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I

from The Lost Pilot

(1967)

Manna

I do remember some things

times when I listened and heard

no one saying no, certain

miraculous provisions

of the much prayed for manna

and once a man, it was two

o’clock in the morning in

Pittsburg, Kansas, I finally

coming home from the loveliest

drunk of them all, a train chugged,

goddamn, struggled across a

prairie intersection and

a man from the caboose real-

ly waved, honestly, and said,

and said something like my name.

The Book of Lies

I’d like to have a word

with you. Could we be alone

for a minute? I have been lying

until now. Do you believe

I believe myself? Do you believe

yourself when you believe me? Lying

is natural. Forgive me. Could we be alone

forever? Forgive us all. The word

is my enemy. I have never been alone;

bribes, betrayals. I am lying

even now. Can you believe

that? I give you my word.

Coming Down Cleveland Avenue

The fumes from all kinds

of machines have dirtied

the snow. You propose

to polish it, the miles

between home and wherever

you and your lily

of a woman might go. You

go, pail, brush, and

suds, scrubbing down

Cleveland Avenue

toward the Hartford Life

Insurance Company. No

one appreciates your

effort and one important

character calls you

a baboon. But pretty

soon your darling jumps

out of an elevator

and kisses you and you

sing and tell her to

walk the white plains

proudly. At one point

you even lay down

your coat, and she, in

turn, puts hers down for

you. And you put your

shirt down, and she, her

blouse, and your pants,

and her skirt, shoes—

removes her lavender

underwear and you slip

into her proud, white skin.

Reapers of the Water

The nets newly tarred

and the family arranged

on deck—Mass has started.

The archbishop in

his golden

cope and tall miter, a resplendent

figure against an unwonted background, the darting

silver of water,

green and lavender

of the hyacinths, the slow

movement of occasional

boats. Incense floats

up and about the dripping gray

moss and the sound of the altar bell

rings out. Automatically all who have stayed

on their boats drop to their knees with the others

on shore. The prelate, next taking up his sermon,

recalls that the disciples of Christ were drawn

from the fishermen

of Galilee. Through

the night, at the lake, they cast in vain.

Then He told

them to try once more, and lo!

the nets came heavily loaded…. Now

there will be days when

you, too, will

cast your nets without success—be not

discouraged; His all-seeing

eye will be

on you. And in the storm, when

your boat tosses like a thin

leaf, hold firm….

Who knows whose man will be next? Grandmère

whose face describes how three of hers—

her husband and those two boys—had not returned,

now looks toward

her last son—

it is a matter of time.

The prelate dips his gold aspergillum

into the container of holy water

and lifts it high. As the white

and green boats

pass, the drops fall on the scrubbed

decks, on the nets, on the shoulders

of the nearest ones, and they move up

the long waterway.

The crowds watching and waving:

the Sea Dream, the Normandie,

the Barbara Coast, the Little Hot

Dog, the God

Bless America, the Madame of Q.—

racing past the last tendrils

of the warm pudding

that is Louisiana.

Epithalamion for Tyler

I thought I knew something

about loneliness but

you go to the stockyards

buy a pig’s ear and sew

it on your couch. That, you

said, is my best friend—we

have spirited talks. Even

then I thought: a man of

such exquisite emptiness

(and you cultivated it so)

is ground for fine flowers.

For Mother on Father’s Day

You never got to recline

in the maternal tradition,

I never let you. Fate,

you call it, had other eyes,

for neither of us ever had

a counterpart in the way

familial traditions go.

I was your brother,

and you were my unhappy

neighbor. I pitied you

the way a mother pities

her son’s failure. I could

never find the proper

approach. I would have

lent you sugar, mother.

In a Town for Which I Know No Name

I think of your blind odor

too long till I collide with

barbers, and am suspected.

The clerk malingers when I

nod. I am still afraid of

the natural. Even the

decrepit animals,

coveting their papers and

curbs, awake and go breathing

through the warm darkness of

hotel halls. I think that they

are you coming back from the

colossal obscurity

of your exhausted passions,

and dash to the door again.

Success Comes to Cow Creek

I sit on the tracks,

a hundred feet from

earth, fifty from the

water. Gerald is

inching toward me

as grim, slow, and

determined as a

season, because he

has no trade and wants

none. It’s been nine months

since I last listened

to his fate, but I

know what he will say:

he’s the fire hydrant

of the underdog.

When he reaches my

point above the creek,

he sits down without

salutation, and

spits profoundly out

past the edge, and peeks

for meaning in the

ripple it brings. He

scowls. He speaks: when you

walk down any street

you see nothing but

coagulations

of shit and vomit,

and I’m sick of it.

I suggest suicide;

he prefers murder,

and spits again for

the sake of all the

great devout losers.

A conductor’s horn

concerto breaks the

air, and we, two doomed

pennies on the track,

shove off and somersault

like anesthetized

fleas, ruffling the

ideal locomotive

poised on the water

with our light, dry bodies.

Gerald shouts

terrifically as

he sails downstream like

a young man with a

destination. I

swim toward shore as

fast as my boots will

allow; as always,

neglecting to drown.

Why I Will Not Get Out of Bed

My muscles unravel

like spools of ribbon:

there is not a shadow

of pain. I will pose

like this for the rest

of the afternoon,

for the remainder

of all noons. The rain

is making a valley

of my dim features.

I am in Albania,

I am on the Rhine.

It is autumn,

I smell the rain,

I see children running

through columbine.

I am honey,

I am several winds.

My nerves dissolve,

my limbs wither—

I don’t love you.

I don’t love you.

Graveside

Rodina Feldervatova,

the community’s black angel—

well, we come to you,

having failed to sink

our own webbed fingers

in the chilled earth where

you hang out. I think

you are doomed to become

symbols for us that we

will never call by name.

But what rifles through

our heads is silence, one

either beyond or below

whatever it is that we do

know. We know by heart,

don’t we? We’ve never

learned. And we bring what

we have known to you, now,

tonight. Open your home

to us, Rodina. Kiss

our brains. Tell us that

we are not drunk, and

that we may spend

our summers with you.

The Lost Pilot

for my father, 1922–1944

Your face did not rot

like the others—the co-pilot,

for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-

mush: his wife and daughter,

the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.

He was more wronged than Job.

But your face did not rot

like the others—it grew dark,

and hard like ebony;

the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole

you to come back for an evening,

down from your compulsive

orbiting, I would touch you,

read your face as Dallas,

your hoodlum gunner, now,

with the blistered eyes, reads

his braille editions. I would

touch your face as a disinterested

scholar touches an original page.

However frightening, I would

discover you, and I would not

turn you in; I would not make

you face your wife, or Dallas,

or the co-pilot, Jim. You

could return to your crazy

orbiting, and I would not try

to fully understand what

it means to you. All I know

is this: when I see you,

as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,

spin across the wilds of the sky

like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were

the residue of a stranger’s life,

that I should pursue you.

My head cocked toward the sky,

I cannot get off the ground,

and, you, passing over again,

fast, perfect, and unwilling

to tell me that you are doing

well, or that it was mistake

that placed you in that world,

and me in this; or that misfortune

placed these worlds in us.

Intimidations of an Autobiography

I am walking a trail

on a friend’s farm

about three miles from

town. I arrange the day

for you. I stop and say,

you would not believe how happy

I was as a child,

to some logs. Blustery wind

puts tumbleweed

in my face as I am

pretending to be on my way

home to see you and

the family again,

to touch the orange

fingers of the moon.

That’s how I think of it.

The years flipped back last night

and I drank hot rum till

dawn.

It was a wild success and I wasn’t sad when

I woke past noon

and saw the starlings in the sky.

My brain’s an old rag anyway,

but I’ve got a woman and you’d say

she’s too good for me. You’d call

her a real doll and me a goof-ball.

I’ve got my head between my paws

because it’s having a damn

birthday party. How old do you think I am?

I bet you think I’m

seventeen.

It doesn’t matter. Just between

us, you know what I’m doing

now? I’m calling the cows home.

They’re coming, too.

I lower

myself to the ground lazily,

a shower of avuncular kisses

issuing from my hands and lips—

I just wanted to tell you

I remember you even now;

Goodbye, goodbye. Here come the cows.

The End of the Line

We plan in partial sleep

a day of intense activity—

to arrive at a final bargain

with the deaf grocer,

to somehow halt a train;

we plan our love’s rejuvenation

one last time. And then

she dreams another life

altogether. I’ve gone away.

The petals of a red bud

caught in a wind between

Hannibal and Carthage,

the day has disappeared.

Like a little soap bubble

the moon glides around

our bed. We are two negroes

lugubriously sprawled

on a parched boardwalk.

The Move

… you are alone with the Alone,

and it is His move.

Robert Penn Warren

The old buccaneers are leaving

now. They have had

their fill. A blue halo

has circled the imitation

gold, and the real, and they

are bewildered. All

is shimmering. The sea

is shimmering like a marvelous belly

viewed from the outside

during a blizzard in the mountains.

For each other

they are shimmering.

They do not know what splendor

is balanced

atop the foresail now, what

it is that is moving, moving

toward them, down.

They rub their bodies.

The skin is a fine lace

of salt and disease,

and something is moving

just under the skin

and they know

that it is not blood.

Flight

for K.

Like a glum cricket

the refrigerator is singing

and just as I am convinced

that it is the only noise

in the building, a pot falls

in 2B. The neighbors on

both sides of me suddenly

realize that they have not

made love to their wives

since 1947. The racket

multiplies. The man downhall

is teaching his dog to fly.

The fish are disgusted

and beat their heads blue

against a cold aquarium. I too

lose control and consider

the dust huddled in the corner

a threat to my endurance.

Were you here, we would not

tolerate mongrels in the air,

nor the conspiracies of dust.

We would drive all night,

your head tilted on my shoulder.

At dawn, I would nudge you

with my anxious fingers and say,

Already we are in Idaho.

Grace

The one thing that sustained

the faces on the four

corners of the intersection

did not unite them,

did not invite others to join.

Their inner eyes as the light

changed did not change,

but focused madly precise

on the one thing until

it scared them. Then

they all went to the movies.

I was just beginning

to understand when one

who represented the desperate

shrunken state came toward

me, bisecting the whole mass

of concrete into triangles;

and handed me a package.

I carried it with me for

the rest of my life, never

opening it, telling no one.

The Last Days of April

Through the ceiling comes

the rain to cool my lover

and me. The lime carpeting

darkens, and when we cross

to retrieve our glasses

of gin from the mantle, our

feet sink as into drifts

of leaves. We have a deep

thirst, for it is the end

of April, and we know that

a great heat is coming soon

to deaden these passions.

Uncle

Homer was a ventriloquist;

so drunk, one day he projected his voice

so far it just

kept going and going (still is).

Joe Ray insisted

Homer was afraid of work, but he’s

had 130 jobs or more

just recently, he didn’t think in terms

of careers.

The family never

cared for Homer

even after

he ginned himself into a wall

and died balling

with a deaf-mute in an empty Kansas City hall.

Joe Ray insisted

Homer would have made a fine dentist

had he kept his mouth shut; that is,

had he lived. Still is

heard about the house

jiggling glasses,

his devoted astral voice coming back.

How the Friends Met

So what do you do? What

can you do? Leave the room

altogether? Crazy.

Your eyes are the wallpaper;

makes it tough, doesn’t it?

Peel them away. You call

that pain? It’s not. It’s insane.

You make it. Keep going.

Confront a lightpole. Smoke

a mythopoeic

cigarette forever.

Mark a spot with your

mysterious shoe; scratch

Hate in the sidewalk.

A man will come along

and there will be reason

enough to knife him. Sure

enough, there comes along

a worse-than-Bogart….

There you are, smoking

the lightpole. The spot

you marked appears between

your eyes, and then becomes

a sidewalk, and the man

walks right up the sidewalk

into your room, looks at

the wallpaper, and laughs.

So what do you do? What

can you do? Kick him out?

Hell, no. You charge him rent.

Tragedy Comes to the Bad Lands

Amnesic goatherds tromboning

on the summit, the lazy

necklaces of their own breath

evanesce into the worst

blizzard since Theodore

Roosevelt and the Marquis

de Mores blessed Medora, North

Dakota with their rugged

presence. Look! I implore, who’s

sashaying across the Bad

Lands now—it’s trepid riding

Tate (gone loco in the

cabeza) out of his little

civilized element—Oh!

It’s bound to end in tears.

Aunt Edna

Aunt Edna of the hills

comes down to give

her sisters chills;

she wears the same

rags she wore

seven years ago,

she smells

the same, she tells

the same hell-

is-here stories.

She hates flowers,

she hates the glory

of the church she

abandoned for the

glory

of her Ozark cave.

She gave

her sons to the wolves.

Rescue

For the first time the only

thing you are likely to break

is everything because

it is a dangerous

venture. Danger invites

rescue—I call it loving.

We’ve got a good thing

going—I call it rescue.

Nicest thing ever to come

between steel cobwebs, we hope

so. A few others should get

around to it, I can’t understand

it. There is plenty of room,

clean windows, we start our best

engines, a-rumm … everything is

relevant. I call it loving.

The Mirror

She tells me

that I can

see right through

her, but I

look and can

see nothing:

so we go

ahead and

kiss. She is

fine glass, I

say, throwing

her to the

floor….

The Tabernacle

Poor God was always there,

but He was something sinister,

and we worshiped the fear

we had of Him,

we had of the church on Tenth,

near the end

of the whole dark city.

The way the family

gathered murmuring on a Sunday,

surreptitious, solemn,

down to the midwest harlem

to give our worn

and rusty souls an airing—

grandmother swearing

at Ruthanna’s hoop ear-rings,

and Uncle Barrington,

hesitant, knowing what would come,

stealing his Sunday swill of rum

invariably. Once there, it was not

as bad as we had thought;

it was not God at all, but

Pentecostal

joy. A man would wrestle

with his soul, and all

the other sinners cheered,

and soon we heard

the voices of another tongue—

garbled, and far too

inflated for us

to understand who

taught them how to sing such songs.

Late Harvest

I look up and see

a white buffalo

emerging from the

enormous red gates

of a cattle truck

lumbering into

the mouth of the sun.

The prairie chickens

do not seem to fear

me; neither do the

girls in cellophane

fields, near me, hear me

changing the flat tire

on my black tractor.

I consider screaming

to them; then, night comes.

Today I Am Falling

A sodium pentothal landscape,

a bud about to break open—

I want to be there, ambassador

to the visiting blossoms, first

to breathe their smothered, secret

odors. Today I am falling, falling,

falling in love, and desire

to leave this place forever.