Nothing by Design Read online

  of Eden left behind but in the fierce

  desire to live my own days, light as air?

  IV

  LIGHTWEIGHTS

  T. S. LIGHTWEIGHT AND EZRA PROFOUND

  A meditation upon “The Waste Land”

  Give Ezra his due credit

  for that amazing edit.

  Still, T.S. is the one who said it.

  OUT OF THE WOODS

  What is it about the forest?

  Why can’t we give it a rest?

  All those writers taking

  soulful walks in the woods:

  good heavens, it’s been done.

  Step out and get some sun!

  Dante did, after getting the goods

  in the darkest glades from Virgil;

  but what about Longfellow

  sadly tagging along—

  or ten steps back, at the distance

  of a translated insistence?

  Sure, I admire the flight paths

  of the hawkmoths of Nabokov,

  who pinned them down in a knockoff

  of the hawthorn path in Proust—

  but if I must lose my way,

  I’ll take the route of song:

  give me Sondheim any day.

  I’ve had my fill of Frost,

  proud again to be lost,

  coming upon his fork

  in the road for the millionth time,

  or stumbling upon woodpiles

  of somebody else’s work.

  EDNA ST. VINCENT, M.F.A.

  Chic and petite, blind to her destiny

  of being hailed upon her death the worst

  sometimes-excellent poet in history,

  she ran the reading series, and ranked first

  in her year despite some issues, namely those

  pretentious, creaky sonnets e‑mailed late

  for workshop, densely wrought with “thee”s and “thou”s,

  Apollo’s “dewy cart,” man’s “frosty fate”…

  Her classmates listened, bored, without a clue.

  Still, they liked her, partly because she friended

  everybody who asked, and fucked them too,

  lending them each some notoriety

  by blogging through the night how things had ended.

  Plus, she knew people at A.W.P.

  URBAN HAIKU

  Leash dog; strap iPod

  to bicep; jog, shower, dress—

  it’s not worth the time.

  *

  Thought at the checkout:

  stupid to put five seltzers

  in one plastic bag.

  *

  New leather jackets:

  hand in hand, the married rich

  strolling to MoMA.

  *

  Like an Olympic

  torch held aloft: a steaming

  latte with no lid.

  *

  What makes them do it—

  jaywalkers in dark clothing

  at night, in the rain?

  *

  Hailing a taxi—

  finally one pulls over.

  Proof I must exist.

  DR. SYNTAX AND PROSODY

  Ms. Martin at Princeton knows firsthand how electronic searches can unearth both obscure texts and dead ends.… She recalled finding a sudden explosion of the words “syntax” and “prosody” in 1832, suggesting a spirited debate about poetic structure. But it turned out that Dr. Syntax and Prosody were the names of two racehorses.

  “You find 200 titles with ‘Syntax,’ and you think there must be a big grammar debate that year,” Ms. Martin said, “but it was just that Syntax was winning.”

  —THE NEW YORK TIMES

  December 3, 2010

  The sentence, diagrammed,

  is a boring one-track course:

  Dr. Syntax was a horse.

  Prosody enjambed

  himself near the finish line.

  It happens. Hey, that’s fine.

  KITTI’S HOG-NOSED BAT

  For some learned people

  this creature, whose torso

  (a bumblebee’s size)

  makes it smallest of all

  the thousand-plus species

  of bat on the planet,

  and the most petite extant

  species of mammal—

  though some experts cite

  the Etruscan shrew—

  is worth a life’s study.

  Carry on, please do.

  But others will care

  only who Kitti was

  and if he was teased

  (as his name meant cat)

  when he christened the hog-

  nosed horrible bat.

  I am numbered with these.

  I’m not speaking for you.

  FRENCH HAIKU

  1. Proust, Book One

  The elaborate

  word ballet whereby Odette

  turns into a Swann.

  2. Mont Sainte-Victoire

  Still-life tablecloth

  heaped and crumpled: yet Cézanne

  lets no stone roll off.

  3. Concierge

  Old and sort of fat,

  she thinks she’s sexy: yes, I

  want to be like that.

  OUR PING-PONG TABLE

  Literary, lazy,

  unsporty, unoutdoorsy,

  and seriously unlikely

  to reform our habits much,

  we bought it feeling flush

  one summer, and resolving

  to have more family fun

  than whatever we’d been having.

  We read the warning: Some

  assembly is required.

  The very thought of that

  made us cross and tired

  but we put our heads together,

  tore hunks of Styrofoam,

  and built the big, “all-weather,”

  eight-legged, hope-green wreck

  while watching unmarked, tiny,

  essential pieces sent

  all the way from China

  as placidly they went

  irretrievably rolling

  through slats in our old deck.

  Nothing to do about it.

  In a way, that was consoling.

  How many years ago

  was that? ten?—and how few

  games did we play each year?

  One day we stopped. But when?

  I think I was the first

  to notice poison oak

  where the balls were prone to land.

  After the net frame broke

  we knew it was the end,

  though there were nights we’d throw

  a tablecloth or two

  on top for a barbecue.

  All-weather? So far it’s stood

  as a tottering monument

  to the bumblers we remain;

  it’s stood there in the rain

  and, through the kitchen window

  in winter, as an efficient

  means to measure snow.

  I’ve liked that. That’s been good.

  INSTRUMENTAL RIDDLES

  Nothing to shake a stick at,

  hollow inside, I’m anything but shallow.

  The deeper I am, the louder

  silence is struck a blow.

  drum

  Love often looks like me—

  two lovers, and then three—

  although, in love, the third stays out of view.

  I play upstage. I can be quiet, too.

  triangle

  I live on a limited scale.

  Homeless, I collapse and wheeze

  on the subway. As if you care!

  Sorry to be so sentimental,

  but buddy, please,

  can you spare a dime?

  Otherwise you may have to bear

  the polka, one more time.

  accordion

  Shaped much like an angel’s wing,

  like angel hair my lengths of string,

  I’m strummed
by angels as they sing.

  harp

  In nursery school, before you learned to read,

  you played like Pan upon a simple reed.

  My name says what I do—

  I bring your earliest memories back to you.

  recorder

  NO SECOND TRY

  Why should I blame her that she filled my days

  With misery…

  —W. B. YEATS, “No Second Troy”

  Why should I blame him that he filled his days

  With mistresses, or that he came home late

  To meet most ignorant trust with smiling ways,

  Such thoughtful gifts, and claims that I looked great—

  Whatever that meant, though clearly not desire?

  What help if I’d been wiser, with a mind

  Simply to hurl his laundry in the fire

  Rather than buy his tall tales with a kind

  Solicitude and a deluded kiss,

  Having cleaned his house from stem to stern?

  Why, who else could he use, a guy like this?

  Was there another wife for him to spurn?

  V

  BED OF LETTERS

  I was angry with my friend:

  I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

  I was angry with my foe:

  I told it not, my wrath did grow.

  —WILLIAM BLAKE,

  “A Poison Tree”

  STRING OF PEARLS

  The pearls my mother gave me as a bride

  rotted inside.

  Well, not the pearls, but the string.

  One day I was putting

  them on, about thirty years on,

  and they rattled onto the floor, one by one…

  I’m still not sure I found them all.

  As it happened, I kept a white seashell

  on my vanity table. It could serve as a cup

  where, after I’d scooped the lost pearls up,

  I’d save them, a many-sister

  haven in one oyster.

  A female’s born with all her eggs,

  unfolds her legs,

  then does her dance, is lovely, is the past—

  is old news as the last

  crinkle-foil-wrapped sweet

  in the grass of the Easter basket.

  True? Who was I? Had I unfairly classed

  myself as a has-been? In the cloister

  of the ovary, when

  released by an extra dose of estrogen,

  my chances for love dwindled, one by one.

  But am I done?

  THE GAZEBO

  It’s my last day at the house.

  My last time wandering the backyard.

  I’m not aware I want to crush anything.

  My boots crunch through the desiccated,

  frosted grass, a sound like stubbing out

  cigarette after cigarette.

  I climb to the top of the hill

  and unlatch the creaky gate in the fence

  that frames the swimming pool.

  I don’t see it, but there’s a crust

  of ice beneath the canvas cover.

  Plus algae, a few dead frogs and bugs,

  however things stood last August.

  Eons ago. Before I knew.

  Another creaky door now, to the gazebo.

  An icicle crashes from the roof

  as I lower myself

  into a plastic Adirondack chair.

  Our view: three mountains, shy and local,

  that spoke a little of yearning; of gratitude.

  Mosquitoes got in through these screens.

  And wasps would hover

  near nests stuck to the beams and rafters

  like harmless mischief; like wads of chewing gum.

  There was laughter up here, iced tea, beer.

  Paper-plate family meals, tête-à-têtes,

  and silent reading alone, and sunsets

  one shouldn’t see alone. And a husband

  who’d walk up and knock, a little joke,

  before he’d let himself in.

  I see him smiling. He asks how I am.

  He’s wrapped in a towel; he’s been in the pool,

  he’s dripping on the floor, we chat,

  we’re the luckiest couple you’ve ever met.

  But it’s December. And the dripping now

  is the sound of melting icicles

  sharpening into knives.

  DRINKING SONG

  He lay with me upon a time,

  sweet it was and lemon-lime.

  Wedding ring and ringing bell,

  Champagne was it never hell.

  Coffee tea and morning toast,

  none loved more and love was most.

  Up we dressed for dinner out,

  Prozac and Prosecco, doubt.

  Peace in time and time to seethe.

  Open wine and let it breathe.

  Mix up our imperfect match:

  dry martini, olive branch.

  Jesus, who agreed the whore

  he shall have with him always more?

  Econo Lodge and Scottish Inn,

  vodka, orange, scotch, and gin.

  Years and years they met by day,

  nights and nights forgot away

  till the thing had not occurred.

  Whiskey, whisper not a word.

  What knows who was laced with truth,

  shaken cocktail? Twist of ruth?

  Panic and alarm creep back,

  Ativan and Armagnac.

  In my mind the slipping gears.

  In our come-cries down the years

  sometimes was love not sublime?

  Another round, and hold the crime.

  COMPLAINT FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE

  A little something to endorse:

  Download attachment, print and sign

  Complaint for Absolute Divorce,

  the lawyer wrote with casual force.

  Yet why complain? The suit was mine.

  A little something to endorse

  “Complaint”: sheer poetry, of course,

  more lofty than Lament or Whine.

  Complaint for Absolute Divorce:

  so well-phrased, who could feel remorse?

  That “Absolute” was rather fine.

  A little something to endorse

  the universe as is: for worse,

  for better. Nothing by design.

  Complaint for Absolute Divorce,

  let me salute you, sole recourse!

  I put my birth name on the line—

  a little something—and endorse

  the final word, then, in “Divorce.”

  BED OF LETTERS

  Propped like a capital

  letter at the head

  of what was once our bed,

  or like a letterhead—

  as if your old address

  were printed on my face—

  I’m writing you this note

  folded in sheets you lay

  on then, but sleeplessly

  night after night, a man

  whose life became about

  the fear of being found out.

  Rarely a cross word

  between us, although today

  I see the printer’s tray

  of your brain, the dormant type

  sorted in little rooms

  to furnish anagrams,

  fresh headlines, infinite

  new stories in nice fonts.

  Give her what she wants,

  you must have thought, and brought

  home seedlings to transplant

  in flower beds, unmeant

  to bloom into such tall

  tales—which even you

  can’t unsay or undo.

  And yet it’s true that long

  ago, two lovers dozed

  naked and enclosed

  one history between covers.

  We woke and, shy and proud,

  read our new poems aloud.

  VI

&n
bsp; THE SEAFARER

  a version from the Anglo-Saxon

  THE SEAFARER

  I can sing my own true story

  of journeys through this world,

  how often I was tried

  by troubles. Bitterly scared,

  I would be sick with sorrow

  on my night watch as I saw

  so many times from the prow

  terrible, tall waves

  pitching close to cliffs.

  My feet were frozen stiff,

  seized and locked by frost,

  although my heart was hot

  from a host of worries.

  A hunger from within

  tore at my mind, sea-weary.

  But men on solid ground

  know nothing of how a wretch

  like me, in so much pain,

  could live a winter alone,

  exiled, on the ice-cold sea

  where hail came down in sheets,

  and icicles hung from me

  while friendly hall companions

  feasted far away.

  The crashing sea was all

  I heard, the ice-cold wave.

  I made the wild swan’s song

  my game; sometimes the gannet

  and curlew would cry out

  though elsewhere men were laughing;

  and the sea mew would sing

  though elsewhere men drank mead.

  Storms beat against the stone

  cliffs, and the ice-feathered

  tern called back, and often