BOOKS
(Available)
- Gathering of Wanderers (2008)
- Lilith & The Blues (2008)
- Poem-Chanting Tower (2007)
- Dark Encounter in Mid Air (2006)
- Sonata Sonnets (1997) (Poems from this volume)
- Las Espinas (1997) (Poems from this volume)
- Sketches for a Mayan Odyssey (1982) (Poems from this volume)
- Letters and Voices from the Steppes (1977) (Poems from this volume)
- Scenes from an Old Album
GATHERING OF WANDERERS (2008)
Poems by William Hollis,
with photographs by Andrea Baldeck
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Hawkhurst Books
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-9748304-3-8
Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x .75 inches
GATHERING STORMS
My memory is full of islands and those
who wander and come to rest, for a while at rest,
here where a sea rolls in, around and on
to somewhere else where others wander
or come to rest, for a short while at rest
until these tides build up and winds blow in
and we gather in the harbor, waiting for something,
waiting for what we are not sure could be,
a party at the bar, a tide that rises faster
or winds that rise with echoes of other worlds,
laughter washed with tears, a falling palm,
one less to age and fall across the dock
as we gather close to tell tales breathlessly
like approaching storms and the wanderers we are.
LIPS THIN AND BLUE
For years, with lips thin and blue, she brought
our coffee, decaf and black, without asking,
pulled a sweater close and tried to smile,
sometimes eager to exchange a hug, sometimes
not even aware, after shoving mugs and turning,
that we were still there, still in need of omelets,
as if she feared we might see the bruised eye,
a chilled drip of sweat at the neck of her sweater.
We were told she had a boyfriend, one of the cooks
who scowled over hot splashes of oil, whose face
would appear at a serving window with a curt number;
and occasionally she mentioned grandchildren, one or two,
though she turned to another customer if asked how many.
She’d worked for the boss for thirty years, she said,
in a diner here or there, in small towns that shrank
and now on a highway where traffic heads away.
I asked if she too wanted to take off in another
direction, to get away; but she only frowned
and turned and told one of the boys to bring a tray
of mugs and make sure that they were clean.
And then this morning she seems to be waiting for us;
the coffee is poured, with extra napkins and water.
At first we don’t notice, a moment of hesitation,
at which she flinches, until suddenly we see.
She’s done her hair, short and neat, and no sweater;
she waits while we look and express surprise
and pleasure; and then she comes and gives us hugs;
and for a moment I think, I really think, she’ll burst
with a story, something about her boyfriend, her family,
her leaving town; but all she does is hug us
and giggle and tell us she isn’t on the counter;
and so we finish breakfast, puzzled, but with pleasure.
RIDING A SILVER CAR
He rides a silver car as if it is a horse
and pauses while cresting a hill to wonder
if there could be one more adventure left,
another city, another girl to love,
to photograph, to imagine anything
might be, might lead him from a mourning stall
and set him on a trail away from heartache.
We never know what story he may have
on brief returns, a tale that differs daily,
a passionate involvement with a model
who’s lost her way, a titled friend driven
by family quarrels, an exhibition in a gallery
where hunger is the motif of the owner
and circling wagons circumvent attack.
We call each other with excited whispers,
“Have you heard he’s driven back to town?
Have you seen him yet? Will he come for lunch?
What happened to the girl with whom he swam,
he said, before they crossed the mountains?”
We’re the ones with the curious twist
that envies him as he rides into the night.
LILITH & THE BLUES
(2008)
Poems by William Hollis,
with photographs by Andrea Baldeck
Hardcover: 124 pages
Publisher: Hawkhurst Books
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-9748304-2-1
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x .75 inches
MOMENTS WITH LILITH
1.
She’s there as I fall asleep in a chair
and my book falls shut and slips to the floor
with a slam, and I wake and call out, perhaps
with her name or with a moan of sorrow
or touch of laughter; but no one’s there,
not even the inevitable she
I always thought would be close enough
to hear and respond with an owl’s voice.
I’m caught somewhere between a cry
and a laugh, in the moment it takes to catch
my breath, in the moment it takes
to remember the book that slid away,
a moment to find that the sun is bright
and gold and falling beyond the window.
2.
I rise to open the door, but no door is there;
I reach to catch the door, but there isn’t any door.
My hand abruptly closes on itself,
fingers against palm, with no weight of the door,
no holding back night or opening to light,
just a sudden shift of a world that jars me awake,
a sudden shift of dreams I’d almost had
that might have shown me what the answer is.
I reach to pull the door, but no door is there;
there isn’t any door and my hand closes,
my fingers bite the palm and I wake
and wonder what it’s all about, this life,
this moving in and out a door that may
be only a figment of the imagination.
3.
No? What is there to explain? I can only describe:
There is somewhere out there, in vast plains of space,
a group of identical women, all of whom look
like someone sculpted by a favorite, aging artist.
They all look down and around and fail to focus
until I come and stand very still just in front of one;
and if I’m not careful, she’ll suddenly look up,
catch my eye, and hold hard to the twist of the moment.
If I should have to say something else, I’d simply say
that perhaps as we wander through inner freedoms,
we’ll meet one of those wonderful figures,
and then go off in a different direction,
up and down another set of stars, out there,
somewhere out there, a long way away.
4.
What’s her voice? What’s the tone, the accent,
the burr in the voice I hear when I hear her voice —
Katie’s voice, from the east coast of England,
elegant and touched by waves of the North Sea;
or the edgy, sharp and brittle voice of Debra,
twisted to pain by the Russian/Jewish diaspora,
a voice schooled in the Bronx with a decade in Tuscany?
If fathers of the tribe threw her out of Isaiah,
whether in elegant tones of King James or flat
earnest drawls of the Great Plains in an account
that makes sense in a dull, conditional way,
what am I supposed to hear when I hear owls
full of painful warnings and a cave of dragons
that whir an uproar of curses across the night?
5.
We let her fall until the wind
has caught her wings and brought her round,
and she settles on a sandy knoll,
a moment’s rest, a time for us
to turn away and breathe relief.
Is she there long enough to wander
the palace Isaiah knew, out there
where dunes move slowly across earth
and horizons change and inevitably
the path drops into a crevasse?
Is it her ghost we hear now,
the lingering echo of her power?
We let her fall, but still she’s here;
such power isn’t so easily dropped.
6.
Distant cousins board their windows against Lilith
and if I didn’t make something of that, she’d know
that I was ill.
She knows I watched for hurricanes
when I was young, saw the force that pulled a tree
and thrust it through a neighbor’s window; and all hell
broke loose; and all dogs barked and police arrived;
and I jumped up and down on the sofa by the window
so hard I peed in my pants to see what a force of awe
a temper like that might unleash.
The scream of wind
as it folds a garbage can around a grapefruit tree
is nothing compared to the voice that brings a curse
from god and wraps it all around a careless poet.
So here’s to the namer of storms who remembers
the force of that woman when he wakes at night.
7.
I often awake to a sound of many bells
that, for a moment, I think are echoes of
her voice, bells that call from towers beyond
the woods, across fields where owls still hunt,
bells that call the hour in cities we know,
knowing the names of bells that mark the hour,
and not knowing, until recently, that she
will speak in tones of bells that wake us
in the night, in moments when I wake to hear
her voice, the pull of her voice, an ache she knows,
a cry she utters when lingering sun
goes down and she is left to fly among
towers, ringing bells and calling us
to remember her, to remember her voice.
8.
She carries a serpent in her arms
and strokes its head and holds it out
for us to see, a show and tell
that leaves the class confused and scared.
She’s the only one like that,
beautiful and full of pain,
unwilling to play the game and fraught
with something the others never know.
I try to talk with her and feel
we might have a song to share,
might understand the pain
that pulls us from an empty dance;
but then one day she isn’t there,
not even her name is called in class.
9.
I see her at the stove when I know
she should be flying with her owls.
Perhaps she’ll look hard at the pot
and the dish will be ready to serve.
I wonder if Lilith stands at the stove
and stirs the broth of a chicken,
watching a bit of her own blood
enrich the pot and give it life.
I wonder if she sings for children,
sings in a low voice, hoarse
and edged with tears. Is it she
I wake at night and hear call,
in a voice that calls for me to rise, to come
and accept the hugs of what will be?
10.
The triple barking of Cerberus is still,
relentless wrappings of moon and stars
spin out to give sleep to the night.
Owls of Lilith settle and wait to see
what might come from fog that swirls at sea.
No child should wander on a night like this;
doors and windows should be closed and locked,
candles lit, and someone should play the flute,
play loudly as darkness pulls us close.
We should sing despite a heavy fog.
Heavy winds come, owls begin to cry,
candles flicker as winds rattle the window;
something sad and beautiful whispers
of failing growth in a garden’s last breath.
GETTING IT RIGHT
We never seem to get it right —
there’re some things we never get right.
We push up and down the hills —
more slowly as years accumulate,
more slowly wondering why not even love
forgives us the horror of what’s been done,
of what we’re doing still — a thousand here
ten thousand there, or even one or two.
The one who died because he was black,
the one who hung until he was dead....
“I loved him,” I cry. “It wasn’t I.”
I cry and try to climb another hill.
But it was done. As long as any one can do it
to another, I’ll carry the pain.
We have to carry the pain,
otherwise we’d never get it right.
We can learn to love in spite of it all —
in spite of what others may do,
in spite of what we ourselves could do
if we’d not been taught to love
by Minnie who held us in her arms to teach us love
and Kitty who folded us into one family;
and yet we seem unable to get it right —
some things we just never seem to get right.
AT THE EXXON
I forgot to mention a poem that happened at the local
Exxon, yesterday, when poems happened at every turn,
and it felt as if I were in a movie, though, actually,
the prelude or preface, or whatever it might be titled,
happened the night before when Deming called after 10
to read her story, her letter, or whatever it was.
I listened, heard and felt it with total attention, as usual,
though it was late for a phone call — but that’s Deming,
who depends on my total attention and immersion,
for that’s how I am — and she tells a wonderful story
about getting lost, trying to visit someone
in the suburban confusion of our neighborhood.
It was a letter, or it was a story, actually two in one;
and I felt only two jarring words in the five pages
she read — but visualized a different form
with each sentence, each thought a separate line,
as someone might do a poem; but she disagreed,
and I, for that’s how I am, didn’t press my view.
The main thing is, it’s a cliff-hanger, it really is,
all the way through, my story, and beautiful too,
that I’ll call ‘At The Exxon’ or something that will hint
at complexities of life this far out of town
where many of us have spent much of life getting lost
and trying to find ourselves once again, as you know.
That’s why I needed to wake up this morning
and turn that call from Deming into a poem or story,
even though a meddling fool to whom I told the story
took my perfectly good account and like some editor
turned it into a poem, though I’m quite happy to say
he doesn’t know what really happened at the Exxon.
(found in a letter from Helene)
POEM-CHANTING TOWER
A Tribute to Xue Tao
(2007)
Poems by William Hollis
Hardcover: 104 pages
Publisher: Hawkhurst Books
Language: English
ISBN: 0-9748304-1-0
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x .75 inches
Author's Note:
‘Poem-Chanting Tower’ was the name of the house that Xue Tao, courtesan and poet, built at her retirement in 810 a.d. on the banks of the Brocade River, just a few hundred yards downriver from the house of Tu Fu, China’s most famous poet.
The poems in this volume gathered words slowly over a quarter of a century even as they looked back to Xue Tao’s 9th century or to my years in Vermont or to more recent years when I decided to encounter more vividly an ancient world where I wake at night and find myself.
POEM-CHANTING TOWER
A Presentation for Xue Tao
1
I can not imagine the years
when generals sat smiling at your song
or scholars came a great distance
to ask a favor
years later
when it was no longer necessary
for you to rise in the middle of the night
to comfort an official
dropped by the latest turn of government
I stood watching
from the shadow of an arbor
as you sat in the sun
and brushed poems
on slips of bright paper
and I was there
when young poets brought scrolls
with small perfect poems
though I was not among the pretty ones
who played golden lutes
but a gray one
with breath too short to finish a line
when you came close and listened
the very air trembled
and lilies burst open
with a shudder
and flooded the garden with perfume
as rich and haunting as the musk
in the scarf you wound about my shoulders
I keep it still
in a box with these poems
that were for you
when all the world was a landscape
fading from the scroll that hung in a corner
lit only by the turning of the stars
2
after the emissaries had left
tall strangers
with red hair
who came from beyond the mountains
to see for themselves
a woman who had brushed more eloquently
than any man
after they had mounted their horses
amid a clatter of drums
and the shrill sounding of flutes
and there was again silence in the courtyard
and dust settled
and birds sang again in the garden
after such tribute
after such a stir on the banks of the river
how can you see these inadequate words
that leave a slight trail of ink
as the brush lifts
and moves on
how can you hear the suppressed song
that centers time
on this white expanse
how can you know what I feel
as I wait here
at the end of the corridor
where morning sun
bright across the sheen of this paper
pushes back at my brush
3
I do not remember when it happened
a time of illness
a time when all friends seemed distant
seemed to have sailed away
and there in the mountains beyond the river
there was the silence of my own breath
was it a dream
or did you come to me in the night
slipping into that chilled room
like silver moonlight
falling through a window
and did you unwrap the scarves from your hair
and let fall that hair
and let fall the robes
that I have only seen since
in dusty cases that line the corridor
I felt the touch of your hand
a small hand
that had stained letters
with a brushed eloquence
and I lifted myself to hear your voice
and the voice of the golden crane
but the only sound was the echo of your steps
falling away into the past
4
for a moment I fight for breath
fight to remind myself
that it has been a thousand years
that I am alone in a room without light
that you are somewhere else
a part of memory
a part of some tattered painting
never seen
only imagined as I write this
pretending / wishing to be there
in the Poem-Chanting Tower
on the banks of the Brocade River
where willows make lace of the afternoon sun
and small bright birds
fly in at the open window
as you hold a hand to your mouth and laugh
at the letters that have just arrived
from an old poet
EIGHT FAMOUS DRINKERS
Tu Fu wrote the original poem
or copied one that was known
long before I moved to the Ompompanusic River
where Ned and I chilled bottles of wine in shallows
while arguing about what music
should drift from the shack
to make cheap wine taste better
the first to arrive for an afternoon party
was always John Chang
sitting on an old farm horse as if riding a boat
eyes glazed and rolling
with those banal poems he liked to chant
until he would stumble into the shallow well
and sleep there until dinner
then Joe Yang wandered about bragging
of the three gallons he needed before going to court
and broke out salivating
at the memory of a cart-load of wine-yeast
he had seen on the road
and regretted that he had never been transferred
to a post in the wine country
meanwhile Tom Hanks staggered about
drinking like a whale swallowing a hundred streams at once
to support his happiness
bragging that he had spent all his inheritance
ten thousand a day
and now loves only the wise
and can do without the worthy
everyone stopped for a moment to watch the Hugh boy
join us on the river
a handsome free and easy kid
weaving a bit
who lifted his cup and gazed at blue skies
with the whites of his eyes
and sparkled like a jade tree facing a brisk wind
in real contrast Surry Chin walked about
with great solemnity and bowed to each of us
before he set up an embroidered Buddha
in front of whom he fasted
in spite of gay music that drifted about
for once he’s drunk
he loves just to sit and meditate
then Lee Poe
who after a single drink will write a hundred poems
and fall asleep in a wine shop down river
arrived late with an excuse
that heavenly voices had summoned him
since he was as we should know
an immortal of the wine
Chuck Sue after drinking three cups
showed his work as master of cursive calligraphy
wielding his brush across paper
like mist or clouds that drift
until with enthusiasm he threw off his cap
and exposed his bald pate
right in front of all of us
finally Joe Shoer
after an hour of silence
and five dippers of our best cheap wine
came to life and stumbled upright
and with a noble discourse and earthy lecture
startled us all into laughter
with words only famous drinkers can inspire
(based on a poem by Tu Fu)
IN THE STUDIO
among debris and dust
the shriveled gloves her mother wore
a box of yellow teeth
glittering virgins from a sunnier place
and scrawled quotations from a favored poet
she piles the heads her fingers make
her heart has seen
her nightmares give
she smiles and smiles
and piles the bones about the heads
with teeth her uncle left
with dreams and angry tears
with all those withered faces
grimaced in glass
with memories reflected from the case
with footsteps dying down the corridor
she piles the heads
beside a photograph her daughter sent
and smiles at a fist of clay
and lets her fingers push at eyes
‘you can not see behind their dusty glass
you only see your dusty face’
it all begins and ends among debris
among the boxes full of time and tears
DARK ENCOUNTER IN MID AIR (2006)
Poems by William Hollis,
with photographs by Andrea Baldeck
Hardcover: 340 pages
Publisher: University Press of Florida (July 2004)
Language: English
ISBN: 0974830402
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.0 inches
THIRTEEN BY THIRTEEN BY THIRTEEN I have heard the cello of Bach fill the noisy streets And afterwards, the student seemed so afraid to play |
TIPPERARY
I used to sing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’;
but that’s a long time ago, back where shadows fall
and echoes reverberate through lagoons and hills
that rise higher and higher toward the setting sun,
against hills of cloud that change as colors change,
oranges and reds and purples that roll to black.
With a smell of swamp rising at the falling of dark,
with cicadas creating their own crescendo,
and a grunt of frogs, an echoing bay of gators,
and a rumbling fall of the sea, the waters spread
with an iridescence across sand, the last light
breaks into a thousand shards of memory.
It’s a long way from where I’ve been to here,
and the memories accumulate like dreams
in the echoing spaces of night, like gators
and frogs and the beat of something more distant,
an ominous rumbling from out there, beyond
the fireflies, beyond phosphorescence in the surf.
It’s a long way for a little kid who cried
and laughed and didn’t know he wasn’t supposed
to live, and did and finally learns to laugh,
but not to cry except when storm clouds clash
above his head and bolts of lightning light the sky
and, damn, but it’s a pretty sight to see.
Oh, how I love to watch the sunlight come
across the face of someone I hardly know,
one who tries to hide behind a floppy hat,
a modulated voice, manners determined by
a job, a hurt, a frantic measure of reserve --
until it’s there, breaking from the edge of a cloud.
I’ve never known just where it is, where was,
the place we sang about when I was 12.
No one could tell me, no one tried;
it was just a song to bring us all together,
like the Yellow Brick Road that made me laugh,
the empty places in the prayers they said in church.
It’s Tipperary, wherever that may be,
it’s what we sang about with voices thin, off key,
a long time before I remembered what I’ve found
to fill my heart and poems; and now we’re there,
the path leads down to the sea, once again to the sea
and sounds that rise in the night with urgency.
HANDS
Series One
1.
The hands I’ve come to know,
the hands that touch the keys,
that touch the flesh, the hands
held up against the light
translucent like the moon,
like hands that clutch at books,
at pens that drag the words
across the page, that hit
the keys and mar the screen,
these hands grow stiff with time
and clutch a heavy rose;
now scarred by sharp thorns,
they hesitate and waver,
still gentle though impatient.
2.
The hand of a child will reach
for the brightness of a fire,
will reach to touch a flame
that dances against the night;
the hand of a child must touch
a flame that spits and sputters;
the hand of a child withdraws
with sudden pain, a clutch,
surprised by something new,
so lovely in the air
so painful in the hand
that only tears will cool,
like ice, a burn on the hand
and scars on memory.
4.
She held a glass of wine
as pale as her slender hand,
caressing each of her words
as if it were a lover
who spoke of a distant past
so gently one had to strain
to hear and almost touch
the other hand that lay
so still upon the table
it might have been a flower
sent by an old admirer
who sat across the room,
waiting to see if this hand
would suddenly withdraw.
5.
As the hand slips down the body
and touches unseen places,
it moves like light and wind
across a rising hill
and slips to the near edge
and pauses, briefly poised,
before it slips the field
and sweeps down to the river,
a hawk on downdraft sweeping
that caws in pleasure, pauses,
lifted by the wind,
a hand, deciding which key,
hesitates and stirs
and suddenly descends.
6.
His hand descended slowly
with globs of paint on brushes,
a green that ran and splattered,
leaving fingers like canvas
or like another brush
that dipped and pulled the paint
across an earlier brown
of a landscape that never was
from a touch some force had made
before the hand was lifted
to say, 'It’s done at last;
they’re on their own;' and now
the hand has paused and rested
and, finished, pulled away.
7.
My mother’s hand went still
in the middle of the day,
went still and limp and cool;
the puffy veins relaxed;
at last her hand accepted
a stillness she had earned
and did not reach for mine
to offer comfort, food,
a touch of encouragement;
it lay upon the bed
and did not seem to wait
for burial or tears;
a hand at rest at last,
as I had rested there.
8.
They’re on a ceiling high
beyond my touch, two hands,
iconic hands, that reach
and fail to touch, withdrawn
in fear or anticipation,
a hand that holds back,
that wants so much to touch
and hold, to come together
up there, so far up there
that as a boy I thought
I had not seen it clearly,
the hands that reach, the distance
of a Roman afternoon
with sweaty awkward hands.
10.
That’s why the hands smear paint,
push images down a page,
while plundering the day
of anything that helps,
a touch of memory,
the flesh that held them close,
those hands like instruments
that labor with a hope
of something more, an echo
for someone else to hear
another time, when we
are nothing more than marks
upon a page, on walls,
reflected in an eye.
12.
A Buddha’s hand, detached,
a piece of bronze broken,
Rodin’s piece of marble,
a hand that reaches up,
that once I thought banal,
the hand of Christ that bleeds,
the one that Arlene made
to fend the lurking world,
the hands we’ve held and loved,
those frail or full of strength,
these are the hands I’ve known,
the hands that I remember
and place upon the page
with the pressure of a hand.
A YOUNG POET’S DUENDE
I.
Young and restless in a way I thought
would surely change as I found my way home,
I wandered through hills of Andalusia,
into caves where, alone in a baggy suit,
unable to speak the language, I sat among
gypsies and waited for something to happen, waited
for more than just the spattering of a foot,
a quick tap on the back of a battered guitar.
“Go there,” a girl had said on the run from somewhere
to somewhere else with a name I never knew,
pulling her hand from any touch I might
have wanted to give. “Go there,” she said again
as winds blew her across a river and away,
leaving only an hour’s memory, a voice
that still carries an edge of pain I can not imagine.
“Go there,” the voice was saying as I waited.
It was only the tap of a foot at first, the scrape
of a finger on the table, and silence, a lot of silence
that pulled the heart I’d never really known.
I was there in a white-washed room, in a cave,
with a family without smiles, with walls that closed
as suddenly a voice rose from rubble and silence,
rose and filled the room with unbearable pain,
a cry as old as the world, a cry never to end.
But it did, in a splutter unkeyed from the strings
or the heel of a boot striking the stone with a blow,
a shatter of blows, and another voice that edged
all memory of my brief twenty years;
and then a silence that left me blinking, that lingered
forever or for a minute, until a woman in black,
old and heavy, with eyes that seemed not to see,
moved slowly from shadows until she burst the light.
And then a child, an old man, their voices on edge,
guitars blurring the air with crescendos and slaps....
I have no memory how long I held my breath,
how long the rise, how long the silence that followed,
until, quietly, out of that silence, all body, tight
and slender, arched like a bow, a piercing arrow
moved, without moving, moved on the sounds
that burst from the stones, that rose from the dead.
And again I have no memory how long he held
that fire of sound, until his feet exploded,
the room exploded, the voices of old and young
filled the cave, the night, the clear night under stars
that crossed and glittered from pole to pole, echoed
from other caves, with other voices rising in the call
to go there, now, to go there, to be there
in all the painful nights that linger, in all the nights.
II.
In darkness before dawn on the streets of Seville, on corners
by themselves, old ones cried to the dark, a lingering cry
that pulled me to hear, my heart beating from awkward
attempts to dance their dances in a bar crowded with generals
and whores and a pair of Danes much taller than us all.
The dark figures who huddled on corners did not approach;
the time for begging was gone, the dying night was theirs
to lament without dance, with songs unlike any I’d heard,
full of gutturals and tears and even a scream of pain, voices
that broke the aching silence of early dawn and denied the sun.
And every morning, stumbling back to the hotel with too much
to drink, too full of wonder at a world that spun me round
and round with awkward pretentions of what it was to dance
all night in a flannel suit that smelled of sweat and travel,
I’d grow sober on the sounds the gypsies made, and sad.
One morning, returning with an old dancer from London,
who was, I’m told, famous, who had pulled me to the stage
and pushed me beyond whatever it was I didn’t know,
I suddenly wanted to be alone, wanted to slip into shadows
and listen to the harsh flaying of the deep songs at dawn.
No one will see, I thought, as I slid down a crumbling wall
and rested against pillows of stone. The old ones were silent,
waiting I suppose for some release, until a child approached
with a gesture of acceptance and lifted and led me to the group
where sounds of voices, low and rhythmic, bid me welcome.
I’ve never told the story. It seems unreal, a drunken dream,
something read in a book left behind in another life.
But there I was among voices I’d come to love and fear,
voices that slowly picked a beat and rose,
one and then another, in a wail beyond all regrets.
I left that day, walking out of the city with a pack
on my back and dreams and memories for a lifetime.
Never again have the voices carried me so far, so high,
never again have I been so at one with a human cry,
never again would I know all it was I could not know.
III.
Sitting in an upper balcony as the lights went dim,
I tried to imagine the caves of Andalusia, the streets
of Seville, the fire in the foot or the voice; but this
was New York City and a theatre full of the well-dressed.
Guitar players in black arranged themselves in chairs;
clusters of women in bright dresses, perfectly tailored,
swished out and took poses with laughter and gestures;
young men in black tights rippled muscles and strutted.
It had been a full-moon evening; the theatre was warm
and comfortable; and the guitars began, together and apart,
promising, inviting the young women to move and throw
themselves, suddenly, unexpectedly, into harsh flurries of sound.
The young men turned their backs and cracked their boots,
tight assed and arrogant; and someone wailed, her voice
rising in remembrance of what had happened when she,
on another occasion, was young and dressed in red.
There was a pause and we applauded as the dancers shifted
to another round of gestures with perfection. The carefully trained
could do no less; the gifted even pushed to the edge;
the audience expected no less. And this was what they got.
I drifted, perhaps with too much wine, and felt my heel
lift and fall with a click that brought a hiss from my companion;
I strained to hold still, to be attentive, to forget what pulls,
what still, years later, splits the night with a bitter song.
Harsh songs still wake from sleep with a cry like those
from the streets of Seville. And yet I must admit
it was a beautiful evening, well reviewed in the Times,
though I can’t remember just who the dancers were.