Stanley Kunitz

Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk 
across the board and told us 
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course 
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills 
with a wild look in his eyes 
stood in the public square 
at the playground's edge 
proclaiming he was sent by God 
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted, 
waving his hand-lettered sign. 
At supper I felt sad to think 
that it was probably 
the last meal I'd share 
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate. 
So mother scolded me 
and sent me early to my room. 
The whole family's asleep 
except for me. They never heard me steal 
into the stairwell hall and climb 
the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof 
of the red brick building 
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky, 
waiting for the world to end.

Stanley Kunitz

 

After The Last Dynasty

Reading in Li Po
how "the peach blossom follows the water"
I keep thinking of you
because you were so much like
Chairman Mao,
naturally with the sex 
transposed
and the figure slighter.
Loving you was a kind
of Chinese guerilla war.
Thanks to your lightfoot genius
no Eighth Route Army
kept its lines more fluid,
traveled with less baggage
so nibbled the advantage.
Even with your small bad heart
you made a dance of departures.
In the cold spring rains
when last you failed me
I had nothing left to spend
but a red crayon language
on the character of the enemy
to break appointments,
to fight us not
with his strength
but with his weakness,
to kill us
not with his health
but with his sickness.
Pet, spitfire, blue-eyed pony,
here is a new note
I want to pin on your door,
though I am ten years late
and you are nowhere:
Tell me,
are you stillmistress of the valley,
what trophies drift downriver,
why did you keep me waiting?

Marie Howe

 

Just Now

My brother opens his eyes when he hears the door click
open downstairs and Joe's steps walking up past the meowing cat

and the second click of the upstairs door, and then he lifts
his face so that Joe can kiss him. Joe has brought armfuls

of broken magnolia branches in full blossom, and he putters
in the kitchen looking for a big jar to put them in and finds it.

And now they tower in the living room, white and sweet, where
John can see them if he leans out from his bed which

he can't do just now, and now Joe is cleaning. What a mess
you've left me, he says, and John is smiling, almost asleep again.

Marie Howe

March 4, 2013 4:53 pm

Photo

 

What the Living Do 

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Marie Howe

The Gate

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was

a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

Nick Flynn

 

from ALCOHOLISM

 

Once I fall from my stilts     once the elephant

steps over my body     once the strong man tosses me

& everyone like me into the hay     once I step out of my little car

once the enormous hammer crushes my tiny flowered hat

once I climb the rigging     once I leave the cannon

once sawdust becomes my sea

 

Nick Flynn

 

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

 

A child (somewhere) squats, scratches / the dirt with a twig, muttering broken
broken / broken muttering an excellent place to hide / an excellent hole a hidey-
hole, a spider hole, the hole she / will crawl into or through one day, not /
today, thank god, not yet, she can’t know yet / each hole is a word, each word /
a thread. Let’s try this again, without / the child this time—broken broken broken /
no sun today, no shadow. Tiring / isn’t it, this kneeling, lips pressed to / the side-
walk, whispering into a crack.  Yesterday /  it all seemed normal, Brooke Adams
says / to Donald Sutherland, as he drives her to / the psychiatrist—today every-
thing seemed the same / but it wasn’t. Brooke didn’t know, couldn’t / know, not
then, that Donald was gone / already gone.

Nick Flynn

Forty-Seven Minutes

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Years later I’m standing before a roomful of young writers in a high school in Texas. I’ve asked them to locate an image in a poem we’d just read—their heads at this moment are bowed to the page. After some back & forth about the grass & a styrofoam cup, a girl raises her hand & asks, Does it matter? I smile—it is as if the universe balanced on those three words & we’ve landed in the unanswerable. I have to admit that no, it doesn’t, not really, matter, if rain is an image or rain is an idea or rain is a sound in our heads. But, I whisper, leaning in close, to get through the next forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does.