Book of Longing Read online

  Than any Sacred Text

  Sometimes just a list

  Of my events

  Is holier than the Bill of Rights

  And more intense

  THE COLD

  The cold seizes me

  and I shiver

  The wine

  overthrows my tears

  The night puts me to bed

  and the sorrows

  strengthen my resolve

  Your name is burning

  under a statue

  Even when I was with you

  I wanted to be here

  The rain unhooks my belt

  The wind gives a shape

  to your absence

  I move in and out

  of the One Heart

  no longer struggling

  to be free

  A MAGIC CURE

  I get up too late

  The day is lost

  I don’t bless the rooster

  I don’t raise my hands to the water

  Then it’s dark

  and I look into all the spots

  on rue St-Denis

  I even talk religion

  to the other wastrels

  who, like me, are after new women

  In bed I fall asleep

  in the middle of a Psalm

  which I am reading

  for a magic cure

  – Montreal, 1975

  LAYTON’S QUESTION

  Always after I tell him

  what I intend to do next,

  Layton solemnly inquires:

  Leonard, are you sure

  you’re doing the wrong thing?

  – after a photo by Laszlo

  IF YOU KNEW

  if you knew how much we loved you

  you’d cover up

  you wouldn’t fuck around

  with the passion

  that killed three hundred thousand people

  at hiroshima

  or scooped up rocks from the moon

  and crushed them into dust

  looking for you

  looking for your lost encouragement

  I WROTE FOR LOVE

  I wrote for love.

  Then I wrote for money.

  With someone like me

  it’s the same thing.

  – 1975

  LORCA LIVES

  Lorca lives in New York City

  He never went back to Spain

  He went to Cuba for a while

  But he’s back in town again

  He’s tired of the gypsies

  And he’s tired of the sea

  He hates to play his old guitar

  It only has one key

  He heard that he was shot and killed

  He never was, you know

  He lives in New York City

  He doesn’t like it though

  MERCY RETURNS ME

  A woman I want –

  An honour I covet –

  A place where I want my mind to dwell –

  Then Mercy returns me

  To the triad

  And the crisis of the song.

  THE TRADITION

  Jazz on the radio

  32 in the desk drawer

  Brush in hand

  Heart in sad confusion

  He draws a woman

  The sax says it better

  The cold March night says it better

  Everything but his heart and his hand

  Says it better

  Now there is a woman on the paper

  Now there are colours

  Now there is a shadow on her waist

  He knows his own company

  The surprises

  Of patience and disorderly solitude

  Knows the tune

  According to his station

  How to let the changes

  He can’t play

  Connect him to the ones who can

  And the woman on the paper

  Who will never pierce the air with her beauty

  She belongs here too

  She too has her place

  In the basement of the vast museum

  Not that he could boast about it

  Even to himself

  Not that he would dare to call it

  Some kind of Path

  He will never untangle

  Or upgrade

  The circumstances

  That fasten him to this loneliness

  Or bent down with love

  Comprehend the sudden mercy

  Which floods the room

  And dissolves it now

  In the traditional golden light

  My Metal Cup

  GOOD GERMANS

  You took me to your family

  You warned me well before

  that your father is a fascist

  and your mother is a whore

  I was kind of disappointed

  I was bored to tell the truth:

  your folks they’re just Good Germans

  but you, you’re Hitler Youth

  So I’m going to live in China

  where you get a better deal

  where your killer is a poet

  and your comrade is a girl

  – 1973

  IF I COULD HELP YOU

  If I could help you, buddy, I would

  I really would

  I’d pray for you

  I’d make muscles appear on your back

  I’d take you to a bridge

  that people think is beautiful

  if there were the slightest chance

  that you’d like it

  I’d get you that motorcycle

  I’d put your songs on the jukebox

  if you were a singer

  I’d help you step across

  that crack in your life

  I’d die for you on the cross again

  I would do all these things for you

  because I’m the Lord of your life

  but you’ve gone so far from me

  that I’ve decided to embrace you here

  with my most elusive qualities

  You always wanted to be brave and true

  So breathe deeply now

  and begin your great adventure

  with crushing solitude

  THE REMOTE

  I often think about you

  when I’m lying alone in

  my room with my mouth

  open and the remote

  lost somewhere in the bed

  THE MIST OF PORNOGRAPHY

  when you rose out of the mist

  of pornography

  with your talk of marriage

  and orgies

  I was a mere boy

  of fifty-seven

  trying to make a fast buck

  in the slow lane

  it was ten years too late

  but I finally got

  the most beautiful girl

  on the religious left

  to go with her lips

  to the sunless place

  the art of song

  was in my bones

  the coffee died for me

  I never answered

  any phone calls

  and I said a prayer

  for whoever called

  and didn’t leave a message

  this was my life

  in Los Angeles

  when you slowly

  removed your yellow sweater

  and I slobbered over

  your boyish haunches

  and I tried to be

  a husband

  to your dark and motherly

  intentions

  I thank you

  for the ponderous songs

  I brought to completion

  instead of ----ing you

  more often

  and the hours you allowed me

  on a black meditation mat

  intriguing with my failed

  aristocratic pedigree

  to overthrow vulgarity

  and set America straight />
  with the barbed wire

  and the regular beatings

  of rhyme

  and now that we are gone

  I have a thousand years

  to tell you how I rise

  on everything that rises

  how I became that lover

  whom you wanted

  who has no other life

  but your beauty

  who is naked and bent

  under the quotas of your desire

  I have a thousand years

  to be your twin

  the loving mirrored one

  who was born with you

  I’m free at last

  to trick you into posing

  for my Polaroid

  while you inflame

  my hearing aid

  with your vigorous obscenities

  your panic cannot hurry me here

  and my panic and my falling

  shoulders

  our shameless lives

  are the grains

  scattered for an offering

  before the staggering heights

  of our love

  and the other side of your anxiety

  is a hammock of sweat

  and moaning

  and generations of the butterfly

  mate and fall

  as we undo the differences

  and time comes down

  like the smallest pet of G-d

  to lick our fingers

  as we sleep

  in the tangle

  of straps and bracelets

  and Oh the sweetness of first nights

  and twenty-third nights

  and nights

  after death and bitterness

  sweetness of this very morning

  the bees slamming into

  the broken hollyhocks

  and the impeccable order

  of the objects on the table

  the weightless irrelevance

  of all our old intentions

  as we undo

  as we undo

  every difference

  DELAY

  “I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak

  until the waters overflow their banks

  and break through the dam.”

  Thus I was able to delay this book well beyond

  the end of the 20th century.

  MONTREAL AFTERNOON

  Henry and I

  cover our heads

  and write a few poems

  The prayer book is open

  The radio is playing

  Henry says: They’re not

  playing that right,

  it should be faster.

  The kitchen door is open

  It’s raining

  Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your/father

  It was a hunting accident

  Rabbi Zerkin is speeding

  toward us

  through the wet city

  with the woollen prayer-shawls

  that he promised us

  on the telephone

  Henry says: In the year

  sixteen hundred thousand

  two hundred and twenty-nine

  you will begin a commentary

  on the Chumash

  and in the year fourteen thousand

  four hundred and forty-three

  I will begin a commentary

  on the Chumash

  I’ll call mine Tzim Tzimay Ha Yerak

  which means

  The Contracted Greens of the Greenery;

  then we will write a book together

  called Acorns and Other Leaves

  or

  The Green Hills of Sunshine

  We smoke Players Medium

  drink cups of hot water

  waiting for Rabbi Zerkin

  Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your father

  It was a hunting accident

  But he’ll be back

  So will Queen Elizabeth the First

  READING TO THE PRIME MINISTER

  NEED THE SPEED

  need the speed

  need the wine

  need the pleasure

  in my spine

  need your hand

  to pull me out

  need your juices

  on my snout

  need to see

  I never saw

  your need for me

  your longing raw

  need to hear

  I never heard

  against my ear

  your dirty word

  need to have

  you summon me

  like moon above

  the gathered sea

  need to know

  I never knew

  the tidal tow-

  ing come from you

  need to feel

  I never felt

  your magnet pull-

  ing at my self

  now it fades

  now it’s gone

  hormonal rage

  unquiet song

  HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED

  I stopped looking for you

  I stopped waiting for you

  I stopped dying for you

  and I started dying for myself

  I aged rapidly

  I became fat in the face

  and soft in the gut

  and I forgot that I’d ever loved you

  I was old

  I had no focus, no mission

  I wandered around eating and buying

  bigger and bigger clothes

  and I forgot why I hated

  every long moment that was mine to fill

  Why did you come back to me tonight

  I can’t even get off this chair

  Tears run down my cheeks

  I am in love again

  I can live like this

  VOICE DICTATING IN A PLANE OVER EUROPE

  Leonardos,

  I am no longer lonely.

  I will accept your friendship now

  if you can say

  something true about me.

  That is correct,

  I had a red cardigan sweater

  which I used to wear

  in the evenings.

  The years have brought us together.

  Straighten your seat back.

  You are landing in Vienna

  where I killed myself

  in nineteen sixty-two.

  THE GREAT EVENT

  It’s going to happen very soon. The great event that will end the horror. That will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge into suffering for the last 200 million years. What a lovely night that will be. What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and the retired nightingales pick up their dusty tails, and assert the majesty of creation!

  THE PARIS SKY

  The Paris sky

  is blue and bright

  I want to fly

  with all my might

  Her legs are long

  her heart is high

  The chains are strong

  but so am I

  THE STORY THUS FAR

  Things blew all over the place on the day that I was born. It was windy. Dried leaves crashed against the walls of the Homeopathic Hospital. I was alive. I was alive in the horror.

  The Givers huddled over me like a football team. They started to give me things and then to take them away. The things that didn’t fit they chucked back into the Funnel of the Void. The gifts were many and many were the warnings that went with them.

  We are giving you a great heart but if you drink wine you will begin to hate the world. The moon is your sister but if you take sleeping pills you will find yourself in the company of unhappy women. Every time you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory.

  My mother was lying not far away and I heard her cry, “He isn’t mine!” My noble parent cried to my ears alone from her bed of blood and wa
ter. I heard her say it and I thanked her for the truth with a shriek of joy. I was not born into a family. I was fully protected.

  The hammers fell on infants everywhere but I was saved on a river in the beautiful autumn land of Egypt.

  THE SWEETEST LITTLE SONG

  You go your way

  I’ll go your way too

  THING

  I am this thing that needs to sing

  I love to sing

  to my beloved’s other thing

  and to my own dear sweet G-d

  I love to sing to Him and her

  and to my baby’s lower fur

  which is so holy

  that I want to crawl on my knees

  off a high cliff

  and sail around singing

  in the wind

  which is so friendly

  to my feathery spirit

  I am this thing

  that wants to sing

  when I am up against the spit

  and scorn of judges

  O G-D I want to sing

  I Am

  THIS THING THAT NEEDS TO SING

  STANZAS FOR H.M.

  O perfect gentleman, and champion

  of the Royal Throne; O unbroken stone

  of Sinai’s heart; O Hero of Verdun;

  our greatest poet until now unknown,

  whose banner over death has always flown

  in wilds of poverty and solitude;

  I thank you for the years you spent alone

  with nothing to hang on to but a mood

  of glory, searching words that Love could not elude

  (We lost you for a while. The doctors tried

  their hopeful science on a chosen soul,

  but this chosen soul was sitting by the side

  of G-d, and touched by Him, hale and whole,

  though broken in men’s eyes, in His control.)