He’ll be on the move from now on. Traveling night and day,
without cease, all of him, every last exploding piece
of him. Until he reaches a place only he knows about.
An Arctic place, cold and frozen. Where he thinks,
This is far enough. This is the place.
And lies down, for he is tired.
Sleeping
He slept on his hands.
On a rock.
On his feet.
On someone else’s feet.
He slept on buses, trains, in airplanes.
Slept on duty.
Slept beside the road.
Slept on a sack of apples.
He slept in a pay toilet.
In a hayloft.
In the Super Dome.
Slept in a Jaguar, and in the back of a pickup.
Slept in theaters.
In jail.
On boats.
He slept in line shacks and, once, in a castle.
Slept in the rain.
In blistering sun he slept.
On horseback.
He slept in chairs, churches, in fancy hotels.
He slept under strange roofs all his life.
Now he sleeps under the earth.
Sleeps on and on.
Like an old king.
The River
I waded, deepening, into the dark water.
Evening, and the push
and swirl of the river as it closed
around my legs and held on.
Young grilse broke water.
Parr darted one way, smolt another.
Gravel turned under my boots as I edged out.
Watched by the furious eyes of king salmon.
Their immense heads turned slowly,
eyes burning with fury, as they hung
in the deep current.
They were there. I felt them there,
and my skin prickled. But
there was something else.
I braced with the wind on my neck.
Felt the hair rise
as something touched my boot.
Grew afraid at what I couldn’t see.
Then of everything that filled my eyes —
that other shore heavy with branches,
the dark lip of the mountain range behind.
And this river that had suddenly
grown black and swift.
I drew breath and cast anyway.
Prayed nothing would strike.
The Best Time of the Day
Cool summer nights.
Windows open.
Lamps burning.
Fruit in the bowl.
And your head on my shoulder.
These the happiest moments in the day.
Next to the early morning hours,
of course. And the time
just before lunch.
And the afternoon, and
early evening hours.
But I do love
these summer nights.
Even more, I think,
than those other times.
The work finished for the day.
And no one who can reach us now.
Or ever.
Scale
FOR RICHARD MARIUS
It’s afternoon when he takes off
his clothes and lies down.
Lights his cigarette. Ashtray
balanced over his heart.
The chest rising, then
sinking
as he draws, holds it,
and lets the smoke out in spurts.
The shades are drawn. His eyelids
closing. It’s like after sex,
a little. But only a little.
Waves thrash below the house.
He finishes the cigarette.
All the while thinking
of Thomas More who,
according to Erasmus, “liked eggs”
and never lay with his second wife.
The head stares down at its trunk
until it thinks it has it
memorized and could recognize
it anywhere, even in death.
But now the desire to sleep
has left him, utterly.
He is still remembering More
and his hair shirt. After thirty years of wear
he handed it over, along with his cloak,
before embracing his executioner.
He gets up to raise the shades.
Light slices the room in two.
A boat slowly rounds the hook
with its sails lowered.
There’s a milky haze
over the water. A silence there.
It’s much too quiet.
Even the birds are still.
Somewhere, off in another room,
something has been decided.
A decision reached, papers signed
and pushed aside.
He keeps on staring at the boat.
The empty rigging, the deserted deck.
The boat rises. Moves closer.
He peers through the glasses.
The human figure, the music
it makes, that’s what’s missing
from the tiny deck.
A deck no broader than a leaf.
So how could it support a life?
Suddenly, the boat shudders.
Stops dead in the water.
He sweeps the glasses over the deck.
But after a while his arms grow
unbearably heavy. So he drops them,
just as he would anything unbearable.
He lays the glasses on the shelf.
Begins dressing. But the image
of the boat stays. Drifting.
Stays awhile longer. Then bobs away.
Forgotten about as he takes up
his coat. Opens the door. Goes out.
Company
This morning I woke up to rain
on the glass. And understood
that for a long time now
I’ve chosen the corrupt when
I had a choice. Or else,
simply, the merely easy.
Over the virtuous. Or the difficult.
This way of thinking happens
when I’ve been alone for days.
Like now. Hours spent
in my own dumb company.
Hours and hours
much like a little room.
With just a strip of carpet to walk on.
Yesterday
Yesterday I dressed in a dead man’s
woolen underwear. Then drove to the end
of an icy road where I passed
some time with Indian fishermen.
I stepped into water over my boots.
Saw four pintails spring from the creek.
Never mind that my thoughts were elsewhere
and I missed the perfect shot.
Or that my socks froze. I lost track
of everything and didn’t make it back
for lunch. You could say
it wasn’t my day. But it was!
And to prove it I have this little bite
she gave me last night. A bruise
coloring my lip today, to remind me.
The Schooldesk
The fishing in Lough Arrow is piss-poor.
Too much rain, too much high water.
They say the mayfly hatch has come
and gone. All day I stay put
by the window of the borrowed cottage
in Ballindoon, waiting for a break
in the weather. A turf fire smokes
in the grate, though no romance
in this or anything else
here. Just outside the window an old iron
and wood schooldesk keeps me company.
Something is carved into the desk under
the inkwell. It doesn’t matter
what; I’m not curious. It’s enough
to imagine the instrument
that gouged those letters.
My dad is dead,
and Mother slips in and out of her mind.
I can’t begin to say how bad it is
for my grown-up son and daughter.
They took one long look at me
and tried to make all my mistakes.
More’s the pity. Bad luck for them,
my sweet children. And haven’t I mentioned
my first wife yet? What’s wrong with me
that I haven’t? Well, I can’t anymore.
Shouldn’t, anyway. She claims
I say too much as it is.
Says she’s happy now, and grinds her teeth.
Says the Lord Jesus loves her,
and she’ll get by. That love
of my life over and done with. But what
does that say about my life?
My loved ones are thousands of miles away.
But they’re in this cottage too,
in Ballindoon. And in every
hotel room I wake up in these days.
The rain has let up.
And the sun has appeared and small
clouds of unexpected mayflies,
proving someone wrong. We move
to the door in a group, my family and I.
And go outside. Where I bend over the desk
and run my fingers across its rough surface.
Someone laughs, someone grinds her teeth.
And someone, someone is pleading with me.
Saying, “For Christ’s sake, don’t
turn your back on me.”
An ass and cart pass down the lane.
The driver takes the pipe from his mouth
and raises his hand.
There’s the smell of lilacs in the damp air.
Mayflies hover over the lilacs,
and over the heads of my loved ones.
Hundreds of mayflies.
I sit on the bench. Lean
over the desk. I can remember
myself with a pen. In the beginning,
looking at pictures of words.
Learning to write them, slowly,
one letter at a time. Pressing down.
A word. Then the next.
The feeling of mastering something.
The excitement of it.
Pressing hard. At first
the damage confined to the surface.
But then deeper.
These blossoms. Lilacs.
How they fill the air with sweetness!
Mayflies in the air as the cart
goes by—as the fish rise.
Cutlery
Trolling the coho fly twenty feet behind the boat,
under moonlight, when the huge salmon hit it!
And lunged clear of the water. Stood, it seemed,
on its tail. Then fell back and was gone.
Shaken, I steered on into the harbor as if
nothing had happened. But it had.
And it happened in just the way I’ve said.
I took the memory with me to New York,
and beyond. Took it wherever I went.
All the way down here onto the terrace
of the Jockey Club in Rosario, Argentina.
Where I look out onto the broad river
that throws back light from the open windows
of the dining room. I stand smoking a cigar,
listening to the murmuring of the officers
and their wives inside; the little clashing
sound of cutlery against plates. I’m alive
and well, neither happy nor unhappy,
here in the Southern Hemisphere. So I’m all the more
astonished when I recall that lost fish rising,
leaving the water, and then returning.
The feeling of loss that gripped me then
grips me still. How can I communicate what I feel
about any of this? Inside, they go on
conversing in their own language.
I decide to walk
alongside the river. It’s the kind of night
that brings men and rivers close.
I go for a ways, then stop. Realizing
that I haven’t been close. Not
in the longest time. There’s been
this waiting that’s gone along with me
wherever I go. But the hope widening now
that something will rise up and splash.
I want to hear it, and move on.
The Pen
The pen that told the truth
went into the washing machine
for its trouble. Came out
an hour later, and was tossed
in the dryer with jeans
and a western shirt. Days passed
while it lay quietly on the desk
under the window. Lay there
thinking it was finished.
Without a single conviction
to its name. It didn’t have
the will to go on, even if it’d wanted.
But one morning, an hour or so
before sunrise, it came to life
and wrote:
“The damp fields asleep in moonlight.”
Then it was still again.
Its usefulness in this life
clearly at an end.
He shook it and whacked it
on the desk. Then gave up
on it, or nearly.
Once more though, with the greatest
effort, it summoned its last
reserves. This is what it wrote:
“A light wind, and beyond the window
trees swimming in the golden morning air.”
He tried to write some more
but that was all. The pen
quit working forever.
By and by it was put
into the stove along with
other junk. And much later
it was another pen,
an undistinguished pen
that hadn’t proved itself
yet, that facilely wrote:
“Darkness gathers in the branches.
Stay inside. Keep still.”
The Prize
He was never the same, they said, after that.
And they were right. He left home, glad for his life.
Fell under the spell of Italian opera.
A gout stool was built into the front of his sedan chair.
His family went on living in a hut without a chimney.
One season very much like another for them.
What did they know?
A river wound through their valley.
At night the candles flickered, blinking like eyelashes.
As though tobacco smoke burned their eyes.
But nobody smoked in that stinking place.
Nobody sang or wrote cantatas.
When he died it was they who had to identify the body.
It was terrible!
His friends couldn’t remember him.
Not even what he’d looked like the day before.
His father spat and rode off to kill squirrels.
His sister cradled his head in her arms.
His mother wept and went through his pockets.
Nothing had changed.
He was back where he belonged.
As though he’d never left.
Easy enough to say he should have declined it.
But would you?
An Account
He began the poem at the kitchen table,
one leg crossed over the other.
He wrote for a time, as if
only half interested in the result. It wasn’t
as if the world didn’t have enough poems.
The world had plenty of poems. Besides,
he’d been away for months.
He hadn’t even read a poem in months.
What kind of life was this? A life
where a man was too busy even to read poems?
No life at all. Then he
looked out the window,
down the hill to Frank’s house.
A nice house situated near the water.
He remembered Frank opening his door
every morning at nine o’clock.
Going out for his walks.
He drew nearer the table, and uncrossed his legs.
Last night he’d heard an account
of Frank’s death from Ed, another neighbor.
A man the same age as Frank,
and Frank’s good friend. Frank
and his wife watching TV. Hill Street Blues.
Frank’s favorite show. When he gasps
twice, is thrown back in his chair —
“as if he’d been electrocuted.” That fast,
he was dead. His color draining away.
He was grey, turning black. Betty runs
out of the house in her robe. Runs
to a neighbor’s house where a girl knows
something about CPR. She’s watching
the same show! They run back
to Frank’s house. Frank totally black now,
in his chair in front of the TV.
The cops and other desperate characters
moving across the screen, raising their voices,
yelling at each other, while this neighbor girl
hauls Frank out of his chair onto the floor.
Tears open his shirt. Goes to work.
Frank being the first real-life victim
she’s ever had.
She places her lips
on Frank’s icy lips. A dead man’s lips. Black lips.
And black his face and hands and arms.
Black too his chest where the shirt’s been torn,
exposing the sparse hairs that grew there.
Long after she must’ve known better, she goes on
with it. Pressing her lips against his
unresponsive lips. Then stopping to beat on him
with clenched fists. Pressing her lips to his again,
and then again. Even after it’s too late and it
was clear he wasn’t coming back, she went on with it.
This girl, beating on him with her fists, calling
him every name she could think of. Weeping
when they took him away
from her. And someone thought to turn off
the images pulsing across the screen.
The Meadow
In the meadow this afternoon, I fetch
any number of crazy memories. That
undertaker asking my mother did she