One of my best, I think. A rather different response to 9/11. Any
reactions?
The Earthly Paradise
1
Hours of thunder; then,
across the hundred visible miles of plain,
large gestures of rain.
We're at Helen's place in the country.
I don't know what she sees.
The view
is the kind we like, the sublime
above the rim of a wineglass
from her broad, bright terrace
with its somewhat formal chairs.
Whatever she's doing, she likes to keep
one eye on the wall of mountains, now obscured,
as if, unsure of his nature,
she expects a god to descend
from the arrested glacier.
Perhaps she will know, and tell us when he comes.
We sit far apart.
Tom
is melancholy, having spent the night
at his desk, weeping. He insists
that what he is channeling
originated near a distant star
the light of whose explosion is now arriving,
as we may see
tonight, if the night is clear, from the roof-garden,
some distance westward of the Milky Way.
I don't know how to take this,
but am of the opinion
there is probably something
out there deserving weeping
(for which, as Tom would say, the eye evolved).
The rain drums
on our awning. The grey picks out
the red of impatiens,
red-pink of coleus; dims the mums
but not that ambiguous
yet vivid salmon-rose of Autumn Joy -
traversed by paths,
extending some way
below and before us, out to the edge of the waste.
When it clears
we see, framing the mountains,
from one spot in the landscape to another,
the whole rainbow.
2
Mornings, I pee and return to bed.
We cuddle under the white enormous comforter.
Outside, the town, the tenor bell
of a tram; the deeper tone
that strikes, ponders - strikes,
apologetically, again,
and will do the same to mark the afternoon.
After a while, the meticulously quiet
recycling truck.
Your breast against my arm, hair by my cheek,
the ceiling far away …
"Middle-aged lust! Yuck!" as you liked to say
when we kissed in public.
Yet here it is almost the sole topic
of literature,
the rest the anguished insights of the young
working towards it.
We reminisce about the chase,
trophy wives no one applauded,
arm candy without sweetness,
and how lucky we are,
until we arrive at silence
and a point
at which, in fall light
and a breeze that lifts the curtain,
although neither of us speaks
or looks at the other,
we sense the miracle about to happen.
You will look as you did at twenty
and I as I never was
if we are only patient a moment
(your hand soft on my chest),
if we are only patient.
3
At times, where we gather, the word goes round:
"We've caught an American!"
You'll never hear us say that.
With us, you don't have to pay
the dues of good behavior -
sitting alone in bistros with a book
for six months, as in Amsterdam,
or, in Stockholm, for years,
or Paris, forever
before you're accepted. No,
we invite you straight off
to exhibits, to readings
that go on for weeks,
the latest syncretic restaurant,
the mountains or weddings,
to our enigmatic ruins
by moonlight, our strangely moving parks,
our demonstrations.
It's like New York, you're immediately human
and never have to see
what is behind our compassion
when, beneath your well-known
politeness, you're maddened
by our lack of ambient
noise, efficiency,
computers, television;
by the grainy photographs,
the one grey intermittent page
of news.
4
Tom is abstractly considering
the End of Empire.
At least he says that's the object
of his nervous, jocular brooding
as we walk for miles beside the river,
yet his talk seems only about great men:
some of them slain in war, some by their wives,
by trusted lieutenant-colonels, the secret police,
heart failure, TOW missiles from rival clans, or merely
rusticated to Switzerland with their money.
He even mentions Hitler, so oddly postmodern
in the comprehensive narrowness
of his goals, his lack of pathos;
then digresses to something I can't follow
about the "digitalization
of experience" or vice versa.
"A Carlylean view," I say -
discreetly, as always with Tom.
The lamps go on along the balustrade;
the sun has set behind the palaces
lining the other bank.
In this half-light, half-warmth,
one expects to meet on these stones
top-hatted, high-buttoned ancestors
who would disapprove of our khakis
but would, I think, recognize
our look, our slow pace
at the other end of things.
"Not at all," he says - abruptly,
as if to negate the pause.
"Impersonal forces
decide, yet they all come down,
in the victim's eye, to somebody else's
trigger-finger.
There is a kind of humility
in gossip
about movers and shakers and their ends;
I mean, if we define 'humility' as
the imitation (in the classic sense)
of failure."
5
My wife wants to go shopping;
I want to stay at the tea house to work on a poem.
We will meet later by the structure
whose tower resembles a church-tower,
ambiguously at the north end of the park.
The flowers and vines, the look of the building
are those of a church, but different.
One theory about it is that it comes
from another history, with other faiths,
where it still mostly resides;
which is why it can be reached or located
but not both,
though it snaps into place for rendezvous.
We kiss, and I watch her leave, with the fond
focus that comes from remembering death.
As I work beneath the bright cool sun,
a small demonstration gathers near the bandstand
and moves forward.
Today their placards are all negative.
Sometimes they march in praise, but today
they proclaim how much better it would have been
if Gustav II hadn't died at Lützen;
remind us that William, surname unknown,
aged about 10, miner,
has remained unaccounted for
since 1724; protest the cowardly non-intervention
in Spain, plague, the fall of the Gracchi, the murder
of Giordano Bruno
and various people I don't know, the slave trade, cancer.
The overarching banners are the usual -
fraying a bit (they should be fixed up) but stirring.
At times these groups get a bit hysterical,
with self-flagellation, breast-beating
(like Shi'ites for Ali), but today
the prevailing mood is as gay
as the yellow ribbons.
I return to my poem,
which partly eludes me:
"On the plains, I look to the horizon
and invite the mountains into myself
but remain small.
From the mountains, I gaze at the plains
with their fields and meandering rivers,
yet the light in a distant window remains distant.
From the ground I glance at a hawk;
from the air, the earth slips indifferently by;
and I know if I could reach the sea" -
I know, I know, but can't go on from there.
6
Hal's rebellious daughter Mina lies
in the great bed of the Elector,
watching the Elector undress. Her white hand
savors the curtained tapestries,
then the rose-scented damask quilt, which
she lowers. Her look,
the attitude
of her bare arms along the pillows,
are hotter than the flambeaux lining the walls -
hot enough to melt the gilt
from the room's many putti.
If the Elector were more cruel, less handsome,
less powerful than he is, love
would not be an issue.
If he were less cruel, less in debt, it wouldn't be.
"The manor," she smiles. It is
a private shorthand: she might
have referred to the villages,
the sum involved, the famine
she will take off his hands, or one
of the many jokes about women
who mention things at the last moment.
And his bark of assent is distinct
from his gaze, and the erection
pointing at her like a cannon.
He pays her more attention
at greater length, with less
vanity than she expected,
and she is well pleased
as, withdrawing from his snores,
she dresses in guttering torchlight,
traverses corridors, opens the great door,
measures the cloudy dawn and leaves the museum.
7
Tom was neurasthenic, I
the "last romantic," Hal
mildly brooding and stolid
when we hung out together in the old days.
Here, Hal can rarely be talked into leaving
his gabled and mullioned place overlooking the park.
It is like the house of the war minister
of a long, successful dictatorship:
no wall or shelf bare of mementos
of armies and causes -
often opposed, but comradely
in his chandelier light;
each black and scarlet poster or shrapnel sculpture
labeled and lovingly dusted.
The furniture is comfortable, plush.
The tables and baronial sideboards hold
Cycladic figures, local ceramics
that reassure Hal's friends and other guests
whose mental horizon is taste.
When the laughter or the music become too great
he positions himself - not gloomily, though heavily -
by a window, and whether he
is looking out or in
his tone is equally private, unportentous:
"Only power exists.
The prayer for deliverance,
the thanks of the delivered imply power.
How love pertains, or occurs, I have
no more idea than undeluded lovers.
The words of power are alone valid
and power achieved has little use for words.
When all the green is gone, a larger space
of grey will suffice;
when there is no more space, another's meat.
True masters sit by their televisions,
enjoying the show, and feel
no more concern than I for original thought."
Conversation stops a moment,
but only out of fondness or respect.
One thinks how well Hal's done it
this time, compared to last,
and of how kind he is, how good a host,
proceeding from group to group, denying himself,
cross-fertilizing - till someone capable sings,
with Helen, perhaps, accompanying
on the harpsichord.
8
As I would have been a poet
in any world
and therefore never quite at one with it,
so you must know that, in any world,
you made that world worthwhile.
One day I will seem distracted
over breakfast and one of those great,
thick books I never finish -
perhaps Hans Blumenberg's
*Legitimacy of the Modern Age* -
and you'll know the time has come
when you, unprepared, must act
the wife of a soldier -
make all the arrangements; mourn -
as I, even less suitably,
must act like a soldier
who has been called up.
For telomeres may grow again,
rededicating muscle, bone, and glance,
and tiny armies of enlightenment
surround the terrorist cell;
yet the mind, despite the flattery
about adaptability
we pay it, sees
itself on the verge of losing
its one idea,
and in that realization a last duty.
That day, you must clear the dishes
I never minded washing,
and think how, where we came from,
a man with a gun
on a street makes others flee;
but that here, as I walk
through cleanliness and quiet,
people come up, hug, and weep.
They know they are, as little as myself,
my target.
Officials, friends will find me
in the badlands west of town,
our Gehinnom -
the place called *Menefrego, "Don't-give-a-damn."
The view is of rock and sand -
uninspiring,
yet sufficient staging area
for this patrol.
At the end of which, who knows?
I may bring down God
with one bullet.
9
I know if I could reach the sea
I would find myself accompanied
by the finest of all battalions -
weary from marching but unwearied,
their eyes bright with whatever replaced irony.
And, gazing from a height,
we would be wholly fused
by a bolt from the cloudless sun
into that energy
which let us reach the sea.
I know if I could reach the sea,
the warm sands and the sand
the waves caress and cool
would host a thousand women -
all supremely lovely,
intelligent and nude;
and some would turn to welcome us
while others went on talking
without fear,
their eyes bright with whatever conquered fear.
Instantly they would dress and enlist,
and instantly we would accept them
and begin training there for our next campaign;
and suddenly a helicopter
would drop us a machine to reverse time,
and freighters would appear, full of children,
each carrying enough wealth to absorb him,
and on the far horizon we would watch
a slow tanker bearing
across the sea of oil its load of water.
10
Indian Summer. The gang
repairs again to the country, to Helen's.
We roam for hours in the gardens
and I, for one, am pleased
with the warm sky above the wintry earth;
because it is the opposite of,
and therefore like, the cool wind over flowers
I like.
Transmission from the supernova,
according to Tom, has ceased.
Whoever they were a million years ago,
they are out of misery
and Tom's mood no more than usually grim.
When we gather around eleven for drinks in the library
we drink to them.
Even Mina has come. She avoids
Hal, who moons about like a scorned lover.
Yet once I saw them talking
in the slit of light that separates the drapes
of the portrait gallery.
He was gesturing at the pictures
and seemed to be trying to explain something to her.
She has brought a group of her friends,
who are bored on principle.
They fuck between the hedgerows of the maze,
and have brought with them the noise
one senses through their headphones -
that indestructible tendril from outside
that bears within it all of the outside
but which we allow because we love our children.
Yet Mina and a few of the others sit,
patient at first, then rapt
when Helen plays her recordings.
Tonight it's the Schwarzkopf/Böhm Lied von der Erde.
The kids are in awe of Helen; that priestess air
of hers controls them.
I suppose that's why it's there.
And the song rises, the music
rises … and
holding my wife's hand on a far sofa,
I wonder, If words cannot attain this immediacy,
what vital, changeable truth does music fail?
And, fiercely ensconced
in a body, half out of time
and almost out of words, almost I have it
until my gaze drifts past my friends and finds
a full moon upon distant snow-capped peaks,
beyond which lie our minefields and our SAMs,
our sensors and our soldiers who keep out
the hungry and the angry and believers.
September, 2001
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