The Surveyors Read online

  I’ve already quoted wrong the thing you said,

  not being you. I can’t be in your head.

  You can’t follow me back there, hearing strains

  of Vivaldi in cafés. America

  had just learned cappuccino, and to say

  croissant, not Danish; we went for those parfait

  glasses of yogurt, with strata of granola.

  I was so new. The year was ’73

  or maybe ’72. It doesn’t matter.

  I had discovered sex and poetry.

  Thinking of either one would make me shudder.

  I was happy. I was nervous about exams.

  I was going to read all the works of Henry James.

  I was going to read all the works of Henry James,

  but haven’t. So much unfinished business

  unless you’re Henry James, who had time to witness

  every minute of life, then record the whole, it seems.

  Yes, it was thrilling art, but also bad

  to make us wait so long to locate Chad

  and Madame de Thing in their adulterous boat.

  The Europeans or The Ambassadors—

  the grandeur James could pour into a title!

  That plural but hawk-like wisdom, above it all—

  implied too by your title “The Surveyors.”

  Tripod and hard hat, compass, orange vest:

  sometimes, I think, more grounded work is best,

  or better than the poem you thought I wrote.

  Or better than the poem you thought I wrote

  is another one I never wrote: it’s set

  in shabby, hipster Zagreb, where my love

  and I, now sixty, walked past shuttered shops

  on a Sunday morning, and found ourselves in front of

  the—really?—Museum of Broken Relationships,

  which was open. Of course it was open. So we spent

  time in the gift shop, where they charged the equivalent

  of thirteen dollars for a little pink

  eraser that would help you not to think.

  RUB IT ALL OUT, it said. A pillowcase

  read SLEEP IT OFF. By this age, I’d erased

  much of my past quite nicely; so had he.

  We walked out holding hands, a bit brokenly.

  We walked out holding hands, a bit brokenly,

  like Adam and Eve, in my favorite poem of all.

  Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour

  but you’re not, since these two made sure you were mortal.

  No human, though, can dream beyond the power

  of your blind omniscience; modernity

  in poetry must die if you don’t last.

  What’s more Einsteinian than Book Eleven,

  Michael escorting Adam up that hill

  to make their space-time survey of the past

  ahead, witnessed not just in the brain

  but in present action? Cain killing Abel

  as the seed of countless long-dead wars, and even

  while Eve has not yet given birth in pain…

  While Eve has not yet given birth in pain,

  I have. I try to sneak a look, like Thetis,

  over the shoulder of whatever may

  now forge my daughters’ prospects. Surely Auden

  had Milton’s scene in mind when he shaped his;

  what Homer saw on his word-hammered shield

  had taken on the sheen of the word-field

  surveyed by Adam; implied an unnamed Mary,

  who knew It is written, and that she must yield.

  I live for nothing more than for my children,

  yet I’ll confess, Matt, I know well the If

  Clause of self-sabotage: If I must lose

  my life, why not make this my hour to choose?

  Jesus, tempted, might have jumped off the cliff.

  Jesus, tempted, might have jumped. Off the cliff

  is where this-poem-that-isn’t now must go.

  Today in the paper (“the paper” has a whiff

  of yesterday to it, sorry), Elon Musk

  averred we might be living in a vast

  computer simulation of a past

  world re-created by our own descendants.

  To them our metaphors can make no sense—

  the summer of my life, my day at dusk…

  Death, thou shalt die, said Donne. Could that be so?

  The only instinct greater than survival

  is, apparently, its keenest rival,

  the drive to guarantee no thing’s not dead.

  Melt all the ice caps. Cut off every head.

  Melt all the ice caps. Cut off every head

  to serve the crude medieval god up there

  and post the act on social media, where

  all life went anyway—into the Cloud.

  Numberless universes at this minute

  (though what’s a minute?) may be simulcast,

  we’re also told, in which case nothing’s lost,

  yet something’s deathly in the infinite:

  it leaves us mortals out. What’s with this glee

  we humans feel, enabling the posthuman?

  Doubtless we’ll come to singularity

  with our machines, but why must we be glad?

  A life from here to there, in one direction—

  oh, I was content with what I had.

  Oh, I was content with what I had:

  a perch on the back stoop. I’m maybe three.

  This is it, Matt, my first memory.

  I’m in a wool coat, tailored, double-breasted,

  absurd for a toddler; but that’s how things were.

  The president was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  So long ago! I look down from my great

  height, the fourth step of new-poured concrete,

  to survey the new sod of our new backyard.

  My mother is on her knees. She’s working hard,

  making a garden, planting flowers between

  different-sized rocks. She calls it a “rock garden.”

  Here in Grand Rapids, people are not so grand.

  My mother is making art from her plot of dirt,

  Japanese art, and the neighbors won’t understand.

  She’ll spend a lot of time feeling proud and hurt.

  She’ll spend a lot of time feeling proud and hurt

  like her daughter. I came by it honestly,

  being stung by life, soothing myself with art,

  making stuff up, getting things different-sized.

  You doubt my first memory? I’m not surprised.

  I must have fused two scenes, since nobody,

  I see now, wears a winter coat in weather

  warm enough to plant flowers in. It’s wrong

  and the sonnet I just wrote contained sixteen

  lines, which even I know is too long.

  I’ve lived already longer than my mother

  and haven’t lived enough. Live all you can,

  said Lambert Strether; it’s a mistake not to.

  Living by this is the best I think I’ll do.

  Living by this is the best I think I’ll do,

  while praying not to burden those I love.

  What hope I won’t? When my time comes to vault

  off the bridge, I’ll be a midget, bent and frail

  (I’m too short, even now, to clear the rail)

  and besides (will they concede it’s not my fault

  my brain is shot?), I won’t be good for new

  information, or even old stuff I believe

  nobody told me. Half-deaf, paranoid

  nihilist nonsense, technophobic rants,

  the imagined feats of grandchildren, the round

  of half-true stories run into the ground—

  and gone will be Vivaldi, sex, romance,

  sweet things I must remember I’ve enjoyed.

  Sweet things. I must remember. I’ve enjoyed

  forgetting
, then remembering again,

  the running out (remember, Matt, the chain

  gone taut, then running out, over and over?)

  of what my life is, before it meets the void.

  A buried marriage. Late, my truest lover.

  My children jumping too high on the bed,

  landing on college campuses. Goodbye,

  goodbye, walk through that gate, don’t watch me cry.

  Lost friends, a dozen places I called home.

  I can’t see all I’m seeing—give me time!

  If I wrote the poem you dreamed, would that imply

  we’d finalized my list?…For now that’s why,

  I’m sorry to say, “The Surveyors” does not exist.

  PAPARAZZI

  I wish I could escape the paparazzi!

  They pop up everywhere I want to go.

  I cannot shop, I cannot sunbathe topless,

  I fly to Greece, I’m spied at the Acropolis.

  How did anyone know?

  I wish I could escape the paparazzi!

  They leap from limos like it’s some big game—

  At home they crouch for hours in my bushes.

  I watch them lie in wait on their big tushes!

  Don’t they have any shame?

  I won a Golden Globe (OK, a nomination)—

  but they were asking, was my stomach flat?

  Did I look pregnant? Who might be the father?

  Is he a rock star—if not, why bother?

  How shallow, to care about that!

  I’m really shy, I am a private person.

  Nobody knows how deep I am inside!

  Yes, I love Gaultier, I’m wearing Prada,

  but I’m happy in jeans, or nada.

  Where can a simple girl hide?

  I wish I could escape the paparazzi!

  If I could wave a magic wand today,

  I would get rid of them in such a hurry!

  I ought to sue them, then again I worry—

  what if they went away?

  HERE I AM

  Here I am, making my grand tour

  the summer after graduation.

  What is this? Must be the Rome train station.

  We never noticed we were poor.

  Backpacks and low-rise jeans—

  we never lived beyond our means.

  (Back then there were no ATMs.)

  Here we are,

  my friends and me.

  We’re napping on a bank of the Thames,

  when love was free.

  Here I am with that girl I met

  on the trip to Brussels or Bruges.

  (My God, her duffel bag is huge!)

  What was her name? Yvonne? Yvette?

  She ditched me; I’m forgetting why.

  Oh yeah—when I slept with that Swedish guy.

  His sleeping bag was full of fleas.

  Here we are,

  with our bread and cheese,

  on a park bench in the Tuileries,

  when love was free.

  Here I am,

  a woman in the middle

  of her life,

  and her life

  is an endless riddle.

  In all of Europe

  I couldn’t stir up

  a memory more un-

  likely and foreign

  than me at twenty-two.

  I can’t help gazing

  at her bright young eyes,

  at her nice firm thighs.

  Was I ever twenty-two?

  Look at her skin, it’s amazing.

  Can you be me? Am I you?

  Here I am at the Berlin Wall.

  They tore it down, but it’s still there

  in this picture, like my long dark hair.

  But there’s a wall between her and me

  that, like me, won’t be getting thinner.

  Here we are,

  myself and me,

  thinking, Ich bin ein Berliner,

  but who is free?

  Here I am,

  looking at this kernel

  of myself,

  and I feel

  so strangely maternal.

  Do I have a choice?

  I can’t believe I’m hearing

  my own mother’s voice

  giving me advice:

  Did you pack your passport?

  Sign your traveler’s checks?

  Don’t talk to men,

  they only want sex;

  keep a ladylike appearance

  and when was the last time you sent

  a postcard to your parents?

  Here it is.

  Here’s my postcard to me.

  I’ve become my own mother;

  never thought I’d be.

  But here I am…

  here I am.

  I’VE GOT YOUR PICTURE

  HE: I’ve got your picture,

  it’s all I’ve got,

  and all I’ve got is remembering

  where I’m not.

  You’re in that sunhat—

  I can hardly see

  your face in the shade, but I think

  you’re smiling at me.

  SHE: I’ve got your picture,

  it’s all I’ve got

  and all I’ve got is remembering

  where I’m not.

  In your black T-shirt

  you look so wise.

  The flash made you blink, but who

  could forget those eyes?

  SHE: I took only one shot of only you—

  HE: I took only one shot of only you—

  SHE and HE: And now we’re through.

  HE: Why did we never ask some innocent

  passerby to take our picture arm in arm?

  SHE: We meant to—

  HE: Oh, there were so many things we meant, but

  SHE and HE: I never meant to do you any harm.

  SHE: I’ve got your picture,

  it’s in a drawer,

  I don’t let myself look at it

  anymore.

  HE: No fingerprints,

  it’s in a frame.

  I wouldn’t let you

  touch it if you came—

  SHE and HE: If you only came.

  SHE: I’ve got your picture,

  I don’t know why

  but I hope you stare at mine

  and really cry.

  HE: I’ve got your picture,

  it’s deaf and dumb.

  It never calls to tell me

  why you never come.

  SHE: It never calls to say why you had to go

  HE: I think it’s because—

  SHE and HE: Because neither of us know.

  HE: Hey, I was worth it—

  SHE: And so was I—

  HE: I’ve got your picture and—

  SHE: I think I understand—

  SHE and HE: I love it because it never

  says goodbye.

  DARK ROOMS

  My best friend came back

  from his tour of Iraq

  a different way than me.

  He was lifted off a plane

  in a flag-draped coffin

  that nobody else could see.

  They’ve got a law to ban

  all photos by the press—

  to soften all our pain, I guess.

  There are dark rooms in my head

  like coffins in a row

  that nobody will show

  ’cause nobody wants to know.

  Dark rooms like the box

  he’s buried in. He’s dead.

  It could have been me instead.

  He was just a kid of twenty—

  he’s not the only one.

  Oh, plenty of them to see

  in the dark rooms in my head

  where I don’t want to go.

  Why let my feelings show

  when nobody wants to know?

  He’ll never get the chance

  to develop or grow

  in his dark room in the ground.<
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  There’s a governmental ban

  on the image of his coffin.

  But my buddy was a living man.

  Why should he be forgotten?

  There are dark rooms in the ground

  that no photograph will show,

  where soldiers lay their heads.

  And nobody wants to know—

  Nobody else must know.

  A VANITY TABLE

  Mary Jeanne Cassell Cooke, 1929–2014

  A few old snapshots, precious, original,

  lie scattered artfully for perusal

  away from the luncheon table set

  along the span of the plate-glass window

  in a private room, reserved for its view

  across a gorge. The lush and generous

  greenness out there seems too primitive

  yet to be peopled.

  Pictured here, though, from long ago,

  is a bride seated at a vanity table.

  The forgotten hired photographer

  likely asked her to pose like this,

  with her silver brush raised stagily

  to correct the back of a coiffure

  already pinned and sprayed in position.

  And the wedding gown was worn by Iris,

  her older sister, first.

  Still, everything bespeaks her freshness.

  Her very slimness seems a form

  of the innocence smiling back at her,

  the quiet excitement caught in reflection.

  Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,

  today of all days we should feel it

  who have stood by the green plot marked for her

  forever; but if truth is what is framed

  in a mirror, here was not vanity—

  neither in the sense of preening

  nor in that of unavailing hope.

  Here was simply a glass that faced

  an eager, bright unknowingness.

  Nothing at all to be confirmed there,

  had she sought to learn what awaited her

  once she was stepping down the aisle

  of years—first the daughter, then a son,

  then another, and another one;

  their marriages; the grandchildren;

  the illnesses, the hurts; the talents

  and fulfillments not to be spoken of

  too often, or without the soft

  laugh she is now remembered for.

  No prophecy to be offered either

  for the life of her husband, who rises

  like a groom now from his central position

  at the long, hushed table to speak of her

  briefly, modestly. Her final circle

  looks up to hear him; looks away and back,

  while behind his head a hawk appears

  high in the distance, banking its wings

  and coasting as it considers something