style

  is burning leaves and a shelving of moss

  over each planted face.

  192

  Love me love me love me love me love me

  I am in need thereof, I mean of love,

  I married her.

  That was a hasty & a violent step

  like an unhopeful Kierkegardian leap,

  wasn’t it, dear?

  Slowly the sloth moved on in search of prey,

  I see that. The jungles flash with light,

  in some angles dark as midnight,

  and chuck chuck chuck the spark did make a noise

  when he cross the street on de electric wires

  but that sloth was all right.

  Swiftly the wind rose, gorgons showed their teeth,

  while the bombs bombed on empty territory beneath.

  I love you.

  Will I forget ever my sole guru

  far in Calcutta. I do not think so.

  Nor will I you.

  193

  Henry’s friend’s throat hurt. (Yvor Winters’ dead.)

  Reason & Nature cried out ‘Operate!’

  Of his high office

  little he made with the trouble between his head

  & chest. (Winters’ last words marshalled with hate.)

  Peculiar bliss

  comes in relax. Decisions medics faced

  (He thought the world of the East Coast: enemy.)

  the Mayor faced no more,

  relying in their hands, on memory based

  & unforeseen conditions. (Henry set high

  that Winters, his own sore

  foe, like his cancer.) Now these two good men

  wise in their years, ill in their bodies, lay

  one gone, one to arrive

  fixed, for our little time, & get up again:

  Hurrah! (Alas.) Praising their—we may—

  criteria & overdrive.

  194

  If all must hurt at once, let yet more hurt now,

  so I’ll be ready, Dr God. Púsh on me.

  Give it to Henry harder.

  There lives content: one area, taking a bow,

  unbothered, whére I can’t remember, lovely,

  somewhere down there,

  or, better still, up here, where forest fires

  burn on for years. From the fire-towers watch is kept

  on diminuendo flaming.

  Each jack be the custodian of his desires

  from which he sprang & sullen then he slept

  until a coda of blaming.

  —You do. She do. I will be with you-all,

  in a little little silence, Mr Bones.

  —I see I depend on you

  for nothing.—Try Dr God, clown a ball,<
br />
  low come to you in the blue sad darkies’ moans

  worsing than yours, too.

  195

  I stalk my mirror down this corridor

  my pieces litter. Oklahoma, sore

  from my great loss leaves me.

  We pool our knowless in my seminar,

  question all comers that they may not jar

  their intrepidity

  before the Awenger rises in the corpse’s way

  as inconvenient as the bloodscoot sway

  of them Aztecs’ real priests.

  All my pieces kneel and we all scream:

  History’s Two-legs was a heartless dream,

  reality is

  & reskinned knuckles & forgiveness & toys

  unbreakable & thunder that excites & annoys

  but’s powerless to harm.

  Reality’s the growing again of the right arm

  (which so we missed in our misleading days)

  & the popping back in of eyes.

  196

  I see now all these deaths are to one end—

  whereby I lost a foe, friend upon friend—

  room.

  We wonder guided: it comes to all the same,

  we too’ll perform our rapture as of whom

  later my love in whose name.

  Fresh spring them enemies, decent fall the cloths

  over a high income.

  Vanish me later: here I’ll stay while some

  first put their glasses on the windowsill:

  headlines the next day screamed until

  even at Harvard the story was moths.

  Harvard is after Henry, and that’s not new.

  ‘I’ll see you later’ cried the crippled soul

  one destination behind.

  Soul upon soul, in the high Andes, blue

  but blind for turns. And this is where the mind

  stops. Death is a box.

  197

  (I saw in my dream

  the great lost cities, Macchu Picchu, Cambridge Mass., Angkor

  I wonder if it’s raining on Macchu Picchu or

  Cambridge Mass, as here,

  the terraces alive with magical rain

  the dead all in their places, all insane

  & trying to sit up from fear,

  I saw it all, the peopled terraces

  as once I suppose they were, as we are,