A slow, late response -
I think "Dray" is a terrific poem Frederick,
Brian
--- On Thu, 18/3/10, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: 3 poems
To: [log in to unmask]
Received: Thursday, 18 March, 2010, 2:13 AM
No Sign of the Cavalry
And if they did come, what price rescue?
For the girls, charm to the brim
of the Stetson, “ma’am” this “ma’am” that, and,
in the first dark arroyo, knifepoint.
The contempt of the absolute gambler
who raises in every round, never wins,
but if he does is the Weltgeist.
Who sees in the sublime vanishing
forests only timber.
The Injuns who surround our Volkswagen
bus view things holistically.
Walk light on the land. Have hyperdeveloped
senses. Know the name
of every totemic deer, rabbit,
and raindrop. Own all things in common,
recycle the dead, never traumatize
children, and would be entirely admirable
except that they want to scalp us.
Dray
God knows where he kept, how he fed it.
Required two spaces.
Looked strange between cars.
Mother and some neighbors –
entranced as if childhood
were back from an illusion
that it had gone – hurried out
to handle, haggle, buy
lettuce that may or may not
have been rounder, greener, more real than storebought.
I knew cars, but this –
the horse – was alarming:
looking down, considering me
from a weary alien eye,
then turning to hide behind blinkers.
*Armoire animée,* as Ponge said,
as years later I read.
With a smell like old, rancid things.
Mysterious earthblobs (turnips, rutabagas) shared
the cart. The man also smelled
and glared. I remember that glare.
When I see students plinking
diminutive keys under desktops,
glancing watchfully, not guiltily
up, then back,
rearranging the subtle plug in the ear
and less and less literate each year,
I mimic it. He liked Mother;
they talked a long time. But somehow
he thought I was the future and all wrong.
Breath of Air
Someone was there in the night.
Gone now. So as not
to distract him, perhaps,
or tempt or shame him into relationship.
Am I ashamed? he wonders.
Is solitude still voluptuous?
He could make inquiries; roam
the corridors in search of her,
if that’s the price …
Has the time come for gentle melancholy?
Instead he showers. Breakfast
awaits when he emerges,
as always. In response
to subtle measurements of need
and mood, it consists
today of perfect eggs and sausages
beside the usual perfect bread.
He might like a newspaper –
there is probably news somewhere –
but finds, again, he’s glad
to trace the variations of morning
from the river to the snow
on the peaks above it, glaciers and hawks
above those, the sea beyond and around
the mountains.
The window, as vast as the view, copies its curve,
and every day he reads the view like news.
Then he turns to the book, in thin leather,
that shares his table. Its characters suffer
as much as his imagination
permits, and will triumph, finally,
beyond his boldest hunch.
So he hopes. Each day he works,
and words arrange
themselves in stately print on the fine paper.
Though actually things haven’t been going well,
even before the distraction of
last night. Blankness reclaims.
He needs some notes.
They’re in his room back in town.
And a talisman, in a drawer of a dusty bureau.
So he dresses and leaves. The corridors
jog so as to avoid
oppressive endlessness. Are as inviting
as the suites, with nooks and landings looking
out on a variety of grandeurs.
Far ahead someone waves, disappears.
The writer wonders if politeness requires
he seek out his host. Of course not;
he can stay, leave and return
forever. The will of guests is absolute.
Beyond the majestic door,
the wind can’t decide
between the early bite of spring and fall.
It is as pleasant as reviews
that say you have crystallized your times, or time.
He rests on a bench on a wooded ridge.
Before him the land slopes away.
Hills compensate for mountains; troupes of lakes
receding to the horizon, for the sea.
In however many days he needs,
his ocher town,
static, sullen, cowed by space, escapable,
will rise on its dry plain.
But now the breeze changes, contains
a doubt. What if words
are really, loathsomely, equal,
fit to be thrown
by anyone, changed anyhow –
as if by a magician, barely attempting
to conceal the fraud – on some sort of screen?
What if there is no hierarchy, no patron?
Almost he doesn’t dare to look behind him
for fear there will be nowhere to return.
Almost the immensities he assumes
on every side collapse to leave
some stinking village …
Then he shrugs and rises, swings his arms
as he descends into the day.
The moment becomes merely an experience.
For in that universe I, the host,
keep ambiguity and irony
in my vaults; what reaches for them,
and that from which it extends, are happiness.
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