No Outlet
There are evenings when history,
my subject-matter, my grotesque
unamerican faithless love,
casts me out as if she or I
were illness ... Under the scruffy trees
where the neighboring street dead-ends,
bats flicker, and the birds
disperse, or sleep in the higher branches.
Humidity briefly releases
its probing and demeaning grip;
subjectively the heat appears
to suit the last half-hour of light.
Most cars are home;
four empty spaces index fear or ambition.
Beneath one living-room window,
uncurtained and on show, above
a gray garage-door where the ivy spreads,
another inbox has been added
and piled high.
Whoever lives there is at least
the secret sage of the neighborhood,
dispensing his fierce wisdom on his blog.
A passing Weimaraner likes
the old-world smell of my cigar;
his silent mistress doesn’t.
Both live, she no doubt proudly, in the now.
And on the wall of my study
hangs a sword. Two feet long,
double-edged and curved; still sharp
though black with age; its handle ivory,
too small for my hand. It belonged
to a pirate. He never knew
when there were soldiers aboard
the slow majestic junks that plied the Straits;
took his chances. Recently, beak-nosed strangers
in big ships with amazing guns
had appeared, also after spices.
These one avoided, unless one was clever.
He was clever. Low in the water,
without a shadow in the Dutchman’s wake;
grinning for blood;
the moon behind the fast clouds like his sword.
|