LATE ENCOUNTERS

Letter Poems (2000)

Dark Encounter in Mid Air (2004)

3 poems from LETTER POEMS

NATURALLY THE LETTERS ARE FUN...

Naturally the letters are fun.  We are, after all, talkers,
and, from having been talkers, became wordy.
And if one is wordy without a gift for painting or sculpture,
there's only one logical direction:  law or poetry
(including fiction, of course, though usually for legal types).
You're lucky, your line worked and your words work;
my lines never worked, so I had to do verse, which is different,
which is why large prose pieces flounder into verse.

Now if I'm not careful, there’ll be another letter poem,
prose wandering off into a parenthetical ache.
In fact, having gone back and added something,
I find this is, again, on its way into something different,
as is, I suppose, almost everything else these days.
I'll save it and kneed it a bit later and maybe....
But I really don't have the energy,
not after Neel and d'Harnoncourt and a snow storm.

Speaking of Neel, which I'll do more of later, or will have
by the time you read this, I decided she's not a dirty old lady
(wasn’t ever), doesn't do pornography (though that I knew)
and doesn't do eroticism (which was a disappointment)
and isn't really interested, as a painter, in sex,
not even in sensuousness. She's interested in two things only:
How a painting looks as a painting; and, let's face it,
how death appears in the faces of human beings.

GIVEN MR. KURTZ’S HORROR...

Given Mr. Kurtz’s horror this fall, we’re glad we’re here
to watch each tree in its slow transformation of the hedge row;
fresh lettuce and herbs still flow from the garden;
persimmons are just now ripening in the orchard.
Death is inevitable, but this process is at least very beautiful
and, even more important, full of promise for other years.
Where is promise in the rubble of lower Manhattan?
A promise of buildings likely to rise again? Our hearts crumble
like the economy itself, imploding as people are fired,
as survival rather than growth becomes the spirit.

We miss walking the campi of Venice, running into friends,
stopping for coffee or just waving as we pass, promising ‘later’.
We miss the heavy throb of gossip that rustles the air
like lingering leaves of autumn which still brush my windows,
lit by translucent yellows and orange of the late sun.
In a last batch of gossip, a leaf whispered that Fashionista
was having trouble paying for the little palace she bought,
that old count’s son was moving into the father’s apartment,
that another American wants to restore another flagpole,
that there are too few tourists to buy t-shirts at the Rialto.

I worry most for children, not abstract ones, but ours,
my daughters, pushing their way through weedy patches
where bones still crumble under tons of steel and remnant walls
of ancient temples.  And I worry, I must admit, for you
when I hear you are flying for long hours in one direction
and I for hours in another, amid anthrax and dust.
But then I cease this worry and watch leaves at the window
and turn back to my computer and start pushing words together
and across the screen, thinking that maybe a letter, even this one,
might lead, during a long afternoon, to something else.   

My favorite doctor was a favorite because at twenty-five
he camped with his commanding officer at Angkor Wat
and for two weeks walked among crumbling stones
with no one else about except the spirits that lurk.
By now the spirits have probably given up as we found
they’d given up on restored temples of the Mayan world;
though they still speak to those who wander, who push
through uncleared vines and slip across piles of rubble
where a toe will occasionally uncover a small head,
a shard, the gesture of a hand pointing somewhere else.

AS THE QUINTESSENTIAL VOYAGER...   

As the quintessential voyager, you’re always on some
odyssey; you slip by rocks and pass a thousand islands,
thinking the next one will hold harbor; and there you will pause,
disappointed, and move on with some enthusiastic
comment about the sadness of life.  In this way you have
created your guardian figures and their history
that remain in your power because you can, with a slap
of your brush, a pull of the palette knife, destroy the ground
on which, for a few hours, they exist.  And, on a ground
where there is nothing but that ground, you create another
guardian, another harbor, another angry bull,
head lowered to rip guts from any tedious theory
that has been banded and released to the suffusing air.

In order to do that with any conviction, the heart
must be convinced that each call of “Land, Ho!” is, this time, it. 
I have always suspected that each island was not it,
only another temporary crunch among the rocks. 
Perhaps this is why I have drifted against stiff headwinds
of painting, sculpture, music, television and poetry;
perhaps poetry is a dance, but not a harbor; perhaps
this is why I turn letters into poems and make poetry
in letters when I should be thinking of your wish for news;
and perhaps this is why I had finally to give up
my teaching — pontification always seemed to creep in
with a voice that rose, insisting that this was the harbor,
a father’s bland assurance that we are, now, almost there. 
   
At any rate, I envy you the excitement of bulls,
dying or rampant, a new guardian, a wild harbor,
there, just there, look, to the starboard, in mist that is clearing;
and I look forward to rambling or coherent letters
of these off-course explorations — though you have, as you know,
often “put these thoughts into ... communicable order.”
Every time you have struggled through a painting or drawing 
to the moment you lean forward, pause, and flourish your name,
you have moved us with the mark of your hand, the residue.
And while I love your letters, I don’t hang them on the wall
with paintings that move restlessly during the night; I don’t
mount letters on steel bases for confrontations; they don’t
cluster on a platform under oaks beyond these windows.

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4 poems from DARK ENCOUNTER IN MID AIR 

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.

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