Read Saving Daylight Page 6


  To a Meadowlark

  for M.L. Smoker

  Up on the Fort Peck Reservation

  (Assiniboine and Sioux)

  just as I passed two white crosses

  in the ditch I hit a fledgling meadowlark,

  the slightest thunk against the car’s grille.

  A mean-minded God

  in a mean-minded machine, offering

  another ghost to the void to join the two

  white crosses stabbing upward in the insufferable

  air. Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving

  ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing

  each other out. We set this house

  on fire forgetting that we live within.

  Driving south of Wolf Point down by the Missouri:

  M.L. Smoker is camped with her Indians,

  tepees in a circle, eating buffalo meat for breakfast,

  reminding themselves what life may have been.

  She says that in the evenings the wild horses

  from the terra incognita to the south come

  to the river to drink and just stand there

  watching the Indians dance. I leave quickly,

  still feeling like a bullsnake whipping through

  the grass looking for something to kill.

  November

  The souls of dogs,

  big toes of ladies,

  original clouds,

  the winter life

  of farm machinery,

  the hammer lost

  in the weeds,

  the filaments of sunlight

  hugging the bare tree,

  then slipping off the bark

  down into night.

  Cold Poem

  A cold has put me on the fritz, said Eugene O’Neill,

  how can I forget certain things?

  Now I have thirteen bottles of red wine

  where once I had over a thousand.

  I know where they went but why should I tell?

  Every day I feed the dogs and birds.

  The yard is littered with bones and seed husks.

  Hearts spend their entire lives in the dark,

  but the dogs and birds are fond of me.

  I take a shower frequently but still

  women are not drawn to me in large numbers.

  Perhaps they know I’m happily married

  and why exhaust themselves vainly to seduce me?

  I loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars

  and was paid back only by two Indians.

  If I had known history it was never otherwise.

  This is the song of the cold when people

  are themselves but less so, people

  who haven’t listened to my unworded advice.

  I was once described as “immortal”

  but this didn’t include my mother who recently died.

  And why go to New York after the asteroid

  and the floods of polar waters, the crumbling

  buildings, when you’re the only one there

  in 2050? Come back to earth.

  Blow your nose and dwell on the shortness of life.

  Lift up your dark heart and sing a song about

  how time drifts past you like the gentlest, almost

  imperceptible breeze.

  Invasive

  Coming out of anesthesia I believed

  I had awakened in the wrong body,

  and when I returned to my snazzy hotel room

  and looked at Architectural Digest

  I no longer recognized large parts of the world.

  There was a cabin for sale

  for seven million dollars, while mine had cost

  only forty grand with forty acres. An android

  from drugs I understood finally that life

  works to no one’s advantage. From dawn

  until midnight I put together a jigsaw puzzle

  made of ten million pieces of white confetti.

  On television I watch the overburdened world

  of books and movies, all flickering trash, while outside

  cars pass through deep puddles on the street,

  the swish and swash of life, patterns of rain

  drizzle on the windows, finch yodel and Mexican raven squawk

  until I enter the murder of sleep and fresh demons,

  one of whom sings in basso profundo Mickey and Sylvia’s

  “Love Is Strange.” In the bathroom mirror it’s someone else.

  On the Way to the Doctor’s

  On Thursday morning at seven AM seven surgeons will spend seven hours taking me apart and putting me back together the same way. Three of the surgeons don’t have medical degrees but are part-time amateurs trying to learn the ropes. One is a butcher who wants to move up. A butcher’s salary is twenty-seven thousand and the average surgeon makes two hundred twenty-seven, the difference being the proximity of the nearest huge asteroid to the moon, which could be destroyed any minute now. In anticipation of the unmentionable I’ve put my life in order. Anyone with blood-slippery hands can drop a heart on the floor. I’ve sent a single-page letter of resignation to the Literary World but they haven’t had time to read it. They’re exhausted from reading Sontag’s obituaries, a nasty reminder that everyone dies. Assuming I survive, Jean Peters and Jean Simmons will reemerge as twenty-seven-year-olds and trade shifts nursing me around the clock. They’re goddesses and never get tired. Since the surgeons are cutting me open like a baked potato, sex will be put aside for the time being. It’s unpleasant to burst your stitches on a Sunday morning dalliance when you’re due on your gurney in the hospital Chapel of Black Roses. I’m not afraid of death. I’ve been told I’ll immediately return as a common house finch, but it’s all the stuff between here and death falsely called life. Right now we’re actually in the car with my wife driving to the doctor’s. I say, “Turn left on Ruthrauff onto La Cholla.” I always drive when we go to Tucson but I’m in too much pain half-reclining in the seat peeking out like the little old man I might not get to be. At the entrance to the office the doctor meets us with an immense bouquet of Brazilian tropical flowers. The doctor resembles a photo of my mother in 1933, so much so that I’m uncomfortable. The office is full of dozens of identical framed photos of a desperate sunset in the desert trying to look original. The office temperature is kept at 32 degrees to reduce odors. I’ve been recently sleeping under seven blankets and am quite cold. The pages of the magazines on the coffee table are blank so that you can make up your own National Geographics. I haven’t eaten for days except rice and yogurt, but my wife is out in the car having a baguette stuffed with proscuitto, imported provolone, mortadella and roasted peppers. They turn out the lights so my eyes don’t tire reading blank pages. Now I see that the mirror on the wall is two-way and in another room the seven surgeons are rolling up their sleeves, hot to get started. “We don’t have time to wash our hands,” they say in unison.

  Español

  Por años he creído que el mundo debe hablar español.

  He soñado que hablaba y leía español,

  pero cuando desperté no fue verdad. Tal vez las Naciones Unidas

  puedan poner freno al inglés pero lo dudo.

  El inglés es el lenguaje de la conquista, el dinero, el asesinato.

  Dios me envió un e-mail diciendo que el sexo sería mejor

  en español. Dios estaba fumando un “Lucky Strike”

  mientras Bush mordisqueaba chicle “Dentyne” y estudiaba “Baywatch” en la tele.

  Mi viejo amigo Jesús se convirtió en una película de terror

  que ganó millones en inglés, el cual pensaba no había sido inventado.

  Jesús habla español pero no entiende bien el inglés,

  por eso nuestras oraciones erran y las chicas son deshimenizadas.

  Niños y niñas yacen en sus camas pataleando

  en desesperación a los dioses que juegan al boliche

  con sus cabezas. No pasaría si hablaran español.

/>   La televisión mexicana dijo que la Virgen llevaba calzones los domingos.

  El dibujo animado es nuestra forma de arte mientras que los españoles escriben

  poesía, miles de Lorcas de quinta elogiando a la luna

  pero sin el contragiro de los dibujos en sus corazones. El sexo no nos conducirá

  al cielo en español pero nos acercará más que los dibujos.

  María Magdalena dijo que si no hubiera sido por la historia

  se habría ahogado en el pozo o inventado

  la pistola para que se la dispararan. Es tan compleja

  que no puede ser entendida excepto en español.

  Me arrojé de un avión pero aterricé en una nube de español.

  El inglés me había perseguido a muerte. Los santos caen

  sobre plumas ensangrentadas justo antes que la historia termine.

  Spanish

  For years I’ve believed the world should speak Spanish.

  I’ve dreamt that I spoke and read Spanish,

  but when I awoke it wasn’t true. Perhaps the U.N.

  can put a halt to English but I doubt it.

  English is the language of conquest, money, murder.

  God e-mailed me that sex would be better

  in Spanish. God was smoking a Lucky Strike

  while Bush snapped Dentyne and studied Baywatch on TV.

  My old pal Jesus became a horror film that made

  millions in English that he thought hadn’t been invented.

  Jesus speaks Spanish but understands English poorly,

  thus our prayers go awry and girls are dehymenized.

  Boys and girls lie on their beds kicking their feet

  in desperation at the gods who are bowling

  with their heads. It wouldn’t happen if they spoke Spanish.

  Mexican TV said the Virgin wore underpants on Sunday.

  The cartoon is our art form while the Spanish write

  poetry, thousands of fifth-rate Lorcas praising the moon

  but without cartoon backspin in their hearts. Sex won’t take

  us to heaven in Spanish but closer than cartoons.

  Mary Magdalene said that if it hadn’t been for history

  she would have drowned herself at the well or invented

  the gun for them to shoot her. She’s so complex

  that she can’t be understood except in Spanish.

  I jumped out of a plane but landed on a Spanish cloud.

  English had chased me to death. The saints fall

  on bloody feathers just before history ends.

  the gun for them to shoot her. She’s so complex

  that she can’t be understood except in Spanish.

  I jumped out of a plane but landed on a Spanish cloud.

  English had chased me to death. The saints fall

  on bloody feathers just before history ends.

  Pico

  I don’t know what. I don’t know what.

  I’m modern man at the crossroads,

  an interstice where ten thousand roads meet

  and exfoliate. Meanwhile today a hundred

  dense blue never-seen-before pinyon jays

  land in the yard for a scant ten minutes.

  The pinyon jays are not at any crossroads

  but are finding their way south by celestial navigation.

  You’re not on a road, you fool. This life

  is pathless with ninety billion galaxies

  hovering around us, our home truly away from home.

  The Short Course

  For my new part I’m in makeup

  each day for twenty-four hours.

  We can die from this exhaustion

  of shooting without a script;

  the lines that didn’t come right disappeared

  into the thickest air

  without the vacuum of intentions.

  New lines appeared in miraculous succession.

  We found love by writing it down

  only moments before she appeared.

  The door opened itself.

  Steps were taken.

  A new day dawned crimson.

  We went outside among the inhuman trees.

  A creek appeared from nowhere.

  Everyone is raised by the gods

  but we never learned our lines.

  Science

  It was one of those mornings utterly distorted by the night’s dreams. Why go to court to change my name to Gaspar de la Nuit in order to avoid thinking of myself as a silly, fat old man? At midmorning I looked at the dogs as possibilities for something different in my life. I was dogsitting both daughters’ dogs plus our own: Lily, Grace, Pearl, Harry, Rose and Mary. I shook the biscuit box and they assembled in the living room on a very cold windy morning when no one wanted to go outside except for a quick pee and a bark at the mailman. I sang, “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” as they waited for their snack. Harry was embarrassed and furtive and tried to leave the room but I called him back. I tried, “Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today,” and Lily, the largest of the dogs, became angry at the others who looked away intimidated. I tried something religious, “The Old Rugged Cross,” to no particular response except that Mary leapt up at the biscuit box in irritation. I realized decisively that dogs don’t care about music and religion and thus have written up this report. This scarcely makes me the Father of the A-bomb, I thought as I flung the contents of the full box of biscuits around the room with the dogs scrambling wildly on the hard maple floor. Let there be happy chaos.

  The Fish in My Life

  When I was younger I walked the floor

  of the Baltic looking for a perfect herring.

  Off Ecuador when I swam underneath the boat

  the hooked marlin was wreathed in curious sea snakes.

  I stepped on a scorpion in Key West. It bit me.

  It’s not a fish but it looks like a shrimp.

  The nude girl ate the brook trout I fried. A morsel

  plummeted from her lips to the left aureole.

  Fish spend their lives underwater except for skyward jumps

  for food, or to shake off gill lice, look around in dismay.

  In the house of water the bottom and the top

  do not go away. Our drowned bodies are kissed.

  With my grandson’s Play-Doh I shaped

  a modest fish, also the brown girl of my dreams.

  O fish, my brothers and sisters, some scientists

  think that our sinuses are merely vestigial gills.

  Fish, we both survive among countless thousands

  of dead eggs. We’re well chosen by the gods of chaos.

  A Letter to Ted & Dan

  France to Michigan

  Just another plane trip

  with the mind wandering

  at large in the bowels

  of life. How am I to land this?

  At Godthåb, above Greenland,

  we’re disappointing compared to the immensity

  of our scientific reality, the trillions

  of unresolved particles, though there were

  those improbable unrecorded celebrations,

  over a million at the samba festival,

  a thousand bands, a million doves

  eaten raw because there was no wood for fire,

  an immense dance with no words with nonstop

  loving in the fashion of lions and porpoises.

  Off in the jungle anacondas perked up their heads

  and slowly moved toward the music,

  the largest snake of all wrapped around

  the world’s waist, holding us together

  against our various defilements, our naive

  theocracies at war with one another.

  Almost forgot that, over Iceland,

  seven miles below I saw children

  sledding in the first snow of the year,

  small as motes of dust on silver-edged

  sleighs, the glistening of the frosted sw
eat

  of the shaggy pony that pulled them

  back up the hill. I’ve long wondered

  at the way certain children, even babies,

  decide to become songbirds because they could see

  the endless suffering in their future.

  They’ve been using this method for centuries.