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 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.

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 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.