Gabriel Read online

  ALSO BY EDWARD HIRSCH

  Poetry

  The Living Fire (2010)

  Special Orders (2008)

  Lay Back the Darkness (2003)

  On Love (1998)

  Earthly Measures (1994)

  The Night Parade (1989)

  Wild Gratitude (1986)

  For the Sleepwalkers (1981)

  Prose

  A Poet’s Glossary (2014)

  Poet’s Choice (2006)

  The Demon and the Angel:

  Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration (2002)

  Responsive Reading (1999)

  How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999)

  Editor

  The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008) with Eavan Boland

  To a Nightingale: Poems from Sappho to Borges (2007)

  Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems (2005)

  William Maxwell: Memories and Appreciations (2004) with Charles Baxter and Michael Collier

  Transforming Vision: Writers on Art (1994)

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2014 by Edward Hirsch

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by

  Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.aaknopf.com/poetry

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

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Strings,” written by Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Scott Raynor, copyright © 1993 EMI April Music Inc., Jolly Old Saint Dick and Publisher(s) Unknown. All rights on behalf of EMI April Music Inc. and Jolly Old Saint Dick administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hirsch, Edward.

  Gabriel : a poem / by Edward Hirsch.—First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-385-35373-1 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-8041-7287-5 (trade pbk.)—

  ISBN 978-0-385-35358-8 (ebook) 1. Children—Death—Poetry.

  2. Grief—Poetry. I. Title.

  PS3558.I64G33 2014

  811′.54—dc23 2013049301

  Jacket design by Oliver Munday

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  First Page

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  I would do anything and that’s

  What scares me so bad

  Don’t want to live my life alone

  Don’t want to go back to what I had

  Don’t want to spend my life without

  All those special things

  Don’t want to walk around being tied to

  Anyone else’s

  Strings, strings, strings, strings

  BLINK-182, “Strings”

  The funeral director opened the coffin

  And there he was alone

  From the waist up

  I peered down into his face

  And for a moment I was taken aback

  Because it was not Gabriel

  It was just some poor kid

  Whose face looked like a room

  That had been vacated

  But then I looked more intently

  At his heavy eyelids

  And fine features

  He had always been a restive sleeper

  Now he was weirdly still

  My reckless boy

  Dressed up for a special occasion

  He liked that navy-blue suit

  And preened over himself in the mirror

  Hey college boy the guy called out

  On the street in Northampton

  You look sharp in those new duds

  He loved the way he looked

  After he stopped taking the meds

  That fogged his mind

  He admired himself

  In store windows and revolving doors

  Where his reflection turned

  Now he looked rigid and buttoned up

  Like he was going to a funeral

  On a Friday in early September

  Laurie loosened his necktie

  And opened his top button

  So I could breathe easier

  His face was waxen

  And slightly shiny

  His skin gray and papery

  Why were there black marks

  Around his eyes

  Already a little sunken

  His nose slightly deformed

  A scab where his lip had bled

  During the seizure

  He was still handsome

  In his fresh haircut but something

  Was off he wasn’t moving

  He could never stand still but now

  Something that had once been my son

  Lay there restless spirit

  Who left the house one rainy night

  And never returned

  Lost boy

  Who will never be found again

  Anywhere but eternity

  Uncontrollable fiery youth

  Who whirled into any room

  And ranted against whatever

  Came into his mind

  The world was unjust to him

  And so he hurled his tirades

  And then disappeared

  He has the Japanese word for music

  Tattooed on one arm and a Jewish star

  Tattooed on the other

  It looks colored in with blue crayon

  You shall not make gashes in your flesh

  For the dead or incise any marks on yourselves

  I am the Lord it says in Leviticus

  But something tribal had taken root

  And he labeled himself a Jew

  He downed all four glasses of wine

  And sold me the afikomen on Passover

  But he did not like the High Holidays

  He disliked Sunday school

  He was allergic to synagogues

  I never saw him crack a prayer book

  When he was too young to object

  Janet dressed him up for Purim

  In a black and white shirt

  With a sign on his back that said

  Queen Esther’s Little Brother

  He roared a noisemaker against Haman

  I wonder what he would think

  About the short-sleeved shroud

  He is wearing under his white shirt

  In the casket I hope it’s comfortable

  He would have scorned the old Jew

  We hired to sit with him overnight

  Janet didn’t want him to be by himself

  I’m sure he was annoyed by the prayers

  I wonder if he believed in God I never asked

  He once cut the grass around Emily Dickinson’s grave

  In West Cemetery in downtown Amherst

  And read me the inscription Called Back

  It reminded him of going to the cemetery

  In Houston to visit his friend

  Who was now in heaven Lettie said

  He experienced the rapture

  But Gabriel talked to the gravestone

  And clutched a reindeer with a yellow bandana

  I wonder if he knelt down and prayed

  With the family when his friend died of leukemia

  Cousins rolled in the aisle speaking in tongues

  Jews stand up to the Almighty

  I told him but mostly we just s
kipped

  Out of services and headed to the playground

  He was named after Janet’s mother Gertrude

  And the angel Gabriel

  Strong man of God

  He had three epileptic seizures

  Suddenly his brain caught fire

  He spasmed to the ground and blanked out

  Dostoevsky believed the convulsive fits

  Bring you down bring you closer

  The idiot the holy fool are nearer to God

  He was a pallbearer at two funerals

  One of my fathers died in Chicago

  One in Phoenix I gave both eulogies

  The music of death is solemn

  He kept hugging me afterward and talked

  Like a madman in the car to the graveyard

  Like a spear hurtling through darkness

  He was always in such a hurry

  To find a target to stop him

  Like a young lion trying out its roar

  At the far edge of the den

  The roar inside him was even louder

  Like a bolt of lightning in the fog

  Like a bolt of lightning over the sea

  Like a bolt of lightning in our backyard

  Like the time I opened the furnace

  In the factory at night

  And the flames came blasting out

  I was unprepared for the intensity

  Of the heat escaping

  As if I’d unsheathed the sun

  Like a crazed fly the daredevil monarch

  Like a bee exploding from its hive

  Like a bird ricocheting off the window

  Like a small car zooming too fast

  On a two-lane highway at night

  His friends thought they would die

  Like the war cry of an injured crane

  Falling into the sea

  I did not see it hit the waves

  Like the stray fury of a bullet

  Splintering against a skull

  The soldier looked surprised

  He did not move when they touched him

  Like a bolt of lightning flooded with darkness

  After it strikes the sea

  Ben Jonson was off in the country

  Visiting a friend’s estate

  When he had a vision

  Of his eldest son Benjamin

  Who appeared to him with the mark

  Of a bloody cross on his forehead

  As if it had been cut with a sword

  Jonson was so amazed

  By the apparition that he prayed

  Unto God it was but a fantasy

  His friends assured him

  It was a fevered dream

  It was no dream

  The letter came from his wife

  Announcing their seven-year-old son

  Had died of the Pest

  Ravaging London in 1603

  Why had the father escaped

  That night Jonson’s son appeared

  To him again in a dream

  This time the child of his right hand

  Had grown into the shape of a man

  The one he would become

  On the Day of Resurrection

  Jonson wrote a poem and called his son

  His best piece of poetrie

  A lovely line a little loathsome

  I loved that poem once

  He said we are lent our sons never take

  Too much pleasure in what you love

  Why go over seven years of fertility

  Doctors medicine men in clinics

  Peddling surgeries and drugs

  Why go over seven years of treatments

  That never engendered a child

  Janet and I adopted him

  It took another twelve months

  Of social workers and lawyers

  Home studies and courtrooms

  Passports and interlocutory orders

  Injunctions jurisdictions handshakes

  Everyone standing around in suits

  Saying yes we think so yes

  What was for others nature

  Was for us culture

  We traveled from Rome to New Orleans

  It took twenty-three hours

  Of anguish and airplanes

  Instructions in two languages

  Music from cream-colored headsets

  Jet lag instead of labor

  On the other end a rainbow

  Of streamers in the French Quarter

  A celebration in Jackson Square

  We stayed in an empty bungalow

  And waited all night

  By the bay-shaped window

  For the moment when our lawyer

  Collected him from the hospital

  And brought him to us

  It was inscribed

  In the Book of Life

  And the court of law

  It was signed in a neighboring parish

  And written in black ink

  It was sealed in blood

  After five days and nights

  On this earth our lawyer

  Took him from the arms of a nurse

  Strapped him into an infant seat

  And delivered him

  Into our keeping

  A wrinkled traveler

  From faraway who had journeyed

  A great distance to find us

  A sweet aboriginal angel

  With his own life a throbbing bundle

  Of instincts and nerves

  Perfect fingers perfect toes

  Shiny skin blue soulful eyes

  Deeply set in a perfectly shaped head

  He was a trumpet of laughter

  And tears who did not sleep

  Through the night even once

  O little swimmer in the deeps

  Raise up your arms

  Ring out your lungs

  O wailing messenger

  O baleful full-bodied crier

  Of the abandoned and the chosen

  He dropped out of the sky

  Into the infirmary in the Garden District

  At nine pounds two ounces

  When he was eight days old

  We carried him into family court

  In a plastic molded seat with a handle

  After he settled our case with a special order

  The judge an amateur photographer

  Snapped pictures of us in the witness stand

  We propped him up in the middle

  Of the table in a Chinese restaurant

  And rotated him this way and that

  The mohel arrived at my parents’ apartment

  With a little black suitcase of instruments

  It was barbaric but it was our barbarism

  At the American Academy in Rome

  Our friends threw a black-and-white party

  Like Truman Capote he wore black and white booties

  There were Welcome Gabriel signs in the rafters

  The classicists drank gallons of red wine

  And hoisted him up like a trophy

  Gelsa the Italian nanny overdressed him

  And took him all over Trastevere he was known

  At the butcher shops the dry cleaners the coffee bars

  He had become the unofficial mayor

  Of the neighborhood waving from his stroller

  At shopkeepers who waved and shouted Ciao Gabriele

  When he learned to crawl he pulled himself

  Forward on his arms a little at a time

  As if he were climbing Arizona Beach on D-day

  We strapped him into the car seat

  And drove around for hours

  Trying to get him to sleep

  There were other parents nodding

  To each other on the road I remember steering

  Clear of the trucks veering down Highway 59

  Give him a wing and a propeller

  And he’ll launch I joked

  When he hurled himself out of his crib

  It was no joke when h
e twitched

  And twisted in his sleep we marveled

  That he never stopped moving

  I can make out a man pushing a stroller

  Through Rice Village on Sunday morning

  Dew on the grass mist on the windows

  The moon a crescent in a children’s book

  The streets vacant the parking lots empty

  Everyone in the city slept but us

  Why all the tears

  Oh blow Gabriel blow

  Go on and blow Gabriel blow

  At the diner we set him up in a high chair

  Where the little pasha shrieked

  And littered the floor below

  While Little Richard mimicked a drum intro

  From the speakers above

  A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bop-bop

  In the end it becomes a blur

  Oh blow Gabriel blow

  Go on and blow Gabriel blow

  Issa recalled how a young priest

  Slipped crossing a bridge

  And fell into the torrents of a river

  People searched with lighted torches

  Until they found him wedged between rocks

  And carried him home on a litter

  His parents wept they wept bitterly

  In front of everyone and even the old priests

  Cried until their sleeves were soaked in tears

  When the boy was cremated two days later

  Issa tossed flowers into the flames

  And watched them seeping into the sky

  He lost three baby boys in infancy

  He named his daughter Sato

  Hoping she would grow in wisdom

  She was pure moonlight beaming

  From head to foot a butterfly

  Resting her wings on a sprig of grass

  He believed his two-year-old flitted

  In a special state of grace

  With divine protection from Buddha

  But he was wrong he could not bear

  To see her body swollen with blisters

  In the clutches of the vile god of smallpox

  His wife cried at her death he did not

  He tried to escape he could not