Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

  January 28 1 962

  My abandoned narcotics have

  abandoned me

  January 28 1962

  7 : 30 must have dug its

  pikes into your blue wrist

  January 28 1 962

  I shoved the transistor up my ear

  And putting down

  3 loaves of suicide (?)

  2 razorblade pies

  1 De Quincey hairnet

  (sic)

  a collection of oil

  (sic)

  6 lysol eye foods

  he said with considerable charm and travail:

  Is this all I give?

  One lousy reprieve

  at 2 in the morning?

  This?

  I'd rather have a job.

  I 9'

  I W A N T E D T O B E A D O C T O R

  The famous doctor held up Grandma's stomach.

  Cancer! Cancer! he cried out.

  The theatre was brought low.

  None of the internes thought about ambition.

  Cancer! They all looked the other way.

  They thought Cancer would leap out

  and get them. They hated to be near.

  This happened in Vilna in the Medical School.

  Nobody could sit still.

  They might be sitting beside Cancer.

  Cancer was present.

  Cancer had been let out of its bottle.

  I was looking in the skylight.

  I wanted to be a doctor.

  All the internes ran outside.

  The famous doctor held on to the stomach.

  He was alone with Cancer.

  Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!

  He didn't care who heard or didn't hear.

  It was his 87th Cancer.

  92 I

  O N H E A R I N G A N A M E

  L O N G U N S P O K E N

  Listen to the stories

  men tell of last year

  that sound of other places

  though they happened here

  Listen to a name

  so private it can burn

  hear it said aloud

  and learn and learn

  History is a needle

  for putting men asleep

  anointed with the poison

  of all they want to keep

  Now a name that saved you

  has a foreign taste

  claims a foreign body

  froze in last year's waste

  And what is living lingers

  while monuments are built

  then yields its final whisper

  to letters raised in gilt

  But cries of stifled ripeness

  whip me to my knees

  I am with the falling snow

  falling in the seas

  I am with the hunters

  hungry and shrewd

  I 93

  and I am with the hunted

  quick and soft and nude

  I am with the houses

  that wash away in rain

  and leave no teeth of pillars

  to rake them up again

  Let men numb names

  scratch winds that blow

  listen to the stories

  but what you know you know

  And knowing is enough

  for mountains such as these

  where nothing long remains

  houses walls or trees

  94 I

  S T Y L E

  I don't believe the radio stations

  of Russia and America

  but I like the music and I like

  the solemn European voices announcing jazz

  I don't believe opium or money

  though they're hard to get

  and punished with long sentences

  I don't believe love

  in the midst of my slavery I

  do not believe

  I am a man sitting in a house

  on a treeless Argolic island

  I will forget the grass of my mother's lawn

  I know I will

  I will forget the old telephone number

  Fitzroy seven eight two oh

  I will forget my style

  I will have no style

  I hear a thousand miles of hungry static

  and the old clear water eating rocks

  I hear the bells of mules eating

  I hear the flowers eating the night

  under their folds

  Now a rooster with a razor

  plants the haemophilia gash across

  the soft black sky

  and now I know for certain

  I will forget my style

  Perhaps a mind will open in this world

  perhaps a heart will catch rain

  Nothing will heal and nothing will freeze

  but perhaps a heart will catch rain

  I 95

  America will have no style

  Russia will have no style

  It is happening in the twenty-eighth year

  of my attention

  I don't know what will become

  of the mules with their lady eyes

  or the old clear water

  or the giant rooster

  The early morning greedy radio eats

  the governments one by one the languages

  the poppy fields one by one

  Beyond the numbered band

  a silence develops for every style

  for the style I laboured on

  an external silence like the space

  between insects in a swarm

  electric unremembering

  and it is aimed at us

  (I am sleepy and frightened)

  it makes toward me brothers

  g6 I

  G O E B B E L S A B A N D O N S H I S N O V E L

  A N D J O I N S T H E P A R T Y

  His last love poem

  broke in the harbour

  where swearing blondes

  loaded scrap

  into rusted submarines.

  Out in the sun

  he was surprised

  to find himself lustless

  as a wheel.

  More simple than money

  he sat in some spilled salt

  and wondered if he would find again

  the scars of lampposts

  ulcers of wrought-iron fence.

  He remembered perfectly

  how he sprung

  his father's heart attack

  and left his mother

  in a pit

  memory white from loss of guilt.

  Precision in the sun

  the elevators

  the pieces of iron

  broke whatever thous

  his pain had left

  like a whistle breaks

  a gang of sweating men.

  Ready to join the world

  yes yes ready to marry

  convinced pain a matter of choice

  a Doctor of Reason

  I 97

  he began to count the ships

  decorate the men.

  Will dreams threaten

  this discipline

  will favourite hair favourite thighs

  last life's sweepstake winners

  drive him to adventurous cafes?

  Ah my darling pupils

  do you think there exists a hand

  so bestial in beauty so ruthless

  that can switch off

  his religious electric Exlax light?

  H I T L E R T H E B R A I N - M O L E

  Hitler the brain-mole looks out of my eyes

  Goering boils ingots of gold in my bowels

  My Adam's Apple bulges with the whole head of Goebbels

  No use to tell a man he's a Jew

  I'm making a lampshade out of your kiss

  Confess! confess!

  is what you demand

  although you believe you're giving me everything

  gs I

  I T U S E S U S I

&nbs
p; Come upon this heap

  exposed to camera leer:

  would you snatch a skull

  for midnight wine, my dear?

  Can you wear a cape

  claim these burned for you

  or is this death unusable

  alien and new?

  In our leaders' faces

  (albeit they deplore

  the past) can you read how

  they love Freedom more?

  In my own mirror

  their eyes beam at me:

  my face is theirs, my eyes

  burnt and free.

  Now you and I are mounted

  on this heap, my dear:

  from this height we thrill

  as boundaries disappear.

  Kiss me with your teeth.

  A ll things can be done

  whisper museum ovens of

  a war that Freedom won.

  I 99

  M Y T E A C H E R I S D Y I N G

  Martha they say you are gentle

  No doubt you labour at it

  Why is it I see you

  leaping into unmade beds

  strangling the telephone

  Why is it I see you

  hiding your dirty nylons

  in the fireplace

  Martha talk to me

  My teacher is dying

  His laugh is already dead

  that put cartilage

  between the bony facts

  Now they rattle loud

  Martha talk to me

  Mountain Street is dying

  Apartment fifteen is dying

  Apartment seven and eight are dying

  All the rent is dying

  Martha talk to me

  I wanted all the dancers' bodies

  to inhabit like his old classroom

  where everything that happened

  was tender and important

  Martha talk to me

  Toss out the fake Jap silence

  Scream in my kitchen

  logarithms laundry lists anything

  Talk to me

  My radio is falling to pieces

  My betrayals are so fresh

  they still come with explanations

  100 1

  Martha talk to me

  What sordid parable

  do you teach by sleeping

  Talk to me

  for my teacher is dying

  The cars are parked

  on both sides of the street

  some facing north

  some facing south

  I draw no conclusions

  Martha talk to me

  I could burn my desk

  when I think how perfect we are

  you asleep me finishing

  the last of the Saint Emilion

  Talk to me gentle Martha

  dreaming of percussions massacres

  hair pinned to the ceiling

  I'll keep your secret

  Let's tell the milkman

  we have decided

  to marry our rooms

  1 101

  F O R M Y O L D L A Y T O N

  His pain, unowned, he left

  in paragraphs of love, hidden,

  like a cat leaves shit

  under stones, and he crept out in day,

  clean, arrogant, swift, prepared

  to hunt or sleep or starve.

  The town saluted him with garbage

  which he interpreted as praise

  for his muscular grace. Orange peels,

  cans, discarded guts rained like ticker-tape.

  For a while he ruined their nights

  by throwing his shadow in moon-full windows

  as he spied on the peace of gentle folk.

  Once he envied them. Now with a happy

  screech he bounded from monument to monument

  in their most consecrated plots, drunk

  to know how close he lived to the breathless

  in the ground, drunk to feel how much he loved

  the snoring mates, the old, the children of the town.

  Until at last, like Timon, tired

  of human smell, resenting even

  his own shoe-steps in the wilderness,

  he chased animals, wore live snakes, weeds

  for bracelets. When the sea

  pulled back the tide like a blanket

  he slept on stone cribs, heavy,

  dreamless, the salt-bright atmosphere

  like an automatic laboratory

  building crystals in his hair.

  102 1

  F I N A L L Y I C A L L E D

  Finally I called the people I didn't want to hear from

  After the third ring I said

  I'll let it ring five more times then what will I do

  The telephone is a fine instrument

  but I never learned to work it very well

  Five more rings and I'll put the receiver down

  I know where it goes I know that much

  The telephone was black with silver rims

  The booth was cozier than the drugstore

  There were a lot of creams and scissors and tubes

  I needed for my body

  I was interested in many coughdrops

  I believe the drugstore keeper hated

  his telephone and people like me

  who ask for change so politely

  I decided to keep to the same street

  and go into the fourth drugstore

  and call them again

  I 103

  T H E O N L Y T O U R I S T I N H A V A N A

  T U R N S H I S T H O U G H T S H O M E W A R D

  Come, my brothers,

  let us govern Canada,

  let us find our serious heads,

  let us dump asbestos on the White House,

  let us make the French talk English,

  not only here but everywhere,

  let us torture the Senate individually

  until they confess,

  let us purge the New Party,

  let us encourage the dark races

  so they'll be lenient

  when they take over,

  let us make the esc talk English,

  let us all lean in one direction

  and float down

  to the coast of Florida,

  let us have tourism,

  let us flirt with the enemy,

  let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards,

  let us sell snow

  to under-developed nations,

  (Is it true one of our national leaders

  was a Roman Catholic?)

  let us terrorize Alaska,

  let us unite

  Church and State,

  let us not take it lying down,

  let us have two Governor Generals

  at the same time,

  let us have another official language,

  let us determine what it will be,

  1 04 I

  let us give a Canada Council Fellowship

  to the most origiral suggestion,

  let us teach sex in the home

  to parents,

  let us threaten to join the U.S.A.

  and pull out at the last moment,

  my brothers, come,

  our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere

  like Gladstone bags abandoned

  after a coup d'etat,

  let us put them on very quickly,

  let us maintain a stony silence

  on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

  Havana

  April 1961

  I 105

  M I L L E N N I U M

  This could be my little

  book about love

  if I wrote it-

  but my good demon said:

  "Lay off documents! "

  Everybody was watching me

  burn my books-

  ! swung my liberty torch

  happy as a gestapo brute;

  the only thing I wanted to save

&nbs
p; was a scar

  a burn or two-

  but my good demon said:

  "Lay off documents!

  The fire's not important!"

  The pile was safely blazing.

  I went home to take a bath.

  I phoned my grandmother.

  She is suffering from arthritis.

  "Keep well," I said, "don't mind the pain."

  "You neither," she said.

  Hours later I wondered

  did she mean

  don't mind my pain

  or don't mind her pain?

  Whereupon my good demon said:

  "Is that all you can do?"

  Well was it?

  Was it all I could do?

  There was the old lady

  eating alone, thinking about

  Prince Albert, Flanders Field,

  w6 1

  Kishenev, her lingers too sore

  for TV knobs;

  but how could I get there?

  The books were gone

  my address lists-

  My good demon said again:

  "Lay off documents!

  You know how to get there! "

  And suddenly I did!

  I remembered it from memory!

  I found her

  poring over the royal family tree,

  "Grandma,"

  I almost said,

  � � [j]

  "you've got it upside down-"

  "Take a look," she said,

  "it only goes to George V."

  � fB]�

  "That's far enough

  you sweet old blood!"

  11@ � �

  "You're right! " she sang

  �Wt�li.l�

  and burned the

  London Illustrated Souvenir

  I did not understand

  the day it was

  till I looked outside

  and saw a lire in every

  window on the street

  and crowds of humans

  crazy to talk

  and cats and dogs and birds

  smiling at each other!

  I 107

  A L E X A N D E R T R O C C H I , P U B L I C

  J U N K I E , P R I E Z P O U R N O U S

  Who is purer

  more simple than you?

  Priests play poker with the burghers,

  police in underwear

  leave Crime at the office,

  our poets work bankers' hours

  retire to wives and fame-reports.

  The spike flashes in your blood

  permanent as a silver lighthouse.

  I'm apt to loaf

  in a coma of newspapers,

  avoid the second-hand bodies

  which cry to be catalogued.

  I dream I'm

  a divine right Prime Minister,

  I abandon plans for bloodshed in Canada.

  I accept an O-B.E-

  Under hard lights

  with doctors' instruments

  you are at work

  in the bathrooms of the city,

  changing The Law.

  I tend to get distracted

  by hydrogen bombs,

  by Uncle's disapproval

  of my treachery

  to the men's clothing industry-

  lOS I

  I find mysel£

  believing public clocks,

  taking advice

  from the Dachau generation.