At what point did the present stop
Being present and become the future?
I wake and I am no longer secure
In the bedclothes as I’ve always been.
Nothing threatens, but there is nothing,
No one, I can safely rely on either.
Was it just another tick of the clock?
The one too many? The fatal one?
Is it only what I’ve lost, beckoning,
Being ignored, rescinding sanctions
Of such long standing I’ve forgotten
How crucial they were to my senses?
Time? Or self? No, what I now fear
Is the two become the same thing --
A last fling, a dance that whirls me from
My partner’s arms into dimming air.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Faience Hippopotamus
I
The turquoise glaze
worn to earthenware
between the eyes-
the scrawled lotus
break up
the broadness of back,
flare the brow,
decorate a massive
rump: Duchamp's
mustachioed Mona Lisa
glossed this image
four thousand years
later. "Egyptian,
Middle Kingdom, 12th
Dynasty, Circe 1940
B.C." reads the
authentication;
"accoutrement of tombs,"
premium paid
gods of the hunt, sent
into unknown lands
with habitat tattoo,
surrogate blossoms
should there be none.
II
Fecund Thoueris,
upright walking
pregnant hippo
leaning on a magic
knot, you are not;
nor Seth, the evil
one, enemy of Re.
Despite the lotus,
you're clearly
what you are,
piglike, grown to
majesty of size, but
piglike,
wallower, muncher
of riverslop,
boundless shitter,
unchallenged,
mountainously meek,
as Roethke wrote,
a yawner.
III
Popular, a faience
reproduced
in pourable stone,
improvement on
the original
because
we take it home.
Artifact of
an artifact,
it is that
and nothing.
A gift I bought
and didn't give, dear
at fifty-two fifty;
a paperweight or
mantelpiece
piece, borrowed
for this writing,
breakable as bone.
It is that
and nothing,
neither hollow nor
flesh and blood, not
quite up to Eliot.
IV
What is not a form
of exhaustion in
our minds, dreaming
in its own multi-
plicity of meaning?
Rivers of hippos
map each thought.
The brutes swim past
eroded shorelines,
submerged except
for snout and peepers,
winking doe-eyed or
staring like horses,
picking up snatches
of song to croon in
cavernous throats.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Blue Jirl
Here's another from my long sequence about women, "Frissons".
The Blue Jirl
She is neither cold nor hard and her dog
Is just as blue as she is. The color blue.
She is more conscious of her blueness
Than aware of her own nekkidness, her
Long and boney nose, her four fingers
On her left hand and six on her right, or
The little potbelly she rubs like a magic lamp.
Blue light and blue water and burnt orange
Beach beyond her canted hips; the dog’s
Head bars my eyes from seeing their darkened
Wedge or what I must only assume is dark.
She has a tiny moue of a mouth and no eye
Lashes; a scar runs from her chin to her
Left breast in a graceful curved smile.
Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing not
The perfection of the odalisque tradition.
She simpers and whines, though, quite
Out of keeping with her stateliness, her
Sang-froid, her attention to the moment,
Which is keen as any Zen priest’s
In its sucking up of all that she creates.
She rises, she walks, and her dog follows.
Her rump glitters gold and a white star
Floats between those two cupped crescents.
She turns and says, “My wit-dream, you.”
And for the first time all is clear and all
I have ever wanted of love smashes her
Out of all memory, leaving only her blue.
The Blue Jirl
She is neither cold nor hard and her dog
Is just as blue as she is. The color blue.
She is more conscious of her blueness
Than aware of her own nekkidness, her
Long and boney nose, her four fingers
On her left hand and six on her right, or
The little potbelly she rubs like a magic lamp.
Blue light and blue water and burnt orange
Beach beyond her canted hips; the dog’s
Head bars my eyes from seeing their darkened
Wedge or what I must only assume is dark.
She has a tiny moue of a mouth and no eye
Lashes; a scar runs from her chin to her
Left breast in a graceful curved smile.
Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing not
The perfection of the odalisque tradition.
She simpers and whines, though, quite
Out of keeping with her stateliness, her
Sang-froid, her attention to the moment,
Which is keen as any Zen priest’s
In its sucking up of all that she creates.
She rises, she walks, and her dog follows.
Her rump glitters gold and a white star
Floats between those two cupped crescents.
She turns and says, “My wit-dream, you.”
And for the first time all is clear and all
I have ever wanted of love smashes her
Out of all memory, leaving only her blue.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
The Argument from Design
There is only one tree in the park.
Not this day only, but every day,
I find that tree when the day grows dark,
Never before dark, when the gray
Leaves are like a whispered amen
To a prayer I wasn’t there to say.
Therefore, I’m cautious and slow when
I start to climb (I believe the tree
Is not unknown to other men);
I test each limb before I leave the
One beneath, without assurance
Any but the lowest will receive me.
Then my doubt subsides where I chance
Upon a tangled branch, ripped free
The time I almost lost my balance.
Now I can move quickly up the tree,
Into its clotted heart, where the dark
Yields, to my callused fingers only,
The life of the one tree in the park.
Not this day only, but every day,
I find that tree when the day grows dark,
Never before dark, when the gray
Leaves are like a whispered amen
To a prayer I wasn’t there to say.
Therefore, I’m cautious and slow when
I start to climb (I believe the tree
Is not unknown to other men);
I test each limb before I leave the
One beneath, without assurance
Any but the lowest will receive me.
Then my doubt subsides where I chance
Upon a tangled branch, ripped free
The time I almost lost my balance.
Now I can move quickly up the tree,
Into its clotted heart, where the dark
Yields, to my callused fingers only,
The life of the one tree in the park.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The House
The house in dreams is always the same,
Though its rooms, like lungs, bulge and contract
And sometimes the rain
Bends ceilings and bursts through in cataracts,
Frightening as spitting your teeth down the drain.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The old trees, too, are still the same.
We rake and burn leaves in the driveway
And recall legendary Claire,
Who caught fire leaping on a dare, they say,
Whose ghost still turns on the faucet upstairs.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The stairway in the front hall is the same.
I find my mail stacked on the newel post,
Though I don’t live here.
Though I am still alive, I am a ghost
The others cannot touch or see or hear.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The ways we use each room are still the same,
But the television is black and white
And the kitchen is a mess.
We feel no urgency, no physical delight
In being where there is no light, no darkness.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The river runs through our backyard just the same.
Memories of trysts and laughter, beneath the willows,
Though vivid, never intrude.
The river is a dark chalice threatening to overflow,
Or frozen as stone, dead, supine, nude.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
My bedroom and closet still seem the same.
While the window no longer looks out on the trains
On the trestle beneath the moon,
The closet door mirror no longer refrains
From showing me what has come only too soon.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The attic and the basement are both the same.
We hide in one or the other with our fear—
Of life, or of death—
The attic when all that we hold dear
Disappears; in the basement holding our breath.
They’re gone, and that house will never be the same.
Christopher Guerin
Though its rooms, like lungs, bulge and contract
And sometimes the rain
Bends ceilings and bursts through in cataracts,
Frightening as spitting your teeth down the drain.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The old trees, too, are still the same.
We rake and burn leaves in the driveway
And recall legendary Claire,
Who caught fire leaping on a dare, they say,
Whose ghost still turns on the faucet upstairs.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The stairway in the front hall is the same.
I find my mail stacked on the newel post,
Though I don’t live here.
Though I am still alive, I am a ghost
The others cannot touch or see or hear.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The ways we use each room are still the same,
But the television is black and white
And the kitchen is a mess.
We feel no urgency, no physical delight
In being where there is no light, no darkness.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The river runs through our backyard just the same.
Memories of trysts and laughter, beneath the willows,
Though vivid, never intrude.
The river is a dark chalice threatening to overflow,
Or frozen as stone, dead, supine, nude.
Dad’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
My bedroom and closet still seem the same.
While the window no longer looks out on the trains
On the trestle beneath the moon,
The closet door mirror no longer refrains
From showing me what has come only too soon.
Mom’s gone, and that house will never be the same.
The attic and the basement are both the same.
We hide in one or the other with our fear—
Of life, or of death—
The attic when all that we hold dear
Disappears; in the basement holding our breath.
They’re gone, and that house will never be the same.
Christopher Guerin
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Of a Blackbird Looking at Thin Trees Sway
1.
The trees move and I am
Not moving.
2.
My eye is not the only eye.
There is one other.
3.
I fly between the branches
But do not find a perch--too many leaves falling.
4.
I am alone as a blind eye. I was once
Not alone. I have forgotten why.
5.
The wind whistles in the branches
And I whistle--the sounds exactly the same.
6.
Ice on the grass this morning. Soon the snow
Will catch my shadow as I pass from tree to tree.
I know exactly why I am here.
7.
I watch for the one with talons.
I cannot chase him like the little ones.
I think of him, at night, huddled on the opposite
Side of the black bole.
8.
I know all the inflections of birds and of branches.
They know
That I can sing louder than the moon.
9.
From above, the trees look like black suns
Against the dying grass. There is no
Perch at the center of a sun.
10.
My fellows cry out as they pass.
They see these trees with my eye
And do not want them for their own.
11.
I do not fear anything
And nothing fears me
Except the trees.
12.
I must be going soon--
Once the river and the trees
Stop moving.
13.
The dark grows long as day
And there are no more leaves.
The snow stings my eye.
I have already left
Before I fly.
The trees move and I am
Not moving.
2.
My eye is not the only eye.
There is one other.
3.
I fly between the branches
But do not find a perch--too many leaves falling.
4.
I am alone as a blind eye. I was once
Not alone. I have forgotten why.
5.
The wind whistles in the branches
And I whistle--the sounds exactly the same.
6.
Ice on the grass this morning. Soon the snow
Will catch my shadow as I pass from tree to tree.
I know exactly why I am here.
7.
I watch for the one with talons.
I cannot chase him like the little ones.
I think of him, at night, huddled on the opposite
Side of the black bole.
8.
I know all the inflections of birds and of branches.
They know
That I can sing louder than the moon.
9.
From above, the trees look like black suns
Against the dying grass. There is no
Perch at the center of a sun.
10.
My fellows cry out as they pass.
They see these trees with my eye
And do not want them for their own.
11.
I do not fear anything
And nothing fears me
Except the trees.
12.
I must be going soon--
Once the river and the trees
Stop moving.
13.
The dark grows long as day
And there are no more leaves.
The snow stings my eye.
I have already left
Before I fly.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The Vietnam War Memorial
At night it seems a hole in the earth,
until you walk down; the black wall veers
to eye level and higher; the names multiply.
The hole becomes a precarious ledge
on a darkened corner of the world.
At the vertex, the shock descends,
like the percussion of monstrous hands:
the enormity, if not horror, of war dead.
I'm surprised to find a humane memorial
in spite of all that's been said.
Each name has a voice we can touch,
trace with fingers, pronounce in the solemn
field of the mind; courage, death, stupidity,
are not reduced to three anonymous soldiers
no one ever mentioned in a prayer.
Who are these people at 11 p.m.?
I lose count at thirty, when I'm pushed
by a skinny youth, drunk, high perhaps,
stumbling up to the wall: "You taught me to smoke,"
he says, forehead pressing the black granite,
"I'm trying to quit. You'd want me to by now."
I kneel, touch a poppy wired to a wreath,
strike a match to read a letter, typed, unsigned,
taped to the stem of the flower:
"I can't forgive you for going but I
won't forget I was your wife who let you."
Lottery number three hundred and twelve
the year they took the first fifty-two,
I never had to choose, to go, or anything else:
this wall of names reproaches understanding.
until you walk down; the black wall veers
to eye level and higher; the names multiply.
The hole becomes a precarious ledge
on a darkened corner of the world.
At the vertex, the shock descends,
like the percussion of monstrous hands:
the enormity, if not horror, of war dead.
I'm surprised to find a humane memorial
in spite of all that's been said.
Each name has a voice we can touch,
trace with fingers, pronounce in the solemn
field of the mind; courage, death, stupidity,
are not reduced to three anonymous soldiers
no one ever mentioned in a prayer.
Who are these people at 11 p.m.?
I lose count at thirty, when I'm pushed
by a skinny youth, drunk, high perhaps,
stumbling up to the wall: "You taught me to smoke,"
he says, forehead pressing the black granite,
"I'm trying to quit. You'd want me to by now."
I kneel, touch a poppy wired to a wreath,
strike a match to read a letter, typed, unsigned,
taped to the stem of the flower:
"I can't forgive you for going but I
won't forget I was your wife who let you."
Lottery number three hundred and twelve
the year they took the first fifty-two,
I never had to choose, to go, or anything else:
this wall of names reproaches understanding.
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