Houseboat Days: Poems Read Free Page A

garbage
    Wrapped in it, the over, the under.
    You get thrown to one side
    Into a kind of broom closet as the argument continues carolling
    Ideas from the novel of which this is the unsuccessful
    Stage adaptation. Too much, perhaps, gets lost.
    What about arriving after sunset on the beach of a
    Dank but extremely beautiful island to hear the speeches
    Of the invisible natives, whose punishment is speech?
    At the top of his teddy-bear throne, the ruler,
    Still lit by the sun, gazes blankly across at something
    Opposite. His eyes are empty rectangles, shaped
    Like slightly curved sticks of chewing gum. He witnesses.
    But we are the witnesses.
    In the increasingly convincing darkness
    The words become palpable, like a fruit
    That is too beautiful to eat. We want these
    Down here on our level. But the tedium persists
    In the form of remarks exchanged by birds
    Before the curtain. What am I doing up here?
    Pretending to resist but secretly giving in so as to reappear
    In a completely new outfit and group of colors once today’s
    Bandage has been removed, is all.

Loving Mad Tom
    You thought it was wrong. And afterwards
    When everyone had gone out, their lying persisted in your ears,
    Across the water. You didn’t see the miserable dawns piled up,
    One after the other, stretching away. Their word only
    Waited for you like the truth, and sometimes
    Out of a pure, unintentional song, the meaning
    Stammered nonetheless, and your zeal could see
    To the opposite shore, where it was all coming true.
    Then to lay it down like a load
    And take up the dream stitching again, as though
    It were still old, as on a bright, unseasonably cold
    Afternoon, is a dream past living. Best to leave it there
    And quickly tiptoe out. The music ended anyway. The occasions
    In your arms went along with it and seemed
    To supply the necessary sense. But like
    A farmhouse in the city, on some busy, deserted metropolitan avenue,
    It was all too much in the way it fell silent,
    Forewarned, as though an invisible face looked out
    From hooded windows, as the rain suddenly starts to fall
    And the lightning goes crazy, and the thunder faints dead away.
    That was a way of getting here,
    He thought. A spear of fire, a horse of air,
    And the rest is done for you, to go with the rest,
    To match up with everything accomplished until now.
    And always one stream is pointing north
    To reeds and leaves, and the stunned land
    Flowers in dejection. This station in the woods,
    How was it built? This place
    Of communicating back along the way, all the way back?
    And in an orgy of minutes the waiting
    Seeks to continue, to begin again,
    Amid bugs, the harking of dogs, all the
    Maddening irregularities of trees, and night falls anyway.

Business Personals
    The disquieting muses again: what are “leftovers”?
    Perhaps they have names for it all, who come bearing
    Worn signs of privilege whose authority
    Speaks out of the accumulation of age and faded colors
    To the center of today. Floating heart, why
    Wander on senselessly? The tall guardians
    Of yesterday are steep as cliff shadows;
    Whatever path you take abounds in their sense.
    All presently lead downward, to the harbor view.
    Therefore do your knees need to be made strong, by running.
    We have places for the training and a special on equipment:
    Knee-pads, balancing poles and the rest. It works
    In the sense of aging: you come out always a little ahead
    And not so far as to lose a sense of the crowd
    Of disciples. That were tyranny,
    Outrage, hubris. Meanwhile this tent is silence
    Itself. Its walls are opaque, so as not to see
    The road; a pleasant, half-heard melody climbs to its ceiling—
    Not peace, but rest the doctor ordered. Tomorrow …
    And songs climb out of the flames of the near campfires,
    Pale, pastel things exquisite in their frailness
    With a note or two to indicate it isn’t lost,
    On them at least. The songs decorate our notion of the world
    And mark its limits, like a frieze of soap-bubbles.
    What