My Noiseless Entourage: Poems Read online

  One torn photograph after another

  Whose pieces do not fit—

  And why should they, grim whispers,

  With all your seasonings of folly?

  Every time I went to the sea and sky

  To seek advice, this is what I got.

  BATTLING GRAYS

  Another grim-lipped day coming our way

  Like a gray soldier

  From the Civil War monument

  Footloose on a narrow country road.

  A few homes lately foreclosed,

  Their windows the color of rain puddles

  About to freeze, their yards choked

  With weeds and rusty cars.

  Small hills like mounds of ashes

  Of your dead cigar, general,

  Standing bewhiskered and surveying

  What the light is in no hurry

  To fall upon, including, of course,

  Your wound, red and bubbling

  Like an accordion, as you raise your saber

  To threaten the clouds in the sky.

  SUNLIGHT

  As if you had a message for me...

  Tell me about the grains of dust

  On my night table?

  Is any one of them worth your trouble?

  Your burglaries leave no thumbprint.

  Mine, too, are silent.

  I do my best imagining at night,

  And you do yours with the help of shadows.

  Like conspirators hatching a plot,

  They withdrew one by one

  Into corners of the room.

  Leaving me the sole witness

  Of your burning oratory.

  If you did say something, I'm none the wiser.

  The breakfast finished,

  The coffee dregs were unenlightening.

  Like a lion cage at feeding time—

  The floor at my feet turned red.

  THE BIRDIE

  Two-room country shack

  On a moody lake.

  A black cat at my feet

  To philosophize with

  Stretched out on the bed

  Like a gambler

  Who's lost his trousers

  And his shoes,

  Listening to a birdie raise its voice

  In praise of good weather,

  Little wiggling worms,

  And other suchlike matters.

  MINDS ROAMING

  My neighbor was telling me

  About her blind cat

  Who goes out at night—

  Goes where? I asked.

  Just then my dead mother called me in

  To wash my hands

  Because supper was on the table:

  The little mouse the cat caught.

  COCKROACH SALON

  The clips of the scissors

  And the voices

  Difficult to discern at first

  Even as I press my ear against the wall.

  The barber and his customer

  Talking of greasy spoons,

  Late night back alleys,

  Rats leaping out of trash cans

  Then, nothing further...

  Had they wandered off

  Deeper into the wall,

  Or possibly inside my head?

  Where else? Where else?

  Someone replied cheerfully,

  Her identity and whereabouts

  A complete mystery, a scandal.

  MIDNIGHT FEAST

  for Michael Krüger

  Snowflake and laughter salad.

  Cuckoo-clock soup.

  Andouillettes of angel and beast.

  Bowlegged nightingale in aspic.

  Peep-show soufflé.

  Fricassee of Cupid with green peas.

  Roasted bust of Socrates with African postage stamps.

  Venus in her own gravy.

  Wines of graveyard lovers—

  Or so I read in a take-out menu

  Someone slid under my door

  While I sat staring at the wall.

  ONE CHAIR

  That can't help creak at night

  As if a spider

  Let itself down

  By a thread

  To hang over it

  With the chair quaking

  At the outcome.

  INSOMNIA'S CRICKET

  I'll set you up in a tiny cage over my pillow.

  You'll keep me company,

  Warn me from time to time

  As the silence deepens.

  My father spent nights in the bathroom

  Thinking about the meaning of his life.

  We'd forget all about him,

  Find him asleep there in the morning.

  O cunning walls, ceilings

  And mirrors in the dark,

  I heard his pocket watch tick on his grave—

  Or was it a cricket?

  In the same tall grass

  Where eternity was being made

  By a few solitary fireflies

  In the tails of someone's black coat.

  TALK RADIO

  "I was lucky to have a Bible with me.

  When the space aliens abducted me...."

  America, I shouted at the radio,

  Even at 2 A.M. you are a loony bin!

  No, I take it back!

  You are a stone angel in the cemetery

  Listening to the geese in the sky

  Your eyes blinded by snow.

  III

  MY TURN TO CONFESS

  A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,

  That's me, dear reader!

  They were about to kick me out of the library

  But I warned them,

  My master is invisible and all-powerful.

  Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.

  In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.

  On a bench, I saw an old woman

  Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors

  While staring into a small pocket mirror.

  I didn't say anything then,

  But that night I lay slumped on the floor,

  Chewing on a pencil,

  Sighing from time to time,

  Growling, too, at something out there

  I could not bring myself to name.

  THE HERMETICAL AND ALCHEMICAL WRITINGS OF PARACELSUS

  Any man or woman, this book tells me,

  Can bring an egg to maturity under the arm,

  Materializing thus in a wonderful fashion

  What may seem to you wildly beyond belief.

  If the parents have large ears and long noses,

  That helps. Large ears are a sign of good memory

  And brainpower, while a long nose denotes

  A farsighted person, secretive but fair.

  The newly hatched chickens walk

  The yard with their eyes cast down

  Looking for precious stones in the dirt

  With which they hope to repay their parents.

  As for a rooster procreated in such manner,

  It inclines to idleness and frivolous pursuits,

  Gaining whatever livelihood it can get

  At state fairs and seaside penny arcades.

  ON THE FARM

  The cows are to be slaughtered

  And the sheep, too, of course.

  The same for the hogs sighing in their pens—

  And as for the chickens,

  Two have been killed for dinner tonight,

  While the rest peck side by side

  As the shadows lengthen in the yard

  And bales of hay turn gold in the fields.

  One cow has stopped grazing

  And has looked up puzzled

  Seeing a little white cloud

  Trot off like a calf into the sunset.

  On the porch someone has pressed

  A rocking chair into service

  But we can't tell who it is—a stranger,

  Or that boy who never has anything to say?


  I SEE LOTS OF STICKS ON THE GROUND

  Do people still whittle around here?

  Do they carry clasp knives for that purpose?

  Do they sit on porches and tree stumps

  With shavings piling up at their feet?

  Are dogs keeping a close eye on them?

  Do they lay their heads on their paws

  And sigh as the stick gets shorter?

  What thoughts are they thinking as they whittle?

  Little thoughts about many little things,

  Or big thoughts about one big thing?

  Come dark, is there enough of a stick left

  To sit back and chew on a toothpick?

  EVERYBODY HAD LOST TRACK OF TIME

  The wide-open door of a church.

  The hearse with one flat tire.

  The grandmother on the sidewalk

  Leaning on a cane and cupping her ear.

  The lodger no one has ever seen,

  Drawing her bath upstairs.

  The little boy who climbed on the roof

  To keep the clouds company.

  An old man carrying a chair

  And a rope into the backyard

  As if he meant to hang himself

  And then sat down and lost track of time.

  BRETHREN

  A woodpecker hammers

  On the gutter of a nursing home

  Where the war cripple sits

  In a wheelchair by the gate.

  The windows are wide open,

  But no one ever speaks here,

  Neither about the crazy bird,

  Nor about that other war.

  ASK YOUR ASTROLOGER

  My stars have been guilty of benign neglect.

  They neither procure riches for me

  Nor burn my house down.

  They've left me dangling halfway

  Between good and bad luck.

  A predicament I cannot afford to treat casually.

  I'm all on edge. I look over my shoulder.

  There goes some deadbeat

  Stepping on shadows of pedestrians

  As if they were scurrying mice.

  I have to go into a church to avoid him.

  To our Lord who has withdrawn

  Into a corner with his wounds

  I say, that world out there

  Is a riddle even you can't solve.

  Afterward, the coast clear, I rush to buy

  A newspaper and read my horoscope.

  A diet of small disappointments and minor

  Contentments is to be my lot for the week,

  Unless, of course, the astrologer blew it.

  KAZOO WEDDING

  The groom is red-cheeked as he blows into a kazoo

  And so is the bride as she blows one too.

  The guests are blowing hundreds of kazoos

  And the Minister as he prepares to bless their union.

  The weeping bridesmaid covers her ears.

  One sounds like a bad muffler on a hearse,

  Another like a wedding dress ripped open at midnight.

  Look, even our Lord on the cross is tooting a kazoo!

  What are they playing? the hard of hearing are asking.

  It's a wedding march, Grandpa, the ushers shout.

  SNOWY MORNING BLUES

  The translator is a close reader.

  He wears thick glasses

  As he peers out the window

  At the snowy fields and bushes

  That are like a sheet of paper

  Covered with quick scribble

  In a language he knows well enough,

  Without knowing any words in it,

  Only what the eyes discern,

  And the heart intuits of its idiom.

  So quiet now, not even a faint

  Rustle of a page being turned

  In a white and wordless dictionary

  For the translator to avail himself

  Before whatever words are there

  Grow obscure in the coming darkness.

  TO FATE

  You were always more real to me than God.

  Setting up the props for a tragedy,

  Hammering the nails in

  With only a few close friends invited to watch.

  Just to be neighborly, you made a pretty girl lame,

  Ran over a child with a motorcycle.

  I can think of a million similar examples.

  Ditto: How the two of us keep meeting.

  A fortune-telling gumball machine in Chinatown

  May have the answer,

  An old creaky door opening in a horror film,

  A pack of cards I left on a beach.

  I can feel you snuggle close to me at night,

  With your hot breath, your cold hands—

  And me already like an old piano

  Dangling out of a window at the end of a rope.

  SLURRED WORDS

  Taking cover in the closet

  With my dark suspicions.

  Two of her nightgowns brush my cheeks

  As I stand trembling.

  At the funeral, I thought I had much to say,

  When in truth I had nothing.

  I was just one more crow

  Trailing after the pallbearers.

  This house is haunted,

  Though I've never seen a ghost.

  I don't count myself, of course,

  Or their bare feet in bed,

  Incubus, spreading his black wings

  Over her in the slow afternoon hours

  As she lay writhing

  Like a snake at the end of a stick.

  MEETING THE CAPTAIN

  In one of these old seaside towns,

  On soot-stained December afternoons

  When it's wise to hurry home

  Past the closed-up summer homes,

  While he hugs the shadows in pursuit.

  I caught a glimpse of him once

  Towering in his stovepipe hat

  At the top of the stairs to my room

  With its view of the sky at sunset

  Washing its bloody rags in the sea.

  Looking for stowaways under my bed,

  Runaway orphans, pot lickers

  In wooden clogs, rat and mice catchers

  And finding, instead, Melville's book

  And a gull moping on the windowsill.

  SWEETEST

  Little candy in death's candy shop,

  I gave your sugar a lick

  When no one was looking,

  Took you for a ride on my tongue

  To all the secret places,

  Trying to appear above suspicion

  As I went about inspecting the confectionary,

  Greeting the owner with a nod

  With you safely tucked away

  And melting to nothing in my mouth.

  LEAVES AT NIGHT

  Talking to themselves, digressing, rambling on—

  Or is it a tête-à-tête we are overhearing?

  A flutter of self-revelations, a gust of recriminations

  With the moon slipping in and out of the clouds.

  A half-mad oak tree affronted by nature's conduct,

  The vagaries of New England weather.

  The foolish adoration of every skimpy ray of sunlight,

  Or some other disturbing truth?

  A mock-heroic farce being played in whispers.

  The tree as the hanging judge, the tree as the accused.

  Windy night squabble followed by a long hush

  As they wait anxiously for our applause.

  IV

  STARLINGS IN A TREE AT DUSK

  Spooked me. They had heard a rumor

  We had not yet,

  And were collectively

  On the verge of panic.

  The few of us passing the park

  Quickened our steps,

  With a wary, sidelong glance

  At each other.

  Bent under some obscure burden,

  We were fleei
ng,

  Crossing the avenue and dispersing

  As if we, too, had wings.

  THE HEADLINE

  The way you sat at the kitchen table

  Made you look like you were staring at your feet

  Or thinking of the next move

  On an invisible chessboard.

  Truth to tell, you were doing neither.

  It was seven o'clock in the morning.

  You were waiting for a ray of sunlight

  To warm your cold feet,

  Or your wife to amble in drowsily

  In her frayed blue bathrobe,

  And reach down with hair over her eyes

  For the paper that had slid out of your hands