Sailing Alone Around the Room Read Free Page B

as ambitious and definitive,
    for it will cover even the climate before the Flood
    when showers moistened Eden and will conclude
    with the mysteries of the weather before history
    when unseen clouds drifted over an unpeopled world,
    when not a soul lay in any of earth’s meadows gazing up
    at the passing of enormous faces and animal shapes,
    his jacket bunched into a pillow, an open book on his chest.

The Death of Allegory
    I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
    that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
    and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
    displaying their capital letters like license plates.
    Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
    Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
    Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
    Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,
    Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
    Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
    They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
    Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.
    Valor lies in bed listening to the rain.
    Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood,
    and all their props are locked away in a warehouse,
    hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles.
    Even if you called them back, there are no places left
    for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss.
    The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums
    and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair.
    Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies
    and next to it black binoculars and a money clip,
    exactly the kind of thing we now prefer,
    objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case,
    themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow,
    an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray.
    As for the others, the great ideas on horseback
    and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns,
    it looks as though they have traveled down
    that road you see on the final page of storybooks,
    the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears
    into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.

Forgetfulness
    The name of the author is the first to go
    followed obediently by the title, the plot,
    the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
    which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
    even heard of,
    as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
    decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
    to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
    Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
    and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
    and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
    something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
    the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
    Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
    it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
    not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
    It has floated away down a dark mythological river
    whose name begins with an
L
as far as you can recall,
    well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
    who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
    No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
    to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
    No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
    out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Candle Hat
    In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
    Cézanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
    Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
    Rembrandt looks relieved, as if he were taking a breather
    from painting
The Blinding of Samson
.
    But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
    and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
    addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.
    He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
    we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
    which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
    a device that allowed him to work into the night.
    You can