All of Us: The Collected Poems Read online

  waved & they cheered him

  again

  He pointed across the river

  & the men grew silent

  The builders

  busy themselves with great rafts

  at the water’s edge

  on the morrow

  we again set our faces

  to the East

  Tonight

  wind birds

  fill the air

  the clacking of their bills

  like iron on iron

  The wind

  is steady is fragrant

  with jasmine

  trail of the country behind us

  The wind moves

  through the camp

  stirs the tents of

  the Hetaeri

  touches each

  of the sleeping soldiers

  Euoi! Euoi!

  men cry out

  in their sleep & the horses

  prick their ears & stand

  shivering

  In a few hours

  they all shall wake

  with the sun

  shall follow the wind

  even further

  The Mosque in Jaffa

  I lean over the balcony of the minaret.

  My head swims.

  A few steps away the man who intends

  to betray me begins by pointing out

  key sights —

  market church prison whorehouse.

  Killed, he says.

  Words lost in the wind but

  drawing a finger across his throat

  so I will get it.

  He grins.

  The key words fly out —

  Turks Greeks Arabs Jews

  trade worship love murder

  a beautiful woman.

  He grins again at such foolishness.

  He knows I am watching him.

  Still he whistles confidently

  as we start down the steps

  bumping against each other going down

  commingling breath and bodies in the narrow spiralling dark.

  Downstairs, his friends are waiting

  with a car. We all of us light cigarettes

  and think what to do next.

  Time, like the light in his dark eyes,

  is running out as we climb in.

  Not Far from Here

  Not far from here someone

  is calling my name.

  I jump to the floor.

  Still, this could be a trap.

  Careful, careful.

  I look under the covers for my knife.

  But even as I curse God

  for the delay, the door is thrown open

  and a long-haired brat enters

  carrying a dog.

  What is it, child? (We are both

  trembling.) What do you want?

  But the tongue only hops and flutters

  in her open mouth

  as a single sound rises in her throat.

  I move closer, kneel

  and place my ear against the tiny lips.

  When I stand up—the dog grins.

  Listen, I don’t have time for games.

  Here, I say, here—and I send her away

  with a plum.

  Sudden Rain

  •

  Rain hisses onto stones as old men and women

  drive donkeys to cover.

  We stand in rain, more foolish than donkeys,

  and shout, walk up and down in rain and accuse.

  •

  When rain stops the old men and women

  who have waited quietly in doorways, smoking,

  lead their donkeys out once more and up the hill.

  •

  Behind, always behind, I climb through the narrow streets.

  I roll my eyes. I clatter against stones.

  Balzac

  I think of Balzac in his nightcap after

  thirty hours at his writing desk,

  mist rising from his face,

  the gown clinging

  to his hairy thighs as

  he scratches himself, lingers

  at the open window.

  Outside, on the boulevards,

  the plump white hands of the creditors

  stroke moustaches and cravats,

  young ladies dream of Chateaubriand

  and promenade with the young men, while

  empty carriages rattle by, smelling

  of axle-grease and leather.

  Like a huge draught horse, Balzac

  yawns, snorts, lumbers

  to the watercloset

  and, flinging open his gown,

  trains a great stream of piss into the

  early nineteenth century

  chamberpot. The lace curtain catches

  the breeze. Wait! One last scene

  before sleep. His brain sizzles as

  he goes back to his desk—the pen,

  the pot of ink, the strewn pages.

  Country Matters

  A girl pushes a bicycle through tall grass,

  through overturned garden furniture, water

  rising to her ankles. Cups without handles

  sail upon the murky water, saucers

  with fine cracks in the porcelain.

  At the upstairs window, behind damask curtains,

  the steward’s pale blue eyes follow.

  He tries to call.

  Shreds of yellow note paper

  float out onto the wintry air, but the girl

  does not turn her head.

  Cook is away, no one hears.

  Then two fists appear on the window sill.

  He leans closer to hear the small

  whisperings, the broken story, the excuses.

  This Room

  This room for instance:

  is that an empty coach

  that waits below?

  Promises, promises,

  tell them nothing

  for my sake.

  I remember parasols,

  an esplanade beside the sea,

  yet these flowers…

  Must I ever remain behind —

  listening, smoking,

  scribbling down the next far thing?

  I light a cigarette

  and adjust the window shade.

  There is a noise in the street

  growing fainter, fainter.

  Rhodes

  •

  I don’t know the names of flowers

  or one tree from another,

  nevertheless I sit in the square

  under a cloud of Papisostros smoke

  and sip Hellas beer.

  Somewhere nearby there is a Colossus

  waiting for another artist,

  another earthquake.

  But I’m not ambitious.

  I’d like to stay, it’s true,

  though I’d want to hang out

  with the civic deer that surround

  the Hospitaler castle on the hill.

  They are beautiful deer

  and their lean haunches flicker

  under an assault of white butterflies.

  •

  High on the battlement a tall, stiff

  figure of a man keeps watch on Turkey.

  A warm rain begins to fall.

  A peacock shakes drops of water

  from its tail and heads for cover.

  In the Moslem graveyard a cat sleeps

  in a niche between two stones.

  Just time for a look

  into the casino, except

  I’m not dressed.

  •

  Back on board, ready for bed,

  I lie down and remember

  I’ve been to Rhodes.

  But there’s something else —

  I hear again the voice

  of the croupier calling

  thirty-two, thirty-two

  as my body flies over water,

  as my soul, poised like a cat, hovers —

  then leaps into sleep
.

  Spring, 480 BC

  Enraged by what he called

  the impertinence of the Hellespont

  in blowing up a storm

  which brought to a halt

  his army of 2 million,

  Herodotus relates

  that Xerxes ordered 300

  lashes be given

  that unruly body of water besides

  throwing in a pair of fetters, followed

  by a branding with hot irons.

  You can imagine

  how this news was received

  at Athens; I mean

  that the Persians were on the march.

  IV

  Near Klamath

  We stand around the burning oil drum

  and we warm ourselves, our hands

  and faces, in its pure lapping heat.

  We raise steaming cups of coffee

  to our lips and we drink it

  with both hands. But we are salmon

  fishermen. And now we stamp our feet

  on the snow and rocks and move upstream,

  slowly, full of love, toward the still pools.

  Autumn

  This yardful of the landlord’s used cars

  does not intrude. The landlord

  himself, does not intrude. He hunches

  all day over a swage,

  or else is enveloped in the blue flame

  of the arc-welding device.

  He takes note of me though,

  often stopping work to grin

  and nod at me through the window. He even

  apologizes for parking his logging gear

  in my living room.

  But we remain friends.

  Slowly the days thin, and we

  move together towards spring,

  towards high water, the jack-salmon,

  the sea-run cutthroat.

  Winter Insomnia

  The mind can’t sleep, can only lie awake and

  gorge, listening to the snow gather as

  for some final assault.

  It wishes Chekhov were here to minister

  something—three drops of valerian, a glass

  of rose water—anything, it wouldn’t matter.

  The mind would like to get out of here

  onto the snow. It would like to run

  with a pack of shaggy animals, all teeth,

  under the moon, across the snow, leaving

  no prints or spoor, nothing behind.

  The mind is sick tonight.

  Prosser

  In winter two kinds of fields on the hills

  outside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slips

  rising overnight out of the plowed ground,

  and waiting,

  and then rising again, and budding.

  Geese love this green wheat.

  I ate some of it once too, to see.

  And wheat stubble-fields that reach to the river.

  These are the fields that have lost everything.

  At night they try to recall their youth,

  but their breathing is slow and irregular as

  their life sinks into dark furrows.

  Geese love this shattered wheat also.

  They will die for it.

  But everything is forgotten, nearly everything,

  and sooner rather than later, please God —

  fathers, friends, they pass

  into your life and out again, a few women stay

  a while, then go, and the fields

  turn their backs, disappear in rain.

  Everything goes, but Prosser.

  Those nights driving back through miles of wheat fields —

  headlamps raking the fields on the curves —

  Prosser, that town, shining as we break over hills,

  heater rattling, tired through to bone,

  the smell of gunpowder on our fingers still:

  I can barely see him, my father, squinting

  through the windshield of that cab, saying, Prosser.

  At Night the Salmon Move

  At night the salmon move

  out from the river and into town.

  They avoid places with names

  like Foster’s Freeze, A & W, Smiley’s,

  but swim close to the tract

  homes on Wright Avenue where sometimes

  in the early morning hours

  you can hear them trying doorknobs

  or bumping against Cable TV lines.

  We wait up for them.

  We leave our back windows open

  and call out when we hear a splash.

  Mornings are a disappointment.

  With a Telescope Rod on Cowiche Creek

  Here my assurance drops away. I lose

  all direction. Gray Lady

  onto moving waters. My thoughts

  stir like ruffed grouse

  in the clearing across the creek.

  Suddenly, as at a signal, the birds

  pass silently back into pine trees.

  Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist

  •

  Last night I dreamt a priest came to me

  holding in his hands white bones,

  white bones in his white hands.

  He was gentle,

  not like Father McCormick with his webbed fingers.

  I was not frightened.

  •

  This afternoon the maids come with their mops

  and disinfectant. They pretend I’m not

  there, talk of menstrual cycles as they

  push my bed this way and that. Before leaving,

  they embrace. Gradually, the room

  fills with leaves. I am afraid.

  •

  The window is open. Sunlight.

  Across the room a bed creaks, creaks

  under the weight of lovemaking.

  The man clears his throat. Outside,

  I hear sprinklers. I begin to void.

  A green desk floats by the window.

  •

  My heart lies on the table, a parody

  of affection, while her fingers rummage

  the endless string of entrails.

  These considerations aside,

  after all those years of adventure in the Far East,

  I am in love with these hands, but

  I’m cold beyond imagining.

  Wes Hardin: From a Photograph

  Turning through a collection

  of old photographs

  I come to a picture of the outlaw,

  Wes Hardin, dead.

  He is a big, moustached man

  in a black suitcoat

  on his back over a boardfloor

  in Amarillo, Texas.

  His head is turned at the camera

  and his face

  seems bruised, the hair

  jarred loose.

  A bullet has entered his skull

  from behind

  coming out a little hole

  over his right eye.

  Nothing so funny about that

  but three shabby men

  in overalls stand grinning

  a few feet away.

  They are all holding rifles

  and that one

  at the end has on what must be

  the outlaw’s hat.

  Several other bullets are dotted

  here and there

  under the fancy white shirt

  the deceased is wearing

  — in a manner of speaking —

  but what makes me stare

  is this large dark bullethole

  through the slender, delicate-looking

  right hand.

  Marriage

  In our cabin we eat breaded oysters and fries

  with lemon cookies for dessert, as the marriage

  of Kitty and Levin unfolds on Public TV.

  The man in the trailer up the hill, our neighbor,

  has just gotten out of jail again.

  This morning he d
rove into the yard with his wife

  in a big yellow car, radio blaring.

  His wife turned off the radio while he parked,

  and together they walked slowly

  to their trailer without saying anything.

  It was early morning, birds were out.

  Later, he propped open the door

  with a chair to let in spring air and light.

  It’s Easter Sunday night,

  and Kitty and Levin are married at last.

  It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes, that marriage

  and all the lives it touched. We go on

  eating oysters, watching television,

  remarking on the fine clothes and amazing grace

  of the people caught up in this story, some of them

  straining under the pressures of adultery,

  separation from loved ones, and the destruction

  they must know lies in store just after

  the next cruel turn of circumstance, and then the next.

  A dog barks. I get up to check the door.

  Behind the curtains are trailers and a muddy

  parking area with cars. The moon sails west

  as I watch, armed to the teeth, hunting

  for my children. My neighbor,

  liquored up now, starts his big car, races

  the engine, and heads out again, filled

  with confidence. The radio wails,

  beats something out. When he has gone

  there are only the little ponds of silver water

  that shiver and can’t understand their being here.

  The Other Life

  Now for the other life. The one

  without mistakes.

  — LOU LIPSITZ

  My wife is in the other half of this mobile home

  making a case against me.

  I can hear her pen scratch, scratch.

  Now and then she stops to weep,

  then—scratch, scratch.

  The frost is going out of the ground.

  The man who owns this unit tells me,

  Don’t leave your car here.

  My wife goes on writing and weeping,