A Wave Read Free Page A

background, we’re the background,
    On the outside looking out. The surprises history has
    For us are nothing compared to the shock we get
    From each other, though time still wears
    The colors of meanness and melancholy, and the general life
    Is still many sizes too big, yet
    Has style, woven of things that never happened
    With those that did, so that a mood survives
    Where life and death never could. Make it sweet again!

Down by the Station, Early in the Morning
    It all wears out. I keep telling myself this, but
    I can never believe me, though others do. Even things do.
    And the things they do. Like the rasp of silk, or a certain
    Glottal stop in your voice as you are telling me how you
    Didn’t have time to brush your teeth but gargled with Listerine
    Instead. Each is a base one might wish to touch once more
    Before dying. There’s the moment years ago in the station in Venice,
    The dark rainy afternoon in fourth grade, and the shoes then,
    Made of a dull crinkled brown leather that no longer exists.
    And nothing does, until you name it, remembering, and even then
    It may not have existed, or existed only as a result
    Of the perceptual dysfunction you’ve been carrying around for years.
    The result is magic, then terror, then pity at the emptiness,
    Then air gradually bathing and filling the emptiness as it leaks,
    Emoting all over something that is probably mere reportage
    But nevertheless likes being emoted on. And so each day
    Culminates in merriment as well as a deep shock like an electric one,
    As the wrecking ball bursts through the wall with the bookshelves
    Scattering the works of famous authors as well as those
    Of more obscure ones, and books with no author, letting in
    Space, and an extraneous babble from the street
    Confirming the new value the hollow core has again, the light
    From the lighthouse that protects as it pushes us away.

Around the Rough and Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Rudely Ran
    I think a lot about it,
    Think quite a lot about it—
    The omnipresent possibility of being interrupted
    While what I stand for is still almost a bare canvas:
    A few traceries, that may be fibers, perhaps
    Not even these but shadows, hallucinations….
    And it is well then to recall
    That this track is the outer rim of a flat crust,
    Dimensionless, except for its poor, parched surface,
    The face one raises to God,
    Not the rich dark composite
    We keep to ourselves,
    Carpentered together any old way,
    Coffee from an old tin can, a belch of daylight,
    People leaving the beach.
    If I could write it
    And also write about it—
    The interruption—
    Rudeness on the face of it, but who
    Knows anything about our behavior?
    Forget what it is you’re coming out of,
    Always into something like a landscape
    Where no one has ever walked
    Because they’re too busy.
    Excitedly you open your rhyming dictionary.
    It has begun to snow.

More Pleasant Adventures
    The first year was like icing.
    Then the cake started to show through.
    Which was fine, too, except you forget the direction you’re taking.
    Suddenly you are interested in some new thing
    And can’t tell how you got here. Then there is confusion
    Even out of happiness, like a smoke—
    The words get heavy, some topple over, you break others.
    And outlines disappear once again.
    Heck, it’s anybody’s story,
    A sentimental journey—“gonna take a sentimental journey,”
    And we do, but you wake up under the table of a dream:
    You are that dream, and it is the seventh layer of you.
    We haven’t moved an inch, and everything has changed.
    We are somewhere near a tennis court at night.
    We get lost in life, but life knows where we are.
    We can always be found with our associates.
    Haven’t you always wanted to curl up like a dog and go to sleep like a dog?
    In the rash of partings and dyings (the new twist),
    There’s also room for breaking out of living.
    Whatever happens will be quite ingenious.
    No acre but will resume being disputed now,
    And paintings are one