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.

My Dear Udnie, Part 1

"My Dear Udnie" is one of what I call my "voices poems." Each stanza is a separate voice, though not necessarily a separate person. It was written in 1986 after a number of visits to great museums, including the Hirshorn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the National Gallery. I bought postcards of great paintings I'd seen at each museum and these stacked up on my writing desk. Eventually, I composed this poem with each stanza prompted by a single painting. The poem was published in 1987, but this is the first time it has appeared with the artwork that inspired it. (Part Two is here  , Part Three is here  .)

                                                   MY DEAR UDNIE

I

Your face is energy beauty expends

in the gilded bust green in blue lamplight.

Molded by thumbs, the lumpish moon ascends

to fright the sky and hush the dream of night.

Steeple, cornice, dome, gable, pyramid—

today I must speak to you in flat roofs,

simple boxes, as to a crown amid

capitals, monumental and aloof.

Who did these paintings in my studio?

I’ve kissed that flesh, rubbed it raw as roses.

Who did these paintings?  Do you know?

You’ve sat for me in similar poses?

II

It’s one thirty.  We should go to our homes.

Maybe next time we won’t just walk these streets,

adding to the shadows.  We’ll talk in poems,

let them distinguish the truth from deceit.

Lovers stare at themselves through a window—

faces motionless behind glass and frame.

Blinking unseen, they’re bored by what they know.

Either might break a smile and nothing change.

You are my private demon in this hell,

my love.  A lady who carries a fan,

soothingly forever saying farewell.

Give the fan to me and wave your hand.

III

All thought of you is memory in abstract—

congeries of blades and thudding saps.

A nice nose, long-licking tongue: discrete facts

hold harmless stupid phrases, futile haps.

You are like to god as stones multiplying arcs.

I don’t say this to anger you, but explain

the hard singularity of your remarks,

which leave me faithless on a pebbled plain.

We all dreamt deserts in rainbow clothes,

wanderers following mirages of love.

A lioness breathed on me, whispering oaths—

the moon’s kiss a slap of a limp glove.

IV

You see a candle in the mirror, cry

tears of a skull couched in a maiden’s lap.

Her breasts grow white and rigid, calcify—

orgasms crack in the cranial gap.

The life inside my soul is a black crow

kissed and stroked by flesh I can’t control.

No old boy, no new man is not my foe.

I give myself to each to char his soul.

New crystal, blown white hot from inside—

cool simplicity, single purposes.

It changes when faceted, like a bride—

innerness revealed in spectral surfaces.

My Dear Udnie, Part 2

V

She’s flat-chested and bald between her legs,

just like me.  Not exactly.  More tummy.

But she has three boys who moon and beg,

who don’t even care if she’s a dummy!

Sister says reflections off pump and pearl

will make a window of a girl’s dress.

I know boys who laugh with their eyes, so sure

of success—if not I, then others undress.

Yeah, they were naked all right, the whores,

jiggling, cooing, squatting, touching themselves.

About as exciting as two-by-fours.

I took a big one—boobs like swinging bells.

VI

I stretch every minute looking to see

that we’re still here beneath this crooked butte.

A short nap has creased my unworthy dreams.

Alone, she’d trade the sun her red suit.

I wonder what he’s like on trapeze?

She locks her legs about his waist and must

feel it.  That and the way he grabs her knees

And dives between them, flying with lust!

Later, she said, Lover, you are a top,

spinning madly.  Clear the floor and drill

the points of the compass until we drop

down blurred dimensions, dizzy, almost ill.

VII

Holding hands, the five dancers circle

on rippling grass, naked in spirit.

As the dance turns each dancer’s miracle,

the virgin breaks the ring without regret.

The truest is the dawn dream.  Fair bodies

bathe in cool waters, or pluck roses

for the golden basket.  Stirred, she flees

the crescent-moon-crowned bull’s hypnosis.

The King has said, “Her love is food for war.”

A slut fattens him daily for the job.

How they walk!  Their genitals must be sore.

In the tower, his Queen gives birth to sobs.

VIII

Pregnant, your belly grew longer, then round.

Your breasts too.  Painful for you.  Not for me.

I watched you sleeping nude and listened, found

a new life swimming in an ancient sea.

If there’s nothing but eyes to justify

her expense, what is all this darkness?

She ignores the child.  When I get mad, she cries.

Mother laughs, thinking, poetic justice.

Our breakfast room is a chapel of light

where my husband prays to the newspapers.

It has been years.  We no longer fight.

I serve him currant jelly with capers.

My Dear Udnie, Part 3

IX

I’m in diamonds.  I do my best to provide.

But last night my wife acted out a strange scene.

God knows she was absolutely pie-eyed.

Dressed only in a bow, she grabbed my thing!

Solitaire sprawled on the rug with the dog—

goddamned loneliness, card game, my burnt knees,

the wallpaper samples in that catalog!

He says he’s good when he isn’t with me!

I buy this bird.  It’s dead but soft.  Nice.  Soft.

My woman could make nothing of these others.

So many birds you’ve brought down from aloft.

Shut up!  I don’t bargain with her lovers.

 X

 These women never let us get things done.

It’s such a basic thing to hang a man

on a cross.  And he’s not even their son.

I suppose they must do what they can.

The women weary of calling their men

to lunch they’ve made in the golden hay fields.

Harvest is a working madness for them.

They eat, to the sound of scythes, poverty’s meal.

Hurry!  The night finds the darkness.  The sea

will empty before our lamps are lit!

The fish peck eyes that can no longer see.

Hungry, we work to milk our mother’s tit.

XI

 She is the only woman left who has her hair.

Alone, in that shattered window, she sits,

nourished by food she gets from god knows where,

while I lug starving corpses to the pits.

Come, Perfect Fool!  I’ll tell your fortune,

while my girls cut your purse, pick your pocket.

I predict a fall in self-satisfaction.

You have a brain, but your actions mock it.

The sockets in the skull have been worn to

pinholes.  The jaw is a flower of flakes

in a desert stretched from red hills to blue

lakes, blooming for a dead man’s dead wife’s sake.

XII

See?  Here she is.  No man held her life.

Barbed wire and bullets were to no avail.

How swift a bird to fly above the knife.

Her body is still warm.  Her eyes are pale.

Trees are a curse on the moon, which is far

and updateless, while they stand here and grow.

My eyes stir a whirlpool of dim stars;

Diving for death, I see her and follow.

Udnie, my dear one, I see you idealized—

A fervent virgin staring at a house.

You were more than that, I realize—

A god my fervent prayer could not arouse.

Here Are More We Missed

What follows was written in 1978 and '79 by my grad school roommate (and still best friend) Michael Antman and myself. At the time, I was working as a PR assistant for a machine tool company and Michael for the Chicago Board of Trade. Over the course of several months, we composed these haiku and many others, mostly at work, and mailed them to each other. Collaborative haiku has a venerable history in Japan, but for us it was probably therapy as much as anything else -- two aspiring writers wondering how we'd suddenly found ourselves in the business world. I have left the poems and their clumsy introduction entirely unedited and intact. Posting them now, which I do with Michael's permission, comes about in part because of his fine recent piece on "Poetry, Patience, and Rage" in the culture blog When Falls the Coliseum.



HERE ARE MORE WE MISSED

100 HAIKU

By Michael Antman and Christopher D. Guerin

FOREWORD

Haiku has not fared well in America. That there are “haiku magazines” (I know of none for sonnets or sestinas) is proof of this. Haiku is seldom printed elsewhere.

Admittedly, American haiku is not always what it could be. It is often aphoristic, cute, or merely photographic. But unfortunately, its failure is judged (often simultaneously) the consequence of its being a poor imitation of Japanese haiku, and too precise an imitation of Japanese haiku; sometimes it’s condemned for being nothing at all like Japanese haiku.

Perhaps the problem is not (as so often stated) that we are not blessed with a sensibility subtle enough (whatever that means) to say a lot in a little space, or that, English being too economical a language compared to Japanese (if you are counting syllables), American haiku seem but limp translations; the problem may be that we think of our haiku in terms of the Japanese at all.

We call it “haiku,” and I think rightly, if for no other reason than in recognition of the origins of the form. But, what matters ultimately is the succinct and precise capture and evocation of a moment. Beyond this first understanding, oriental aesthetics and philosophy need have nothing to do with an American’s writing haiku. Which, of course, is not to say that it must not.

By this reasoning, one might argue that our haiku might be twenty or a hundred lines long. Yet, to experience a moment fully, mustn’t one experience it within a moment? Thus economy and compression is key. What happens next – the brooding, the questions, or the nod of recognition – is not the poem, is not in the poem. It is only the reaction of the imagination to a small cloud. The images suggested by a cloud are not the cloud, only the cloud’s progeny. Good haiku will engender many such images before it – being, after all, only two or three short lines long – dissipates in the attention and floats off. And, just as clouds unmindfully and naturally attain their own peculiar forms (I mean in the larger, generic sense of, for example, cirrus appearing quite different from cumulo nimbus), so each writer evolves a form best fitted to his manner of perceiving the world. Hence the differences between those of Michael Antman and myself.

Christopher D. Guerin


Waxwings
Gobble berries –
Twilight.

The huge oak
Thinks leaf, leaf, leaf
Of nothing.

A cottonmouth jabs
Dry branches
A million miles off.

Autumn rain
Falls from leaf to leaf –
Ah, childhood!

An October wind
Arriving on foaming waves
Closes my eyes tight.

A full moon
Rises huge and red
Just for us.

Gold leaves darken
In the trees and then in fires.
The cold green grass.

A snapshot
Taken as I laughed
Explains death.

A flock of starlings
Perched in bare maple branches –
The loneliest leaves.

Autumn, empty
Sky – birdcall – am I
Missing something?

The harvest
Moon and 1,000,000 stars –
Did I sneeze?

Falling leaves –
Shadows of the sun
Going down.

A sparrow
Frozen in the grass –
Where am I?

Wait longer?
Snowflakes softly break
The window.

Winter sun –
A icicle drips
Cold water.

Not crouching,
A white cat stalks mice
In the snow.

On the wall,
Shadows of a tree
Moved by wind.

Shooting stars
Falling someplace else
Scratch scratches.

The snow falls
On a thick oak limb,
A sparrow.

A vicious snowstorm
On the last night of the year.
Where to, old woman?

January wind –
Right below my window
Bodies pile up.

Snow drifting
Beneath pine trees sheathed in ice –
My cap itches.

A bare tree –
Nowhere in its branches
A right angle.

Orderly,
The geese wing north.
‘V’ for vane.

Haiku dance a jig
On the cracks in the sidewalk,
The air between leaves.

Snow in May
Depresses us both,
Mere lovers.

Haiku come
To mind, raindrops fall
Into pools.

Greeting spring,
I climb a willow.
Droop, spirits!

The loon dives;
Ripples soon fade.
He’ll never come up.

Waves crashing
Against a seawall.
I give up!

Cardinal
Flits from bush to shrub.
Red is rare.

The spring air
Comes in through my door.
Welcome, meal!

Two bobolinks
Light on the fence, singing –
My paintbrush falls.

Crazy
Old man laughs,
Suns rise.

Two blackbirds
Dive at a crow…
Stop blinking!

The sun’s limited –
Between a willow’s branches
Spider’s stretched his web.

Drops of blood on sand;
The child runs to his mother;
Glass glints in the sun.

Cicada’s murmur
Under evening thunder.
Fly, crazy fireflies!

A nighthawk
Dives after insects.
Ah, sweet beer!

The girl’s wet black hair
And ankles covered with sand.
My sunburnt skin peels.

Barefoot, I
Fish a mountain stream,
Ravens hop.

At nightfall –
The wink of an owl
I can’t see.

“Firefly”
Has three syllables:
The thing, one.

Chips of wood
Float in on a wave,
Brush the sand.

Rainbow trout
Shimmers in the stream
Playing me.

The cobra snaps
At a tail-chasing dog.
You talk of order!

I reel in
A wriggling sunfish
Worm in jaw.

September –
Green leaves carve
The sunlight.

Harvesttime –
A sunflower droops,
Flinging seeds.

_______

On Buson’s Portrait of Basho

Old grinner,
What’s under that skyblue cap?
Not haiku!


Christopher D. Guerin



FIFTY HAIKU
Michael Antman


AUTUMN

Unlucky from first
To last, the bright leaf plunges
Through the autumn night.

The lost calf bellows.
A hundred cows, eyes bulging,
Lift their heads and low.

In the yard – a hawk,
Wings torn, cornered by a dog.
Why wasn’t I told?

Asphalt lot. Children
Catch none of the leaves that fall
From the giant oak.

The sunset’s last light
Tints with orange the rising moon.
It doesn’t, really.

Waiting in the car:
Weed shadows on the windshield,
Crickets in the springs.

Playing touch football:
The ball soaring the sky,
Up there with my head.

Does she know the world
Will end tomorrow, that girl
Who walked right by me?

All night, howling wolves,
Gibbering monkeys: I live
Too near the school yard.

Old Wisconsin road –
Stillness, and clear autumn air.
Not a poem in sight!

That crow’s brittle cry –
It reminds me of something,
But I can’t say what.

Poetry’s a joke.
I walk boldly down the street,
Confident I’ll die.


WINTER

Chipping sound, far off:
Otherwise, the woods are still.
A few snow flakes fall…

A gap in the trees –
Black winter sky, or a lake?
The moon is confused.

Oysters and lemons –
Gulls call in the winter dusk –
On a blue platter.

A few footprints mark
That gleaming expanse of snow,
The still shining moon.

That squirrel, back again
To scrape my window for food:
The winter twilight.

The stench of lilacs.
The old woman behind me
Looks behind her, too.

Loaded down with ice,
The power lines faintly hum.
Over them, the stars.

Dear little rabbit! –
What are you doing gnawing
Through snow at tree bark?

An abandoned farm.
A dog lopes the icy yard
Under runny skies.

Sparrows flock about
Stalks frozen in the dark ice,
Slide when the wind blows.

The family poses
For a photograph, waist-deep
In the sparkling snow.


SPRING

Five months of winter
Forgotten, I sniff the breeze.
Leaping…lingering!

The kitten’s afraid
To let its paws touch the grass
Its first time outdoors.

The starling soars, loops,
Holding in its beak its prize:
A bit of french fry.

A silver-haired bum
Plucks a cigar from the curb,
Carefully dusts it.

As I leave for work,
A squirrel scampers for his tree.
I can’t take his life!

A walk after rain.
Mirrored in puddles, one grey cloud –
You should be ashamed!

Robins tear at worms.
Bodies shine in the spring light
Just before they snap.

The oily puddles
Spark on the midnight road: lights
Of refineries.

In the mists and rain,
Red lights by the switching yard.
The warehouse trembles.

The small town in spring –
The huge elms never still, tossed
By birds and crickets.

Eyes tearing, cheeks damp,
The evening cool and windy,
Sidewalks black and slick.

The whole block flooded.
Men hauling pumps and hoses,
Children, plastic boats.

Eating sweet oranges
On a warm night: My tooth throbs
And my fingers burn.


SUMMER

All along the tracks
To the grain elevator,
Little corn plants sprout.

Imagination
Lacking, that cow swats at flies
Like all the others.

Remember? We’d chase
Fireflies all summer long.
Here are more we missed.

What is lovelier
Than this glass of cherry pop
In the summer light?

Chirps from the garden.
My cheek against the window,
The glass faintly scratched.

Waking before dawn
I see the trees are swaying –
Because I’m watching?

Coffee in the cup
Trembles as she takes her seat:
Her loose-fitting dress.

By the old factory,
The air is always humming –
Locusts in the trees.

Is life worth living?
When she bends over like that,
You still have to ask?

A summer picnic:
The air is clear and sparkling,
Fresh-sliced cantaloupe.

Who let the firefly
Loose in the dark theater?
Our twilight movie!

Hot summer morning.
My cat pretends not to see
As I scratch myself.

In the green meadow
The brightest thing is the mirror
On a rusted truck.

Late summer twilight
Prickles the back of my hand.
How will the snow melt?

Flowering Crab

Scarlet unopened, the buds of flowering crab
bleach out in sunlight, go pale pink and drab.

After the third day, the wind loosens the petals,
and one flutters to the grass and settles.

It works its way through grass down to the soil—
air and water rub it thin as foil.

Then, between each cell, oxygen convenes,
until the petal of itself is rendered clean.

It dissolves into pattern everywhere;
if grown again to petal it won’t know or care.

My Dear Udnie

I

Your face is energy beauty expends
in the gilded bust green in blue lamplight.
Molded by thumbs, the lumpish moon ascends
to fright the sky and hush the dream of night.

Steeple, cornice, dome, gable, pyramid—
today I must speak to you in flat roofs,
simple boxes, as to a crown amid
capitals, monumental and aloof.

Who did these paintings in my studio?
I’ve kissed that flesh, rubbed it raw as roses.
Who did these paintings? Do you know?
You’ve sat for me in similar poses?


II

It’s one thirty. We should go to our homes.
Maybe next time we won’t just walk these streets,
adding to the shadows. We’ll talk in poems,
let them distinguish the truth from deceit.

Lovers stare at themselves through a window—
faces motionless behind glass and frame.
Blinking unseen, they’re bored by what they know.
Either might break a smile and nothing change.

You are my private demon in this hell,
my love. A lady who carries a fan,
soothingly forever saying farewell.
Give the fan to me and wave your hand.


III

All thought of you is memory in abstract—
congeries of blades and thudding saps.
A nice nose, long-licking tongue: discrete facts
hold harmless stupid phrases, futile haps.
You are like to god as stones multiplying arcs.
I don’t say this to anger you, but explain
the hard singularity of your remarks,
which leave me faithless on a pebbled plain.

We all dreamt deserts in rainbow clothes,
wanderers following mirages of love.
A lioness breathed on me, whispering oaths—
the moon’s kiss a slap of a limp glove.


IV

You see a candle in the mirror, cry
tears of a skull couched in a maiden’s lap.
Her breasts grow white and rigid, calcify—
orgasms crack in the cranial gap.

The life inside my soul is a black crow
kissed and stroked by flesh I can’t control.
No old boy, no new man is not my foe.
I give myself to each to char his soul.

New crystal, blown white hot from inside—
cool simplicity, single purposes.
It changes when faceted, like a bride—
innerness revealed in spectral surfaces.


V

She’s flat-chested and bald between her legs,
just like me. Not exactly. More tummy.
But she has three boys who moon and beg,
who don’t even care if she’s a dummy!

Sister says reflections off pump and pearl
will made a window of a girl’s dress.
I know boys who laugh with their eyes, so sure
of success—if not I, then others undress.

Yeah, they were naked all right, the whores,
jiggling, cooing, squatting, touching themselves.
About as exciting as two-by-fours.
I took a big one—boobs like swinging bells.


VI

I stretch every minute looking to see
that we’re still here beneath this crooked butte.
A short nap has creased my unworthy dreams.
Alone, she’d trade the sun her red suit.

I wonder what he’s like on trapeze?
She locks her legs about his waist and must
feel it. That and the way he grabs her knees
And dives between them, flying with lust!

Later, she said, Lover, you are a top,
spinning madly. Clear the floor and drill
the points of the compass until we drop
down blurred dimensions, dizzy, almost ill.


VII

Holding hands, the five dancers circle
on rippling grass, naked in spirit.
As the dance turns each dancer’s miracle,
the virgin breaks the ring without regret.

The truest is the dawn dream. Fair bodies
bathe in cool waters, or pluck roses
for the golden basket. Stirred, she flees
the crescent-moon-crowned bull’s hypnosis.

The King has said, “Her love is food for war.”
A slut fattens him daily for the job.
How they walk! Their genitals must be sore.
In the tower, his Queen gives birth to sobs.


VIII

Pregnant, your belly grew longer, then round.
Your breasts too. Painful for you. Not for me.
I watched you sleeping nude and listened, found
a new life swimming in an ancient sea.

If there’s nothing but eyes to justify
her expense, what is all this darkness?
She ignores the child. When I get mad, she cries.
Mother laughs, thinking, poetic justice.

Our breakfast room is a chapel of light
where my husband prays to the newspapers.
It has been years. We no longer fight.
I serve him currant jelly with capers.


IX

I’m in diamonds. I do my best to provide.
But last night my wife acted out a strange scene.
God knows she was absolutely pie-eyed.
Dressed only in a bow, she grabbed my thing!

Solitaire sprawled on the rug with the dog—
goddamned loneliness, card game, my burnt knees,
the wallpaper samples in that catalog!
He says he’s good when he isn’t with me!

I buy this bird. It’s dead but soft. Nice. Soft.
My woman could make nothing of these others.
So many birds you’ve brought down from aloft.
Shut up! I don’t bargain with her lovers.


X

These women never let us get things done.
It’s such a basic thing to hang a man
on a cross. And he’s not even their son.
I suppose they must do what they can.

The women weary of calling their men
to lunch they’ve made in the golden hay fields.
Harvest is a working madness for them.
They eat, to the sound of scythes, poverty’s meal.

Hurry! The night finds the darkness. The sea
will empty before our lamps are lit!
The fish peck eyes that can no longer see.
Hungry, we work to milk our mother’s tit.


XI

She is the only woman left who has her hair.
Alone, in that shattered window, she sits,
nourished by food she gets from god knows where,
while I lug starving corpses to the pits.

Come, Perfect Fool! I’ll tell your fortune,
while my girls cut your purse, pick your pocket.
I predict a fall in self-satisfaction.
You have a brain, but your actions mock it.

The sockets in the skull have been worn to
pinholes. The jaw is a flower of flakes
in a desert stretched from red hills to blue
lakes, blooming for a dead man’s dead wife’s sake.


XII

See? Here she is. No man held her life.
Barbed wire and bullets were to no avail.
How swift a bird to fly above the knife.
Her body is still warm. Her eyes are pale.

Trees are a curse on the moon, which is far
and updateless, while they stand here and grow.
My eyes stir a whirlpool of dim stars;
Diving for death, I see her and follow.

Udnie, my dear one, I see you idealized—
A fervent virgin staring at a house.
You were more than that, I realize—
A god my fervent prayer could not arouse.