The Last Person to Hear Your Voice [1 ed.] 9780822978039, 9780822959571

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The Last Person to Hear Your Voice

PITT POETRY SERIES Ed Ochester, Editor

The Last Person to Hear Your Voice

RICHARD SHELTON

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Copyright © 2007, Richard Shelton All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-8229-5957-7

For Lois, Brad, Carol, Carson, and Malia— the family

Contents

1. Children of the New Crusade It Is Raining

3

The Little Towns of West Texas

5

Texas Water Tastes like Turpentine

7

In Search of History

8

At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners

10

Politics Last Summer

12

Summer’s Children

13

Miranda of the Sorrows

15

6 p.m.

17

Destination

18

Borderland

19

Mother of God

20

Downfall Enters

21

Colin Powell Is in Cairo/Madeleine Albright to Join Think Tank

22

Wee Hour

23

Chicago

24

Yes Miss Emily

25

One Morning

27

The Offering

29

Veteran

30

2. The Pope and the Contortionist South Paradise

37

Letter from Cuernavaca

39

The Cartography of Loneliness

41

Dichos

43

Here in Mexico

44

Here in Ecuador

45

The Wrong Room

47

King of Roses

48

Lugubrious

50

The Creep

52

Getting On

54

A Cinquain and the Moon

56

Therapy Session

57

The Golden Jubilee

60

3. Suburban Life as We Know It The Examined Life

67

The Glass Slipper

69

The Hole

71

If I Were a Dog

73

The Farm across the Road

75

Brief Communications from My Widowed Mother

77

Let Me Tell the One About

79

Red and Ed and Clyde

81

Canes

83

Eros Turannos, Fred and Jo

85

Catechism When the Kingdom Is in Danger

87

Runaway

89

Those Who Name Birds

90

Green Pastures

92

The Gates of Paradise

94

Lost Languages

95

Light

96

Interview before Departure

97

Confetti

100

Home Place

101

Glen Canyon on the Colorado (1991)

102

Acknowledgments

109

1 Children of the New Crusade

It Is Raining

and a line of light is just beginning to open the lid of the horizon. Somebody leans out an upstairs window and shouts, “Thanks for the beer. Write when you get work.” A car coughs, starts, moves down the street avoiding the deeper puddles stippled with rain. It passes a dog in a doorway, his tail curled carefully around his delicate feet. It is raining in Coblenz and in Buda and in Pest. It is raining on the top and bottom of the world. It is raining in Argentina. The bank vaults are leaking. The German certificates of deposit are beginning to mold. It is raining on the gleaming seats of hundreds of parked bicycles. It is raining for those who plan to go out and for those who plan to stay in. It is raining quietly, the rain of forever, the rain of good-bye, the rain of tomorrow. It is raining on horses who stand on three feet in wet fields and speak the language of every country. 3

It is raining on the mansion on the hill with one small light from the kitchen where the cook has a toothache and cannot sleep. She sits playing solitaire, looking around the empty room quickly, and cheating. It is raining on the glistening tailings from exhausted mines and on little ghost towns in the mountains. It is raining on the old house in the city far away where we once lived another life. It is raining wherever you are and wherever I am and wherever we are going and have been. It is raining on the tombstones, on the flat stones and the upright stones. It is raining into the open graves that are waiting. It is raining on history, on the battlefields of long-lost wars and the bronze statues of forgotten heroes. It is raining on Alcatraz, in the fog, where mushrooms are growing under steel bunks. It is raining on millions of pale yellow butterflies far out at sea, migrating like angels from one world to another.

4

The Little Towns of West Texas

know all the roads go somewhere else and never come back. They know Heaven is directly above them and from it comes great suffering. In their fierce localities they suffer without complaint. They believe in their names and in the Holy Ghost whose tongues of fire surround them. They are covered with cotton silt, insulated from the cold and the world as if wearing a coat of frost all year. They are mirages of mica shimmering in the distance, moving always ahead of the traveler. No stranger can enter them, no native can leave. Their seasons are summer and winter, the hot wind and the cold. Spring avoids them and goes a different way. At night the wind spins them upward into the darkness. At dawn it drops them back to earth in no particular order. If a house is found closer to the road or at a different angle, nobody notices. The horizon is always the same. The wind flays everything equally. Near the graveyards of the little towns of West Texas beer cans are crucified 5

on fence posts and shot full of holes. The wind plays them like flutes. Coyotes answer with voices that could wake the dead. But the dead sleep on, having everything they ever wanted, a cool, dark place to rest where the wind cannot rattle the lids of their coffins and the sun no longer torments them. .

Their mouths are pale crescent moons drawn down over teeth they paid for and intend to keep. They await no other transfiguration, having heard a voice roaring out of the desert and it was not a comfort to them. Now they sleep without dreams, rocked by the rhythm of the pump’s heartbeat and the faint susurrus of oil sliding like silk from beneath them.

6

Texas Water Tastes like Turpentine

We live in a bar just off the freeway in a permanent state of nostalgia listening to brokenhearted songs and gunfire from the parking lot. This is the frontier of the postmodernist era. One of us lost his leg in the war but he can’t remember which war. After midnight he can’t remember which leg. We still have private parts, semiprivate at least, but we are surrounded by dangerous dry counties and the abuse of loneliness. There are as many ways of being dead as there are ways of dying. All afternoon we watch the heavy industry of flies on flypaper. Outside is raw distance and the apotheosis of glare. We close at 2 a.m. It’s a long journey from Texas to West Texas. The world as we know it is mostly unknown.

7

In Search of History

We go in search of history and find a guillotine at a garage sale where the lady of the house in curlers and stretch pants sits in a lawn chair knitting, knitting. The guillotine is ugly but has historic value, we say, and take it home to replace the wagon wheel in the yard, but we can’t get the damned thing to work. Nobody told us the lubricant of history is blood. We thought it was money. Is Grandma’s pickle crock historical? How much is it worth? Could we convert the rusted old tricycle into a fountain? But history sings like a chainsaw in the woods, a freight train in the night. History is the grizzled Vietnam veteran with his dog and sign, begging at the intersection. History is the yellow detritus of used condoms at the edge of Lovers’ Lane. History is a lottery ticket, a truck full of cocaine approaching the border crossing, a drunk on the wrong side of the highway. History is hallucination, fantasy, a mirage

8

in the desert, as blind as justice. Historians suffer from the fever of time but never know what time it is. They are mad poets making up stories. The history of war passes a hat and we put our children in it. Then somebody gives us stars to put in our windows, one star for each child.

9

At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners

The dead in their coffins can’t get out. Can’t go to Heaven. Can’t go to Hell. Can’t go to lunch. Can’t go to Philadelphia. If we dumped their coffins in the river they could paddle like mad downstream and rest under the dark muscles of the sea. Some would steer better than others. Some would turn over in the rapids. But you can’t kill the dead. The ones who lost their boats in the rapids would just have to walk the rest of the way, scaring the bejesus out of anybody who happened to be fishing along the river. No, you can’t kill the dead. That’s why we shouldn’t confine them in coffins and make them wait aeons until some lazy angels blow rusty trumpets, trumpets the dead in their coffins probably won’t be able to hear anyway. Maybe the angels are asleep. Or maybe it was all a lie in the first place and there aren’t any angels with trumpets. So what about the poor gullible dead waiting in those cramped spaces for something that’s never going to happen? It’s the final indignity after all the others.

10

Let them out, I say, let them out! Let the dogs bury their bones. Let them run through the streets gibbering about how bad life treated them. Let them shove their stumps in our faces and offend us with the smell of their flesh. Then maybe we will realize we are mortal. Then maybe we will stop killing one another.

11

Politics Last Summer

The pederasts were pederasting, the sycophants were sycophanting and Washington was awash in the slime of politics when suddenly the three wise monkeys burst into the committee room beating on drums and demanding an end to the teaching of Darwinism or any theory that related them, even distantly, to such a debauched creature as man. Meanwhile, the homeless were trying to form a union so each of them could have a pot and a window. Can you imagine the gall? A pot and a window!

12

Summer’s Children

we do not know who chose us but we are the chosen we were chosen not to be you we enter your cities like fog with our bedrolls and our portable lives our ragged coats always too big the better for sleeping in we follow summer and we all look alike to you with our uncombed hair we look like winter when we are young we look older when we are older we begin to look young you do not want to look at us and since we are invisible to you we can urinate anywhere we are not lost we know where we are but our itinerary is chance and weather we do not believe in destinations and we are in no hurry we have learned patience from statues in a thousand parks and joy from dogs without collars we envy you nothing you want we can live on what you throw away 13

we envy only birds of passage their ability to fly sometimes we ask for your spare change but never your credit cards otherwise we keep our distance avoiding the germs of your misery the wolf does not come to our doors we have no doors we have lost our names somewhere and are required to sign nothing we do not pay taxes we feed the birds we do not vote why should we vote for you we do not join the army we are an army and we will not fight in your wars we have lost our return addresses our forwarding addresses our social security numbers and are secure in our own society we leave messages to one another on the undersides of bridges in a code you cannot decipher but we plot to overthrow nothing we escape we are summer’s children born into your winter we are not a problem we are a solution to a problem you are the problem 14

Miranda of the Sorrows

do you like my ponytail I got it off a real pony who died but I have always been a real literal person things would be easier for me if I didn’t tell the truth so much like my mother said a thousand times Miranda don’t tell the truth so much it will only get you into trouble but I always told her to screw it what did she know about how precious the truth is and she never knew nothing about all the sorrows just because I always tell the truth don’t mean I ain’t understanding see how I wear makeup on only one side of my face that makes me able to understand both sides of every issue but we suffer Lord we all suffer some more than others and I have been chosen to understand the sufferings and will probably live forever which is why I always keep one eye closed so my eyes will last and each one works a four-hour shift it’s only fair sometimes children throw rocks at me but they are mostly feral and sniff paint from spray cans they steal otherwise life on the streets ain’t 15

too bad if you keep your wits about you and don’t have serious bowel problems like I often do that’s the worst if you’re willing to be honest and suffer for others as I am we all suffer Lord some more than others but I was always strong in the legs I dance sometimes to cheer everybody up a kind of belly dance and I lift up my shirt so they can see my belly dancing but that’s all I do because if you take off your clothes they put you in the wagon and take you to a place where everybody is throwing up all over the floor I pray for all of them but it smells bad Lord sometimes it’s hard to suffer once when I was listening to the preacher on the corner a man stopped and asked me if I had a personal savior and I told him there can’t be no personal savior because suffering ain’t personal it’s general and I wanted to talk to him for a long time but he was just passing through the neighborhood the way everybody does since the stores have all gone out of business or to be literal the business has all gone out of the stores we suffer Lord some more than others on the streets where we live nobody is home

16

6 p.m.

This silence is the music of snow dying on the surface of the river or falling like God’s cold dandruff on to streets where the homeless have parked their shopping carts for the night and closed the doors of their cardboard boxes. We hurry home to our frozen suppers, happy to avoid eye contact with history.

17

Destination

Perhaps we are going neither to Heaven nor to Hell but somewhere else like the foggy coast of Oregon in winter. Perhaps our inability to know what we are doing or to see what is around us is merely practicing for death, learning our lines before we go on stage where there will be nothing to do but wait for nothing and every afternoon when the light goes hard and nacreous before it fades entirely, we will stand in a long line for our only meal of the day, a soupy gelatinous something served from a kettle by a woman with fat arms and a mustache, and then go to bed, almost contented, on cots in a dank church basement, surrounded by the snores and farts and sighs of others of our sad kind.

18

Borderland When too much light falls on everything a special terror results. Annie Dillard

In summer the sky goes flat and rapacious. Thirsty doves hurl themselves through it and mountains rise up against the light’s authority but they can hide nothing. Visiting rivers and relatives never stay very long. What are we possessed by? Love of a place? Fear of a place? Devils? As our fair flesh burns we remain where those before us have bowed to the light and created monuments to the transcendence of suffering, but we have no gift for suffering. That is for the permanent poor who cross the desert on foot to work or die, who offer us their hands for our labor that we might be free to find redemption or pleasure, who forgive us our lives, our complicity. Their bodies are candles burning for us so we will not stumble on our pathway to God.

19

Mother of God

That night he lay down in an arroyo although he knew it was better to walk at night and rest during the day. He lay down because he had to. It was cooler and the sky was filled with cold stars. For two days and a night he had seen only ocotillo, dried sticks with claws, and clumps of gray cholla attaching themselves to his legs like huge gray spiders. There was no water anywhere. That night he lay down and knew he was dying. He wanted to cry but had no tears. He tried to sing but his mouth would make no sound, so he prayed inside his head, looking straight up at the stars that seemed to be holes in the dark robe of the Mother of God through which the light from her body flowed. Little Mother, he prayed, let this night last for me forever and let the sun not return to torment me. I am a sinner but I have loved you always and I have suffered enough in search of food for my children. Later some told how he had tried to dig with his hands for water in the sand of the arroyo but those who knew him said it was not true. He had been digging a grave.

20

Downfall Enters

through a crack in wet ashes like nacreous light like an ethnic Albanian vampire like unrest in Indonesia the wild juice of language begins to melt under the heavy construction of glare we are covered as if with a gun as if with water as if with a shroud as if with moonlight as if with angels as if with hair we mark our progress with a trail of dead condoms like bread crumbs we volunteer to be the subjects of vast experiments involving weather as snow touches them the trees stop singing

21

Colin Powell Is in Cairo / Madeleine Albright to Join Think Tank The dogs sleep in their hair shirts creating soft inner linings for thousands of birds’ nests. Beauty and bad behavior surround us. We see/we shine. First there is the echo of light. Leaves become translucent. He could no longer sweep her off her feet or even lift her. Drop to your knees wherever you are. The sky turns green, the twister comes. He undertakes vast collaborations alone. A bird hits the window as sun pierces clouds. A heavily flooded area . . . library inundated . . . The president is baffled by the idea of a complete sentence. The birds are making a racket. He has undergone surgery for the removal of an organ he didn’t know he had. He never used it, nor did anyone else. The desert is quietly reasserting itself. Soon the wings of the house will fly away. 22

Wee Hour

contempt has congealed on last night’s dishes and open eyes ricochet over magnetic fields of insomnia this is the hour of the creaking floor and in the closet an intruder with a knife hour of the crawling flesh the aching tooth the rising gorge of hives and shingles of fighting cats of sobbing heard through the wall when terror opens like a trapdoor on a scaffold when Hell’s bells ring from the telephone and a voice says I only am escaped alone to tell thee

23

Chicago

Transgressors avoid capture but a helicopter is jumping off with its long tail and mane to ride through the night in search of impurity. O troubled city! Naked white mannequins freezing in store windows. Who will rescue the confetti on New Year’s Eve? Only Jesus saves. The rest of us spend as if dollars were buffalo. We bloom and spark, marching down the street (watch out for the horse manure, the cops are mounted) to celebrate a new war nobody won and our hair kinks or waves in dutiful directions. War all over now. Go home and eat a salami sandwich.

24

Yes Miss Emily

sometimes I am nobody I ever heard of but I have clothes in the closet therefore I exist and I get used to it slowly learning by the holes where my teeth once were that death has a certain civilizing influence on us and no one will have to rock our cradles when finally we grow quiet calm and impregnable and bloom into a kind of consternation where nothing can hurt us anymore at night the tall buildings of crumpled glass are opaque and mysterious and darkness falls from their windows into empty hands below but what could I change a few lights are still on where janitors work and wait for dawn which will arrive whenever it arrives with subtlety and precision the people I thought I could see through are the people I should have looked at more and some words are so dangerous they are born into cages and hang from a ceiling of fierce and sullen stars I fear abstractions I fear we are all abstractions 25

whose physical needs will never be satisfied and I fear you Miss Emily who touch the cages and make them ring in the darkness where all we want is to get through the night

26

One Morning

Who was the last person to hear your voice on a cell phone from an airplane over Pennsylvania or from an office in a tower or as you were clambering down a thousand steps on your way to the final seconds of your life? Will the last person to hear your voice please stand. Will the last person to hear your voice please stop screaming, stop remembering that you said I love you and hugs to the children and everything is going to be alright. As the tall buildings open like lilies, bloom and descend, may the last person to hear your voice not remember the passion in your voice as you lied to comfort the last person to hear your voice. The plane flies into the future. The buildings blossom on television. Summer is over. Winter is approaching, and cold rain. Soon the snow will cover everything. Will the last person to hear your voice hear your voice again in the silence as snow falls on the ground where your ashes are mingled with the ashes of others in an erasure that can never be erased?

27

I did not witness the shocked response to your message. I did not wait, slumped against a kitchen wall, for the final click and dial tone when the line went dead and the last person to hear your voice felt death creeping like smoke under the door, along the floorboards, and could not escape. There will be a moment of silence. There will be no excuse, no explanation, no apology. Will the last person to hear your voice please leave the room now to make way for others.

28

The Offering

Halfway through the boredom of a winter afternoon I get excited by the promise of a holy war on TV, a spectator sport less predictable than a wrestling match, longer than a football game. But the little voice in my head says it’s a religious war waged by the fundamentalists of one religion on the fundamentalists of another, that our president has gone mad. I try not to listen. I try to drown out the small voice that says we are being led into war by a religious fanatic. Surely, I say, the president wasn’t mad when we elected him. Did we elect him? the voice says, and Uncle Sam points out from the cover of Time magazine, but there is no time and he doesn’t want me anyway. I am too old. He wants the children of the New Crusade to march under his banner against the heathen and we offer them to him as the hand in the poster turns palm up and with a different finger he blesses our children: Go to war and die. 29

Veteran

1 The rain rises and falls, rises and falls. The boy with one hand reaches the hand he does not have to touch the rain and feels its gentleness blessing his absent fingers. What is rain? the boy wonders. Is it the photograph before the photograph was taken? Is it the reminder of all things leaving and never returning? Is it tomorrow, the future with one hand behind its back? The Stoic says I will endure the rain. The Epicurean says I will eat the fruits of the rain. The boy with one hand says I will accept the rain and live in the rooms of the rain. Rain refreshes the hairless head, the toothless mouth, the phantom limb. Of every pair of gloves one will be useless. He wants to give it away but how to find that other boy missing the opposite hand? That boy who could be his companion 30

and friend forever and they would have two hands and be blessed by the rain, two boy-men whose hands have been taken, he now knows, in a wretched, foolish war.

2 The boy with one hand has come back to the place he knows, to the place that knows him, but it is a two-handed place. He keeps the sleeve of his shirt fastened to conceal the absence of his hand. He feels they are staring at his missing hand. The hand has become invisible. It is there but they can’t see it. He is a young man with an invisible hand. He makes a fist with the invisible hand and threatens those who stare but they turn away. He can count on the fingers of his invisible hand or make an obscene gesture. No one will know. What happened to the real hand? he wonders. Where did it go? Is it embedded in the soil between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in the Garden of Eden? An image of the garden comes to him as he must have seen it in a picture book, 31

although he cannot remember when or which book, an image of trees and flowers, a man and a woman naked except for fig leaves, and a snake in a tree. The woman is holding a shining apple in her two hands, offering it to the man. The snake is grinning, twined around a tree laden with red fruit. The boy knows he can hold an apple in his hand but he is afraid to approach a woman with his one hand. He feels he is abhorrent. They have offered to give him a metal hook to replace his missing hand. How do you approach a beautiful woman with a metal hook?

3 The boy with one hand is singing, beating time to the music with his arm and the hand he does not have. He is young but his eyes are no longer young. They know that even when he is an old man he will never be able to clap his hands to the music, to cup water in his hands, to hold a toothbrush in one hand and the toothpaste in the other, to hold the face of a woman between his gentle hands. He feels there are some questions he should ask. Is there some way to change the past? Some way to find a new hand? He is almost ready to ask 32

the questions but he doesn’t know whom to ask. God is as far away as his childhood. He wants to ask the president but he realizes now that the president exists only on television. The boy could not have known how it would be and only now is beginning to understand that the world is two-handed and he has lost his right hand. He thinks about the two-handedness of the boxer, and two hands holding the rake, the shovel. He thinks about the sudden sureness of the osprey as it clutches a trout and lifts it from the foaming water as if the action were inevitable. He is constantly surprised by this absence as if it were a solid thing he could touch. He remembers the war but it seems to him it did not happen. He was there only a short time and did not kill anybody. He was riding in a truck, as if he were in the back of a pickup at home, and then he had only one hand. He does not know who he is now, a stranger in his own bed, the wrong hand reaching toward his nightly need, the hand he does not recognize, awkward and unfamiliar.

33

2 The Pope and the Contortionist

South Paradise ‘Ride, boldly, ride,’ The shade replied. ‘If you seek for Eldorado’ Edgar Allan Poe

Paradise is more beautiful than anything we could have imagined, but the brochures lied. It isn’t the heat so much as the humidity, and the air. . . well, there isn’t any. It had rained, was raining, and was about to rain. The natives blame the government for this. They blame the government for everything. The truth is, there is no government. It is only a convenience the natives invented long ago to explain the way things are, since religious beliefs no longer serve that function. They also believe that the government is planning to trade the entire region to the United States in return for the cancellation of a huge national debt that has been growing each year. They have no idea what happened to the money their country was loaned, but are philosophical about being traded to another country, believing that one government is as good as another. The important thing is to have one in order to have something to blame. As I said, most of the country is incredibly beautiful, but the coast is a disappointment. Someone, undoubtedly the government, has poured too much oil on troubled waters and the sea has nearly congealed. An island floats just offshore like a pyramid on a lake of grease. One frigate bird revolves above it with still wings, a black dagger suspended by an invisible thread. Generations of dead fish rot on the beach. We feel exposed, not to anything in particular, but exposed as the negative of a photograph is exposed. The natives are exceedingly handsome and languid, all gesture without motion. They pose in the shade of their jalapas, too picturesque to move. Cannas the color of blood bloom at their feet, and above them the flame trees flame. They wear white and slumber like indolent angels while the world behind them burns. They do not look at us but at something behind us, something amusing and strange, perhaps a shadow with 37

nothing to cause it. Their dogs come out to greet us, small and covered with sores, wagging their entire emaciated bodies. My knowledge of the language is slight, but I make them understand that we are trying to find the Hotel Eldorado, the one with aire acondicionado. “It is on the road that circles the bay,” several of them tell us. I explain as best I can that the road that circles the bay is flooded and impassable. “Then the hotel is on the highway to the capital,” they reply. “Seven kilometers along the highway to the capital is located the tourist hotel, muy grande, muy rico.” “But does it have aire acondicionado?” They are offended. “Como si!” Of course it has aire acondicionado! They withdraw their attention from us in order to resume their contemplation of something profound, possibly the government, and we who worship machines go on through the humidity in search of Eldorado. Seven kilometers down the road to the capital, in a swamp, we find the ruins of a large, unfinished structure abandoned for years. It is inhabited by snakes and tarantulas and covered with purple bougainvillea so lush it makes us nauseous. We suffer from beauty and dysentery, and can find no relief from either. There is no Hotel Eldorado. There is no aire acondicionado. There are disciplined armies of mosquitoes, ravenous enough to have eaten even the native dogs if we had brought them with us, and they wanted to come. So we go on through the perfect landscape: somnolent villages of thatched huts hidden in the flowers, yellow hibiscus with blossoms the size of dinner plates, huge pink sows lying beside the road, gleaming like porcelain. It is magnificent, but we flee on and on, exhausted, in search of some place with aire acondicionado, in search of any place but the paradise we are in, utterly beautiful, designed by some god who had never been there and did not plan to go.

38

Letter from Cuernavaca

Hurricanes of light roar down the street each morning past the ancient cathedral where a priest looks out from his little high window, sighs the sigh of history that sounds like The Revolution and returns to bed with a bottle of tequila and a sack of limes. His sadness is absolute. Since The Revolution he has not been allowed on the street except in disguise. I live upstairs across the street in a ruined mansion. The ground floor is paved with tombstones and my window opens onto an air shaft leading straight to Hell. All night the murdered daughter of a silver baron sobs in my room while teenagers make love standing up in the hallway. It sounds like The Revolution, The Revolution. Local color is the color of bougainvillea hanging over walls beyond which lizards wait in the ruins for The Revolution. Crepe paper is the local art form. I have met Our Lady of the Bathtub and Sister Alcoholica. I have seen 39

the defaced mural attributed to Orozco and the two starving horses in the dump where boys practice their pitching skills by throwing stones at them. We wear masks on the street. I have seen the Virgen de Guadalupe dragged through town in the backseat of a new Mercedes, a virgin Mercedes they told me, whose motor had never been started, pulled with long ropes by dozens of men. They had swept and decorated the street in her honor and they wept and prayed quietly as she passed. Nobody seems to know where she will go next. Some think she is Malinche and must return as a captive to the ugly Palace of Cortez on the square. Is it the last revolution they pray for or the one before that or the one yet to come? They wait for the return of the Virgen. And will she lead them to victory, a dark Maid of Orleans with an armful of crepe-paper roses?

40

The Cartography of Loneliness

The loneliness of the sea, of approaching Cartagena from the sea down a long still corridor and through the arms of a fortress unused for centuries. The loneliness of small towns in Kansas with depots to which no trains will ever come. The loneliness painted by Corot: a scrim of leafless poplars along a river in France, and beyond them a tall stone house with two chimneys reflected in the water. The loneliness of the farthest reaches of the rain. The loneliness of a German shepherd abandoned by those she loved and still loves, knowing what they have done to her. The loneliness of the Pilgrim’s Way across Kent and Surrey for a pilgrim alone. The loneliness of the ghost of a dead river in Arizona, of a field of stumps, once a forest in Oregon. The loneliness of summer’s leaving, lingering and looking back again and again, of the gorgeous, meaningless rhetoric of sunset. The loneliness of the moon in its final house with no star near it, and of the pale daylight moon.

41

The loneliness of an ear that will never see its mate, of a lost language, never again to be spoken, of the sure knowledge that death is near.

42

Dichos

It is easier to outsmart a fox than to outswim a shark. One out of every seven drivers is armed; the other six have only their fingers. History is the story we make up to explain the inevitable, for which we are never ready. It is far more entertaining to watch the Pope pretending to be a contortionist than it is to watch a contortionist pretending to be the Pope. Geologists refuse to admit that many stones seem to enjoy moving from place to place. The real problems of our culture can be deduced from the fact that we name mountains after men. If you can’t get what you want from me with flattery, flatter my dog. That always works.

43

Here in Mexico

Mozart’s Divertimento for Two Basset Horns was so seldom performed we rewrote it for two beagles. We are promoting a revival of the Polish Renaissance for those who missed the first one. Crucifixion has become an art form, and snow, when it occurs in the higher elevations, is thought of as the dandruff of a cold god. Recent analysis in the laboratory has proven this to be true. When the parade of naked virgins goes past, blind voyeurs fall from the trees along its route. The last bus to Hell leaves late but never too late for anyone inclined to go. Some ride on the roof. The eye in the obelisk watches as the bus passes the intersection of La Madre and a foregone conclusion or the cat and the fiddle, whichever comes first. The steep mountain grades are next, and nobody checked the brakes.

44

Here in Ecuador

I want to know if Tom Tom was really the piper’s son. Was he legitimate or a bastard? And why did he steal the pig? Was he hungry or was he attracted to pigs? Did anybody ask the pig about it? Surely pigs have some rights, even in foreign countries. Here in Ecuador, pigs go anywhere they want to and are an integral part of society. Such a theft would not have been allowed to go unpunished. The pigs in Ecuador squeal when they are being stolen. They squeal like nothing else you have ever heard, and somebody comes running, usually a policeman with a nasty-looking gun. My advice is to stay away from pigs in Ecuador. No matter how much they attract you, keep your hands off them. And if you are in Ecuador and your name happens to be Tom Tom, change it to something less controversial like César or Alejandro. That’s my advice. I would also like to know what happened to the pig after Tom Tom ran away. It must have been a very small pig, probably a piglet or the little bastard couldn’t have carried it. In Ecuador the pigs get very big. Some of them get so big it takes five men to persuade one of them to get out of the middle of the road when traffic is heavy. Usually they prefer to lie in the middle of the road where the mud is deepest, and they care nothing about traffic. There isn’t much traffic anyway except during a war, and pigs do not acknowledge wars. Wars are not on their agendas. If pigs happen to be going somewhere, they walk through wars; otherwise they sleep through them or wallow through them. Pigs are natural noncombatants, and everyone in Ecuador recognizes this. Not only are pigs smart enough to adopt this political stance, they are clever enough to get away with it. For this reason they are universally respected here in Ecuador where we have had many wars and have lost all of them. Most of our houses are built on stilts, and the pigs live under the houses where it is cool and moist. If a house is not on stilts, the pigs live inside the house, which is only proper since the owner did not have the 45

forethought to build the house on stilts for the pig’s comfort. In either case the pigs make good company at night. Their snoring is rhythmic and musical and helps you sleep peacefully. But when they appear to be sleeping, pigs are actually thinking deep thoughts which bring pleasant dreams to the entire household. They think about eternity and realize it is now and everywhere. They think about the future and the past, and they realize it is all one thing and it is within them. They know they are immortal. They are in no hurry. If you look deep into a pig’s little eye, you will see something of what they know. It is everything and it goes on forever. It transcends all human knowledge. Pigs love to rub against things, and they love to have things rubbed against them. It reminds them of the here and now, which is part of eternity. Each time we rub a pig with a stick we become part of its eternity, and the pig loves us. The pig dozes off into eternity and we go along for the ride. This might last only a few seconds or forever. It does not matter. The small eyes close, the great heart beats more slowly, the stick moves back and forth, the world ends, the world begins again as it has always done. Something crawls out of the sea, something crawls into the mud, something scratches against a stick, the sky opens, the mud deepens, the pig is willing. In Ecuador these things are understood. If you want to see eternity, look in a pig’s eye.

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The Wrong Room

When I opened the door, I saw a window in the far wall directly in front of me, and through it I could see a full moon rising. The walls of the room were white and there was a bright patch of moonlight on the floor. Everything was where I remembered it—the bed in the corner and beside it an oval rug. Against the wall to the right a chair and a tall chest. To the left a small table with a long cloth and a covered birdcage hanging above it. Then as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, it seemed as if the objects in the room were moving slowly toward me, as if the floor were tilting. The patch of moonlight, also, was creeping across the floor. At once I realized that this illusion was caused by the shadows of things lengthening as the moon rose. I went to the window to look out, but discovered that the window was painted on the wall. There was no window. And the moon was a round mirror in the center of the painted window, reflecting light from the hallway where I had left the door open. As I turned back in confusion, I saw the zebra in front of the closet. He had just removed his stripes and was standing in the moonlight in his underwear. I was in the wrong room. We were both embarrassed. I apologized for the intrusion and left as quickly as possible, closing the door behind me.

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King of Roses

Death emerges from the front door of the Grim Eye Clinic, cheerful and ebullient, wearing tight pants and a tank top, his arms and shoulders a swirling mural of dragons, ferns, a beautiful naked lady, a procession of trolls, flowers, and spiderwebs. He carries the skeleton of an umbrella and hums a phrase of Lola’s ditty from Cavalleria. Da dé da dé da da. He crosses the street without looking in either direction and sits on a bench waiting for the bus, not knowing which bus he is waiting for. No matter. He will recognize it when he sees it. Da dé da dé da da. He spins the ribs of the umbrella above his head like a propeller, creating a cooling breeze on his face while others at the bus stop edge away. A pale middle-aged woman in an ugly wig thinks he must be crazy. Just my luck, she says to herself when he rises and follows her onto her bus, #6 East Broadway via Main, still humming the same phrase over and over, faster and faster, and he will hum it

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all the way to her stop, where he will get off first and help her down, da dé da dé da da, waiting for recognition to snap her eyelids up like window blinds.

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Lugubrious

Consider my friend Lugubrious, a man of sorrow and acquainted with all the right people until he accidentally swallowed his glass eye and began to see the world clearly for the first time through his asshole. Then he received his revelation and began to refer to himself in the third person. How could we have been expected to know he was the Empress of Virtual Reality. Out of the closet and into cyberspace! I now bear him witness while he levitates like a candle burning at both ends. He weeps for those with unlived lives, for those who shave their tongues until they sound like everybody else. He understands the abstract quality of grease. He praises the mad who live by the light of their own immaculate shadows. He knows what the fog is doing in the cleavage of young hills. He recognizes greed. He sees coyotes masturbating furiously on the runways of international airports. He condemns the spectators who gather in stadiums and scream for violence while their gibbous bellies jiggle.

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He sells halos to those who can afford them and offers promissory notes to those waiting for the Second Coming. He hypnotizes chickens, saying, “Run, run, my little children. Soon the expedient stars will rain on your heads.”

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The Creep

his compass has no needle he is everywhere at once arriving at the wrong moment dragging an embarrassed shadow if he does not come by he will call if he does not call he will come by if he comes by he will not leave and if he leaves he will return too soon it takes several weeks to spend an hour with him he is the one subject of all his conversations but his life is garbled like a bad translation his mind is a series of interruptions his voice an insult to silence he is needy he wants to tell you about himself wants to hang himself on your wall like a coat somebody forgot just hanging there you can’t wear it can’t throw it away and each time he returns for it he will forget it again at parties he violates your space when you step back he steps forward

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when you look down you feel guilty his shoes are ashamed of his feet ambition’s blue vein twitches in his eyelid he wants to be famous for something for anything to sign autographs to be recognized wherever he goes and eventually he is

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Getting On

The doctor enters from stage left, his stethoscope dangling. He lights a candle. Take off everything from your waist up and down. Supply a Biblical reference. Nothing to do with raising the dead or ethnic violence. If you can’t think of one, make one up. . . . unless you have had a very rough lifestyle. Are you a member of the Zulu Social and Pleasure Club in New Orleans? Have you ever played Bolero nonstop for forty-eight hours? Were you high on booze and bennies when you killed your crime partner in a hotel in Fillmore, Utah? Is there a hotel in Fillmore, Utah? He attaches the Richter scale to my scrotum. Postnasal drip is common among those who are getting on. Your kidneys are very pretty. Your prostate is symmetrical. Telescope technology may help your eyes. Unused embryos are now being adopted. You are deeply flawed and parenthetical.

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You are being recorded. You are getting on. There is the possibility that you will feel OK for a short time. A little bird told me that, the liar.

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A Cinquain and the Moon

We are studying the full moon and the poems of Adelaide Crapsey, in that order. Adel aide created a poetic form called the cinquain (fortunately not the Crap sey) whose resemblance to the Haiku is suspect if not superficial. The full moon has creat ed nothing but mayhem and pregnancies for thousands of years. We doubt that Adel aide would approve of it, but who knows if Adel aide ever got laid under a full moon?

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Therapy Session

The image of a hypnotized chicken appears several times in your writing. During your childhood on the farm, did you ever hypnotize a chicken? No, but my brother and me got a bunch of chickens very drunk once. We soaked pieces of bread in whiskey and the chickens gobbled it right up. How did the chickens behave? About like people. Some became morose or belligerent and tried to pick a fight. Some dragged one wing on the ground and went around in circles, clucking like they felt sorry for themselves. The rooster strutted around and tried to screw the hens but couldn’t and just fell over and slept. Do you think you were traumatized by this childhood experience? No, but the chickens were. They had terrible hangovers. Have you ever seen a chicken with its little eyes all bloodshot? Did you do anything to help the poor chickens? We made them some strong black coffee, but they wouldn’t touch it. What was your reaction to the drunken chickens? We laughed until we fell down on the ground and rolled around in the chicken shit, which reminds me of one of my father’s favorite sayings. Whenever anybody asked him if he remembered somebody, he would say, “Hell yes! I remember her. We used to go out to her place and eat chicken. Shit, I remember her.” My father’s sense of humor was of the chicken-shit variety. I guess I inherited it. 57

Are you familiar with the term “arrested development”? Yes, but it’s not the kind of arrest I’ve been much concerned with. The first time I was arrested I was just a kid. My brother and me stole some homing pigeons. We went late at night and my brother cut into somebody’s cage with the wire clippers and stuffed the sleeping pigeons into a sack. I carried the sack and he rode me home on the handlebars of his bicycle. The cops came the next day and let the pigeons out and they all flew back to their own cage. So they put us in jail for awhile, but I was only eight, so they let me out right away and kept my brother. My father told the cops they were chicken shit, and then it was wonder the whole family didn’t go to jail. Did you have any other experiences involving chickens or fowl? Well, there was the goose. Would you tell me about the goose? Actually, it was a gander, and a big mean son-of-a-bitch. Every time a little boy opened the gate between the house and the barnyard, he would go right for his crotch. You could see him coming, half-flying, halfrunning with his long ugly neck stuck out and his beak open for the kill. He never bothered little girls. We had to be careful not to let him catch us taking a leak, and he was always on the alert. It was almost as bad as the milking machine. The milking machine? Well, when our grandfather first got a milking machine, my brother and me thought it would be a neat idea to kind of experiment with it and see what happened. So we put it on us and turned it on. You inserted your . . . ? 58

Yeah. Into the part they put on the cow’s tit. But it wasn’t a good idea. Almost as bad as the gander. Was this your first sexual experience? Yeah, you might call it that. Do you think it left you badly scarred? No, just chafed and raw and sore as hell for several days. My brother said it wasn’t so much that we screwed the milking machine as that the milking machine screwed us. We also had some adventures with the turkey and the electric fence. The electric fence! We had an electric fence all around the pasture to keep the cows in, and it could really give you a jolt. Well, one day we were . . . I’m sorry but our time is up for today. We will have to save the electric fence for another session. But I wanted to tell you more about my father and his jokes. His favorite joke was about a sheepherder and a sheep. There was this sheepherder . . . I’m sorry but we have run out of time. We will have to stop now. But don’t you want to hear the joke about the sheepherder? Not now! Not ever!

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The Golden Jubilee In that far off sweet forever, Just beyond the shining river, When they ring the golden bells for you and me.

1 On the morning that lasts forever the neighbors are playing a tape of Tibetan monks again, somewhere between groaning and flatulence, calling it music. We could take the dog for a walk if we had a dog. A famous contortionist has a fit of hiccups while practicing the Bavarian Pretzel and buggers himself severely before anyone can come to his rescue. He swears it has never happened before but he shows little remorse, saying “Such accidents are simply hazards of the profession, and virginity is an asset only to the very young.” The skinheads are greasing their heads and straps, applying for jobs as prison guards. The prison guards are eating turnips, chewing thoughtfully, dreaming of escape. It is sunny. The young president and his wife get into a convertible. The seeds of death are in the flowers of death. Who will catch the bouquet? Soon Love will arrive wearing a necklace of garlic and riding a crow.

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2 During the afternoon that lasts forever a young earthquake ponders the laws of physics and the dictionary grows a new head of hair. A thief steals a purse and finds in it a living magpie. He feeds the bird and cares for it. They become inseparable. Years after the magpie’s death, he finds in its nest the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. God sleeps and dreams about rain. It begins to rain. A revolt breaks out in El Salvador and the government kills 30,000 peasants. A hummingbird flies out of a dead man’s eye. An ex-nun marries an ex-priest and they both become prison guards. A prisoner looks through the tiny window of his cell and sees the second, third, and fourth comings. “Jesus saves,” he shouts, “everybody but me.” Someone is still sobbing behind a curtain and will not be comforted. Those with souls turn to those who have none and say, “You don’t look a day older.” Love sleeps triumphant on a bed of rice and mushrooms.

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3 During the evening that lasts forever an old pederast sits in his basement room. The light from his little high window becomes murky, as if the room is going under water. He waits for the phone to ring, for someone to try to sell him something, for any voice in the world to talk to him. The president and his wife enter a box in the theater. The audience applauds. A mad carpenter and his fishermen friends get into a leaky boat to cross the lake. It won’t work. The boat is overloaded. Somebody is going to have to walk. Later the Pope walks into a tough bar in the barrio dressed as a cowboy. He orders a tequila, rolls a smoke one-handed, and lights a match on the seat of his Levis. Everybody knows he is a fake, but nobody says a word. The skeleton crew of the Inquisition waits in his pickup parked in the alley down which Love staggers, stoned again, and squats to take a pee.

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4 In the night that lasts forever the neighbors are playing Mexican chicken-scratch polkas. Dogs howl. The ex-nun and ex-priest are killed in a prison riot. They go to Heaven where the thief admits them immediately. The Pope objects and spray-paints TRAITORS on the walls. His truck is riding low. The contortionist continues to practice the Bavarian Pretzel but never performs it in public. The boat makes it to shore with the carpenter treading water beside it. The fishermen will later exaggerate the story, as fishermen always do. The vultures in El Salvador get fat during the night that will last forever and an earthquake destroys much of Bolivia. The prisoner becomes a Pentecostal preacher. Someone is still sobbing behind a curtain. The curtain rises. It is a man with a gun. He shoots into the president’s box. Blood sprays out onto the audience who accepts it as a sacrament. Toward dawn of the night that lasts forever Love returns repentant. Bells are ringing. Golden bells are ringing.

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3 Suburban Life as We Know It

The Examined Life

Define bread: Every fanatic has an answer, no two the same. Define sleep: The bread of night, teeth in the jawbone of the past. Define teeth: Tailor-made tombstones. Define water: The horizontal pavilion of history, courage in a bucket. Define history: Weapons and the disappearing wolves. Define courage: The fingers and legs crossed, nobody knows better. Define crucifixion: Loneliness and a lack of trees. Define loneliness: The picture extends beyond the frame, beyond the question of winter. Define winter: Lost beside the railroad tracks. Define creation: Angels out of work, drifting like smoke through the forest.

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Define smoke: Feathers of language worn by travelers. Define language: A bridge of butterflies.

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The Glass Slipper The shoe is not really small, you only have to cut off your toes . . . Miroslav Holub

We can’t all be Cinderella or the prince. Somebody has to be an ugly sister (there are more of them) or a drunken father or even the wicked stepmother herself. What a disgusting woman! But somebody has to be everybody in the story, sad though it is and I couldn’t begin to justify the choices or say who makes them. It’s a job I wouldn’t want. Worse still, they say that if you’re wicked in this story you will be some lowly creature crawling on your belly through the slime of the next. So here we are, all waiting for the slipper made of sand, the sand is running out and no one to turn the hourglass over. A pessimistic view but it can’t be helped. Unless of course the stepmother, if you happen to be the stepmother, decides not to be wicked. What would happen if you were kind, if you loved Cinderella as much as you loved your own daughters, and treated everyone fairly? What would happen then? The slipper would shatter like a flock of doves disturbed on an autumn afternoon and glass would ricochet in all directions while the heavy sky fell on everyone. 69

Finis the story, but somebody might make up a new one, a better one for all of us lowly creatures crawling through the slime.

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The Hole

I have dug a hole. It is not an extremely large hole, about four feet across and perhaps three feet deep, but it is a wonderful hole, a magnificent hole. I was planning to encase it in concrete and fill it with water to make a pool, a trap for goldfish. But once I had seen the hole, once I became aware of the holeness of it, I could not bear to destroy it. It exists and has a function: to be a hole. It has as much right to exist as a mountain or a tree. And I have gotten over the notion that I created it. It was there from the beginning, waiting to be uncovered. I merely found it. Everything conspires to destroy a hole. Leaves blow into it. Sand and water creep in to fill it. And people have an overpowering urge to throw things into it: stones, trash, cigarette butts, anything. When we have nothing to throw into it, we often fall into it. We seem unable to leave it alone, as if it were something evil, something threatening. But a hole is the least aggressive of things. It asks only to exist and to be what it is. So I am building a wall around the hole to help protect it. Tourists will go to see anything; and when they come to see my hole, I will put up a sign that says: NO PART OF THIS HOLE MAY BE REMOVED UPON PENALTY OF LAW. There is no law to protect holes, but it will be a small deception that harms no one, and holes need all the help they can get. A hole is only distantly related to a cave, although it might appear that a cave is just a hole lying down. Actually, in the hierarchy of negative space, holes have much more status than caves. Holes are more courageous, exposing themselves to constant danger, while caves hide under their roofs and protective banks. And people do not seem to have the urge to destroy caves. We simply explore them and deface them. But when we encounter a hole, we want to fill it. While each hole is a quite distinct hole, all have two things in common. They love shadows and sound. They hold shadows as long as they can, caressing them. And they do the same thing with sounds, 71

especially the sound of a voice. When I speak into the hole, it cherishes and amplifies my voice, reluctant to let it go. The hole seems grateful when it has the opportunity to roll words around, enhancing them in subtle ways. It takes no real effort for me to throw it a few words now and then. I rather enjoy talking to it. I have come to admire the way it takes pride in being what it is—not the absence of anything, but the presence of something—a hole. But where is the surface of a hole? I once believed that the surface of a hole is level with the surface of the ground around it. From observation I have come to realize this is not true. The earth has a surface and the sea has a surface but a hole has no surface. A hole has only sides and a bottom from which it extends infinitely upward like a shaft of light; and as the earth revolves, it moves with great care and precision between the stars.

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If I Were a Dog

I would trot down this road sniffing on one side and then the other peeing a little here and there wherever I felt the urge having a good time what the hell saving some because it’s a long road but since I’m not a dog I walk straight down the road trying to get home before dark if I were a dog and I had a master who beat me I would run away and go hungry and sniff around until I found a master who loved me I could tell by his smell and I would lick his face so he knew or maybe it would be a woman I would protect her we could go everywhere together even down this dark road and I wouldn’t run from side to side sniffing I would always be protecting her and I would stop to pee only once in awhile sometimes in the afternoon we could go to the park and she would throw a stick I would bring it back to her

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each time I put the stick at her feet I would say this is my heart and she would say I will make it fly but you must bring it back to me I would always bring it back to her and to no other if I were a dog

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The Farm across the Road

grew nothing but weeds and the old man had used its three-story barn to build a perpetual motion machine which he tinkered with constantly often going without sleep for nights the neighbors said as they watched his lights and heard his racket they said it never would work laughed at him behind his back but they wanted to see it just to get an idea of how crazy the old man was although he never invited them into his house much less the three-story barn it was strange how everything that belonged to us kids when it got lost went straight toward that barn like baseballs arrows dogs kites as if the machine already had the power of a magnet and when the old man saw us looking for something he would come out and invite us in so we saw the size and intricacy of the machine with its one soaring wheel as big as a Ferris wheel 75

only more delicate and beautiful and we knew that as soon as he got it started it would go on forever which was longer than we could imagine and plenty long enough to show everybody in the county what kind of fools they had been

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Brief Communications from My Widowed Mother

You remember I told you I hired an old geezer from church to paint the outside of the house. Well, I’m sure glad he’s finished. What a pain in the neck. I made the mistake of inviting him in for coffee once in awhile and he would just set there and grin like a skunk eating horse manure. The last day he was here he said I was a mighty fine-looking lady and he thought the two of us should get “hitched,” that’s what he said, “hitched” and share our “declining years.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. Declining years my Aunt Hattie. All he wanted was to get his hands on my pension checks. But I fixed him. I just laughed like it was a big joke and told him to come back when he had a million dollars and a VERY SERIOUS heart condition. That’s the only kind of man I’m interested in declining with. And he isn’t a very good painter anyway. 

I read that book you gave me. It was terrible—the dirtiest book I ever read. It’s disgusting what they can get printed these days. Have you got any more by the same author? 

Your sister has been lying about her age so long even her husband doesn’t know how old she is. He must think she was about ten when he married her. I told her if she doesn’t quit lying about her age she’ll never get any social security. 

You remember Harry, the old drunk who lives up the street. Yesterday he was staggering home from the bus stop drunk as a lord. He got right in front of my house and fell down and started vomiting all over himself. Then he passed out and all the stray dogs in the neighborhood ran out and started licking his face. It was positively revolting. I had to call the police AND the dogcatcher. 

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I’m still having those fainting spells but the doctor can’t do anything about them. Two weeks ago I fainted in church. Deacon Carson had to carry me out right in front of everybody. It was terrible. My hat fell off and my hair must have looked a fright. It caused quite a commotion and I got a nice write-up in the church bulletin. Said I was feeling better now. HA! 

Your cousin is always just about to get a job, but he never gets one. I think he is too preoccupied to work. 

Those two young boys who moved in next door are driving me crazy. Loud music all the time and I can smell the marajawana smoke clear over here. Lots of friends coming and going all the time, mostly girls. Last week they had an orgie. I’m not kidding. I was out in the back yard and I looked through the hedge and there was this young couple naked and DOING IT right out on the lawn. It was disgusting. After they finished I came in and called the police. You’d better believe I’m going to keep my eyes open from now on. They’re not going to get away with that sort of thing around here. 

One of the neighbors up the street went completely besmirch last Saturday night and killed his wife. It’s getting so only the widows are safe in this neighborhood. 

My poor little dog is very sick and she’s only seven years old. I took her to two vets and they don’t know what’s wrong with her. They think it’s something in her mind. I don’t know what I would do without her. If she dies, I guess I’ll have to come visit you. Love, Mother

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Let Me Tell the One About

when my father sat in the bar and told stories. It was a serious bar, a saloon really, with oak caryatids naked to the waist supporting the back bar, each holding a globe of soft orange light in front of beveled mirrors that reflected the long room as if it were underwater. When my father sat in the serious bar and told stories, he was afraid of nothing and everyone loved him. Tell the one about the man who went to the doctor, they would say. Tell the one about the man who fell in the ditch. My father took possession of each of the stories he told. The more he drank the more stories he owned. He would look up and see himself in the wavering glass behind the bar and know he was rich. Tell the one about the drunk who sits in a bar telling stories, they demanded, but he would not tell that story. He was saving that story for me. When the bar closed he would drive his old panel truck toward home but his friends would stand around on the sidewalk in front of the bar. The orange glow of the lamps was gone, 79

and they could see through the windows only a little light reflected from the dark polished breasts of the caryatids. They had nowhere to go, nothing to do but wait until the next night when my father would return with their stories.

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Red and Ed and Clyde

How strange to realize they have all been dead for years, my father and his two drunken, derelict friends, and that I am older now than any of them lived to be: Ed, stomped to death in a gutter on skid row, Red of cancer of the liver at 68, and Clyde, who died defending his daughter’s honor, although she was a whore. They were comic and pathetic, never tragic. Their lives were like bad performances in a tawdry drama named Loss, and the audience dwindled as the play ground on, plotless and repetitive. Alcohol fed their dreams like nothing else could, and they lived to dream. When Ed went to jail, Red got him out. When Red went to jail, Clyde got him out. Red was the only one who managed to hang onto his family, although that connection was tenuous at times, and once his wife emptied a .45 at him and his current girlfriend in a dimly lit bar. She missed, if indeed she intended to hit the man she loved in spite of all he could do to prove he didn’t love her. The other two had already lost their wives and children along the way somewhere. I understand the bond between them better now than I did then. I no longer think of them as the drunken three stooges, wisecracking their way through life and leaving little but wreckage behind them. Going to get drunk again tonight, God

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how I dread it. Perhaps I even understand, although I couldn’t explain it, why one of Ed’s sons went to prison and the other one became a judge.

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Canes

1. Six blind children struggle down the street, clinging to each other, ungainly as a giant insect with white legs flailing in all directions. Are they runaways from the school for the blind, I wonder, or is this part of their training? The little girl who seems to be leading them has turned her face up toward the winter sun as if she is following instructions from above. The light makes a halo of her blond, uncombed hair.

2. She had lost the sight in her right eye when she was 14 and in her left when she was 16. Her parents insisted that she learn to use a cane, since it gave her more freedom than if she had to depend on a dog. She told me what she feared most was that she might blunder into an area where many bicycles were parked. The cane is less than useless in a forest of spoked wheels and handlebars. It had happened to her during her training. She had lost all sense of direction and had become helpless. She hated helplessness more than anything. She also told me a story about her adventure on a bicycle during her freshman year in college while she was living in a dormitory with a sighted roommate. One Saturday night they wanted to go to a party but had no car. She convinced her roommate, after much pleading, that they could make it on bicycles. Before she lost her sight, she had been an excellent cyclist. If the two girls rode side by side, she felt sure she could follow her roommate’s verbal instructions. And so they began, with the blind girl riding on the inside next to the 83

curb and her roommate beside her, using her voice as a guide. Things went well for several blocks until it was necessary for them to head down a residential street with cars parked along it. She clipped a protruding rearview mirror, knocking it off and throwing her and her bicycle to the ground. The man to whom the car belonged, hearing the clatter, rushed out of the house and saw the damage to his rearview mirror while the rider was struggling to her feet beside her bicycle. He was furious. “Look what you’ve done!” he screamed. “Are you blind?”

3. Once I met Borges in a crowded room with his cane over his arm, led by a friend. He was looking up and a little to the left and seemed to be listening to words from above. One does not inherit courage, he had said in an essay on blindness. His courage had grown as his eyes failed him. I shook his hand, as close as I have ever come to worshiping a human, and he quickly wiped his palm with a white handkerchief. I was asking for only a secondhand blessing but I should have known better than to touch anyone who was having a conversation with God.

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Eros Turannos, Fred and Jo . . . a stairway to the sea where down the blind are driven. E. A. Robinson

They leave their fingerprints all over one another’s lives. He has no alibi for her crimes and she has no alibi for his. They deny everything and they can’t remember the rest, but it doesn’t matter. The detectives were too lazy to collect evidence, the jury went to sleep, and the prosecuting attorney died of an overdose. They are left with only a judge they no longer believe in so they walk out of the courtroom together, absolved and suffering from the intimacy of their loneliness. They retire to Arizona and see the stars each night through martini glasses frosted like juniper berries. As they grow old gracelessly, she avoids the sinister intentions of mirrors and he listens to the silence of the lizards listening to the silence of the stones. Eventually, when he realizes he will die soon and she cannot survive without him

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he kills her and then himself with a pistol he has kept hidden from her for years but she has always known where it was.

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Catechism When the Kingdom Is in Danger

Which of the following sins have you committed most recently? The phrenology of postage stamps Water Ankle replacement Anything having to do with rubber gloves Tatting as an addiction Which of the following sins have you committed most often? Reading tea leaves and noodles Self-disembowelment Convincing rain not to fall Religious experience as bad theater Large white dogs in the moonlight Some Last Things: Christ behind bulletproof glass at the World’s Fair lying in his mother’s arms limp as a wilted scallion The moon emerging from an eclipse like an egg from a chicken The fire of dawn smoldering in the belly of self-righteousness Portable landscapes

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Apostates, Danites, and the military organization of passion The topography of pubic hair in the light of lunacy Final Exhortations: Let the beaver remain in its den as the prophet remains in his harem. The water will rise. Go into the world by twos telling the story of the hawk and the mouse. Since you cannot fly like the hawk, run like hell with the mouse. In the time of freezing you will freeze. In the time of burning you will burn. You will atone with your own blood. Wash your bodies once each week. Never forget the Kingdom of Zion.

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Runaway

somebody invented metallic grass for a movie about the last days of Carthage and it spread now every lawn is full of knives no more hanky panky in the backyard no more picnics in the park no more Easter egg hunts it’s particularly hard on the dogs scooting along trying to clean their behinds it has taken them generations to learn to do that and nobody knows how long it will take them to learn not to if any of them survive suburban life as we know it is over and we never had time to learn the names of all the constellations but we have tried harder toward the end lying out there after dinner pointing toward the heavens our arms covered with bandages

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Those Who Name Birds

a bird comes he is quite tame his wings are old hinges his head is a brass doorknob his tail feathers are long nails he is not beautiful can fly only short distances but he sings and sings nobody knows his name I ask those who name birds they say he is extinct and not to be troubled with but what can I do he likes it here I call him Hope the Incorrigible and the more I feed him the more he sings soon he forgets how to fly I oil his wings and tell him to fly but he cannot he tries but he has grown heavy he cannot fly but still he sings I put him in a cage to protect him from the cats what else can I do he cannot fly he begins to molt he molts rust he looks at me sadly through the bars of his cage I call him Forlorn Hope 90

then he stops singing I cannot bear the silence I tell him to sing but he will not I put out his eyes to make him sing he does not sing he hangs on his perch dripping rust I call him Blind Hope soon he will die I will have his strange body stuffed and mounted in a glass case I will mourn his loss for awhile he will stare out through the glass with his shoe-button eyes poor Dead Hope I will say to him you were extinct after all

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Green Pastures

Because I was raised knee-deep in cow manure on a dairy farm in Idaho, I know a mess when I see one. At Pt. Reyes on the coast of northern California they transformed the estuary at the head of the shallow trough called Tomales Bay into cow pastures where hundreds of cows graze producing milk, methane, and manure. ( I don’t know what the relative amounts are, not being one of those smart people who can figure out such things, but it doesn’t sound like a pleasant job, trailing along behind a Holstein, weighing and measuring whatever comes out of it.) All that manure flushing into the bay doesn’t do the fish or plants or anything that lives there much good. In fact it’s killing them and Lord knows what’s happening to the whales that swim past the mouth of the bay on their regular migration, although if it comes down to a struggle for survival between the cows and whales, my money’s on the whales who don’t stand around all day eating grass and farting methane and waiting for somebody to milk them. The environmentalists are trying to get the farmers to give up the cows, but what’s a dairy farm without cows? And once you get used to milking cows twice a day, it’s hard to break the habit although the use of machines has taken most of the pleasure out of it for everybody involved. 92

Tomales Bay is a long narrow fissure marking the path of the San Andreas Fault beneath it. Maybe when the big quake comes the whole controversy will be quickly resolved: cows, drainage, and even the bay itself, but it will be a dreadful mess with liquid cow manure flying around and the magnificent homes of the rich along the bay sliding down into it.

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The Gates of Paradise

We keep no secrets from the world. Potatoes have eyes and corn has ears. Each tree, as it falls, screams to the wind and the wind moves through the forest telling everything. Flies are spies. The moon looks in our windows. The way we walk defines our destinations and our shadows leave a greasy trail. The dying gardens of the sea will not forget us, nor will the stars we say we steer by when it is always greed and greed alone that guides us. Each season is forever and remembers. Rain will fall. The oceans rise. The gates of paradise have rusty hinges.

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Lost Languages

If we placed one flower on the grave of each language that has been lost there would be no flower left for Carmen’s hair, for Valentino to hold between his teeth, no carnation for the mobster’s buttonhole, no lilies of the valley for the bride’s bouquet, no poppies in Flanders Field, no roses to be red or violets to be blue, no lilacs in any dooryard, no wreath for the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Each lost language communicates with itself, as the light in one blind eye of God communicates with the light in the other.

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Light

in a flash at the end of the day greasewood and palo verde give back the light they have hoarded then they go under drowning in shadows through which dozens of bats maneuver like tiny umbrellas opening and closing unexpectedly the desert has no burning bush no Jacob’s ladder no pillar of smoke or fire but thousands of small things with shining eyes are searching for food in the dark

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Interview before Departure

Why are you going on a pilgrimage? To be a pilgrim. Yes, but what is the first thing you will do? Open the door. And after that? Close it behind me. What is the most important goal of your journey? It will be there gradually. The year that makes the wine is not the year that drinks it. But what do you seek? A nail for my soup and one for each hand. A new flag for the holes in the world. The horizon, possibly Texas. I want to catch up with my laughter. What route will you take? It is getting colder. Perhaps sideways, like a crab. But do you follow a map? Yes. The topographical lines on my face and the wandering stars. Cruciform trees are a prelude to sunset.

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What will you take with you? The boredom of afternoon. A skate key on a dirty string around my neck. My traveling companions: Left Foot the leader, Right Foot who follows. Will you stop in the homes of the rich or the poor? In both. They share the same flies. What do you expect to see along the way? The narcotic of loneliness. Teeth planted in rows awaiting harvest and eyes lined up on a windowsill to ripen. I will watch a hawk kill a mouse. I will be the mouse. What important things are you leaving behind? Words and their meanings. Several centuries. My St. Christopher medal. What my mother told me never to forget. What is that? I have forgotten. What will you bring back when you return? Lies ready for anything. The ledger of night with a new entry. I will not return. What will you do when you reach your destination? Ask forgiveness of a horse. Take stock options on a dry river.

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Build a bird’s nest from memory. Try to remember the sky. Nothing. Petrify a little. What do you expect to accomplish by going? If I get to the sea, I will stop and consider. What will you consider? The sea. I will be a stranger. I will open my coat to the rain.

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Confetti for Lois

When the gates between a low wall of clouds and sunset open and I sail through them on a tramp steamer or a coal barge or inflated raft or the deck of a great cruise ship bound for the Silk Road, the route Marco Polo found as he was handed off from one suspect pilot to another and made his way by stages to the kingdom of the Great Chan, and you stand on the dock and watch the streamers I am throwing, the silly colored ribbons of words, disappear into the widening maw of dark and violent water between us, if one of the streamers reaches you or if one piece of confetti I have thrown (surely those on deck will be throwing confetti while the band plays Over the Waves) is blown shoreward by the sea breeze and settles for a moment in your hair, I will be comforted and blessed on my long journey home.

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Home Place for Charlotte and Sherman

It is not hard to imagine arriving after so many years to find yourself in the place and watch the road that brought you going on without you, and the swale beside it like a green finger pointing back the way you came. It is not hard to imagine a sunken pasture between the road and the house with a few cows grazing, one now looking up to stare at you for a moment, then lowering its head to the grass, and to hear a meadowlark’s sudden aria again, never forgotten note for note. It is not hard to imagine finding the house set far back from the road beneath poplars, the narrow lane leading to it, the barn and chicken house and weeping willows and outhouse, exactly as you remember them more than 65 years ago, although all of it is gone now. At night no one lowers the blinds—there is no one to look in—and amber light flows from the windows and remains on the grass as if painted there, and those inside, when they pass the windows, create shadows passing through the lights painted on the grass. The windows will be open and we can hear night noises: the pounding of insects against the screen, giant hummingbird moths and beetles, a bullfrog down at the creek, the sudden question of an owl, a cowbell, a huge horse snuffling in the barn. In spite of all this racket, it is not hard to imagine that if we listen when we go outside to empty our bladders before going to bed, we can hear the stars singing, they are that near. 101

Glen Canyon on the Colorado (1991) Past these towering monuments, past these mounded billows of orange sandstone, past these oak-set glens, past these fern-decked alcoves, past these mural caves, we glide hour after hour, stopping now and then, as our attention is arrested by some new wonder, until we reach a point which is historic. John Wesley Powell

1 soon it will be thirty-five years since the gamblers passed a leather cup from hand to hand some breathing into it for luck some passing it on quickly as though it burned and we said we have been told it is necessary we said we have waited long enough let us have the comfort we deserve and whatever profit can be earned from it though it brings darkness to remote places no one is there let there be announcements by those who announce let it be done let it be over let the rain come and the water rise let there be no more talk of monuments in a distant wilderness we will create new monuments to our own ability

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we will move over the water with such speed we will forget even what we have never known surely our time has come let them gather the waters together and create a lake in the desert for our pleasure then we heard the distant explosions of dice and it was over that which was reprieved was reprieved for a while and that which was damned was damned forever

2 once there was a canyon where the river was lying down resting for a while from all its labors moving in repose past hanging gardens of ferns and monkey flowers and sheltered groves of box elders where in the golden light of cottonwood and autumn sun the canyon wren would flirt with anyone who came along staying just ahead moving in and out among polished driftwood and stones promising something wonderful around the next bend follow follow she called with a voice as low and liquid as any siren’s song 103

where sometimes the shadow of a heron would hoist itself above the water flapping its wings as though they needed oiling while the determined beaver followed his nose in a straight line going somewhere important upstream his silver wake spreading behind him and at night when the cliffs seemed to lean inward over the river like giant black guardians protecting stone cathedrals from the moon and the beaver slept in lodges so close to the surface they could hear every word the river said and all that the willows replied a brilliant ribbon of stars would unwind itself above the cliffs following each turn of the canyon walls soon that place will no longer exist in the memory of anyone living and will be hinted at only in photographs and in the dim visions of words as untrustworthy as our own when we say at this point in time to avoid the terror of saying now the unredeemable moment where we live with all past actions beyond our reach and sinking down through dark water

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3 once there was a canyon just another canyon of the Colorado saddest of all the poor damned rivers of the West soon it will be thirty-five years since we passed that point in time which was historic since we crossed a dark meridian from which there is no return and we drift we drift on a lake of our own making casting our offerings upon the water our cans and bottles the detritus of careless lives and we watch our calendars float away and sink slowly downward one month at a time into a world drowned for our good reasons where a few fish swim through the ghostly branches of dead cottonwoods where there is no season no sunlight on sandstone no song of the canyon wren nor any sound where the bones of those who were not historic sit under the floors of their houses in baskets while the stones of their walls fall silently in and black silt covers everything 105

4 where have you gone bright spirit of that canyon numen of secret gardens and hidden groves who balanced the sunlight on one palisaded wall against the shadow on the other whose voice was the little wind playing among the oak leaves or the strong wind of a storm winding down the canyon as a warning or the invitation of the canyon wren or the dove’s cooing and will we see you again as we drift on in darkness followed by the moon’s white face floating on the surface of our lake like the ghost of some dead thing will we see your likes again when we sink into the silk of earth or when our ashes rock for a moment on the surface of the water perhaps the surface of a lake of our own making before sliding down will we know then at last that we have always been blind and will we see then what is gone beyond all seeing

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5 sink softly down black silt to the canyon floor as flower petals fall as motes of sunlight drift through air and settle in the evening when the wind is still sink softly down fill the canyon from wall to wall fall gently rain upon the surface of the lake shine softly moon and stars it is no mirror for your light it is the tomb of beauty lost forever and it is despair the darkness in ourselves we fear

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for a generous grant from the Lannan Foundation that helped make this book possible. Some of these poems and prose pieces were originally published in the following places: Atlantic Monthly (“The Creep,” “Summer’s Children”); Cimarron Review (“At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” “Interview before Departure”); Crazy Horse (“Runaway”); Georgia Review (“The Little Towns of West Texas”); GSU Review (“It Is Raining”); Iron Horse Literary Review (“Destination”); Lucid Stone (“Yes Miss Emily”); Ohio Review (“Here in Ecuador,” “The Hole,” “King of Roses”); Paris Review (“The Golden Jubilee,” “Miranda of the Sorrows”); Puerto del Sol (“Borderland”); Rattle (“In Search of History,” “Lugubrious”); Seneca Review (“The Gates of Paradise”); Solo (“Dichos,” “Letter from Cuernavaca”); Washington Square (“Canes”). “Glen Canyon on the Colorado” first appeared in The Forgotten Language, edited by Christopher Merrill (Peregrine Smith, 1991). “South Paradise,” “The Wrong Room,” and “Brief Communications from My Widowed Mother” first appeared in The Other Side of the Story (Confluence Press, 1987).

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