The Public Life

Once I loved
the public
things in life:
the marching
parades and
bandstand shows.

But in these
things I have
little part.
I stand at
the edge of
the park grass,

where blades cast
a shadow
show of swords
raised in
rally on
the concrete.

I grappled with the sentence. I tore it from its context, that I may keep it. But as I dragged her about my friends recognized wherefrom I tore her. She was not mine they said. Against my will the sentence was restored to its place. My friends say the sentence can never be read the same. A bit of me is indelibly read with it, as if in every sentence-picture I were in the background.

"Le Cygne," Charles Baudelaire

À Victor Hugo

I

Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L'immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,

A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel);

Je ne vois qu'en esprit tout ce camp de baraques,
Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts,
Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l'eau des flaques,
Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus.

Là s'étalait jadis une ménagerie;
Là je vis, un matin, à l'heure où sous les cieux
Froids et clairs le Travail s'éveille, où la voirie
Pousse un sombre ouragan dans l'air silencieux,

Un cygne qui s'était évadé de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec,
Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage.
Près d'un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec

Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre,
Et disait, le coeur plein de son beau lac natal:
«Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?»
Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,

Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l'homme d'Ovide,
Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu,
Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide
Comme s'il adressait des reproches à Dieu!

II

Paris change! mais rien dans ma mélancolie
N'a bougé! palais neufs, échafaudages, blocs,
Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie
Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs.

Aussi devant ce Louvre une image m'opprime:
Je pense à mon grand cygne, avec ses gestes fous,
Comme les exilés, ridicule et sublime
Et rongé d'un désir sans trêve! et puis à vous,

Andromaque, des bras d'un grand époux tombée,
Vil bétail, sous la main du superbe Pyrrhus,
Auprès d'un tombeau vide en extase courbée
Veuve d'Hector, hélas! et femme d'Hélénus!

Je pense à la négresse, amaigrie et phtisique
Piétinant dans la boue, et cherchant, l'oeil hagard,
Les cocotiers absents de la superbe Afrique
Derrière la muraille immense du brouillard;

À quiconque a perdu ce qui ne se retrouve
Jamais, jamais! à ceux qui s'abreuvent de pleurs
Et tètent la Douleur comme une bonne louve!
Aux maigres orphelins séchant comme des fleurs!

Ainsi dans la forêt où mon esprit s'exile
Un vieux Souvenir sonne à plein souffle du cor!
Je pense aux matelots oubliés dans une île,
Aux captifs, aux vaincus!... à bien d'autres encor!

a little of nothing

A wave of the hand
can mean two things:
bother you be off
or smiling hi!

From The Paris Review, W.H. Auden Interview

Wise advice for the twenty-first century poet.

Autumn, 1972

Interviewer:
You have always been a formalist. Today's poets seem to prefer free verse. Do you think that's an aversion to discipline?

Auden:
Unfortunately that's too often the case. But I can't understand -- strictly from a hedonistic point of view -- how one can enjoy writing with no form at all. If one plays a game, one needs rules, otherwise there is no fun. The wildest poem has to have a firm basis in common sense, and this, I think, is the advantage of formal verse. Aside from the obvious corrective advantages, formal verse frees one from the fetters of one's ego. Here I like to quote Valéry, who said a person is a poet if his imagination is stimulated by the difficulties inherent in his art and not if his imagination is dulled by them. I think very few people can manage free verse -- you need an infallible ear, like D. H. Lawrence, to determine where the lines should end.

"A Note On Wyatt," Kingsley Amis

See her come bearing down, a tidy craft!
Gaily her topsails bulge, her sidelights burn!
There's jigging in her rigging fore and aft,
And beauty's self, not name, limned on her stern.

See at her head the Jolly Roger flutters!
"God, is she fully manned? If she's one short..."
Cadet, bargee, longshoreman, shellback mutters;
Drowned is reason that should me comfort.

But habit, like a cork, rides the dark flood,
And, like a cork, keeps her in walls of glass;
Faint legacies of brine tingle my blood,
The tide-wind's fading echoes, as I pass.

Now, jolly ship, sign on a jolly crew:
God bless you, dear, and all who sail in you.

De la lettre vingt-un, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos

Cependant j’arrive au village ; je vois de la rumeur ; je m’avance ; j’interroge ; on me raconte le fait. Je fais venir le collecteur ; et, cédant à ma généreuse compassion, je paie noblement cinquante-six livres, pour lesquelles on réduisait cinq personnes à la paille et au désespoir. Après cette action si simple, vous n’imaginez pas quel chœur de bénédictions retentit autour de moi de la part des assistants ! Quelles larmes de reconnaissance coulaient des yeux du vieux chef de cette famille, et embellissaient cette figure de patriarche, qu’un moment auparavant l’empreinte farouche du désespoir rendait vraiment hideuse ! J’examinais ce spectacle lorsqu’un autre paysan, plus jeune, conduisant par la main une femme et deux enfants, et s’avançant vers moi à pas précipités, leur dit : « Tombons tous aux pieds de cette image de Dieu » ; et dans le même instant, j’ai été entouré de cette famille, prosternée à mes genoux. J’avouerai ma faiblesse ; mes yeux se sont mouillés de larmes, et j’ai senti en moi un mouvement involontaire, mais délicieux. Je serais tenté de croire qu’il y a vraiment du plaisir à faire du bien et qu’après tout ce que nous appellons les gens vertueux, n’ont pas tant de mérite qu’on se plaît à nous le dire. Quoi qu’il en soit, j’ai trouvé juste de leur payer pour mon compte le plaisir qu’ils venaient de me faire. J’avais pris dix louis sur moi ; je les leur ai donnés. Ici ont recommencé les remerciements, mais ils n’avaient plus ce même degré de pathétique : le nécessaire avait produit le grand, le véritable effet ; le reste n’était qu’une simple expression de reconnaissance et d’étonnement pour des dons superflus.

I haven't any ways

The men took him, his heels dug in, parting dirt. And I stood aside the way sensible people do. I'd hazard my fate if I stepped in.

The man has different ways, they say. I don't know. I don't follow the goings-on. I'm out of the way. I sit down on the porch, knees chest high, and whistle. That's what I do: whistle. I haven't any ways.

A boy came to me and said, "Sir, a storm is on its way," and I said, "Nothing to worry, son, I'm not made for storms."

To L——

L——:

I haven't much to say on the matter. We did what we did: nothing's to be done. Just as I extended last night, I want to extend to you my friendship, which, I have been told, never fails any man to whom it has been extended. My respect will go some distance -- as far as it may go.

Your daughter respects you as I do. She is with me. I hope for your kindess.

Yours,
J——

From Achewood Comic Strip, April 9, 2003

On killing someone, Nice Pete to Pat:

It's kind of like...It's kind of like playin' a basketball game...I am there...and the other player is there...and it's just the two of us...and I put the other player's body in my van...and I am the winner.

From Achewood Comic Strip, November 11, 2003

Nice Pete to Philippe:

Oh we all gonna answer when the big bell rings...We all got to answer that bell...That big bell gonna come ringin'...And send all the children to Hell

The so-and-so house

The house has many rooms, each long vacant. The children moved away and the neighborhood, too. A wide veranda wraps around the house, where once the children played and the adults chatted. But the weathered planks, which once sounded the clopping of shoes, haven't born a step in a very long time.

The window shutters are unfastened and clap against the house when the wind comes in gales. A grime frosts the windows. Paint on the house peels. The yard's fallowed, choked with weeds.

A house as this is a family's homestead, where I imagine many generations have lived: in one of the many rooms or looking out through a window pane. This house, it's a surname house, known to the community for its single family occupancy. "The house there that's the so-and-so house, whose family has left. It's a beautiful house, but no one's buying. Perhaps it allows only a so-and-so for a resident."

Our faces were china doll

February 19, 2008

They found us, dead, in the car:
our bodies slouched in our seats,
our heads limp to one side or the other.
From the speakers they heard the sounds
of children's play and laughter,
and in the lap of the front passenger
a player in repeat displayed
a track with question marks for a name.

March 24, 2008

The deputy he put his hat to his breast,
the sheriff radioed shook and stuttered
sentences to the coroner. His descriptions
were unsure, but not fogged with fright:
without himself, all his years of experience,
all these years of brutality and blood,
couldn't lend sense. The sleep death --
the cherubim choir their chorus to corpses.

March 26, 2008

The coroner came and carried out our bodies
from the car. Our faces were china doll:
a talcum pallor with two ruddy circles
and a rictus smile of good passing. The
coroner he put an ear to my breast, but
found sound: a ticking of time, a noise
unlike noise; the ear was troubled and
the mind garbled and wailed in pain.

The deputy he put his hat to his breast

To the original a second stanza has been added.

February 19, 2008

They found us, dead, in the car:
our bodies slouched in our seats,
our heads limp to one side or the other.
From the speakers they heard the sounds
of children's play and laughter,
and in the lap of the front passenger
a player in repeat displayed
a track with question marks for a name.

March 24, 2008

The deputy he put his hat to his breast,
the sheriff radioed shook and stuttered
sentences to the coroner. His descriptions
were unsure, but not fogged with fright:
without himself, all his years of experience,
all these years of brutality and blood,
couldn't lend sense. The sleep death --
the cherubim choir their chorus to corpses.

A Walking Winter Man

A patient man walks in the cold, steady, without quickening his step, though his travels may be long. He draws in his coat, adjusts his spectacles, and finds pleasant the crunch and pop his boots make against the snow. His eyes are icy-blue, clear and telling. He neither smiles nor frowns -- his lips pressed as to show no emotion. What of this man? I walk toward, then past. I turn for a last take. His hands slip finally into pockets. He continues down the snow-path.

They found us in the car

They found us, dead, in the car:
our bodies slouched in our seats,
our heads limp to one side or the other.
From the speakers they heard the sounds
of children's play and laughter,
and in the lap of the front passenger
a player in repeat displayed
a track with question marks for a name.

Tables of Measure

Table of Dry Measure:
2 pints = 1 quart
8 quarts = 1 peck
4 pecks = 1 bushel
1 cord = 128 cubic feet

Table of Liquid Measure:
4 gills = 1 pint
2 pints = 1 quart
4 quarts = 1 gallon
31.5 gallons = 1 barrel
2 barrels = 1 hogshead

Table of Paper Measure:
24 sheets = 1 quire
20 quires = 1 ream
10 reams = 1 bale

Table of Apothecaries' Weight:
20 grains = 1 scruple
3 scruples = 1 dram
8 drams = 1 ounce
12 ounces = 1 pound

Table of Avoirdupois Weight:
16 drams = 1 ounce
16 ounce = 1 pound
100 pounds = 1 hundred-weight
2000 pounds = 1 ton
2240 pounds = 1 long ton

Piss and Wine in Form

Churning in convection,
the piss and wine,
both bitter, and like acid,

tear at him. Wine,
which is sweeter,
sinks, and piss replaces.

And so it goes—
the heart-furnace cycles
piss and wine.

Street Nothings, New York City

From my visit to New York:

December 22, 2007
"Saturday, the last"

What are you peddling, old man? You have no table; no trinkets. You sit behind nothing. Passersby do not stop for your wares; they continue on, to the next peddler -- who has a card table and things for sale. You sit there, between two honest salesmen. I don't trust you, old man. Not at all.

"Canal St. Station, J-train"

The blast of wind as the subway train passes feels good and cleansing to the face.


December 23, 2007

We sat on a few barstools in the Starbucks along Broadway, sipping our coffees. The weather was wet, and the buildings were darker. New Yorkers, when faced with wet weather, do not adjust their composure; they remain steady: their step, confident. No, Angelenos, they hustle as if wet carried illness.

On the A-train to the airport, I sat across a young black mother of no older than sixteen. She had her baby in a stroller in front of her. The lull of the subway had put the mother to sleep. Don't worry, child-mother, I'll look after her. You sleep for now. She's fine. I won't let anything happen to her. Not on my watch. I wonder who's the father. Is he decent? Well-to-do? Maybe not. You're only sixteen. What good man would knock a girl up at that age? No, no good man.

There are no longer brave philosophers who assert metaphysical categories that categorize. Not since Kant, anyway. Show me one, show me one.