Abandoned Poems Read online

  day-reasoning without understanding

  such dreams were my squire.

  I returned with Sancho to Granada,

  my forefathers’ home, my forbearers’ caves,

  banderillas in the bull’s neck of my mind.

  When I was young and difficult,

  Lorca’s photo near my bed,

  I saw Twelfth Night, sang Mozart arias,

  read history textbooks my father wrote.

  Loyalist, I shot fascists, not Iroquois.

  I found an old photo of Belmonte, the matador

  born with deformed legs—he stood so close to the bull

  the beast had to charge around him. His sword

  in a cape of silence, he stood erect, motionless,

  a gypsy in a suit of lights tailored by Goya.

  Interval. . . . Intermission. . . .

  I visited a zoo of languages

  on the soon-to-be-sunk Statendam,

  in February touring the Mediterranean

  with my parents, from the pillars of Hercules

  to the Bosphorus. In Barcelona, I sided

  with the brave bull who entered the ring deceived,

  never having seen a man off a horse,

  the bull, however noble, sure of death.

  * * *

  I want my work to have the “taste of self ”:

  In the bright, silent mornings of my soul,

  I refuse my royalties:

  a bull’s ears, tail, and severed foot.

  God does not ride a horse,

  Jesus preferred donkeys.

  I feed my donkeys carrots, play them operas.

  A trio, they bray with joy.

  I make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

  He wants our kind to rejoice and play to beat the band,

  horns, drums, bawdy noisemakers,

  to read, sing, speak to each other.

  We should give Him the time of day,

  among sounds, unhearable, bang away,

  weep with the uncountable suffering others.

  Among the multitudes, in the swarms,

  the schools, the hives, rejoice, boo, snore,

  make noise for the love of noise and questioning,

  praise Him on Doomsday,

  He hears the noise of all the world’s blinking eyes.

  I believe to live as a silent flower is worthwhile.

  I cannot speak the languages of trees

  better than birds, who out of gratitude

  and affection learn arboreal grammar,

  accents, pronunciation, whatever the weather,

  but I try because I love a good oak—

  still, I cannot better the birds. . .

  “Affection” for my neighbor is easy, “love” difficult.

  Silence can be affection, silence a perfect herald.

  Still there is speechless love and silent conversations

  called gestures, helping hands, sometimes

  only a loving telephone call.

  There are equators, latitudes, and longitudes

  of silence, useful compasses,

  lighthouses, red and green buoys, red light

  to port, green starboard, silent foghorns.

  I remember silent remembrances.

  Is partial light the opposite of silence?

  The sun is noisy, gossips earthly languages.

  Shhh. Trying to find truth.

  I’ve heard late-night laughter in Roman streets,

  screeching pigs carried upside down to slaughter.

  From time to time the living whisper, scream,

  “Help me! Murder!” Roots tremble.

  I never heard the noise and silence of mass murder.

  In Asia and Africa, there are English wildfires.

  Greek and Latin are still smoldering,

  flaming African syllables on every tongue.

  Love, silence, reflection, and revelation

  in the jungle and pine-barren ashes.

  I lift my head to music I call gods,

  whole notes, scales, clefs, and rests

  that are saints, mullahs, rabbis, atheists, pagans.

  So I will ask to collect my dead and wounded

  and you will never hear from me,

  the unheralded herald, anymore.

  GET OUT

  Back in 1290 AD London,

  I don’t know what would have happened to me.

  I might have made it across the Channel—

  no donkey or dog, God knows. Sorry, God

  would not have known or given a damn.

  Some Middle English in my head,

  chilly, I thought it best to head south.

  The compass had not yet arrived from China,

  a person like me might have known

  the stars teach direction. A venerable rabbi taught,

  “Moss often grows on the north side of trees,

  there is safety among swarms of blackflies and bees.”

  I might have descended past Aix-en-Provence,

  in need of rest, stopped, picnicked on wild strawberries.

  I hope I read Roman de la Rose

  before I crossed the cruel Catholic Pyrenees,

  passed some gothic days and nights

  in Barcelona, “Ciudad de mis amores,”

  escaped a fiery death on Montjuïc.

  I hope I dined on sea urchins and black rice.

  I walked to Cartagena, Santes Creus

  for the love of life to dazzling Córdoba

  where I discovered the highest degree of charity:

  make someone independent,

  the second highest—give charity in secret.

  A FOUND POEM:

  One Of The Few Remaining Blanket Peat Bogs Found In The Lowlands Of County Durham.

  The government reports:

  I was once significantly larger but have been

  significantly reduced due to opencast coal mining,

  forestry, and agricultural improvements.

  Heather, bilberry, and cotton grass carpet the bog,

  and where the surface is waterlogged

  sphagnum mosses thrive. More unusual species

  such as crowberry and hare’s-tail cotton grass

  can also be found.

  The site is important for birds

  with breeding meadow pipits, skylark and lapwing,

  and frequent sightings of short-eared owl, black and red grouse,

  and large numbers of snipe and curlew.

  It is now acknowledged that peat bogs

  make a massive contribution in the fight against

  climate change due to their ability to store carbon.

  However, peat bogs have been lost at an alarming rate

  in the recent past, which makes the restoration

  and protection of peat bogs such as Stanley Moss

  so important.

  EARLY CROSSING

  I remember I wept

  when I first heard English English spoken

  by a dockman in Plymouth Harbour,

  after 14 days crossing the unmothering,

  endless Atlantic. One February morning

  the Gulf Stream played 3 cellos.

  Next day banging against the bulkhead, I fell

  on the icy deck. The ship wandered into

  gigantic wave mountains, dirges ringing

  in my ears, decks and lights sinking up

  and rising down into valleys of death.

  Heaven and hell awash, gigantic letter Bs

  green, blue, black, white waters,

  roaring echoes spelling BIBLE BIBLE,

  I had to read backward to get my legs.

  AFTER THE FALL

  You fell in the homeland on the way to the lieu.

  In darkness you broke your hip.

  I managed to pick you up. Humans don’t fall

  as empires, or leaves blown away with others.

  They do not move to Constantinople

  as Christian Romans did after the fall
of Rome.

  Humans call to husbands, friends, go to surgeries.

  We speak of the war wounded as the fallen.

  There was the Fall, original sin.

  What is the least original sin,

  one that just belongs to me, precious,

  more mine than my telephone number,

  more mine than my teeth?

  I have a sin in darkness,

  a grandmotherless grandchild,

  a broken hip.

  Mothers of mothers, fathers of fathers,

  sisters, brothers tell me the final sin,

  the least original

  after God knows how many generations.

  God help God if He knows now.

  After Biblical, Koranic, saintly names

  are changed, then abandoned as unlucky,

  we might just be known as numbers, preoccupations.

  Who will come from where?

  What will be the dog-eared languages?

  I hope to know the late future English

  new words for father, mother, son, and daughter,

  “family” may be out of style, in distant social circles.

  If we commit the sin of “bombs away,”

  in the toasty Antarctic,

  we may only speak fallout baby-talk, chatter or croak,

  or simply be voiceless, our homelands sand,

  or coral reefs.

  Still we may walk with Gandhi, or Doctor King,

  out of the valley of despair

  to the table of brother and sisterhood,

  where nations become warless, hip states,

  where hip God or Gods lend a hand,

  Here’s the rap on hip,

  a lonely trip:

  darling, dance the Broken Bone.

  Dance the Saint Joan.

  Have a hip vision,

  it’s better than television.

  Africa was born, broke its hip,

  moved across the Atlantic, a long, slow trip,

  left the Amazon behind

  with crocodiles and their kind.

  There was this upheaval

  before there was good and evil.

  Before the birds could sing, there was rap,

  reason to clap.

  There were volcanoes

  when the unnamed Congo

  moved from mango and tangos

  to harps and banjos,

  ears came after eyes,

  sweatshirts before neckties.

  Don’t you think

  there was the hip dance of the eyeball

  in the eye’s dancehall before the wink?

  Hip we fall into pretending to see the future,

  sin and virtue post offices:

  in the new world, order and disorder,

  new languages, bodies and sexes changed,

  the common white potato become

  a rainbow potato, boiled, roasted, or fried.

  It’s a sin to fry a rainbow.

  What will a future universe hold

  in Fatima’s open hand? Who’s there,

  a fugitive with many offenses,

  the foul-mouthed North Wind?

  Since we know in the beginning was “the word,”

  it would be useful to know in the end the last word,

  after moonlight has long since disappeared,

  sunlight become warm darkness,

  cooled down to a little little snow—

  perhaps a single, graceful ant ice-skates,

  blind, it sees nothing.

  When everything is over, much loved green green

  become the colorless disliked.

  In the beautiful ugly many-faced Picasso present,

  my country has a cyber-age broken hip,

  slavery, the original sin of our nation.

  Danger: stars, like tears, falling off flags—

  thirty percent still wish the South won the Civil War.

  We must reculturalize,

  not simply educate, call it “change of heart,”

  from mother’s breast or formula to furnace or grave,

  feed the young democracy finger food,

  with Roman charity nurse elders.

  A national surprise, those who love

  and those who hate their work, will strike,

  organize for full freedom and equality.

  Ojalá. Inshallah.

  Rockabye baby still throwing rocks.

  What is the opposite of a miracle? Didn’t satellites

  come from lava, mud, peat, pitch, sand?

  Courage is being hip with a broken hip,

  with malice toward none,

  despite the crack in Lincoln’s moral marble legs.

  THE SPORTING LIFE

  You don’t play golf for truth’s sake.

  You don’t putt a ball in a hole called death.

  You can hit a word long or short

  into the rough or sand trap.

  You can slice or hook. Henry V was given tennis balls.

  He played a set—struck the crown of France into the hazard.

  We must play whatever the weather,

  tennis, golf, our cards. I don’t play bridge.

  It’s London Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge,

  the Bridge of Sighs for me.

  Poets foot fault, carry their own clubs,

  the tennis balls and rackets of others.

  It’s not a matter of birdies and eagles, set points,

  aces, double faults, or advantage-ins.

  I keep score in syllables, meter,

  free verse—I don't replace my divots.

  I shout “fore!” which means “watch out” in golf.

  I drive my ball out of bounds, beyond the rough.

  Impossible, I find my gravestone:

  Stanley was a good sport, not a sore loser.

  He won some, and lost some games.

  And something about his game changed the game.

  I am afraid I will try to play

  my viola, guitar, lute or harp

  with a tennis racket that has broken strings

  after the ball is over.

  YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

  Good days are eggs, time a mother hen.

  This year is the Chinese Year of the Rooster.

  Another moon year gone, this rooster brings

  “Good luck! Honesty! Fidelity!”

  He wakes the world from sleep

  that sees everything with closed eyes,

  because everything that lives

  has sweet dreams and nightmares.

  There are Xia to Ming,

  Spider and Scorpion Tales not for children—

  except the tale The Happy Spider,

  who would not eat meaty flies—

  he lived on grapes and wine,

  flying rice, got drunk.

  The Emperor Rooster,

  father of good days, chick dynasties,

  has suffered year after year

  watching his hens in the yard

  running around with their heads cut off.

  This morning, he simply doesn't appear,

  in his yard or timeless hen houses.

  News in the marketplace and Tiananmen Square:

  the Emperor Rooster is in China,

  China is celebrating him,

  the 4,715th year

  since, cock of the walk, he came into the world.

  MOTTO

  Montaigne’s motto, “que sais-je?” My credo

  not a question, “the Devil generalizes,

  angels are specific.” He is Lord, and I

  a footman in the château of opposites.

  For the hell of it I say, “the Devil is specific,

  angels generalize.” What do I know?

  The Devil takes us to bed where he does

  opposite things, licks up and down, leaving

  permanent blisters wherever his tongue

  plays specifically. Angels generalize,

  they lead us all by the hand everywhere.

&nbs
p; My nameless angel never tells me where I am.

  The angel who caught Abraham’s hand

  holding the knife did so in no man’s land.

  Look: the Devil and a fallen angel

  are dancing—while they dance,

  the Devil gossips, “Be more concerned

  that men talk of you, than how they talk of you.

  Montaigne’s family sold herring,

  enough to buy their Château, Eyquem.

  His grandmother’s a Jew.

  Angels protect herrings, not châteaus.”

  Translations lie. “What do I know?”

  Montaigne said, “if I were accused of stealing

  Notre Dame, I’d leave France.” He disliked rules.

  In my heart I have a valve, a bridge

  that crosses the Hellespont from Europe to Asia.

  The Devil is an arriviste. The Angel of Death

  an aristocrat, loathes all saints except Julian

  who returned home, from the local road

  on the way to Jerusalem. He forgot

  his beads, murdered his mother and father—

  mistaken identity—he thought a lover

  was in bed with his wife. Why did they think

  the dog was barking? Why did they ask

  Montaigne when he was a child to drown

  newborn puppies? Which he did,

  saw their terrible struggle to keep the self,

  the “I” Montaigne saw in every living thing.

  After the dance, the Devil complained,

  “You angels believe every word in the Bible is true.

  Your Lord knows and wills everything, and nothing.

  Why doesn't he mention India, China?

  The Buddha did not think the world was flat.

  Yahweh did not mention there were rattlesnakes

  before Eden, chocolate and potatoes—

  Confucius kept things in order.

  I did not say, “confusion kept things in order.”

  Before the beginning, there were ages and stages,

  actors, pollywogs, and frogs, years

  appeared and disappeared, rattlesnakes

  with calendar skins.”

  Faust never heard the Devil sing.

  The Devil’s Song

  I love to hear them say,

  “The Devil take you.”

  If you believe in any god,

  I’ll take you. If you grieve

  for the dead instead of

  the newborn, I’ll take you.

  With one of my fingers

  pushed into one of your holes,

  I’ll drag you off to heaven

  where my penis is the key

  to the pearly gates, then

  I’ll drag you down to hell.

  Seeing heaven first makes it worse.

  I love to take infants from the breast.