each in his joy
each in his fire
Of one another
they have no need
they have the deepest need
The great ones pass
Recorded in some multiple sky
inlaid in some endless laughter
they pass
like stars of different seasons
like meteors of different centuries
Fire undiminished
by passing fire
laughter uncorroded
by comfort
they pass one another
without touching without looking
needing only to know
the great ones pass
WAITING FOR MARIANNE
I have lost a telephone
with your smell in it
I am living beside the radio
all the stations at once
but I pick out a Polish lullaby
I pick it out of the static
it fades I wait I keep the beat
it comes back almost asleep
Did you take the telephone
knowing I’d sniff it immoderately
maybe heat up the plastic
to get all the crumbs of your breath
and if you won’t come back
how will you phone to say
you won’t come back
so that I could at least argue
WHY I HAPPEN TO BE FREE
They all conspire to make me free
I tried to join their arguments
but there were so few sides
and I needed several
Forsaking the lovely girl
was not my idea
but she fell asleep in somebody’s bed
Now more than ever
I want enemies
You who thrive
in the easy world of modern love
look out for me
for I have developed a terrible virginity
and meeting me
all who have done more than kiss
will perish in shame
with warts and hair on their palms
Time was our best men died
in error and enlightenment
Moses on the lookout
David in his house of blood
Camus beside the driver
My new laws encourage
not satori but perfection
at last at last
Jews who walk
too far on Sabbath
will be stoned
Catholics who blaspheme
electricity applied
to their genitals
Buddhists who acquire property
sawn in half
Naughty Protestants
have governments
to make them miserable
Ah the universe returns to order
The new Montreal skyscrapers
bully the parking lots
like the winners of a hygiene contest
a suite of windows lit here and there
like a First Class ribbon
for extra cleanliness
A girl I knew
sleeps in some bed
and of all the lovely things
I might say I say this
I see her body puzzled
with the mouthprints
of all the kisses of all the men
she’s known
like a honky-tonk piano
ringed with years of cocktail glasses
and while she cranks and tinkles
in the quaint old sinful dance
I walk through
the blond November rain
punishing her with my happiness
THE TRUE DESIRE
The food that will not obey. It longs for its old shape. The grapes dream of the tight cluster, resume their solidarity. The meat, in some rebellious collusion with the stomach, unchews itself, unites into the original butcher’s slab, red, defiant, recalling even the meadow life of the distant dead animal. But perhaps the stomach is guiltless, for here is cheese, mauled and in disarray, but refusing absolutely to interact with gastric juices. The food has no hope of real life, but still, in these regained, however mutilated shapes, it resists, and for its victories claims the next day’s hunger and the body’s joy.
There is a whitewashed hotel waiting for me somewhere, in which I will begin my fast and my new life.
Oh to stand in the Ganges wielding a yard of intestine.
THE WAY BACK
But I am not lost
any more than leaves are lost
or buried vases
This is not my time
I would only give you second thoughts
I know you must call me traitor
because I have wasted my blood
in aimless love
and you are right
Blood like that
never won an inch of star
You know how to call me
although such a noise now
would only confuse the air
Neither of us can forget
the steps we danced
the words you stretched
to call me out of dust
Yes I long for you
not just as a leaf for weather
or vase for hands
but with a narrow human longing
that makes a man refuse
any fields but his own
I wait for you at an
unexpected place in your journey
like the rusted key
or the feather you do not pick up
until the way back
after it is clear
the remote and painful destination
changed nothing in your life
THE PROJECT
Evidently they need a lot of blood for these tests. I let them take all they wanted. The hospital was cool and its atmosphere of order encouraged me to persist in my own projects.
I always wanted to set fire to your houses. I’ve been in them. Through the front doors and the back. I’d like to see them burn slowly so I could visit many and peek in the falling windows. I’d like to see what happens to those white carpets you pretended to be so careless about. I’d like to see a white telephone melting.
We don’t want to trap too many inside because the streets have got to be packed with your poor bodies screaming back and forth. I’ll be comforting. Oh dear, pyjama flannel seared right on to the flesh. Let me pull it off.
It seems to me they took too much blood. Probably selling it on the side. The little man’s white frock was smeared with blood. Little men like that keep company with blood. See them in abatoirs and assisting in human experiments.
– When did you last expose yourself?
– Sunday morning for a big crowd in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth.
– Funny. You know what I mean.
– Expose myself to what?
– A woman.
– Ah.
I narrowed my eyes and whispered in his yellow ear.
– You better bring her in too.
– And it’s still free?
Of course it was still free. Not counting the extra blood they stole. Prevent my disease from capturing the entire city. Help this man. Give him all possible Judeo-Christian help.
Fire would be best. I admit that. Tie firebrands between the foxes and chase them through your little gardens. A rosy sky would improve the view from anywhere. It would be a mercy. Oh, to see the roofs devoured and the beautiful old level of land rising again.
The factory where I work isn’t far from the hospital. Same architect as a matter of fact and the similarities don’t end there It’s easier to get away with lying down in the hospital. However we have our comforts in the factory.
The foreman winked at me when I went back to my machine He loved his abundant nature. Me new at the job and he’d actually given me time off. I really enjoy the generosity of slaves. He came over to inspect my work.
– But this
won’t do at all.
– No?
– The union said you were an experienced operator.
– I am. I am.
– This is no seam.
– Now that you mention it.
– Look here.
He took a fresh trouser and pushed in beside me on the bench He was anxious to demonstrate the only skill he owned. He arranged the pieces under the needle. When he was halfway down the leg and doing very nicely I brought my foot down on the pedal beside his. The unexpected acceleration sucked his fingers under the needle.
Another comfort is the Stock Room.
It is large and dark and filled with bundles and rolls of material.
– But shouldn’t you be working?
– No, Mary, I shouldn’t.
– Won’t Sam miss you?
– You see he’s in the hospital. Accident.
Mary runs the Cafeteria and the Boss exposes himself to her regularly. This guarantees her the concession.
I feel the disease raging in my blood. I expect my saliva to be discoloured.
– Yes, Mary, real cashmere. Three hundred dollar suits.
The Boss has a wife to whom he must expose himself every once in a while. She has her milkmen. The city is orderly. There are white bottles standing in front of a million doors. And there are Conventions. Multitudes of bosses sharing the pleasures of exposure.
I shall go mad. They’ll find me at the top of Mount Royal impersonating Genghis Khan. Seized with laughter and pus.
– Very soft, Mary. That’s what they pay for.
Fire would be best. Flames. Bright windows. Two cars exploding in each garage. But could I ever manage it. This way is slower. More heroic in a way. Less dramatic of course. But I have an imagination.
HYDRA 1963
The stony path coiled around me
and bound me to the night.
A boat hunted the edge of the sea
under a hissing light.
Something soft involved a net
and bled around a spear.
The blunt death, the cumulus jet –
I spoke to you, I thought you near!
Or was the night so black
that something died alone?
A man with a glistening back
beat the food against a stone.
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW
ABOUT ADOLPH EICHMANN
EYES: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium
HAIR: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium
WEIGHT: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium
HEIGHT: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . None
NUMBER OF FINGERS: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ten
NUMBER OF TOES: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ten
INTELLIGENCE: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
THE NEW LEADER
When he learned that his father had the oven contract, that the smoke above the city, the clouds as warm as skin, were his father’s manufacture, he was freed from love, his emptiness was legalized.
Hygienic as a whip his heart drove out the alibis of devotion, free as a storm-severed bridge, useless and pure as drowned alarm clocks, he breathed deeply, gratefully in the polluted atmosphere, and he announced: My father had the oven contract, he loved my mother and built her houses in the countryside.
When he learned his father had the oven contract he climbed a hillock of eyeglasses, he stood on a drift of hair, he hated with great abandon the king cripples and their mothers, the husbands and wives, the familiar sleep, the decent burdens.
Dancing down Ste Catherine Street he performed great surgery on a hotel of sleepers. The windows leaked like a broken meat freezer. His hatred blazed white on the salted driveways. He missed nobody but he was happy he’d taken one hunded and fifty women in moonlight back in ancient history.
He was drunk at last, drunk at last, after years of threading history’s crushing daisy-chain with beauty after beauty. His father had raised the thigh-shaped clouds which smelled of salesmen, gypsies and violinists. With the certainty and genital pleasure of revelation he knew, he could not doubt, his father was the one who had the oven contract.
Drunk at last, he hugged himself, his stomach clean, cold and drunk, the sky clean but only for him, free to shiver, free to hate, free to begin.
HOW IT HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY
Hate jumped out of the way.
Sorrow left with a squashed somersault
like a cripple winning candy from rich ladies.
Angels of reason and joy
plus other Apollonian yes-men at home
on account of sunstroke
contributed their absence to the miracle.
The demons of adulterers, everyday drunks,
professional irrationalists, the fatuous possessed,
these cheap easy demons so common
to the courting procedure,
refused to appear due to insufficient publicity.
No shark put its fin on the lips
of the little waves
like a schoolmistress demanding silence
lest drama threaten the miracle.
Someone began over again and failed –
noting not a single alien tremor
in the voices crying: tomatoes, onions, bread.
FOR E.J.P.
I once believed a single line
in a Chinese poem could change
forever how blossoms fell
and that the moon itself climbed on
the grief of concise weeping men
to journey over cups of wine
I thought invasions were begun for crows
to pick at a skeleton
dynasties sown and spent
to serve the language of a fine lament
I thought governors ended their lives
as sweetly drunken monks
telling time by rain and candles
instructed by an insect’s pilgrimage
across the page – all this
so one might send an exile’s perfect letter
to an ancient hometown friend
I chose a lonely country
broke from love
scorned the fraternity of war
I polished my tongue against the pumice moon
floated my soul in cherry wine
a perfumed barge for Lords of Memory
to languish on to drink to whisper out
their store of strength
as if beyond the mist along the shore
their girls their power still obeyed
like clocks wound for a thousand years
I waited until my tongue was sore
Brown petals wind like fire around my poems
I aimed them at the stars but
like rainbows they were bent
before they sawed the world in half
Who can trace the canyoned paths
cattle have carved out of time
wandering from meadowlands to feasts
Layer after layer of autumn leaves
are swept away
Something forgets us perfectly
THE GLASS DOG
Let me renew my sell
in the midst of all the things of the world
which cannot be connected.
The sky is empty at last,
the stars stand for themselves,
heroes and their history passed
like talk on the wind, like bells.
Flowers do not stand for love,
or if they do – not mine.
The white happens beside the mauve.
I have no laws to bind
their hu
nger to my own.
The same, the same, the doctors say,
for they find themselves alone:
the bread of law is dry.
*
I walked over the mountain with my glass dog.
The mushrooms trembled and balls of rain
fell off their roofs.
I whistled at the trees to come closer:
they jumped at the chance:
apples, acorns popped through the air.
Dandelions by the million
staggered into parachutes. A white jewelled
wind in the shape of an immense spool of gauze
swaddled every moving limb.
I collapsed slowly over the water-filled pebbles.
*
“Lambs in bags are borne by mules.
Rough bags bruise live necks,
three in a bag.
It only hurts when they laugh.
“They’ll hang with chickens, head down,
white chicks in blood shops,
block shops, cut shops.
It only hurts when they bleed.
“Boats named for George and Barbara,
sterns faded rose and blue,
do their simple business
in the bottle of the sea.
“Thalassa, thalassa, in the blackest
weather still you keep somewhere
among your million mirrors
the fact of the highest gull.
“Mules flirt with brother slave brick boats.”
Give the man who said all that
an evil shiny eggplant.
Give him a mucous-hued octopus.
Glory bells, boys in the towers
flying the huge bells like kites,
tear the vespers out of the stoned heart.
A man has betrayed everything!
*
Creature! Come! One more chance. The Sea of Tin Cans. The Sea of Ruined Laboratory Eyes. The Sea of Luminous Swimmers. The Sea of Rich Tackle. The Sea of Garbage Flowers. The Sea of Sun Limbs. The Sea of Blood Jellyfish. The Sea of Dynamite. Our Lady of the Miraculous Tin Ikon. Our Blue Lady of Boats. Our Beloved Lady of Holiday Flags. Our Supreme Girl of Enduring Feathers. Bang Bang bells Bang in iron simple blue.