Wild Gratitude Read online

  And—like insomniacs all over the country—

  She will stroke the cat and gulp warm milk.

  But she won’t see the new junior executive

  In the established firm of Bradley & Bradley

  Slipping from a motel room in Miami Beach

  Registered in Mrs. Bradley’s name; she won’t

  See the Young Democrats in massage parlors

  Or the Communists and the born-again Christians

  Handing out fervent leaflets to pedestrians

  Who smile and nod; and she will never see

  Naked men touching themselves in dark theaters,

  Or whores adjusting their uniforms, or drunk

  Conventioneers rubbing pink lipstick out of

  Their white collars, muttering excuses.

  The greatest moments of the night parade

  Take place under the open tent where muscular

  Sleepwalkers tiptoe across tightropes, carefully

  Holding up umbrellas, and two married acrobats

  Float through miles and miles of empty space

  Just to hold hands on a wooden platform

  Hammered into the air. Everyone laughs

  When the clowns of sleep mimic the lions,

  Tower over the midgets, and pinch the backsides

  Of beautiful bareback riders. And everyone

  Drifts home slowly when the half-moon dims

  And confetti falls from the sky like applause.

  3

  The televisions are droning at the Hotel Insomnia

  Where every room is identical and no one feels

  Like seeing a parade on a black-and-white screen.

  It’s boredom that keeps the businessmen watching

  A rerun of the seven o’clock evening news and

  The housewives restlessly switching channels

  Between a dull soap opera and a musical comedy

  About a rich Italian who falls in love with a poor

  Girl from southern Iowa. The movie finally ends

  And everyone listens to “The Star-Spangled Banner,”

  Waiting for the message of blankness that follows

  The message of patriotism at the end of every day.

  And so all the televisions whiten at dawn,

  The radios blur with static. The stragglers

  At the town hall and the junior-college gym

  Pull down the last orange and black streamers

  And snap off the skulls of the last beers

  Buried in the cooler. Happy musicians, baton

  Twirlers, professional pool players, and

  Even the hit men for the syndicate of sleep

  All clamp instruments into heavy black cases

  While the sheriff leans back in his dark chair

  And the sentry dozes off at his dark post

  And the custodian of wind vanishes like smoke.

  The cedars and pines stand in an ashen trance.

  At this hour even the staunchest insomniac

  Falls through a gaping hole opening up

  In his body like a flower or a fresh grave.

  And now the long arm of exhaustion reaches

  Across the rooftops to douse the candles.

  That’s why no one ever sees the pale trains

  Pulling out of subways and abandoned stations

  All over the country; no one sees the ghostly

  Trucks and gaunt steamers loaded with bodies;

  No one sees the blind searchlights or hears

  The foghorns bellowing in the early morning.

  3

  The Village Idiot

  No one remembers him anymore, a boy

  who carried his mattress through the town at dusk

  searching for somewhere to sleep, a wild-eyed

  relic of the Old World shrieking at a cow

  in an open pasture, chattering with the sheep,

  sitting alone on the front steps of the church,

  gnawing gently at his wrist. He was tall

  and ungainly, an awkward swimmer who could swim

  the full length of the quarry in an afternoon,

  swimming back on his back in the evening, though

  he could also sit on the hillside for days

  like a dim-witted pelican staring at the fish.

  Now that he is little more than a vague memory,

  a stock character in old stories, another bewildering

  extravagance from the past—like a speckled seal

  or an auk slaughtered off the North Atlantic rocks—no

  one remembers the day that the village children

  convinced him to climb down into an empty well

  and then showered him for hours with rocks and mud,

  or the night that a drunken soldier slit his tongue

  into tiny shreds of cloth, darkened with blood.

  He disappeared long ago, like the village itself,

  but some mornings you can almost see him again

  sleeping on a newspaper in the stairwell, rummaging

  through a garbage can in the alley. And some nights

  when you are restless and too nervous to sleep

  you can almost catch a glimpse of him again

  staring at you with glassy, uncomprehending eyes

  from the ragged edges of an old photograph

  of your grandfather, from the corner of a window

  fogging up in the bathroom, from the wet mirror.

  Fever

  In Memory of Anna Ginsburg, 1893–1977

  So the fever leans back in its icy chair

  and lies to her about the night. She thinks the

  full moon is German; she believes the empty white face

  of the moon is saying that it wants to arrest her

  for plotting crimes against the light.

  And she can’t sleep. It’s as if the fever

  had dropped a cube of dry ice into her throat and

  it is scalding hot. No, it is the smell of gas seething

  in her chest. And she keeps hearing footsteps,

  the wind pronouncing names in the street.

  She can’t get up. She is so drugged

  that she can’t focus on the living room wall

  or see the stark painting that hangs above her chair.

  It is a picture of the sky above a stone house

  that is crumbling in a stony field.

  She can’t forget the night the fever

  interrogated her for hours. That was before

  it flooded the country and left corpses in the trees,

  bodies floating face-up in the muddy streams.

  She can’t forget their faces, either.

  And she keeps hearing voices. Someone

  says the night is like a sick child who raves

  and cries out in her sleep because her head is on fire

  and she sees the tall pines bursting into flame,

  waterlogged corpses going up in smoke.

  Sometimes she dreams about a red setter

  barking furiously at a squirrel who is racing

  across the branches for its life. Always she can smell

  the singed brown fur and feel the thin squirrel

  finally losing its balance and falling.

  She whimpers. And that’s when shadows

  begin to grow out of the wet floor, the water

  rises along the misty walls. The windows are barred

  against the night, but the night waits calmly.

  Muskrats paddle in a neighbor’s yard.

  And now she is drifting in a shadow

  against the door; now she has fallen asleep

  in her own chair. So the fever holds her in its arms

  and all night she dreams about the dark clouds

  and the white moon coming to arrest her.

  Ancient Signs

  In Memory of Oscar Ginsburg, 1894–1958

  He loved statues with broken noses,

  the flaking white bodies of bi
rches

  after disease had set in,

  the memory of peasants

  kneeling at garish, hand-carved altars.

  He loved old women washing laundry

  by the river, coolly slapping the

  bedsheets senseless on the stones.

  It was sixty years later

  and yet he still couldn’t forget them.

  And he was still ashamed of the damp

  bodies of men’s shirts filling the wind,

  flapping about like chickens

  at the signs of hard weather.

  Only a woman’s hands could calm them.

  My grandfather loved thunderstorms.

  He loved to see the restless weaving

  of trees and all the small shrubs

  kneeling down like penitents.

  As a child, in southern Latvia,

  he used to run through the streets shouting

  while the ominous clouds moved slowly

  across the dark horizon

  like a large foreign army

  coming to liberate the village.

  My grandfather used to stand calmly

  by the open window during storms.

  He said that he could see lightning

  searching the empty rooftops,

  rifling the windows for his body.

  He said that rain is an ancient sign

  of the sky’s sadness. And he said

  that he could feel the wind trying

  to lift him into its arms,

  trying to carry him home again.

  Dino Campana and the Bear

  Here, in the night, I’m staring

  At the photograph of a stranger faking

  A brave heel and toe, a lyrical

  Dance with the gypsy’s favorite bear

  Stumbling in front of the dying

  Campfire light

  In a small clearing of birches

  On the outskirts of Odessa. Tambourines

  Flash like swords in the spoked

  Shadows, and you can

  Feel the drunken bear stagger

  And weave with exhaustion

  From too many cities, too many

  Ringing triangles and suspicious eyes,

  Too many bored adults, pawing children.

  All the bear wants is to

  Collapse in his own poor cage

  Under stars scattered

  Like red kerchiefs through the trees;

  All he wants is to sleep. But

  The stranger whispers something

  Indecipherable, something convincing

  In a fluent tongue, and so

  The four thick arms continue to

  Grip and lock and hug,

  The four heavy legs stagger on.

  Fur and skin. Dino Campana

  And the bear. 1911. Russia.

  In three long years the bear

  Will have left his body forever

  To travel easily, in another forest,

  While the stranger will still

  Be selling flowers and stoking

  Furnaces, peddling songs in cafes

  Out of hard need. But tonight

  All he knows is that wherever

  He is going is going

  To be better than wherever

  He is, wherever he was.

  And so he tilts the bear’s grim

  Forehead to the sky

  And keeps on dancing and dancing.

  He wants to feel the moon’s

  Wild eye staring

  Into their dark faces. He wants

  To vanish into its hard, cold light.

  Curriculum Vitae (1937)

  I should have been the son of a wolf

  and a bear; I should have been born

  in a small cave in the forest at night;

  I should have been licked clean by a mother

  with thick fur and a fistful of claws,

  with a roar and a howl instead of a voice.

  I was named after a rampaging King of the Huns,

  but Attila József isn’t a name; it’s a shout

  from a corpse disguised as a man, it’s

  the twelve naked apostles of a lie, an echo

  that steams in the bowels of a mirror, a proof

  that ghosts wear the clothes of the living.

  My father stacked crates of soap in a factory

  and disappeared when I was three, a watery bucket

  with a hole in it, a slippery white arm leaving

  a soapy trail of blood. I was an erratic circle

  rotating from a country village to a mother at home;

  I was an orphaned circle searching for its center.

  There’s a black iron that burns in my lungs

  because my mother washed laundry in an aristocrat’s

  house; she ironed a gentleman’s white collars,

  and creased his gray slacks, and steamed his jackets.

  Sometimes my diminutive mother carried a skillet

  of cold leftovers home for us to devour.

  She slept on a rotting straw mattress on the kitchen

  floor and never thought about the clouds of steam

  rising from her lips, the filthy red kerchief

  knotting in her chest. My mother always slept

  poorly, but she was sweet and respectful and

  kept a clean white apron ironed in her dreams.

  I stole chickens for mama; I stole firewood

  and coal from the Ferenvcáros freight yard; I

  snatched red apples from the baskets at Market Hall;

  I swiped bread; I waited in line for cooking lard;

  I scrubbed boilers in dank basements; I sold paper

  whirligigs and drinking water at the Világ Cinema.

  But nothing helped. When my mother finally died

  I dreamt the full moon was a tumor of the uterus,

  my body was pressed under the purple iron of night.

  Etus and Jolán thought we were starving suitcases

  packed for a house of detention. We were so scared

  that one night we sliced a ripe pear into thirds

  and offered its three soft faces to the darkness

  as a gift of appeasement. The darkness refused to

  acknowledge the fruit, but scavengers accepted it

  gladly. And yet no one—not even the crows—can

  pronounce the misery of a childhood floating

  through the streets at night, hanging on dark windows.

  I served faithfully on the tugs Vihar, Torok, and Tatár;

  I trained as a novice with the dwindling Salesian Order

  at Nyergesujfalu; I taught the Bible to an idiot savant;

  I guarded the huge cornfields at Kiszombor; I clerked

  in a tiny bookstore and trafficked in postage stamps.

  I finished the sixth year of gymnasium stifled by boredom.

  My favorite colors were always blue and yellow:

  the blue of self-forgetfulness, the yellow of suicide.

  At nine I drank a mug of starch in the kitchen

  and faked convulsions to get even with my sister.

  I sobbed, howled, stamped and raged; I foamed

  spectacularly at the mouth, ready to die for revenge.

  At fifteen I put my right elbow on the iron tracks

  and waited for the freight train to sever my arm.

  But the train never lumbered through our village:

  It had already killed a girl farther up the line.

  Oh white owl of paranoia, I was young

  and histrionic, but somebody died for me.

  I was freedom’s serious, dark-haired son,

  a scandalous thief, a tough Hungarian punk paroled

  to a life of corrections. At seventeen I begged

  for radiance between hard covers, and a high court

  accused me of blasphemy. Later, I was prosecuted

  for claiming I had no father and no mother,

  no country and no god, a
nd I was expelled

  from the university for shaking an anarchical fist

  at the world in a small magazine. I was denounced,

  but someone called me an infant prodigy in print,

  a lyrical spokesman for the postwar generation.

  No, I was just an orphan tutoring orphans.

  I went to Vienna with a suitcase of bruised

  manuscripts, a stick of salami, a loaf of bread

  and thirty shillings. All winter I shivered

  in an icy room and attended somber lectures

  on the sublime in German. I sold newspapers

  and scrubbed floors at the Collegium Hungaricum

  until a Mæcenas sent me to the Sorbonne.

  That’s when I lived at 10 Rue de la Huchette

  and wrote in French about the iron world of factories,

  our inheritance of empty lots and slums. One night

  I shouted from the rooftops that I was homesick—I

  wanted the distant earth to roar in my lungs

  and I missed the dark vowels of my own language.

  But I was a lost European at home. In 1927

  I fell in love with a wealthy girl whose parents

  snatched her away from me. Oh Márta, my poppy,

  I’ll confess to anything but your betrayal:

  indecent exposure, sedition, espionage, poverty.

  I went mad twice. Once I saw the wind

  kneel down in the soot like a crazed preacher;

  once I saw the large red claws of darkness

  scratch out the eyes of night. I hid in stairways

  because I believed that the streets were on fire,

  every street lamp was a warrant for my arrest.

  I wanted an insurrection and in the hospital

  I yelled that the rugs on the floors of all rich

  merchants are the scalps of our young brothers,

  the animals; I screamed that the bright roses

  flowering on coffee tables in their living rooms

  are the scalps of our sisters in the garden.

  After that, I lived on the rim of a grave city

  with an illegible scrawl on my high forehead.

  My comrade and I passed out fervent red leaflets