All of Us: The Collected Poems

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “An Unpleasantness”

  The Attic

  Her brain is an attic where things

  were stored over the years.

  From time to time her face appears

  in the little windows near the top of the house.

  The sad face of someone who has been locked up

  and forgotten about.

  Margo

  His name was Tug. Hers, Margo.

  Until people, seeing what was happening,

  began calling her Cargo.

  Tug and Cargo. He had drive,

  they said. Lots of hair on his face

  and arms. A big guy. Commanding

  voice. She was more laid-back. A blond.

  Dreamy. (Sweet and dreamy.) She broke

  loose, finally. Sailed away

  under her own power. Went to places

  pictured in books, and some

  not in any book, or even on the map.

  Places she, being a girl, and cargo,

  never dreamed of getting to.

  Not on her own, anyway.

  On an Old Photograph of My Son

  It’s 1974 again, and he’s back once more. Smirking,

  a pair of coveralls over a white tee-shirt,

  no shoes. His hair, long and blond, falls

  to his shoulders like his mother’s did

  back then, and like one of those young Greek

  heroes I was just reading about. But

  there the resemblance ends. On his face

  the contemptuous expression of the wise guy,

  the petty tyrant. I’d know that look anywhere.

  It burns in my memory like acid. It’s

  the look I never hoped I’d live to see

  again. I want to forget that boy

  in the picture—that jerk, that bully!

  What’s for supper, mother dear? Snap to!

  Hey, old lady, jump, why don’t you? Speak

  when spoken to. I think I’ll put you in

  a headlock to see how you like it. I like

  it. I want to keep you on

  your toes. Dance for me now. Go ahead,

  bag, dance. I’ll show you a step or two.

  Let me twist your arm. Beg me to stop, beg me

  to be nice. Want a black eye? You got it!

  Oh, son, in those days I wanted you dead

  a hundred—no, a thousand—different times.

  I thought all that was behind us. Who in hell

  took this picture, and

  why’d it turn up now,

  just as I was beginning to forget?

  I look at your picture and my stomach cramps.

  I find myself clamping my jaws, teeth on edge, and

  once more I’m filled with despair and anger.

  Honestly, I feel like reaching for a drink.

  That’s a measure of your strength and power, the fear

  and confusion you still inspire. That’s

  how mighty you once were. Hey, I hate this

  photograph. I hate what became of us all.

  I don’t want this artifact in my house another hour!

  Maybe I’ll send it to your mother, assuming

  she’s still alive somewhere and the post can reach

  her this side of the grave. If so, she’ll have

  a different reaction to it, I know. Your youth and

  beauty, that’s all she’ll see and exclaim over.

  My handsome son, she’ll say. My boy wonder.

  She’ll study the picture, searching for her likeness

  in the features, and mine. (She’ll find them, too.)

  Maybe she’ll weep, if there are any tears left.

  Maybe—who knows?—she’ll even wish for those days

  back again! Who knows anything anymore?

  But wishes don’t come true, and it’s a good thing.

  Still, she’s bound to keep your picture out

  on the table for a while and make over you

  for a time. Then, soon, you’ll go

  into the big family album along with the other crazies —

  herself, her daughter and me, her former husband. You’ll be

  safe in there, cheek to jowl with all your victims. But don’t

  worry, my boy—the pages turn, my son. We all

  do better in the future.

  Five O’Clock in the Morning

  As he passed his father’s room, he glanced in at the door.

  Yevgraf Ivanovitch, who had not taken off his clothes or gone

  to bed, was standing by the window, drumming on the panes.

  “Goodbye, I am going,” said his son.

  “Goodbye … the money is on the round table,” his father

  answered without turning around.

  A cold, hateful rain was falling as the laborer drove him

  to the station.… The grass seemed darker than ever.

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “Difficult People”

  Summer Fog

  To sleep and forget everything for a few hours…

  To wake to the sound of the foghorn in July.

  To look out the window with a heavy heart and see fog

  hanging in the pear trees, fog clogging the intersection,

  shrouding the neighborhood like a disease invading a healthy

  body. To go on living when she has stopped living…

  A car eases by with its lights on, and the clock is

  turned back to five days ago, the ringing and ringing that brought me

  back to this world and news of her death, she who’d simply been

  away, whose return had been anticipated with baskets

  of raspberries from the market. (Starting from this day

  forward, I intend to live my life differently. For one thing,

  I won’t ever answer the phone again at five in the morning. I knew

  better, too, but still I picked up the receiver and said that fateful

  word, “Hello.” The next time I’ll simply let it ring.)

  First, though, I have her funeral to get through. It’s today, in a

  matter of hours. But the idea of a cortege creeping through this fog

  to the cemetery is unnerving, and ridiculous, everyone in the town

  with their lights on anyway, even the tourists.…

  May this fog lift and burn off before three this afternoon! Let us

  be able, at least, to bury her under sunny skies, she who worshiped

  the sun. Everyone knows she is taking part

  in this dark masque today only because she has no choice.

  She has lost the power of choice! How she’d

  hate this! She who loved in April deciding

  to plant the sweetpeas and who staked them before

  they could climb.

  I light my first cigarette of the day and turn away from

  the window with a shudder. The foghorn sounds again, filling me

  with apprehension, and then, then stupendous

  grief.

  Hummingbird

  FOR TESS

  Suppose I say summer,

  write the word “hummingbird,”

  put it in an envelope,

  take it down the hill

  to the box. When you open

  my letter you will recall

  those days and how much,

  just how much, I love you.

  Out

  Out of the black mouth of the big king

  salmon comes pouring the severed heads of herring,

  cut on the bias, slant-wise —

  near perfect handiwork of the true

  salmon fisherman, him and his slick, sharp bait knife.

  Body of the cut herring affixed then eighteen inches behind

  a flashing silver spoon, heads tossed over

  the side, to sink and turn

  in the mottled water. How they managed it, those heads,

  to reappear so in ou
r boat—most amazingly!—pouring forth

  from the torn mouth, this skewed version, misshapen chunks

  of a bad fairy tale, but one where no wishes will be

  granted, no bargains struck nor promises kept.

  We counted nine of those heads, as if to count was already

  to tell it later. “Jesus,” you said, “Jesus,” before

  tossing them back overboard where they belonged.

  I started the motor and again we dropped our plugged herring-baited

  hooks into the water. You’d been telling stories

  about logging for Mormons on Prince of Wales Island (no booze,

  no swearing, no women. Just no, except for work

  and a paycheck). Then you fell quiet, wiped the knife

  on your pants and stared toward Canada, and beyond.

  All morning you’d wanted to tell me something and now you

  began to tell me; how

  your wife wants you out of her life, wants

  you gone, wants you to just disappear.

  Why don’t you disappear and just don’t ever

  come back? she’d said. “Can you beat it? I think she hopes

  a spar will take me out.” Just then there’s one hell of a strike.

  The water boils as line goes out. It keeps

  going out.

  Downstream

  At noon we have rain, which washes away the snow,

  and at dusk, when I stand on the river bank and watch

  the approaching boat contend with the current,

  a mixture of rain and snow comes down.… We go downstream,

  keeping close to a thicket of purple willow shrubs. The men

  at the oars tell us that only ten minutes ago a boy in a cart

  saved himself from drowning by catching hold of

  a willow shrub; his team went under.…

  The bare willow shrubs bend toward the water with

  a rustling sound, the river suddenly grows dark.… If

  there is a storm we shall have to spend the night among

  the willows and in the end get drowned, so why not go on?

  We put the matter to a vote and decide to row on.

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “Across Siberia”

  The Net

  Toward evening the wind changes. Boats

  still out on the bay

  head for shore. A man with one arm

  sits on the keel of a rotting-away

  vessel, working on a glimmering net.

  He raises his eyes. Pulls at something

  with his teeth, and bites hard.

  I go past without a word.

  Reduced to confusion

  by the variableness of this weather,

  the importunities of my heart. I keep

  going. When I turn back to look

  I’m far enough away

  to see that man caught in a net.

  Nearly

  The two brothers, Sleep and Death, they unblinkingly called

  themselves, arrived at our house around nine in the evening,

  just as

  the light was fading. They unloaded all their paraphernalia

  in the driveway, what they’d need for killing bees, hornets —

  yellow-

  jackets as well. A “dusky” job, one had said on the phone. Those

  invaders, we told ourselves, had become such a nuisance.

  Frightening, too. An end to it! And them, we decided: we’ll write

  finish to their short-lived career as pollen-gatherers, honey-

  makers. Not a decision taken lightly, or easily. Annihilation

  on such

  an undreamt-of scale, a foreign thing to us. We moved

  to the window to look down to the drive where the men,

  one older,

  one younger, stood smoking, watching a few late stragglers find

  their way to the hole under the eave. Those bees trying to

  beat the sun as it tipped over the horizon, the air turning

  colder now,

  the light gradually fainter. We raised our eyes and, through the

  glass, could see a dozen, two dozen, a tiny fist

  of them, waiting in a swirl their turn to enter their newfound

  city. We could hear rustling, like scales, like wings chaffing

  behind the wall, up near the ceiling. Then the sun disappeared

  entirely, it was dark. All bees inside. One of the brothers, Sleep, it

  must have been, he was the younger, positioned the ladder

  in the drive, under the southwest corner. A few words we couldn’t

  catch were exchanged, then Death pulled on his oversized

  gloves and

  began his climb up the ladder, slowly, balancing on his back

  a heavy cannister held papoose-like by a kind of harness. In

  one hand

  was a hose, for killing. He passed our lighted window on his

  way up,

  glancing briefly, incuriously, into the living room. Then he stopped,

  about even with our heads, only his boots showing where he

  stood on

  a rung of the ladder. We tried to act as if nothing out of

  the ordinary were happening. You picked up a book, sat in your

  favorite chair, pretended to concentrate. I put on a record. It was

  dark out, darker, as I’ve said, but there remained a saffron flush in

  the western sky, like blood just under the skin. Saffron, that

  hoarded

  spice you said drove the harvesters in Kashmir nearly mad, the

  fields ripe with the smell of it. An ecstasy, you said. You turned a

  page, as if you’d read a page. The record played and

  played. Then came the hiss-hiss of spray as Death pressed

  the trigger of his device again and again and again. From the drive

  below, Sleep called up, “Give it to them some more, those

  bastards.” And then, “That’s good. That ought to do it, by God.

  Come

  down now.” Pretty soon they left, those slicker-coated men, and we

  never had to see them or talk to them again. You took a glass of

  wine. I smoked a cigarette. That domestic sign mingling with

  the covetous reek that hung like a vapor near the cast-iron stove.

  What an evening! you said, or I said. We never spoke of it after that.

  It was as if something shameful had occurred.

  Deep in the night, still awake as the house sailed west, tracking

  the moon, we came together in the dark like knives, like wild

  animals, fiercely, drawing blood even—something we referred to

  next morning as “love-making.” We didn’t tell each other of our

  dreams. How could we? But once in the night, awake, I heard the

  house creak, almost a sigh, then creak again. Settling, I think

  it’s called.

  VI

  Foreboding

  “I have a foreboding.… I’m oppressed

  by a strange, dark foreboding. As though

  the loss of a loved one awaited me.”

  “Are you married, Doctor? You have a family!”

  “Not a soul. I’m alone, I haven’t even any

  friends. Tell me, madam, do you believe in forebodings?”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “Perpetuum Mobile”

  Quiet Nights

  I go to sleep on one beach,

  wake up on another.

  Boat all fitted out,

  tugging against its rope.

  Sparrow Nights

  There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and

  wind, such as are called among the people “sparrow nights.”

  There has been one such night in my personal life.…

  I woke up after midnight and leaped
suddenly out of bed.

  It seemed to me for some reason that I was just immediately

  going to die. Why did it seem so? I had no sensation

  in my body that suggested my immediate death, but my soul

  was oppressed with terror, as though I had suddenly seen

  a vast menacing glow of fire.

  I rapidly struck a light, drank some water straight out of

  the decanter, then hurried to the open window.

  The weather outside was magnificent.

  There was a smell of hay and some other

  very sweet scent. I could see the spikes of the fence,

  the gaunt, drowsy trees by the window, the road,

  the dark streak of woodland,

  there was a serene, very bright moon in the sky and not a single

  cloud, perfect stillness, not one

  leaf stirring. I felt that everything was looking at me and

  waiting for me to die.… My spine was

  cold; it seemed to be drawn

  inwards, and I felt as though death

  were coming upon me stealthily from behind.…

  — ANTON CHEKHOV

  “A Dreary Story”

  Lemonade

  When he came to my house months ago to measure

  my walls for bookcases, Jim Sears didn’t look like a man

  who’d lose his only child to the high waters

  of the Elwha River. He was bushy-haired, confident,

  cracking his knuckles, alive with energy, as we

  discussed tiers, and brackets, and this oak stain

  compared to that. But it’s a small town, this town,

  a small world here. Six months later, after the bookcases

  have been built, delivered and installed, Jim’s

  father, a Mr Howard Sears, who is “covering for his son”

  comes to paint our house. He tells me—when I ask, more

  out of small-town courtesy than anything, “How’s Jim?” —

  that his son lost Jim Jr in the river last spring.

  Jim blames himself. “He can’t get over it,

  neither,” Mr Sears adds. “Maybe he’s gone on to lose