"Having read to this point, he crumpled the letter and threw it down.

It was not what he read in the letter that made him angry; what made him angry was that the life there, now foreign to him, could excite him. He closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead with his hand, as if driving away all concern for what he had read, and began listening to what was happening in the nursery. Suddenly he seemed to hear some strange noise behind the door. Fear came over him; he was afraid something had happened to the baby while he was reading the letter. He tiptoed to the door of the nursery and opened it. The moment he went in, he saw that the nanny was hiding something from him with a frightened look, and that Princess Marya was no longer by the crib.

’My friend,’ he heard behind him what sounded like the desperate whisper of Princess Marya. As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, a groundless fear came over him: it occurred to him that the baby had died. Everything he saw and heard seemed to him to confirm his fear. ‘It's all over,’ he thought, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Bewildered, he went over to the crib, certain that he would find it empty, that the nanny was hiding the dead baby.

He opened the curtain, and for a time his frightened, unfocused eyes could not find the baby. At last he saw him: the red-cheeked boy lay sprawled across the crib, his head lower than the pillow, smacking and moving his lips in his sleep, and breathing regularly. Prince Andrei, on seeing the boy, was as glad as if he had already lost him. He bent down and, as his sister had taught him, tested with his lips whether the baby had a fever. The tender forehead was moist; he touched his head with his hand—even the hair was wet: the baby had sweated so much. Not only had he not died, but it was obvious now that the crisis was past and that he was getting well. Prince Andrei wanted to snatch up, to squeeze, to clutch to his heart this helpless little being; he did not dare to do it. He stood over him, gazed at his head, his arms, his legs outlined under the blanket. He heard a rustling beside him, and some shadow appeared under the canopy of the crib. He did not turn and, gazing at the baby's face, kept listening to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Marya, who had come over to the crib with inaudible steps, raised the canopy, and lowered it behind her. Prince Andrei recognized her without turning to look, and reached his hand towards her. She pressed his hand.

‘He's been sweating,’ said Prince Andrei.

‘I was coming to tell you that.’ The baby stirred slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead against the pillow. Prince Andrei looked at his sister. Princess Marya's luminous eyes, in the dim halflight of the canopy, glistened more than usual from the happy tears that welled up in them. Princess Marya leaned towards her brother and kissed him, catching slightly in the canopy of the crib. They shook their fingers at each other and stood a little longer in the dim light of the canopy, as if reluctant to part with that world in which the three of them were separated from everything on earth.”

- Leo Tolstoy, from “War and Peace'“

Of the Surface of Things

I

In my room the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
            hills and a cloud.

II

From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
“The spring is like a belle undressing.”

III

The gold tree is blue.
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

- Wallace Stevens

To World War Two

Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafés.
It was a time of general confusion
Of being a body hurled at a wall.
I didn’t do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.
I stood while the typhoon splashed up into morning.
It felt unusual
Even if for a good cause
To be part of a destructive force
With my rifle in my hands
And in my head
My serial number
The entire object of my existence
To eliminate Japanese soldiers
By killing them
With a rifle or with a grenade
And then, many years after that,
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think
About these things
From a great distance
If I survived
I was “paying my debt
To society” a paid
Killer. It wasn’t like
Anything I’d done
Before, on the paved
Streets of Cincinnati
Or on the ballroom floor
At Mr. Vathé’s dancing class
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith
Have thought of me
If instead of asking her to dance
I had put my BAR to my shoulder
And shot her in the face
I thought about her in my foxhole—
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night
We take more precautions but it is night and it is you.
The typhoon continues and so do you.
“I can’t be killed—because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write it.”
I thought—even crazier thought, or just as crazy—
“If I’m killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny
When it’s reported” (I imagined it would be reported!)
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach on Letye
Was “The surf comes in like masochistic lions.”
I loved the terrible line. It was keeping me alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,
“You won’t believe this, but some day you may wish
You were footloose and twenty on Leyte again.” I have never wanted
To be on Leyte again,
With you, whispering in my ear,
“Go on and win me! Tomorrow you may not be alive,
So do it today!” How could anyone ever win you?
How many persons would I have had to kill
Even to begin to be a part of winning you?
You were too much for me, though I
Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me
You’d use me, and then forget. How else
Did I think you’d behave?
I’m glad you ended. I’m glad I didn’t die. Or lose my mind.
As machines make ice
We made dead enemy soldiers, in
Dark jungle alleys, with weapons in our hands
That produced fire and kept going straight through
I was carrying one,
I who had gone about for years as a child
Praying God don’t let there ever be another war
Or if there is, don’t let me be in it. Well, I was in you.
All you cared about was existing and being won.
You died of a bomb blast in Nagasaki, and there were parades.

- Kenneth Koch

 

Salts and Oils

In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog 
believing it was Peking duck. Later, 
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor 
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts. 
In the same room were twins, oilers 
from Toledo, who argued for hours 
each night whose turn it was 
to get breakfast and should he turn 
the eggs or not. On the way north 
I lived for three days on warm water 
in a DC-6 with a burned out radio 
on the runway at Athens, Georgia. We sang 
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed 
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender. 
Napping in an open field near Newport News, 
I chewed on grass while the shadows of September 
lengthened; in the distance a man hammered 
on the roof of a hangar and groaned how he 
was out of luck and vittles. Bummed a ride 
in from Mitchell Field and had beet borscht 
and white bread at 34th and 8th Avenue. 
I threw up in the alley behind the YMCA 
and slept until they turned me out. 
I walked the bridge to Brooklyn 
while the East River browned below. 
A mile from Ebbetts Field, from all 
that history, I found Murray, my papa's 
buddy, in his greasy truck shop, polishing 
replacement parts. Short, unshaven, puffed, 
he strutted the filthy aisles, 
a tiny Ghengis Khan. He sent out for soup 
and sandwiches. The world turned on barley, 
pickled meats, yellow mustard, kasha, 
rye breads. It rained in October, rained 
so hard I couldn't walk and smoke, so I 
chewed pepsin chewing gum. The rain 
spoiled Armistice Day in Lancaster, Pa. 
The open cars overflowed, girls cried, 
the tubas and trombones went dumb, 
the floral displays shredded, the gutters 
clogged with petals. Afterwards had ham 
on buttered whole-wheat bread, ham 
and butter for the first time 
on the same day in Zanesville with snow 
forecast, snow, high winds, closed roads, 
solid darkness before 5 p.m. These were not 
the labors of Hercules, these were not 
of meat or moment to anyone but me 
or destined for story or to learn from 
or to make me fit to take the hand 
of a toad or a toad princess or to stand 
in line for food stamps. One quiet morning 
at the end of my thirteenth year a little bird 
with a dark head and tattered tail feathers 
had come to the bedroom window and commanded 
me to pass through the winding miles 
of narrow dark corridors and passageways 
of my growing body the filth and glory 
of the palatable world. Since then I've 
been going out and coming back 
the way a swallow does with unerring grace 
and foreknowledge because all of this 
was prophesied in the final, unread book 
of the Midrash and because I have to 
grow up and because it pleases me.

- Philip Levine, from “Sweet Will”

" 'Annette, for God's sake, don't refuse me,' the countess said,

suddenly, blushing, which was quite strange with her thin, dignified, and no longer young face, and taking the money from under the handkerchief.
Anna Mikhailovna instantly realized what it was about and bent forward so as to embrace the countess adroitly at the right moment.
‘This is for Boris from me, to have his uniform made…’
Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess was also weeping. They wept because they were friends; and because they were kind; and because they, who had been friends since childhood, were concerned with such a mean subject—money; and because their youth was gone….But for both of them they were pleasant tears…”

- Tolstoy, from “War and Peace”

The Journey of the Magi

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

- T.S. Eliot

Lovely White Flowers

He went inside the café where they used to go together.
It was here, three months ago, that his friend had told him:
“We’re completely broke—the two of us so poor
that we’re down to sitting in the cheapest places.
I have to tell you straight out—
I can’t go around with you any more.
I want you to know, somebody else is after me.”
The “somebody else” had promised him two suits,
some silk handkerchiefs. To get his friend back,
he himself went through hell rounding up twenty pounds.
His friend came back to him for the twenty pounds—
but along with that, for their old intimacy,
their old love, for the deep feeling between them.
The “somebody else” was a liar, a real bum:
he’d ordered only one suit for his friend,
and that under pressure, after much begging.

But now he doesn’t want the suits any longer,
he doesn’t want the silk handkerchiefs at all,
or twenty pounds, or twenty piasters even.

Sunday they buried him, at ten in the morning.
Sunday they buried him, almost a week ago.

He laid flowers on his cheap coffin,
lovely white flowers, very much in keeping
with his beauty, his twenty-two years.

When he went to the café that evening—
he happened to have some vital business there—the same café
where they used to go together: it was a knife in his heart,
that dingy café where they used to go together.

- C.P. Cavafy

From Romans

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

- Romans 1:19 - 1:23

My Daughter, the Hefty Kid

Trashbag kid is a system closer
to God, closer than any Nazareth
or seraphs pleading to die happy;
I would do anything to forget
the time I made my father cry.
Always a heroin & coke addict; still,
I’d choose to hug or love him.


Consider a Facebook Live hanging:

I want to laugh in heaven’s
playground. No motel sheets & shag carpets,

shared bathrooms & Gabby Angel’s
legs in the air, a disembodied doll.
I don’t even know
her real name. Just Gabby Angel turning my palms
so I don’t pick the hives on my chest.
Gabby Angel scolding me
for skipping seventh grade, but she’d walk
me back.
Makes me believe
I could hang from my own
ceiling.
But I care.
I’m in Hayward or Tucson,
the smoke shops where my father left me
for his addictions. Moving left to right through the aisles,
to speak with the managers. Their forceful Hakka,
a language I’d mimic. My father asking me to wait.

These towns where I’m the worthless piece of trash swiped from 16 homes, or 12 years of paradise: I’m Y2K, I’m 9/11, I’m still a truant running from the Upper Legislative Angels—my case managers, my parents’ attorneys, my parents. Ask me how I saw bin Laden’s face when I gutted my stomach so clean, I believed I was disinfected—my parents would want me again.

Or I’ll choose

the Motel 6 shooting on Industrial Parkway:
That I’ve never held a Glock
pistol between my forefinger & thumb—
thanks, Dad, for showing me how to wipe the mouth
after firing at the tin cans
along our chain-link fence.

They’re tilted—made to fall.

Like Evan Isaiah’s torso
with the rod splicing him clean.
Just my best friend taking the sucker punch for me,
as if I’m worthy of saving.
His hands wrapping the trashbag
around my clothes, a tradition in our fosterhood.

I still care.
& I’ll bite my lips until I can say curiosity,
coalition, courage, forgiveness, & volition—this is my life.


They want to graft me,
take the trashbag suicides out of my body.
Call me white—a seraph in an eleven year-old shirtdress.

& when I’ve no more ideation,
when I’ve bound too tight to my twist
ties, crinoline, half-sentences, & lies,
I’ll go back; I’ll write the body bag

thrown at me.

Let me be unfostered & gather my knees in the dawn. Let me say the people I love to touch & hug are nobody, & that does not make me stranger than a girl with parents who want her. Every daughter has the right to have a family. To have parents who love & care for her. My daughter, how do I raise you right?


​I am fostered,
born in a system where I am destined to age,
the same cadence in Evan Isaiah’s
& Gabby Angel’s passings. The rope splices
remind me I’m the one domesticated—
to witness my beloveds leave this earth. That I can’t


sleep or don’t want to sleep or whisper to sleep
their words until the spook threatens me. That I look
for the puppet strings of the women
above me because every trashbag kid

carries compassionate feet; they just need a gentle trigger.
The panic & paranoia of my early pregnancy.
A totality of music which tells my father I’ll forgive
him. Our bodies
borne into another thrill, a stroke
of standing up


or kneeling—
gun punch or seraph
gaveling my limbs

until I find my mind.

& I’m on this earth:

Still a hanging. A benediction. A counter-
blood. I know they will guide
me from their forever homes,
from their addictions, ascensions, abuses,


& loves. My daughter,
I’ll wring with them. I’ll do any-
thing to remember I untie my knots, chuck my knives,
throw my father’s pistol away.

- Sylvia Chan

Orderly Existence

A tree rots in the forest unnoticed.
Lichen trims bark. A raucous reek.
The bruised framework sinks into the earth.
A woman with a man's physique treads the path sobbing.
The night telephone above the table takes a bite out of the darkness.
A dog that begins to howl in its sleep,
as if it weren't supposed to be alive anymore.
Power over words is power over things.
We sleep and have everything — relations,
a favorite restaurant, happy home.
But something here's not clicking. Not only words.

- Milan Dezinsky, trans. from Czech by Nathan Fields

Parable of the Swans

On a small lake off
the map of the world, two
swans lived. As swans,
they spent eighty percent of the day studying
themselves in the attentive water and
twenty percent ministering to the beloved
other. Thus
their fame as lovers stems
chiefly from narcissism, which leaves
so little leisure for
more general cruising. But
fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit
slimy water; whatever the filth was, it
clung to the male’s plumage, which turned
instantly gray; simultaneously,
the true purpose of his neck’s
flexible design revealed itself. So much
action on the flat lake, so much
he’s missed! Sooner or later in a long
life together, every couple encounters
some emergency like this, some
drama which results
in harm. This
occurs for a reason: to test
love and to demand
fresh articulation of its complex terms.
So it came to light that the male and female
flew under different banners: whereas
the male believed that love
was what one felt in one’s heart
the female believed
love was what one did. But this is not
a little story about the male’s
inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan’s
sleazy definition of purity. It is
a story of guile and innocence. For ten years
the female studied the male; she dallied
when he slept or when he was
conveniently absorbed in the water,
while the spontaneous male
acted casually, on
the whim of the moment. On the muddy water
they bickered awhile, in the fading light,
until the bickering grew
slowly abstract, becoming
part of their song
after a little longer.

- Louise Gluck

Penelope's Stubbornness

A bird comes to the window. It’s a mistake
to think of them
as birds, they are so often
messengers. That is why, once they
plummet to the sill, they sit
so perfectly still, to mock
patience, lifting their heads to sing
poor lady, poor lady, their three-note
warning, later flying
like a dark cloud from the sill to the olive grove.
But who would send such a weightless being
to judge my life? My thoughts are deep
and my memory long; why would I envy such freedom
when I have humanity? Those
with the smallest hearts
have the greatest freedom.

- Louise Gluck

Molotov

I got my dream pills.

They’re wrapped in tin foil
And it’s going to be alright.

I got sweet Billy with me
And he’s still breathing and
It’s beautiful, what they’re telling us.

Got my enzymes, a nickel bag of
Electrolytes. My entire life,
I’ve been waiting for this.

I got my radio on.

I’ve got it hooked into a chip
And lodged inside a suburb of thought
In my brain, somehow.

And it’s weird, how it’s wired.

I can hear the fires.

I can hear the daisies
As they fell the desert.
Pretty machete like
Paper Mache confetti of
Dropped cluster bombs and now

I can hear the Black
Hawks wild in their swarm and
I’ve got my horses and
I’m holding beautiful Billy in my arms.

It’s like a song.

- Cynthia Cruz

The Spell

In memory of Elise Asher

Our four year old neighbor Pablo has lost his wand
and so he tries to cast spells with his finger
which doesn’t seem to work as well.

Then he brings handfuls of dimes and nickels to the couch
where I’m sitting, and when I say, Give me some money,
he says, No, laughing.

Give me some money, I say,
and he says, No.

Then he draws, on a piece of paper, a circle with a 10 inside
the word No, an unhappy mouth and eyes,
and gives that to me.

Why not ask the wand to find itself?
No, he says, shaking his head slowly.
Why not make a spell that will find it?
No, he says, that won’t work.
What about the stick? His mother says, holding up a chopstick.
No, says Pablo, who knows the difference between what is secular and
what is sacred.

Every day when I pick up my four year old daughter from preschool
she climbs into the her back booster seat and says, Mom – tell me your story.
And almost every day I tell her: I dropped you off, I taught my class
I ate a tuna fish sandwich, wrote e-mails, returned phone calls, talked with students
and then I came to pick you up.
And almost every day I think, My God, is that what I did?

Yesterday, she climbed into the backseat and said, Mom
tell me your story, and I did what I always did:
I said I dropped you off
taught my class, had lunch, returned e-mails, talked with students….
And she said, No Mom, tell me the whole thing.

And I said, ok, I feel a little sad.
And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom.
And I said, ok, Elise died.

Elise is dead and the world feels weary and brokenhearted.
And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom.
And I said, in the dream last night I felt my life building up around me and
when I stepped forward and away from it and turned around I saw a high
and forever crested wave.

And she said, the whole thing Mom.
Then I thought of the other dream, I said, when a goose landed heavily on my    
head—
but when I’d untangled it from my hair I saw it wasn’t a goose but a winged
serpent
writhing up into the sky like a disappearing bee.

And she said, Tell me the whole story.
And I said, Elise is dead, and all the frozen tears are mine of course
and if that wave broke it might wash my life clear,
and I might begin again from now and from here.

And I looked into the rearview mirror—
she was looking sideways, out the window, to the right
                               --where they say the unlived life is.
Ok? I said.
And she said, Ok, still looking in that direction.


- by Marie Howe

 

Flying

She was fooling around with the plane’s door handle. I said “Don’t touch that, sweetheart, you never know what can happen.” Suddenly the door disappeared and she flew out and I yelled “Judith” and saw her looking terrified at me as she was being carried away. I jumped out after her, smiled and held out my arms like wings and yelled “Fly like a bird, my darling, try flying like a bird.” She put out her arms, started flying like me and smiled. I flew nearer to her and when she was close enough I pulled her to my body and said “It’s not so bad flying like this, is it? It’s fun. You hold out one arm and I’ll hold out one of mine and we’ll see where we can get to.” She said “Daddy, you shouldn’t have gone after me, you know that,” and I said “I wouldn’t let you out here all alone. Don’t worry, we’ll be okay if we keep flying like this and, once we’re over land, get ourselves closer and closer to the ground.”

The plane by now couldn’t be seen. Others could, going different ways, but none seemed to alter their routes for us no matter how much waving I did. It was a clear day, blue sky, no clouds, the sun moving very fast. She said “What’s that?” pointing down and I said “Keep your arm up, we have to continue flying.” She said “I am, but what’s that?” and I said “Looks like a ship but it’s probably an illusion.” “What’s an illusion?” and I said “What a time for word lessons; save them for when we get home. For now just enjoy the flying and hope for no sudden air currents’ shifts.” My other arm held her tightly and I pressed my face into hers. We flew like that, cheek to cheek, our arms out but not moving. I was worried because I hadn’t yet come up with any idea to help us make a safe landing. How do we descend, how do we land smoothly or crash-land without breaking our legs? I’ll hold her legs up and just break mine if it has to come to that. She said “I love you, Daddy, I both like you and love you and always will. I’m never going to get married and move away from home.” I said “Oh well, one day you might, not that I’ll ever really want you to. And me too to you, sweetie, with all that love. I’m glad we’re together like this. A little secret though. For the quickest moment in the plane I thought I wouldn’t jump out after you, that something would hold me back. Now nothing could make me happier than what I did.”

We left the ocean and we were over cliffs and then the wind shifted and we were being carried north along the coast. We’d been up at almost the same distance from water and land for a long time and I still had no idea how to get down. Then along the coastal road I saw my wife driving our car. Daniel was in the front seat, his hand sticking out the window to feel the breeze. The plane must have reported in about the two people sucked out of the plane, and when Sylvia heard about it she immediately got in the car and started looking for us, thinking I’d be able to take care of things in the air and that the wind would carry us east.

“Look at them, sweetheart, Mommy and Daniel. He should stick his arm in; what he’s doing is dangerous.” She said “There aren’t any other cars around, so it can’t hurt him.” “But it should be a rule he always observes, just in case he forgets and sticks it out on a crowded highway. And a car could suddenly come the other way. People drive like maniacs on these deserted roads and if one got too close to him his arm could be torn off.” “But the car would be going the other way — wouldn’t it? — so on Mommy’s side, not his,” and I said “Well, the driver of another car going their way could suddenly lose his head and try and pass on the right and get too close to Daniel’s arm — Daniel,” I screamed, “put your arm back right now. This is Daddy talking.” His arm went back in. Sylvia stopped the car, got out and looked up and yelled “So there you are. Come back now, my darlings; you’ll get yourselves killed.” “Look at her worrying about us, Judith — that’s nice, right? — Don’t worry, Sylvia,” I screamed, “we’re doing just fine, flying. There’s no feeling like it in the world, we’re both quite safe, and once I figure out a way to get us down, we will. If we have to crash-land doing it, don’t worry about Judith — I’ll hold her up and take the whole brunt of it myself. But I think it’s going to be some distance from here, inland or on the coast, so you just go home now and maybe we’ll see you in time for dinner. But you’ll never be able to keep up with us the way this wind’s blowing, and I don’t know how to make us go slower.” “You sure you’ll be all right?” she yelled, and I said “I can hardly hear you anymore, but yes, I think I got everything under control.”

We flew on, I held her in my arm, kissed her head repeatedly, thinking if anything would stop her from worrying, that would. “You sure there’s nothing to worry about, Daddy? I mean about what you said to Mommy,” and I said “What are you doing, reading my mind? Yes, everything’s okay, I’m positive.” We continued flying, each with an arm out, and by the time night came we were still no closer to or farther away from the ground.

- Stephen Dixon

Lucky Life

Lucky Life isn't one long string of horrors
and there are moments of peace and of pleasure as I lie in between the blows.
Lucky I don't have to wake up in Philipsburg, New Jersey,
on the hill overlooking Union Square or the hill overlooking
Kuebler Brewery or the hill overlooking S.S. Philip and James
but have my own hills and my own vistas to come back to.

Each year I go down to the island I add
one more year to the darkness;
and though I sit up with dear friends
trying to separate one year from the other,
this one from the last, that one from the former,
another from another,
after a while they all get lumped together,
the year we walked to Holgate,
the year our shoes got washed away,
the year it rained,
the year my tooth brought misery to us all.

This year was a crisis. I knew it when we pulled
the car onto the sand and looked for the key.
I knew it when we walked up the outside steps
and opened the hot icebox and began the struggle
with swollen drawers and I knew it when we laid out
the sheets and separated the clothes into piles
and I knew it when we made our first rush onto
the beach and I knew it when we finally sat
on the porch with coffee cups shaking in our hands.

My dream is I'm walking through Phillipsburg, New Jersey,
and I'm lost on South Main Street. I am trying to tell,
by memory, which statue of Christopher Columbus
I have to look for, the one with him slumped over
and lost in weariness or the one with him
vaguely guiding the way with a cross and a globe in
one hand and a compass in the other.
My dream is I'm in the Eagle Hotel on Chamber Street
sitting at the oak bar, listening to two
obese veterans discussing Hawaii in 1942,
and reading the funny signs over the bottles.
My dream is I sleep upstairs over the honey locust
and sit on the side porch overlooking the stone culvert
with a whole new set of friends, mostly old and humorless.

Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky the waves are cold enough to wash out the meanness.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.

- Gerald Stern