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.

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.

Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan

My last few columns have all dealt with pretty heavy stuff — time for a palate cleanser. Kurt Vonnegut fans know that Slaughterhouse Five may be his most famous, and even his best, book. But the most enjoyable, the funniest, the most original, and Slaughterhouse’s predecessor by 10 years, is the interplanetary space romp The Sirens of Titan.

When it was first published, as a Dell paperback, in 1959, most people looking at the cover would have taken it for cheap pulp science fiction. And though Vonnegut revels in his improbable universe full of weird creatures, Martians, and implausible physics, this is a work of a mature writer wrestling with important themes, including the fragility of free will and the apparent chaos of fateful occurrences that everyone experiences, though perhaps not always at this level of cosmic consequence.

The novel begins memorably with the arrival of wealthy, famous Winston Niles Rumford in his own backyard.

There was a crowd. The crowd had gathered because there was going to be a materialization. A man and his dog were going to materialize, were going to appear out of thin air — wispily at first, becoming, finally, as substantial as any man and dog alive.

At the tail end of the crowd was a woman who weighed three hundred pounds. She had a goiter, a caramel apple, and a gray little six-year-old girl. She had the little girl by the hand and was jerking her this way and that, like a ball on the end of a rubber band. “Wanda June,” she said, “if you don’t start acting right, I’m never going to take you to a materialization again.”

This materialization takes place every 59 days because having been the first person rich enough to purchase his own private space ship, Rumford, along with his dog Kazak, was caught nine years ago in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, which, we learn, is one of those places, in this case stretching in a thin strip across the solar system, “where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy’s solar watch.” To this particular materialization, Rumford has invited the other main character in the book.

Malachi Constant is a rake and bon vivant, and the wealthiest man in the world. The admiration the world holds for space traveler Rumford is balanced by the contempt it feels for the arrogant, decadent, and, at least until now, incredibly lucky Constant.

Rumford makes the prediction that Constant will soon be bred like cattle with Rumford’s wife on the planet Mars, fathering a son, and later, after many travels, will be the consort of three of the most beautiful women imaginable on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

In spite of all Constant’s best efforts, Constant does end up on Mars as a combat soldier training for the invasion of Earth. This invasion army is controlled by a form of mind control based on memory erasure, which forces Malachi to kill his best friend, Stony Stevenson.

The novel will eventually take us to Mercury, the home of flat diamond-shaped creatures.

The planet Mercury sings like a crystal goblet.

It sings all the time.

One side of Mercury faces the sun. That side has always faced the sun. That side is a sea of white hot dust.

The other side faces the nothingness of space eternal. That side has always faced the side of space eternal. That side is a forest of giant blue-white crystals, aching cold.

It is the tension between the hot hemisphere of day without end and the cold hemisphere of night without end that makes mercury sing.

Mercury has no atmostphere, so the song it sings is for the sense of touch.

The song is a slow one. Mercury will hold a single note in the song for as long as an earthling millenium. There are those who think that the song was quick, wild, and brilliant once — excruciatingly various. Possibly so.

There are creatures in the deep caves.

The song their planet sings is important to them, for the creatures are nourished by vibrations. They feed on mechanical energy.

The creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves.

In that way, they eat the song of Mercury.

Eventually, we return to Earth, then travel all the way out to Saturn’s moon Titan, where Rumsford can actually enjoy a stable corporeal existence, and Malachi Constant will learn the truth about the three beautiful sirens of Titan.

The Sirens of Titan also includes the arrival of the alien Tralfamadorians, strange creatures that resemble a bathroom plunger, and which will appear in several of Vonnegut’s later books.

It’s not giving away anything to say that the cataclysm of war involved in the Earth invasion, and Malachi Constant’s journey, is ultimately only a link in a chain of circumstances to accomplish a very small result in the cosmic scope of things.

It is, of course, inadequate and probably unfair to call Vonnegut a science fiction writer. Books like Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat’s Cradle may feature aliens or improbable things like the latter’s “ice nine,” which can turn the entire world into a block of ice, but they are concerned much more with the human condition — man’s incomprehensible and inevitable cruelty and stupidity, in particular. And, just as importantly, they are all very, very funny.

I grew up on Vonnegut, When he passed away last year, I felt a real and personal sadness, the way I felt about John Lennon’s passing. We all lost a friend, a man who cast a cold and skeptical, but fond, eye on humanity, who saw more clearly than most what is wrong in the world, but never allowed his critique to descend into cynicism or despair.

The Sirens of Titan wears its philosophy very lightly and is the closest thing Vonnegut wrote to a genuine work of pulp science fiction, and it’s all the more enjoyable for that reason.



Other recommended works: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Galapagos, Mother Night, and Welcome to the Monkey House, a wonderful collection of short stories.

Three Windows

I look out the first window
And seeing is what I see.
A branch tearing from the locust
Leans in on the glass,
Will be tied to higher branches
When they chop the thing up.
How many times have the doves
Left their mauve dust
After crashing into the pane?
At times I can hear the wind squeak
On the glass and, between winks,
The sun will flare and blind.
There is no window, no blind,
There is only the knowing blink.

There, out the second window,
In the moon dark the red fox
Precedes its brush thick tail
Into the brush behind the garden.
The screech owl whirs.
The sparrows hide from both
In the heart of a tree that I
Might one day take a flashlight to.
The owl and the fox are content
To wait for propitiousness
And a little longer for the lie.
For, out there, there is no end,
No windowpane, nor either.
There is not even me to eye.

Beyond the third window
I am not certain of anything,
Being blind like all who look.
The morning mist nuzzles the glass
Like a breast in a baby’s face.
It is winter and the eye sees green
Through the fog and light through
The green and dark through the light.
Wishful seeing. So, I don’t look out.
Each season has its own fog.
Rising early is rarely rewarded.
There is no fog, there is no name
For what there is, and there is no
Thing that is left for me unguarded.

The Bewitched Groom

Where am I? Stretched on the floor,
the strength in my limbs a memory
of a moment before. My eyes could be
open or closed, but I'm not seeing
what I think I see, unless I've gone
mad! The witch! The fire-brained hag!
The seething toads and bunched snakes
of her soul are giving birth to blood.
She's flooded my veins with her water
to quench the hot Homunculus in my heart.
My reputation with purblind gossips
has blinkered her view to her daughter's
virtue. My darling, my perfect flower!
She doesn't love me, but I'm rich.
My love! Hers the downy and exquisite
flesh of a rose that is stripped
of its crimson. But what consummation?
The ejaculation of hate from a deaf,
goat-teated rawbones. Sprinkling horn
of gelded unicorn, wielding a faggot
spluttering with the black dust pinched
from the notch between her wizzled
thighs, she's tweaked my inner ear
and banged the bones in my head abuzz,
so I, like a drunken ass, bed
the floor, supine, my crutches under,
jabbing at my spine. She wants me dead
on the day I am to wed. Damn her eyes!
When the bitch has exhausted magic
I'll have her carcass burned to ashes.
There's evidence in this paralysis
to prove what the village has known since
the century was born a breech, wailing,
and the moon began to burn yellow.
The Redeemer fail me? No. I know God.
I once drove my horses till they dropped
and punched my peasants for pennies,
but no more. Oh, I learned a lesson
or two, and paid penance with infirmity.
I even kept the mare that pitched me
on that rock pile. The soil is thin
in which she plants her spell: time
and righteousness, proper living dig
the maggots from my heart and prayer
persists-the leaching of my soul.
I must get up, damn her! Enough is
Enough! I will love her dear one,
keep her safe and use her sweetly.
I promise to veil her eyes from
lascivious men not fit to touch
their lips to her dress's muddy hem,
until my ghost departs this game clay
to ride the fleeter media. Won't one
muscle move? My thumb twitches-
something wooden and smooth. The handle
of a currycomb! The stable floor!
I should be grinning in my closet mirror,
draping myself with golden medallions,
and tying my codpiece with bows.
For all my resolutions, I am a broken
promise. There, now I've given
up hoping! Forgive me, my love.
I cannot come to you today.
Forces more subtle than mortality
and mortal sin conspire against me.
I would hum the song of my honeybee
heart, but Queen Mab would shout out:
"He fooled the child, but not the crone!"
See! See! See my eyes fly open!
She's found the window in my head.
She knows that I would farm you
by the moon and by the sun and stars;
your golden hair would shade my eyes,
a fancy cap; your legs would be my
legs for work, your hands helping me
to beat you. Any child you yielded?
Oh, he'd have learned his Papa's ways.
What's that? Behind! The mare!
Flared nostrils, glaring eye! Humiliation!
Land on me, falling world!
The girl will only remind me when
the cock pecked crow and not the hen.
I'll bathe and go about my business.
To Hell with love and sucking sighs.
I am a man of satisfactory wealth.
Proud to swing his crutches to Heaven.

Madame X

Filthy man! He calls himself Artist!
We pay him a fat lawyer's fee
for his talent at offending me.
Those black eyes see naked flesh
where others see slips or camisoles.
He grins privately, licks his mustache,
strikes me in profile when my nose
is my least attractive feature,
and poses my bust straight ahead.
He's painting my blush, isn't he,
to set the whole world gossiping,
when I wouldn't let him touch me
with his brush! My husband hired
him, as usual, without a resume,
sight unseen. I asked if he'd seen
a sample. "One, my dear," he said,
"which approximates our nephew's head."
My revenge had been this gown,
as expensive as it is décolleté,
and I suppose I dreamed a painter
to be schooled in professional behavior,
like my hairdresser and physicians,
to be marble-cool near bare shoulders-
but those eyes are blind to elegance
and see in sophistication only sex.
He flickers like black flame licking
the canvas with daubs of paint to show
that he's so serious in his art;
a wink and he'd be at me like a shark.
My neck! This portrait is overdue.
Aren't voyeurs prone to exhaustion too?
God would have had to think again
had he spent not seven days, but ten.
And when it's done, what will he have
made of me? Will I look exactly
as I am, well or badly drawn, my
beauty replaced by oily paint
or psychologically portrayed-
the face of hunger or deceit?
Will he trap each hair and mole, each
blemish like weird species in a zoo?
I'd be happier looming through a screen,
through a window dripping in the rain.
I should listen to my little sister
and have it done quickly by photographer.
Yes? Fine. So. He says it's finished
and invites me to look. A threat.
Let's see if it has been worth it.
My word! I'm so . . . do I seem so
to him? Yes, he's made a mistake
with my bosom, but my chin-
I hadn't thought the line that clean.
He teaches me to appreciate my nose.
My hair glows, darkness with a sheen.
My skin, alabaster everywhere, except
my ears, which do, I know, go red at
the least distress; my lips never
spoke such thoughts in mirrors; a kiss
from them I'd be wanton to bestow.
He's cut a heart out of my dress;
from waist to breast, the black cloth
flares and makes my shape a gift
to the admirer, while much else is left
undraped. Certainly the neck
is false, too long, too muscular.
Perhaps it's all the pose he gave me.
My husband will conclude he raped me.
I was wrong and I will tell him.
Oh, he's gone! I didn't see him go!

Being With

Each angle in the room is lost to the person
staring from a doorway or backed against a wall.

Boxes of black earth, coffins in reverse, are
stacked to the ceiling, stenciled with numbers.

You wouldn't want to live here or die here-
too much time lost in consciousness.

Underneath every table is a broken chair,
behind every picture a shuttered window.

The women do splits and the men, arms akimbo,
do all they can to prove they are what they are.

The efforts to impress, the shallow breathing,
the veins bulging at the temple, the black eyes

squinting with astonishment, all, individual to none,
freeze time into seeing, seeing nothing.

The red door opens a crack and a white spear
falls through, clattering like a wicked idea.

Dulle Griet

A creature of prentice alchemy,
slack-jawed butcher, zombie,
wrote the last Deuteronomy
in egg on the first door to Hell.
In breastplate and iron cap (bell
in a tree-tin and distant knell),
Meg schemed the death God would flee
from hated lizards' bite and miss
the jaws of soldier-swigging fish,
but not her blood-sword avarice.
The sick crone ran, her dream to marry
hot in pots and pans she'd carry.

"He is a spy,
a bloodlust fly
circling the sty
above the sky,"

she said as the egg ashes fell
on all red, fecund infidels.
Her barrel insect monster's hiss
excited her waistless bogey-
man's ass to speak; it said, "I
eat and fart and then I die!"
The hysterical diablerie
on the witch inflicted flies.
God's dancing pipers' fantasy,
with spiders from a harp to kill
those who eat apples but can't piss
a lake in payment of the toll,
blow them long and bloody kisses.
His winking, trapdoor-blinkered eyes,
opened wide as windows, see
Mad Meg flee; she desperately
would rather he watch the enemy.