Wild Gratitude Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 by Edward Hirsch

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House LLC.

  www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found on this page.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-76198-9

  Print ISBN: 978-0-375-71012-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hirsch, Edward.

  Wild gratitude

  I. Title.

  PS3558.164w5 1986 811’.54 85-40348

  ISBN 0-375-71012-4 (pbk.)

  First Edition, hardcover and paperback, published January 23, 1986

  Reissued, with new cover, March 2003

  Reprinted One Time

  Third Printing, September 2010

  v3.1

  For my parents, Irma and Kurt Hirsch,

  and my sisters, Arlene and Nancy Hirsch—

  and for Janet Landay

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  I Need Help

  Fall

  Omen

  Fast Break

  The Emaciated Horse

  Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)

  Poor Angels

  Wild Gratitude

  2

  Indian Summer

  The Skokie Theatre

  Prelude of Black Drapes

  Commuters

  In the Middle of August

  Sleepwatch

  The Night Parade

  3

  The Village Idiot

  Fever

  Ancient Signs

  Dino Campana and the Bear

  Curriculum Vitae (1937)

  Paul Celan: A Grave and Mysterious Sentence

  In a Polish Home for the Aged (Chicago, 1983)

  Leningrad (1941–1943)

  4

  Recovery

  Three Journeys

  Excuses

  Unhappy Love Poem

  The White Blackbird

  In Spite of Everything, the Stars

  A Dark Hillside

  The Secret

  Dawn Walk

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Also by Edward Hirsch

  1

  May I, composed like them

  Of Eros and of dust,

  Beleaguered by the same

  Negation and despair,

  Show an affirming flame.

  —W.H. AUDEN

  I Need Help

  For all the insomniacs in the world

  I want to build a new kind of machine

  For flying out of the body at night.

  This will win peace prizes, I know it,

  But I can’t do it myself; I’m exhausted,

  I need help from the inventors.

  I admit I’m desperate, I know

  That the legs in my legs are trembling

  And the skeleton wants out of my body

  Because the night of the rock has fallen.

  I want someone to lower a huge pulley

  And hoist it back over the mountain

  Because I can’t do it alone. It is

  So dark out here that I’m staggering

  Down the street like a drunk or a cripple;

  I’m almost a hunchback from trying to hold up

  The sky by myself. The clouds are enormous

  And I need strength from the weight lifters.

  How many nights can I go on like this

  Without a single light from the sky: no moon,

  No stars, not even one dingy street lamp?

  I want to hold a rummage sale for the clouds

  And send up flashlights, matchbooks, kerosene,

  And old lanterns. I need bright, fiery donations.

  And how many nights can I go on walking

  Through the garden like a ghost listening

  To flowers gasping in the dirt—small mouths

  Gulping for air like tiny black asthmatics

  Fighting their bodies, eating the wind?

  I need the green thumbs of a gardener.

  And I need help from the judges. Tonight

  I want to court-martial the dark faces

  That flare up under the heavy grasses—

  So many blank moons, so many dead mouths

  Holding their breath in the shallow ground,

  Almost breathing. I have no idea why

  My own face is never among them, but

  I want to stop blaming myself for this,

  I want to hear the hard gavel in my chest

  Pounding the verdict, “Not guilty as charged,”

  But I can’t do this alone, I need help

  From the serious men in black robes.

  And because I can’t lift the enormous weight

  Of this enormous night from my shoulders

  I need help from the six pallbearers of sleep

  Who rise out of the slow, vacant shadows

  To hoist the body into an empty coffin.

  I need their help to fly out of myself.

  Fall

  Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season

  Changes its tense in the long-haired maples

  That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves

  Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition

  With the final remaining cardinals) and then

  Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last

  Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.

  At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees

  In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager

  And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever

  Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun

  Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,

  A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud

  Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything

  Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s

  Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment

  Pulling out of the station according to schedule,

  Another moment arriving on the next platform. It

  Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away

  From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,

  Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving

  Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,

  Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.

  And every year there is a brief, startling moment

  When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and

  Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless

  Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:

  It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;

  It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

  Omen

  I lie down on my side in the moist grass

  And drift into a fitful half-sleep, listening

  To the hushed sound of wind in the trees.

  The moon comes out to stare—glassy, one-eyed—

  But then turns away from the ground, smudged.

  It�
�s October, and the nights are getting cold:

  The sky is tinged with purple, speckled red.

  The clouds gather like an omen above the house

  And I can’t stop thinking about my closest friend

  Suffering from cancer in a small, airless ward

  In a hospital downtown. At 37 he looks

  Boyish and hunted, fingered by illness, scared.

  When I was a boy the summer nights were immense—

  Clear as a country lake, pure, bottomless.

  The stars were like giant kites, casting loose.…

  The fall nights were different—schoolbound, close—

  With too many stormy clouds, too many rules.

  The rain was a hammer banging against the house,

  Beating against my head. Sometimes I’d wake up

  In the middle of a cruel dream, coughing

  And lost, unable to breathe in my sleep.

  My friend says the pain is like a mule

  Kicking him in the chest, again and again,

  Until nothing else but the pain seems real.

  Tonight the wind whispers a secret to the trees,

  Something stark and unsettling, something terrible

  Since the yard begins to tremble, shedding leaves.

  I know that my closest friend is going to die

  And I can feel the dark sky tilting on one wing,

  Shuddering with rain, coming down around me.

  Fast Break

  In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946–1984

  A hook shot kisses the rim and

  hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,

  and for once our gangly starting center

  boxes out his man and times his jump

  perfectly, gathering the orange leather

  from the air like a cherished possession

  and spinning around to throw a strike

  to the outlet who is already shoveling

  an underhand pass toward the other guard

  scissoring past a flat-footed defender

  who looks stunned and nailed to the floor

  in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

  of a high, gliding dribble and a man

  letting the play develop in front of him

  in slow motion, almost exactly

  like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,

  both forwards racing down the court

  the way that forwards should, fanning out

  and filling the lanes in tandem, moving

  together as brothers passing the ball

  between them without a dribble, without

  a single bounce hitting the hardwood

  until the guard finally lunges out

  and commits to the wrong man

  while the power-forward explodes past them

  in a fury, taking the ball into the air

  by himself now and laying it gently

  against the glass for a lay-up,

  but losing his balance in the process,

  inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

  with a wild, headlong motion

  for the game he loved like a country

  and swiveling back to see an orange blur

  floating perfectly through the net.

  The Emaciated Horse

  Chinese painting of the Yüan Dynasty

  It was as if I had stumbled alone

  into another world, someone else’s dream

  of floating jade mountains, a stone cliff

  dropping to a moonlit blue lake

  surrounded by willows, one village

  winking through the distant clouds,

  another puckering in the gray mist

  like a paper orchid wrinkling in water.

  It was as if I had somehow stumbled

  into someone else’s mind: in one painting

  I knelt beside a small, middle-aged

  woman on a muddy riverbank,

  gossiping, wringing out laundry;

  in another I stood on a steep ridge

  staring into the forehead of heaven,

  shoulder to shoulder with the lightning.

  I escaped from the celestial power

  of that light and paused beside a young girl

  sponging her neck, two courtesans

  powdering their shoulders with talc,

  kimonos gathered at their waists.

  Their lips were the color of plums,

  their eyes were as shiny as porcelain.

  I heard lightning exploding in the distance,

  a branch cracking somewhere in my mind, rain

  and sleet washing across the tented willows.

  The wind gusted through the wet leaves.

  And suddenly I found myself staring

  at the stark, inky gray profile

  of an emaciated horse:

  gaunt and bony, half-starved, a shrunken

  towering remnant of a once-splendid body,

  that horse was someone I could know, someone

  that I had already known for a long time.

  It was drawn on a faded handscroll

  by Kung K’ai, a familiar of emperors,

  “a strangely isolated man”

  who had become an i-min,

  a pariah, a late survivor—

  like his horse—from an earlier dynasty.

  This was the same artist who had once drawn

  large, fearsome creatures racing furiously

  through the countryside with their nostrils

  smoking and their warlike black eyes

  blazing in anger, their coarse manes

  flying in the mountain wind—

  and I kept trying to imagine him

  kneeling on the dirt floor of a one-room house

  patiently spreading out a paper scroll

  on the back of his eldest son, carefully

  drawing the slow, torturous outline

  of a starving horse, a dying

  horse against a vacant background.

  One gray horse and nothing else.

  I had seen that stark creature before;

  I recognized its harsh, inhuman profile.

  And then I was seven years old again.

  I was in the city with my grandmother

  buying Christmas gifts for my parents

  and the emaciated horse—

  yoked tightly to a gilded carriage

  of wealthy, laughing tourists—

  was standing next to us on the crowded

  street corner, waiting for a traffic light.

  The city was wearing its brightest colors,

  but all I could see was the woeful figure

  of a horse, a gaunt survivor

  from a previous dynasty,

  waiting for the light to change,

  for the tourists to dismount,

  for the taxis to start moving again,

  for the intolerable burden of its life to stop.

  Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)

  Out here in the exact middle of the day,

  This strange, gawky house has the expression

  Of someone being stared at, someone holding

  His breath underwater, hushed and expectant;

  This house is ashamed of itself, ashamed

  Of its fantastic mansard rooftop

  And its pseudo-Gothic porch, ashamed

  Of its shoulders and large, awkward hands.

  But the man behind the easel is relentless;

  He is as brutal as sunlight, and believes

  The house must have done something horrible

  To the people who once lived here

  Because now it is so desperately empty,

  It must have done something to the sky

  Because the sky, too, is utterly vacant

  And devoid of meaning. There are no

  Trees or shrubs anywhere—the house

  Must have done something against the earth.

  All that is present is a single pair of trac
ks

  Straightening into the distance. No trains pass.

  Now the stranger returns to this place daily

  Until the house begins to suspect

  That the man, too, is desolate, desolate

  And even ashamed. Soon the house starts

  To stare frankly at the man. And somehow

  The empty white canvas slowly takes on

  The expression of someone who is unnerved,

  Someone holding his breath underwater.

  And then one day the man simply disappears.

  He is a last afternoon shadow moving

  Across the tracks, making its way

  Through the vast, darkening fields.

  This man will paint other abandoned mansions,

  And faded cafeteria windows, and poorly lettered

  Storefronts on the edges of small towns.

  Always they will have this same expression,

  The utterly naked look of someone

  Being stared at, someone American and gawky,

  Someone who is about to be left alone

  Again, and can no longer stand it.

  Poor Angels

  At this hour the soul floats weightlessly

  through the city streets, speechless and invisible,

  astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds

  seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones

  of dusk already filling the cloudy sky

  while the body sits listlessly by the window

  sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move,

  too weary to stand up or to lie down.

  At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing

  slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic

  cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out

  to the approaching night, “Amaze me, amaze me,”

  while the body sits glumly by the window

  listening to the clear summons of the dead