I want to mention Flying Leaves primarily, and how much I like it. I spent
more time with it than with the others. Thanks for the fine work you are
doing, Frederick!
Sheila
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 5:54 PM, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Flying Leaves
>
>
> Neither their politely contemptuous tone
> nor being unable to see them,
> and all the significance I know
> applies to the latter, deters me.
> They think I’m where they want me
> but I’m where I have to be:
> flipping prints and canvases
> in rooms below the rooms below
> the museum. In flickering light
> and bad air, a collection without catalog
> or order, and likely never to be shown.
> *Do you know which it is?*
> one asks. *I’ll know when I see it*,
> I say, which earns an almost covert laugh:
> this isn’t how one sees or seeks or knows.
> Much of the work is from other planets,
> which heretofore I would have killed to glimpse,
> but now it seems all variations,
> with unexpected shadings, on too-
> familiar themes. Most of the rest
> concerns woe, albeit surprisingly defeated:
> scythes sharpened, castle stormed
> and taken, the central committee
> broadcasting real statistics to real delight.
> These too I filter past. And suddenly
> it’s there – there and not Buddhist,
> nor lost in style, yet with no faux-
> naïveté to make one embarrassed.
> He sits beneath flying leaves
> that are somehow more or less than leaves,
> like the hill below – that “somehow,”
> plus his unaffected smile, enough for me.
> The light dims, only tentatively returns.
> There’s not enough power down here.
> And my companions want to leave,
> for they are shadows and fear
> the darkness I’m attempting not to fear.
>
>
>
>
> The Kid
>
>
> No one recalled how the Kid joined the gang.
> Was he found freezing
> in the doorway of their bar?
> Or stealing pizza from someone’s floor
>
> while everyone slept? He began, no doubt,
> with a beating, but the boss
> (who was called Big Man) felt a sort
> of fondness. Don’t you have
>
> a Mama or Grandmamma? he asked.
> But the Kid apparently didn’t.
> He answered every question
> but always with a whine
>
> that annoyed the others. But Big Man
> said Let him be. Which didn’t stop them
> or make him stop them
> from playing cruel jokes, and making
>
> an occasional quasi-bitch
> of the Kid. To all of which
> he responded impassively, which counted,
> they decided, as courage. Some fool
>
> once mentioned school. Everyone laughed.
> Big Man said I’ll teach him
> whatever he needs. So the Kid
> stood lookout and ran
>
> deliveries, competently, and
> eventually pulled a trigger,
> but missed
> and mumbled and whined
>
> when he had to do that. Years
> passed. Big Man noticed
> that the Kid didn’t grow.
> Which he thought was funny, and drew
>
> a mustache on him, made him shave
> nothing off, had
> the others rub him
> against some serious or laughing bitch
>
> to no effect. A day came
> when Big Man lay in bed
> with tubes in his arms and cops
> at the door, and because
>
> of the cops or being dead,
> no visitors. Except the Kid.
> Strange child, said the boss (more or less),
> was it you who betrayed me? And the Kid
>
> said No, but it doesn’t matter.
> With illusion departing
> you may be prepared to learn
> there is only humiliation and pain.
>
> Embrace the former to lose the latter.
>
>
>
>
> Heather
>
>
> A disaster worse than the oil spill,
> this time on land and in the air.
> This time no managers appear,
> having realized that people of their class,
> even those eventually to be sacrificed,
> can never strike the proper human note.
> This time all corporate response –
> evasive, forthright, legalistic, pained –
> is funneled through a girl I knew in college.
> I recognize her instantly. Sit rapt
> through the long months, windows closed
> against the heat and the corrupted air,
> watching her. She hasn’t changed;
> has only grown into herself.
> That gesture – bosom slightly forward,
> chin down, eyes large and lifted
> as if pleading, enthralled, or overwhelmed –
> seduced more than half our college;
> once made me sweat to entice her
> with clever anecdotes. She listened, drinking
> moderately, then with calm precision
> told me about her major and her plans,
> implicitly portraying potential consorts.
> Now she assures us everything
> possible is being done. Is lucid
> and simple about the technologies
> that may cure us. Almost weeps
> for the casualties. Says she has wept
> when talking to the families.
> Kneels gracefully to look at dying cows,
> her eyes as sad as theirs. Seems not to cough
> as much as I do, as much, I suppose,
> as everyone does. Or at all.
> At last there’s only her, walking through fields,
> the mist at her feet a bit like her hair,
> still with the cordless mike, still comforting.
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