All of Us: The Collected Poems Read online

is what he’d like to say. Did, in fact, say.

  He speaks French. Has started a conversation

  with a white-haired guard who offers himself

  as our informal guide. So we move slowly,

  the three of us, along row upon row of graves.

  Everyone, it seems, is here.

  It’s quiet, and hot, and the street sounds

  of Paris can’t reach. The guard wants to steer us

  to the grave of the man who invented the submarine,

  and Maurice Chevalier’s grave. And the grave

  of the 28-year-old singer, Nonnie,

  covered with a mound of red roses.

  I want to see the graves of the writers.

  My son sighs. He doesn’t want to see any of it.

  Has seen enough. He’s passed beyond boredom

  into resignation. Guy de Maupassant; Sartre; Sainte-Beuve;

  Gautier; the Goncourts; Paul Verlaine and his old comrade,

  Charles Baudelaire. Where we linger.

  None of these names, or graves, have anything to do

  with the untroubled lives of my son and the guard.

  Who can this morning talk and joke together

  in the French language under a fine sun.

  But there are several names chiseled on Baudelaire’s stone,

  and I can’t understand why.

  Charles Baudelaire’s name is between that of his mother,

  who loaned him money and worried all her life

  about his health, and his stepfather, a martinet

  he hated and who hated him and everything he stood for.

  “Ask your friend,” I say. So my son asks.

  It’s as if he and the guard are old friends now,

  and I’m there to be humored.

  The guard says something and then lays

  one hand over the other. Like that. Does it

  again. One hand over the other. Grinning. Shrugging.

  My son translates. But I understand.

  “Like a sandwich, Pop,” my son says. “A Baudelaire sandwich.”

  At which the three of us walk on.

  The guard would as soon be doing this as something else.

  He lights his pipe. Looks at his watch. It’s almost time

  for his lunch, and a glass of wine.

  “Ask him,” I say, “if he wants to be buried

  in this cemetery when he dies.

  Ask him where he wants to be buried.”

  My son is capable of saying anything.

  I recognize the words tombeau and mort

  in his mouth. The guard stops.

  It’s clear his thoughts have been elsewhere.

  Underwater warfare. The music hall, the cinema.

  Something to eat and the glass of wine.

  Not corruption, no, and the falling away.

  Not annihilation. Not his death.

  He looks from one to the other of us.

  Who are we kidding? Are we making a bad joke?

  He salutes and walks away.

  Heading for a table at an outdoor café.

  Where he can take off his cap, run his fingers

  through his hair. Hear laughter and voices.

  The heavy clink of silverware. The ringing

  of glasses. Sun on the windows.

  Sun on the sidewalk and in the leaves.

  Sun finding its way onto his table. His glass. His hands.

  Next Door

  The woman asked us in for pie. Started

  telling about her husband, the man who

  used to live there. How he had to be carted

  off to the nursing home. He wanted

  to cover this fine oak ceiling

  with cheap insulation, she said. That was the first

  sign of anything being wrong. Then he had

  a stroke. A vegetable now. Anyway,

  next, the game warden stuck the barrel

  of his pistol into her son’s ear.

  And cocked the hammer. But the kid

  wasn’t doing that much wrong, and the game

  warden is the kid’s uncle, don’t you see?

  So everybody’s on the outs. Everybody’s

  nuts and nobody’s speaking to anybody

  these days. Here’s a big bone the son

  found at the mouth of the river.

  Maybe it’s a human bone? An arm bone

  or something? She puts it back on the window-

  sill next to a bowl of flowers.

  The daughter stays in her room all day,

  writing poems about her attempted suicide.

  That’s why we don’t see her. Nobody sees

  her anymore. She tears up the poems

  and writes them over again. But one of these

  days she’ll get it right. Would you believe it —

  the car threw a rod? That black car

  that stands like a hearse

  in the yard next door. The engine winched out,

  swinging from a tree.

  The Caucasus: A Romance

  Each evening an eagle soars down from the snowy

  crags and passes over camp. It wants to see

  if it’s true what they say back in Russia: the only

  career open to young men these days

  is the military. Young men of good family, and a few

  others—older, silent men—men who’ve blotted their

  copybooks, as they call it out here. Men like

  the Colonel, who lost his ear in a duel.

  Dense forests of pine, alder, and birch. Torrents

  that fall from dizzying precipices. Mist. Clamorous

  rivers. Mountains covered with snow even now, even

  in August. Everywhere, as far as the eye can reach,

  profusion. A sea of poppies. Wild buckwheat that

  shimmers in the heat, that waves and rolls to the horizon.

  Panthers. Bees as big as a boy’s fist. Bears that won’t

  get out of a man’s way, that will tear a body to

  pieces and then go back to the business of rooting

  and chuffing like hogs in the rich undergrowth. Clouds

  of white butterflies that rise, then settle and

  rise again on slopes thick with lilac and fern.

  Now and then a real engagement with the enemy.

  Much howling from their side, cries, the drum

  of horses’ hooves, rattle of musket fire, a Chechen’s ball

  smashing into a man’s breast, a stain that blossoms

  and spreads, that ripples over the white uniform like crimson

  petals opening. Then the chase begins: hearts racing,

  minds emptying out entirely as the Emperor’s young

  men, dandies all, gallop over plains, laughing,

  yelling their lungs out. Or else they urge

  their lathered horses along forest trails, pistols

  ready. They burn Chechen crops, kill Chechen stock,

  knock down the pitiful villages. They’re soldiers,

  after all, and these are not maneuvers. Shamil,

  the bandit chieftain, he’s the one they want most.

  At night, a moon broad and deep as a serving dish

  sallies out from behind the peaks. But this

  moon is only for appearance’s sake. Really, it’s

  armed to the teeth, like everything else out here.

  When the Colonel sleeps, he dreams of a drawing room —

  one drawing room in particular—oh, clean and elegant,

  most comfortable drawing room! Where friends lounge

  in plush chairs, or on divans, and drink from

  little glasses of tea. In the dream, it is always

  Thursday, 2—4. There is a piano next to the window

  that looks out on Nevsky Prospect. A young woman

  finishes playing, pauses, and turns to the polite

  applause. But in the dream it is the Circassian

  woman with a sabe
r cut across her face. His friends

  draw back in horror. They lower their eyes, bow,

  and begin taking their leave. Goodbye, goodbye,

  they mutter. In Petersburg they said that out here,

  in the Caucasus, sunsets are everything.

  But this is not true; sunsets are not enough.

  In Petersburg they said the Caucasus is a country that gives

  rise to legend, where heroes are born every day.

  They said, long ago, in Petersburg, that reputations

  were made, and lost, in the Caucasus. A gravely

  beautiful place, as one of the Colonel’s men put it.

  The officers serving under him will return

  home soon, and more young men will come to take

  their places. After the new arrivals dismount

  to pay their respects, the Colonel will keep them

  waiting a time. Then fix them with a stern but

  fatherly gaze, these slim young men with tiny

  mustaches and boisterous high spirits, who look

  at him and wonder, who ask themselves what it is

  he’s running from. But he’s not running. He likes it

  here, in the Caucasus, after a fashion. He’s even

  grown used to it—or nearly. There’s plenty to do,

  God knows. Plenty of grim work in the days, and months,

  ahead. Shamil is out there in the mountains somewhere —

  or maybe he’s on the Steppes. The scenery is lovely,

  you can be sure, and this but a rough record

  of the actual and the passing.

  A Forge, and a Scythe

  One minute I had the windows open

  and the sun was out. Warm breezes

  blew through the room.

  (I remarked on this in a letter.)

  Then, while I watched, it grew dark.

  The water began whitecapping.

  All the sport-fishing boats turned

  and headed in, a little fleet.

  Those wind-chimes on the porch

  blew down. The tops of our trees shook.

  The stove pipe squeaked and rattled

  around in its moorings.

  I said, “A forge, and a scythe.”

  I talk to myself like this.

  Saying the names of things —

  capstan, hawser, loam, leaf, furnace.

  Your face, your mouth, your shoulder

  inconceivable to me now!

  Where did they go? It’s like

  I dreamed them. The stones we brought

  home from the beach lie face up

  on the windowsill, cooling.

  Come home. Do you hear?

  My lungs are thick with the smoke

  of your absence.

  The Pipe

  The next poem I write will have firewood

  right in the middle of it, firewood so thick

  with pitch my friend will leave behind

  his gloves and tell me, “Wear these when you

  handle that stuff.” The next poem

  will have night in it, too, and all the stars

  in the Western Hemisphere; and an immense body

  of water shining for miles under a new moon.

  The next poem will have a bedroom

  and living room for itself, skylights,

  a sofa, a table and chairs by the window,

  a vase of violets cut just an hour before lunch.

  There’ll be a lamp burning in the next poem;

  and a fireplace where pitch-soaked

  blocks of fir flame up, consuming one another.

  Oh, the next poem will throw sparks!

  But there won’t be any cigarettes in that poem.

  I’ll take up smoking the pipe.

  Listening

  It was a night like all the others. Empty

  of everything save memory. He thought

  he’d got to the other side of things.

  But he hadn’t. He read a little

  and listened to the radio. Looked out the window

  for a while. Then went upstairs. In bed

  realized he’d left the radio on.

  But closed his eyes anyway. Inside the deep night,

  as the house sailed west, he woke up

  to hear voices murmuring. And froze.

  Then understood it was only the radio.

  He got up and went downstairs. He had

  to pee anyway. A little rain

  that hadn’t been there before was

  falling outside. The voices

  on the radio faded and then came back

  as if from a long way. It wasn’t

  the same station any longer. A man’s voice

  said something about Borodin,

  and his opera Prince Igor. The woman

  he said this to agreed, and laughed.

  Began to tell a little of the story.

  The man’s hand drew back from the switch.

  Once more he found himself in the presence

  of mystery. Rain. Laughter. History.

  Art. The hegemony of death.

  He stood there, listening.

  In Switzerland

  First thing to do in Zurich

  is take the No. 5 “Zoo” trolley

  to the end of the track,

  and get off. Been warned about

  the lions. How their roars

  carry over from the zoo compound

  to the Flutern Cemetery.

  Where I walk along

  the very beautiful path

  to James Joyce’s grave.

  Always the family man, he’s here

  with his wife, Nora, of course.

  And his son, Giorgio,

  who died a few years ago.

  Lucia, his daughter, his sorrow,

  still alive, still confined

  in an institution for the insane.

  When she was brought the news

  of her father’s death, she said:

  What is he doing under the ground, that idiot?

  When will he decide to come out?

  He’s watching us all the time.

  I lingered a while. I think

  I said something aloud to Mr Joyce.

  I must have. I know I must have.

  But I don’t recall what,

  now, and I’ll have to leave it at that.

  A week later to the day, we depart

  Zurich by train for Lucerne.

  But early that morning I take

  the No. 5 trolley once more

  to the end of the line.

  The roar of the lions falls over

  the cemetery, as before.

  The grass has been cut.

  I sit on it for a while and smoke.

  Just feels good to be there,

  close to the grave. I didn’t

  have to say anything this time.

  That night we gambled at the tables

  at the Grand Hotel-Casino

  on the very shore of Lake Lucerne.

  Took in a strip show later.

  But what to do with the memory

  of that grave that came to me

  in the midst of the show,

  under the muted, pink stage light?

  Nothing to do about it.

  Or about the desire that came later,

  crowding everything else out,

  like a wave.

  Still later, we sat on a bench

  under some linden trees, under stars.

  Made love with each other.

  Reaching into each other’s clothes for it.

  The lake a few steps away.

  Afterwards, dipped our hands

  into the cold water.

  Then walked back to our hotel,

  happy and tired, ready to sleep

  for eight hours.

  All of us, all of us, all of us

  trying to save

  our immortal souls, some ways

  seemingly more roun
d-

  about and mysterious

  than others. We’re having

  a good time here. But hope

  all will be revealed soon.

  V

  A Squall

  Shortly after three p.m. today a squall

  hit the calm waters of the Strait.

  A black cloud moving fast,

  carrying rain, driven by high winds.

  The water rose up and turned white.

  Then, in five minutes, was as before —

  blue and most remarkable, with just

  a little chop. It occurs to me

  it was this kind of squall

  that came upon Shelley and his friend,

  Williams, in the Gulf of Spezia, on

  an otherwise fine day. There they were,

  running ahead of a smart breeze,

  wind-jamming, crying out to each other,

  I want to think, in sheer exuberance.

  In Shelley’s jacket pockets, Keats’s poems,

  and a volume of Sophocles!

  Then something like smoke on the water.

  A black cloud moving fast,

  carrying rain, driven by high winds.

  Black cloud

  hastening along the end

  of the first romantic period

  in English poetry.

  My Crow

  A crow flew into the tree outside my window.

  It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow.

  Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow.

  Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore,

  after the battle. This was just a crow.

  That never fit in anywhere in its life,

  or did anything worth mentioning.

  It sat there on the branch for a few minutes.

  Then picked up and flew beautifully

  out of my life.

  The Party

  Last night, alone, 3000 miles away from the one

  I love, I turned the radio on to some jazz

  and made a huge bowl of popcorn

  with lots of salt on it. Poured butter over it.

  Turned out the lights and sat in a chair

  in front of the window with the popcorn and

  a can of Coke. Forgot everything important

  in the world while I ate popcorn and looked out

  at a heavy sea, and the lights of town.

  The popcorn runny with butter, covered with

  salt. I ate it up until there was nothing

  left except a few Old Maids. Then