All of Us: The Collected Poems

  He’ll be on the move from now on. Traveling night and day,

  without cease, all of him, every last exploding piece

  of him. Until he reaches a place only he knows about.

  An Arctic place, cold and frozen. Where he thinks,

  This is far enough. This is the place.

  And lies down, for he is tired.

  Sleeping

  He slept on his hands.

  On a rock.

  On his feet.

  On someone else’s feet.

  He slept on buses, trains, in airplanes.

  Slept on duty.

  Slept beside the road.

  Slept on a sack of apples.

  He slept in a pay toilet.

  In a hayloft.

  In the Super Dome.

  Slept in a Jaguar, and in the back of a pickup.

  Slept in theaters.

  In jail.

  On boats.

  He slept in line shacks and, once, in a castle.

  Slept in the rain.

  In blistering sun he slept.

  On horseback.

  He slept in chairs, churches, in fancy hotels.

  He slept under strange roofs all his life.

  Now he sleeps under the earth.

  Sleeps on and on.

  Like an old king.

  The River

  I waded, deepening, into the dark water.

  Evening, and the push

  and swirl of the river as it closed

  around my legs and held on.

  Young grilse broke water.

  Parr darted one way, smolt another.

  Gravel turned under my boots as I edged out.

  Watched by the furious eyes of king salmon.

  Their immense heads turned slowly,

  eyes burning with fury, as they hung

  in the deep current.

  They were there. I felt them there,

  and my skin prickled. But

  there was something else.

  I braced with the wind on my neck.

  Felt the hair rise

  as something touched my boot.

  Grew afraid at what I couldn’t see.

  Then of everything that filled my eyes —

  that other shore heavy with branches,

  the dark lip of the mountain range behind.

  And this river that had suddenly

  grown black and swift.

  I drew breath and cast anyway.

  Prayed nothing would strike.

  The Best Time of the Day

  Cool summer nights.

  Windows open.

  Lamps burning.

  Fruit in the bowl.

  And your head on my shoulder.

  These the happiest moments in the day.

  Next to the early morning hours,

  of course. And the time

  just before lunch.

  And the afternoon, and

  early evening hours.

  But I do love

  these summer nights.

  Even more, I think,

  than those other times.

  The work finished for the day.

  And no one who can reach us now.

  Or ever.

  Scale

  FOR RICHARD MARIUS

  It’s afternoon when he takes off

  his clothes and lies down.

  Lights his cigarette. Ashtray

  balanced over his heart.

  The chest rising, then

  sinking

  as he draws, holds it,

  and lets the smoke out in spurts.

  The shades are drawn. His eyelids

  closing. It’s like after sex,

  a little. But only a little.

  Waves thrash below the house.

  He finishes the cigarette.

  All the while thinking

  of Thomas More who,

  according to Erasmus, “liked eggs”

  and never lay with his second wife.

  The head stares down at its trunk

  until it thinks it has it

  memorized and could recognize

  it anywhere, even in death.

  But now the desire to sleep

  has left him, utterly.

  He is still remembering More

  and his hair shirt. After thirty years of wear

  he handed it over, along with his cloak,

  before embracing his executioner.

  He gets up to raise the shades.

  Light slices the room in two.

  A boat slowly rounds the hook

  with its sails lowered.

  There’s a milky haze

  over the water. A silence there.

  It’s much too quiet.

  Even the birds are still.

  Somewhere, off in another room,

  something has been decided.

  A decision reached, papers signed

  and pushed aside.

  He keeps on staring at the boat.

  The empty rigging, the deserted deck.

  The boat rises. Moves closer.

  He peers through the glasses.

  The human figure, the music

  it makes, that’s what’s missing

  from the tiny deck.

  A deck no broader than a leaf.

  So how could it support a life?

  Suddenly, the boat shudders.

  Stops dead in the water.

  He sweeps the glasses over the deck.

  But after a while his arms grow

  unbearably heavy. So he drops them,

  just as he would anything unbearable.

  He lays the glasses on the shelf.

  Begins dressing. But the image

  of the boat stays. Drifting.

  Stays awhile longer. Then bobs away.

  Forgotten about as he takes up

  his coat. Opens the door. Goes out.

  Company

  This morning I woke up to rain

  on the glass. And understood

  that for a long time now

  I’ve chosen the corrupt when

  I had a choice. Or else,

  simply, the merely easy.

  Over the virtuous. Or the difficult.

  This way of thinking happens

  when I’ve been alone for days.

  Like now. Hours spent

  in my own dumb company.

  Hours and hours

  much like a little room.

  With just a strip of carpet to walk on.

  Yesterday

  Yesterday I dressed in a dead man’s

  woolen underwear. Then drove to the end

  of an icy road where I passed

  some time with Indian fishermen.

  I stepped into water over my boots.

  Saw four pintails spring from the creek.

  Never mind that my thoughts were elsewhere

  and I missed the perfect shot.

  Or that my socks froze. I lost track

  of everything and didn’t make it back

  for lunch. You could say

  it wasn’t my day. But it was!

  And to prove it I have this little bite

  she gave me last night. A bruise

  coloring my lip today, to remind me.

  The Schooldesk

  The fishing in Lough Arrow is piss-poor.

  Too much rain, too much high water.

  They say the mayfly hatch has come

  and gone. All day I stay put

  by the window of the borrowed cottage

  in Ballindoon, waiting for a break

  in the weather. A turf fire smokes

  in the grate, though no romance

  in this or anything else

  here. Just outside the window an old iron

  and wood schooldesk keeps me company.

  Something is carved into the desk under

  the inkwell. It doesn’t matter

  what; I’m not curious. It’s enough

  to imagine the instrument

 
that gouged those letters.

  My dad is dead,

  and Mother slips in and out of her mind.

  I can’t begin to say how bad it is

  for my grown-up son and daughter.

  They took one long look at me

  and tried to make all my mistakes.

  More’s the pity. Bad luck for them,

  my sweet children. And haven’t I mentioned

  my first wife yet? What’s wrong with me

  that I haven’t? Well, I can’t anymore.

  Shouldn’t, anyway. She claims

  I say too much as it is.

  Says she’s happy now, and grinds her teeth.

  Says the Lord Jesus loves her,

  and she’ll get by. That love

  of my life over and done with. But what

  does that say about my life?

  My loved ones are thousands of miles away.

  But they’re in this cottage too,

  in Ballindoon. And in every

  hotel room I wake up in these days.

  The rain has let up.

  And the sun has appeared and small

  clouds of unexpected mayflies,

  proving someone wrong. We move

  to the door in a group, my family and I.

  And go outside. Where I bend over the desk

  and run my fingers across its rough surface.

  Someone laughs, someone grinds her teeth.

  And someone, someone is pleading with me.

  Saying, “For Christ’s sake, don’t

  turn your back on me.”

  An ass and cart pass down the lane.

  The driver takes the pipe from his mouth

  and raises his hand.

  There’s the smell of lilacs in the damp air.

  Mayflies hover over the lilacs,

  and over the heads of my loved ones.

  Hundreds of mayflies.

  I sit on the bench. Lean

  over the desk. I can remember

  myself with a pen. In the beginning,

  looking at pictures of words.

  Learning to write them, slowly,

  one letter at a time. Pressing down.

  A word. Then the next.

  The feeling of mastering something.

  The excitement of it.

  Pressing hard. At first

  the damage confined to the surface.

  But then deeper.

  These blossoms. Lilacs.

  How they fill the air with sweetness!

  Mayflies in the air as the cart

  goes by—as the fish rise.

  Cutlery

  Trolling the coho fly twenty feet behind the boat,

  under moonlight, when the huge salmon hit it!

  And lunged clear of the water. Stood, it seemed,

  on its tail. Then fell back and was gone.

  Shaken, I steered on into the harbor as if

  nothing had happened. But it had.

  And it happened in just the way I’ve said.

  I took the memory with me to New York,

  and beyond. Took it wherever I went.

  All the way down here onto the terrace

  of the Jockey Club in Rosario, Argentina.

  Where I look out onto the broad river

  that throws back light from the open windows

  of the dining room. I stand smoking a cigar,

  listening to the murmuring of the officers

  and their wives inside; the little clashing

  sound of cutlery against plates. I’m alive

  and well, neither happy nor unhappy,

  here in the Southern Hemisphere. So I’m all the more

  astonished when I recall that lost fish rising,

  leaving the water, and then returning.

  The feeling of loss that gripped me then

  grips me still. How can I communicate what I feel

  about any of this? Inside, they go on

  conversing in their own language.

  I decide to walk

  alongside the river. It’s the kind of night

  that brings men and rivers close.

  I go for a ways, then stop. Realizing

  that I haven’t been close. Not

  in the longest time. There’s been

  this waiting that’s gone along with me

  wherever I go. But the hope widening now

  that something will rise up and splash.

  I want to hear it, and move on.

  The Pen

  The pen that told the truth

  went into the washing machine

  for its trouble. Came out

  an hour later, and was tossed

  in the dryer with jeans

  and a western shirt. Days passed

  while it lay quietly on the desk

  under the window. Lay there

  thinking it was finished.

  Without a single conviction

  to its name. It didn’t have

  the will to go on, even if it’d wanted.

  But one morning, an hour or so

  before sunrise, it came to life

  and wrote:

  “The damp fields asleep in moonlight.”

  Then it was still again.

  Its usefulness in this life

  clearly at an end.

  He shook it and whacked it

  on the desk. Then gave up

  on it, or nearly.

  Once more though, with the greatest

  effort, it summoned its last

  reserves. This is what it wrote:

  “A light wind, and beyond the window

  trees swimming in the golden morning air.”

  He tried to write some more

  but that was all. The pen

  quit working forever.

  By and by it was put

  into the stove along with

  other junk. And much later

  it was another pen,

  an undistinguished pen

  that hadn’t proved itself

  yet, that facilely wrote:

  “Darkness gathers in the branches.

  Stay inside. Keep still.”

  The Prize

  He was never the same, they said, after that.

  And they were right. He left home, glad for his life.

  Fell under the spell of Italian opera.

  A gout stool was built into the front of his sedan chair.

  His family went on living in a hut without a chimney.

  One season very much like another for them.

  What did they know?

  A river wound through their valley.

  At night the candles flickered, blinking like eyelashes.

  As though tobacco smoke burned their eyes.

  But nobody smoked in that stinking place.

  Nobody sang or wrote cantatas.

  When he died it was they who had to identify the body.

  It was terrible!

  His friends couldn’t remember him.

  Not even what he’d looked like the day before.

  His father spat and rode off to kill squirrels.

  His sister cradled his head in her arms.

  His mother wept and went through his pockets.

  Nothing had changed.

  He was back where he belonged.

  As though he’d never left.

  Easy enough to say he should have declined it.

  But would you?

  An Account

  He began the poem at the kitchen table,

  one leg crossed over the other.

  He wrote for a time, as if

  only half interested in the result. It wasn’t

  as if the world didn’t have enough poems.

  The world had plenty of poems. Besides,

  he’d been away for months.

  He hadn’t even read a poem in months.

  What kind of life was this? A life

  where a man was too busy even to read poems?

  No life at all. Then he
looked out the window,

  down the hill to Frank’s house.

  A nice house situated near the water.

  He remembered Frank opening his door

  every morning at nine o’clock.

  Going out for his walks.

  He drew nearer the table, and uncrossed his legs.

  Last night he’d heard an account

  of Frank’s death from Ed, another neighbor.

  A man the same age as Frank,

  and Frank’s good friend. Frank

  and his wife watching TV. Hill Street Blues.

  Frank’s favorite show. When he gasps

  twice, is thrown back in his chair —

  “as if he’d been electrocuted.” That fast,

  he was dead. His color draining away.

  He was grey, turning black. Betty runs

  out of the house in her robe. Runs

  to a neighbor’s house where a girl knows

  something about CPR. She’s watching

  the same show! They run back

  to Frank’s house. Frank totally black now,

  in his chair in front of the TV.

  The cops and other desperate characters

  moving across the screen, raising their voices,

  yelling at each other, while this neighbor girl

  hauls Frank out of his chair onto the floor.

  Tears open his shirt. Goes to work.

  Frank being the first real-life victim

  she’s ever had.

  She places her lips

  on Frank’s icy lips. A dead man’s lips. Black lips.

  And black his face and hands and arms.

  Black too his chest where the shirt’s been torn,

  exposing the sparse hairs that grew there.

  Long after she must’ve known better, she goes on

  with it. Pressing her lips against his

  unresponsive lips. Then stopping to beat on him

  with clenched fists. Pressing her lips to his again,

  and then again. Even after it’s too late and it

  was clear he wasn’t coming back, she went on with it.

  This girl, beating on him with her fists, calling

  him every name she could think of. Weeping

  when they took him away

  from her. And someone thought to turn off

  the images pulsing across the screen.

  The Meadow

  In the meadow this afternoon, I fetch

  any number of crazy memories. That

  undertaker asking my mother did she