Instructions
The Anniversary
You raise the ax,
the block of wood screams in half,
while I lift the sack of flour
and carry it into the house.
I'm not afraid of the blade
you've just pointed at my head.
If I were dead, you could
take the boy,
hunt, kiss gnats, instead of my moist lips.
Take it easy, squabs are
roasting,
corn, still in husks, crackles,
as the boy dances around the table:
old guest at a wedding party for two sad-faced clowns,
who together, never won a round of anything but hard
times.
Come in, sheets are clean,
fall down on me for one more year
and we can blast another hole in ourselves without a
sound.
—Ai
My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a
buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by
dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still
clinging to your shirt.
—Theodore Roethke
Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand
1.
Thumb,
loose tooth of a horse.
Rooster to
his hens.
Horn of a
devil. Fat worm
They have attached to my
flesh
At the time
of my birth.
It takes four to hold him
down,
Bend him in half, until the
bone
Begins to
whimper.
Cut him off. He can take
care
Of himself. Take root in the earth,
Or go hunting with wolves.
2.
The second points the way.
True way. The path crosses the earth,
The moon and some stars.
Watch, he points further.
He points to himself.
3.
The middle one has backache.
Stiff, still unaccustomed to
this life:
An old man
at birth. It's about
something
That he had and lost,
That he looks for within my
hand,
The way a dog looks
For fleas
With a
sharp tooth.
4.
The fourth is mystery.
Sometimes as my hand
Rests on the table
He jumps by himself
As though
someone called his name.
After each bone, finger,
I come to him, troubled.
5.
Something stirs in the fifth
Something perpetually at the
point
Of birth. Weak and submissive,
His touch is gentle.
It weighs a tear.
It takes the mote out of the
eye.
—Charles Simic
The Road Not Taken
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And
sorry I could not travel both |
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And
be one traveler, long I stood |
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And
looked down one as far as I could |
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To
where it bent in the undergrowth; |
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Then
took the other, as just as fair, |
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And
having perhaps the better claim, |
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Because
it was grassy and wanted wear; |
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Though
as for that the passing there |
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Had
worn them really about the same, |
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And
both that morning equally lay |
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In
leaves no step had trodden black. |
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Oh,
I kept the first for another day! |
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Yet
knowing how way leads on to way, |
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I
doubted if I should ever come back. |
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|
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I
shall be telling this with a sigh |
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Somewhere
ages and ages hence: |
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Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I— |
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I
took the one less traveled by, |
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And
that has made all the difference. |
—Robert Frost
Traveling Through the Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the
It is usually best to roll
them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I
stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was
large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side
brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I
hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its
lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the
warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my
only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
—William Stafford
To a Blossoming Pear Tree
Beautiful natural blossoms,
Pure delicate body,
You stand without trembling.
Little mist of fallen starlight,
Perfect, beyond my reach,
How I envy you.
For if you could only listen,
I would tell you something,
Something
human.
An old man
Appeared to me once
In the
unendurable snow.
He had a singe of white
Beard on his face.
He paused on a street in
And stroked
my face.
Give it to me, he begged.
I'll pay you anything.
I flinched. Both
terrified,
We slunk away,
Each in his own way dodging
The cruel
darts of the cold.
Beautiful natural blossoms,
How could you possibly
Worry or bother or care
About the ashamed, hopeless
Old man? He was so near death
He was willing to take
Any love he could get,
Even at the risk
Of some mocking policeman
Or some cute young wiseacre
Smashing his dentures,
Perhaps leading him on
To a dark place and there
Kicking him in his dead groin
Just for the fun of it.
Young tree, unburdened
By anything but your
beautiful natural blossoms
And dew, the dark
Blood in my body drags me
Down with
my brother.
—James Wright
A Supermarket in
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious
looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night!
Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the
tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing
down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats
in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What
price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt
Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard
point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got
out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters
of Lethe?
—Allen Ginsberg
The
I will arise and go now, and
go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build
there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have
there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud
glade.
And I shall have some peace
there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of
the morning to where the cricket sings;
There
And evening
full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for
always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway,
or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's
core.
—W.B.
Yeats
Adam and Eve
I wanted to punch her right
in the mouth and that's the truth.
After all, we had gotten from
the station of the flickering glances
to the station of the hungry mouths,
from the shoreline of skirts and faded jeans
to the ocean of unencumbered skin,
from the perilous mountaintop of the apartment steps
to the sanctified valley of the bed—
the candle fluttering upon the dresser top, its little
yellow blade
sending up its whiff of waxy smoke,
and I could smell her readiness
like a dank cloud above a field,
when at the crucial moment, the all-important moment,
the moment standing at attention,
she held her milk white hand agitatedly
over the entrance to her body and said No,
and my brain burst into flame.
If I couldn't sink myself in her like a dark spur
or dissolve into her like a clod thrown in a river,
can I go all the way in the saying, and say
I wanted to punch her right
in the face?
Am I allowed to say that,
that I wanted to punch her right in her soft face?
Or is the saying just another
instance of rapaciousness,
just another way of doing what I wanted then,
by saying it?
Is a man just an animal, and
is a woman not an animal?
Is the name of the animal
power?
Is it true that the man
wishes to see the woman
hurt with her own pleasure
and the woman wishes to see the expression on the man's
face
of someone falling from great height,
that the woman thrills with the power of her weakness
and the man is astonished by the weakness of his power?
Is the sexual chase a hunt
where the animal inside
drags the human down
into a jungle made of vowels,
hormonal undergrowth of sweat and hair,
or is this an obsolete idea
lodged like a fossil
in the brain of the ape
who lives inside the man?
Can the fossil be surgically removed
or dissolved, or redesigned
so the man can be a human being, like a woman?
Does the woman see the man as
a house
where she might live in safety,
and does the man see the woman as a door
through which he might escape
the hated prison of himself,
and when the door is locked,
does he hate the door instead?
Does he learn to hate all
doors?
I've seen rain turn into snow
then back to rain,
and I've seen making love turn into fucking
then back to making love,
and no one covered up their faces out of shame,
no one rose and walked into the lonely maw of night.
But where was there, in fact,
to go?
Are some things better left
unsaid?
Shall I tell you her name?
Can I say it again,
that I wanted to punch her right in the face?
Until we say the truth, there
can be no tenderness.
As long as there is desire,
we will not be safe.
—Tony Hoagland