Wild Gratitude Page 5

  on the southeast corner of Woodward and Euclid

  will know what it meant for John Clare

  to walk eighty miles across pocked and jutted

  roads to Northborough, hungry, shy of strangers,

  “foot foundered and broken down” after escaping

  from the High Beech Asylum near Epping Forest.

  And whoever has followed the bag lady

  on her studious round of littered stairwells

  and dead-end alleys, and watched her combing

  the blue and white city garbage cans for empties,

  and admired the way that she can always pick out

  the single plate earring and one Canadian dime

  from a million splinters of glass in a phone booth

  will know how John Clare must have looked

  as he tried to follow the route that a gypsy

  had pointed out for him, scaling the high

  palings that stood in his way, bruising

  his feet on the small stones, stooping to

  admire the pileworts and cowslips, scorning

  the self-centered cuckoos but knowing the sweet

  kinship of a landrail hiding in the hedgerows.

  I began this morning by standing

  in front of the New World Church’s ruined storefront;

  I was listening to the bag lady and a pimply-

  faced old drunk trading secrets with the vent man,

  and remembering how a gentleman on horseback

  had mistaken John Clare for a broken-down haymaker

  and tossed him a penny for a half-pint of beer.

  I remembered how grateful he was to stand

  elbow to elbow in the Old Plough Public House

  happily sheltered from a sudden rainfall.

  But later when I saw the bag lady

  sprawled out on a steaming vent for warmth

  I remembered how Clare had moved on, crippled

  by tiny bits of gravel lodged in his shoes,

  and how he tried to escape from the harsh wind

  by lying down in an open dike bottom

  but was soaked through clear to his bones;

  how he came to the heavy wooden doors

  of the Wild Ram Public House hours later,

  and gazed longingly at the brightly lit windows,

  and had no money, and passed on. Whoever

  has stood alone in the night’s deep shadows

  listening to laughter coming from a well-lit house

  will know that John Clare’s loneliness was unbending.

  And whoever has felt that same unbending loneliness

  will also know what an old woman felt today

  as she followed an obedient path between the huge

  green garbage cans behind Kroger’s Super-Market

  and the small silver ones behind Clarence’s grocery.

  I began this day by following a bag lady

  in honor of John Clare but suddenly, tonight,

  I was reading “The Journey Out of Essex, 1841,”

  in honor of the unknown bag lady.

  I had witnessed a single day in her life

  and was trying hard not to judge myself

  and judging myself anyway.

  I remember how she stooped to rub her foot;

  how she smiled a small toothful grin

  when she discovered a half-eaten apple;

  how she talked on endlessly to herself

  and fell asleep leaning against a broken wall

  in an abandoned wooden shed on Second Avenue.

  Tonight when I lie down in the dark

  in my own bed, I want to remember

  that John Clare was so desperately hungry

  after three days and nights without food

  that he finally knelt down, as if in prayer,

  and ate the soft grass of the earth,

  and thought it tasted like fresh bread,

  and judged no one, not even himself,

  and slept peacefully again, like a child.

  Excuses

  If only I could begin to sift through the smoke

  rising from the wet streets leading to your small room

  above the warehouse. If only I didn’t have to walk

  to one side of myself, sideways, like a shadow

  growing out of the side of a building, painfully.

  If only the yellow light across the street

  wasn’t so ashamed

  of the three iron stairs and the empty doorway

  that no one crosses in the sullen rainfall,

  or afterwards. It’s the way the wind rearranges

  the puddles after a storm, the trees hang

  upside down in the water, and no starlings call.

  Or it’s the way the past revises itself

  in my mind, searching for a white stone

  to mark the place, to find my way back

  to the small room that is no longer

  your room

  above a warehouse that is no longer a warehouse

  but the memory of an enormous wooden space

  hollowed out of the night. If only I could

  find us sleeping there, suspended

  over the unrevised space, tangled or spoonlike,

  then I wouldn’t have to spend this night

  walking to one side of myself,

  standing beside myself,

  paralyzed by the memory of you

  in the middle of a vacant city block.

  If only I could stop standing here, sideways,

  like a shadow growing out of the fleshy side

  of an abandoned building, painfully,

  like a shadow on fire.

  Unhappy Love Poem

  I wanted to lie. I wanted to say

  it was the rain falling through a fine mist

  and shattering the lake into tiny fragments

  that suddenly brought it home to me today

  in warm shocks, in a blazing purple gust

  as I walked by the water in the early morning.

  I wanted to invent the wildest statements

  about what happened to us, to feel brilliant

  and wronged, like an angry young widow mowing

  the front yard in a strapless evening gown,

  or a born-again Christian suddenly jumping

  into a fountain to wash away his sins.

  I never wanted it to be like this: hopeless

  and ordinary, dull as a toothache at lunchtime,

  as watching t.v. in the afternoon in summer.

  I never wanted it to happen inside the house

  where I am still undressed at 2 p.m., at 4 p.m.,

  where it seems so precisely like failure.

  The White Blackbird

  “Imagine for a moment that the white blackbird has gone blind....” —JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

  The morning after Sartre’s death

  I thought of a hundred blackbirds rising

  Out of a brilliant white lake sheeted with mist,

  Covering the sky with their feathery bodies

  And blotting the sun with their dark cries.

  I was sitting alone on the twisted wooden

  Stairs of a rented house in the country,

  Reading about Sartre’s long blindness

  And watching the crows in a neighbor’s yard

  Descending on the body of a twisted sycamore.

  Those birds were a mistake, a dozen black

  Errors scrawled across an empty page

  In the sudden stark blankness of morning.

  It was for Sartre that I remembered a blaze

  Of dark scavengers emerging out of a cold lake

  In the torturous outer calm of springtime.

  And it was for Sartre

  That I remembered a single white blackbird

  Drifting over the metallic water at noon, lost

  And severed from the other birds, blinded

  By the clarity and madness of sunlight.

/>   In Spite of Everything, the Stars

  Like a stunned piano, like a bucket

  of fresh milk flung into the air

  or a dozen fists of confetti

  thrown hard at a bride

  stepping down from the altar,

  the stars surprise the sky.

  Think of dazed stones

  floating overhead, or an ocean

  of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,

  like a conductor’s expectant arm

  about to lift toward the chorus,

  or a juggler’s plates defying gravity,

  or a hundred fastballs fired at once

  and freezing in midair, the stars

  startle the sky over the city.

  And that’s why drunks leaning up

  against abandoned buildings, women

  hurrying home on deserted side streets,

  policemen turning blind corners, and

  even thieves stepping from alleys

  all stare up at once. Why else do

  sleepwalkers move toward the windows,

  or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs

  onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals

  press sad foreheads to steel bars?

  Because the night is alive with lamps!

  That’s why in dark houses all over the city

  dreams stir in the pillows, a million

  plumes of breath rise into the sky.

  A Dark Hillside

  Out here in the last moments before dusk,

  It is strange to see the way that shadows

  Steep in the tall grass and sunlight falls,

  Like a woman’s naked arm, across the porch

  And the dim shoulders of the house.

  And it is strange to be standing here

  Instead of there, with my hands darkening

  Inside my pockets, staring for so long

  At a single blue fir spiraling

  Out of the forehead of a nearby hill

  That it begins to resemble the golden

  Horn of a mythical beast, a stray animal

  That men have been seeking for centuries.

  Every child knows what a unicorn is

  Though no one has ever seen anything

  But a tapestry, or a well-executed

  Illustration, or a faulty copy of one;

  And yet this never seemed mysterious

  To me before now, until today. I don’t

  Know if it is curious or not

  To seek the trembling blues and yellows

  Of dusk as often as I have, or to feel

  Strangeness seeping through the air

  Until nothing seems like what it is,

  Nothing is what it seems. I don’t know

  If children believe in tapestries anymore,

  Or in cobblestone streets in old engravings,

  Or in blue horses moving across the sky....

  But sometimes when I drift through

  The afternoon’s deep shadows, the silence

  Of the country at dusk can still

  Seem like a kind of promise, a pact

  Between the red elms and the dusky clouds

  Reaching down to engulf them—and somehow,

  The hills can still take on the dreamy,

  Faraway look of a man standing at the window

  High in the crown of his house,

  Knowing that no one—not his wife

  Descending the stairs, not his children

  Running through the yard—can see him.

  Standing there at the level of the trees

  He could believe in the stars again,

  Slowly being released into the sky,

  One by one, like long yellow plumes

  Of breath, calm and precise above us;

  He could believe in the light again

  Flying toward him through the clouds....

  I have no idea who he is,

  Or why he is here now, alone

  In my mind’s eye, absent-mindedly

  Staring at a purple blend of shadows

  Weaving through the long hair of the elms.

  And suddenly I have no idea why

  I am telling all of this to you,

  You who are so unknown to me,

  As if there could be something like

  Intimacy between us, as if I could ever

  Communicate anything so mysterious,

  Anything so austere and familiar

  As even this simple story, written down:

  Once, in the slow shadings of dusk,

  In the middle of his life,

  A man moved toward a blue unicorn.

  He was a stranger

  Crossing a deserted road, alone.

  He was a late-afternoon shadow

  Lengthening across the tall grass,

  Darkening on a dark hillside.

  The Secret

  Soon we will give our speechless bodies

  Back to the garden at night, like the scores

  Of old songs we can no longer quite remember,

  Or the embroidered shirts we outgrew as children.

  Once, their colorful new skins clung tightly

  To our skins, molding to our elastic human

  Shapes, but now they hang limply in thrift shops

  Next to coverless issues of Newsweek and Time

  And sullen piano music that no longer wants

  To remember the slow torture of being played

  On endless rainy afternoons in mid-October.

  Sometimes I think that inside one of those faded

  Musical sheets I am still practicing scales,

  Still trying to avoid the musty gray smell

  Of an interminable Sunday at home (and sometimes

  I think the dullest afternoons of adulthood are

  A memory of childhood relived in a tedium of autumn).

  I used to press my forehead against the window

  And imagine the sun moving behind the buildings

  Like an exhausted old woman tramping home

  Through a field after a long day in the city

  With her hands buried deep in the pockets

  Of a flowering red dress. I liked to pretend

  That she would leave a smoky lantern flaming

  In the elms for luck while she hummed a lullaby

  To herself, a song from some other world,

  The secret of light. I’d strain to listen,

  But all I could hear was the voicelessness

  Of the wind blowing its emptiness across the sad

  Rooftops, leafing through the empty pages of trees.

  All I could see was my own childish, blue boredom.

  I am thirty-five now, but sometimes when I look out

  At the garden at dusk, I can still feel myself

  Becoming that child again, reliving that boredom,

  And suddenly I am afraid only that the garden is

  Changing even as we are changing, even as the sun

  Goes back to being a sun toiling behind purple bars

  On the horizon, and our bodies start to wear out

  Like our favorite suits and hats. It’s the way

  That even the fat crabapple tree swelling up

  By the fence will someday retire from giving fruit

  To every poor scavenger that comes along, every

  Obese squirrel and thin starling, every lost crow.

  Soon the sour green tree will quit storing up

  Food for the moles—soon, but not yet.

  Because look how the garden survives the dusk,

  How quietly it waits for us, how lovingly

  It welcomes us back. Maybe it already knows

  That we always return to its soil like husbands

  Who never quite leave their faithless wives,

  Or sons who grow into their own fathers.

  So, too, we will touch our bodies to the soil

  And know the ground by its damp and bitter taste.

  But until then, I will stand
by the window at dusk

  Remembering the sullen blue notes of a forgotten

  Childhood, the tedious hours practicing, the rainy

  Afternoons that seem eternal in an adult’s memory.

  I will remember a slow dream of leaving the house

  And then walk through the garden on cool nights

  Listening for a single redbreasted cardinal

  That sometimes returns to our dark elms. I

  Like to think it is a little explosion of dye

  Erupting in secret in its own time, a minor

  Echo of the sun toiling on the bruised horizon.

  I like to believe it is a smoky red lantern

  That an old woman leaves in the branches

  To fend off the darkness while she sleeps,

  To keep a red flame burning through the night.

  Dawn Walk

  Some nights when you’re asleep

  Deep under the covers, far away,

  Slowly curling yourself back

  Into a childhood no one

  Living will ever remember

  Now that your parents touch hands

  Under the ground

  As they always did upstairs

  In the master bedroom, only more

  Distant now, deaf to the nightmares,

  The small cries that no longer

  Startle you awake but still

  Terrify me so that

  I do get up, some nights, restless

  And anxious to walk through

  The first trembling blue light

  Of dawn in a calm snowfall.

  It’s soothing to see the houses

  Asleep in their own large bodies,

  The dreamless fences, the courtyards

  Unscarred by human footprints,

  The huge clock folding its hands

  In the forehead of the skyscraper

  Looming downtown. In the park

  The benches are layered in

  White, the statue out of history