The count of cappuccino,
the marquise of meringue,
all the little cantuccini...
and what was the song they sang?
Oh, the best of us is nothing
but a sweetening of the air,
a tryst between the teeth and tongue:
we meet and no one’ s there
though the café’ s always crowded
as society arrives
and light glints to and fro between
the eyes and rings and knives.
It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,
without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
you blink and you seem to surprise them,
My father’ s dying
resembles nothing so much
as a small village
building itself
in the mind of a traveler
who reads about it
and thinks to go there.
The journey is imagined
in a way not even felt
as when years ago
I knew my father would die someday.
The idea came up as fast
as a curve in a road
which opens out
to an unexpected vista,
and now in this journey
the road gravel crunches
under my tires. I miss
some of the streets,
get lost, get lost.
The cliff above where we stand is crumbling
and up on the Palisades
the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt.
Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts
in perfect unison
against a backdrop of gorgeous blue,
and for you I would try it,
though I have always forbidden myself to write
poems about the beach at sunset.
All the clichés for it sputter
like the first generation of neon,
and what attracts me anyway
Out of a high meadow where flowers
bloom above cloud, come down;
pursue me with reasons for smiling without malice.
Bring mimic pride like that of the seedling fir,
surprise in the perfect leg-stems
and queries unstirred by recognition or fear
pooled in the deep eyes.
Wheel of sorrow, centerless.
Voices, sad without cause,
slope upward, expiring on grave summits.
Mournfulness of muddy playgrounds,
raw smell of rubbers and wrapped lunches
when little girls stand in a circle singing
of windows and of lovers.
Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,
they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,
dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only water to drink, surrounded by joy.
Forced to wear a gaudy gold star,
to surrender their pride,
they do their best to look alive.
Last night, as half asleep I dreaming lay,
Half naked came she in her little shift,
With tilted glass, and verses on her lips;
Narcissus-eyes all shining for the fray,
Filled full of frolic to her wine-red lips,
Warm as a dewy rose, sudden she slips
Into my bed – just in her little shift.
An orange did love
The man who ate it.
A feast for the eyes
Is a fine repast;
Its heart held fast
His greedy gaze.
All day they stream past, petitioners
for understanding, accolade, critique.
I read them all, a vast anthology
of jumbled genres on a common theme:
affliction. So I parse, interpret, scan.
I graph dysrhythmias, dysmetrias;
I eavesdrop on caesuras for unsaid
murmurs, gallops, rubs, snaps, flutters, clicks.
The perils of misreading harrow me —
beware the treacheries of metaphor! —
the elephant that squats upon a chest
is not a burning heart or waterbrash.
