All of Us (25 page)

I sat on the bed one morning, dressed, clean-shaven,

drinking coffee, putting off what I’d decided to do. Finally

dialed Jim Houston’s number in Santa Cruz.

And asked for 75 dollars. He said he didn’t have it.

His wife had gone to Mexico for a week.

He simply didn’t have it. He was coming up short

this month. “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

And I did. We talked a little

more, then hung up. He didn’t have it.

I finished the coffee, more or less, just as the plane

lifted off the runway into the sunset.

I turned in the seat for one last look

at the lights of Buenos Aires. Then closed my eyes

for the long trip back.

This morning there’s snow everywhere. We remark on it.

You tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say

I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.”

We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other

as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind.

As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t,

of course. We never do. No matter.

It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift

this morning that moves and holds me.

Same as every morning.

Those beautiful days

when the city resembles a die, a fan and a bird song

or a scallop shell on the seashore

               
— goodbye, goodbye, pretty girls,

               
we met today

    
and will not ever meet again.

The beautiful Sundays

when the city resembles a football, a card and an ocarina

or a swinging bell

               
— in the sunny street

               
the shadows of passers-by were kissing

    
and people walked away, total strangers.

Those beautiful evenings

when the city resembles a rose, a chessboard, a violin

or a crying girl

               
— we played dominoes,

               
black-dotted dominoes with the thin girls in the bar,

               
watching their knees

               
which were emaciated

               
like two skulls with the silk crowns of their garters

               
in the desperate kingdom of love.

—
JAROSLAV SEIFERT

(
translated by Ewald Osers
)

Back at the hotel, watching her loosen, then comb out

her russet hair in front of the window, she deep in private

thought,

her eyes somewhere else, I am reminded for some reason of

those

Lacedaemonians Herodotus wrote about, whose duty

it was to hold the Gates against the Persian army. And who

did. For four days. First, though, under the disbelieving

eyes of Xerxes himself, the Greek soldiers sprawled as if

uncaring, outside their timber-hewn walls, arms stacked,

combing and combing their long hair, as if it were

simply another day in an otherwise unremarkable campaign.

When Xerxes demanded to know what such display signified,

he was told,
When these men are about to leave their lives

they first make their heads beautiful.

               She lays down her bone-handle comb and moves closer

to the window and the mean afternoon light. Something, some

creaking movement from below, has caught her

attention. A look, and it lets her go.

In air heavy

with odor of crocuses,

sensual smell of crocuses,

I watch a lemon sun disappear,

a sea change blue

to olive black.

I watch lightning leap from Asia as

sleeping,

my love stirs and breathes and

sleeps again,

part of this world and yet

part that.

When after supper Tatyana Ivanovna sat quietly down

and took up her knitting, he kept his eyes fixed on her

fingers and chatted away without ceasing.

    “Make all the haste you can to live, my friends …” he said.

“God forbid you should sacrifice the present for the future!

There is youth, health, fire in the present; the future is smoke

and deception! As soon as you are twenty,

begin to live.”

    Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle.

—
ANTON CHEKHOV

“The Privy Councillor”

Christ broods over our heads

as you comment on this, on that.

Your voice

is borne through those empty chambers still.

Halt with desire, I follow

outside where we wonderingly examine

ruined walls. Wind

rises to meet the evening.

Wind, you’re much overdue.

Wind, let me touch you.

Evening, you’ve been expected all day.

Evening, hold us and cover us.

And evening sinks down at last.

And wind runs to the four corners of the body.

And walls are gone.

And Christ broods over our heads.

The papal nuncio, John Burchard, writes calmly

that dozens of mares and stallions

were driven into a courtyard of the Vatican

so the Pope Alexander VI and his daughter,

Lucretia Borgia, could watch from a balcony

“with pleasure and much laughter”

the equine coupling going on below.

When this spectacle was over

they refreshed themselves, then waited

while Lucretia’s brother, Caesar,

shot down ten unarmed criminals

who were herded into the same courtyard.

Remember this the next time you see

the name
Borgia
, or the word
Renaissance.

I don’t know what I can make of this,

this morning. I’ll leave it for now.

Go for that walk I planned earlier, hope maybe

to see those two herons sift down the cliffside

as they did for us earlier in the season

so we felt alone and freshly

put here, not herded, not

driven.

Faithless, we have come here

this morning on empty stomachs

and hearts.

I open my hands to quiet

their stupid pleading, but

they begin to drip

onto the stones.

A woman beside me slips

on those same stones, striking

her head in the Grotto.

Behind me my love with the camera

records it all on color film down

to the finest detail.

But see!

The woman groans, rises slowly

shaking her head: she blesses

those very stones while we escape

through a side door.

Later we play the entire film again and

again. I see the woman keep falling

and getting up, falling and

getting up, Arabs evil-eyeing

the camera. I see myself striking

one pose after the other.

Lord, I tell you

I am without purpose here

in the Holy Land.

My hands grieve in this

bright sunlight.

They walk back and forth along

the Dead Sea shore

with a thirty-year-old man.

Come, Lord. Shrive me.

Too late I hear the film running,

taking it all down.

I look into the camera.

My grin turns to salt. Salt

where I stand.

Today a woman signaled me in Hebrew.

Then she pulled out her hair, swallowed it

and disappeared. When I returned home,

shaken, three carts stood by the door with

fingernails showing through the sacks of grain.

No sleep. Somewhere near here in the woods, fear

envelops the hands of the lookout.

The white ceiling of our room

has lowered alarmingly with dark.

Spiders come out to plant themselves

on every coffee mug.

Afraid? I know if I put out my hand

I will touch an old shoe three inches long

with bared teeth.

Sweetheart, it’s time.

I know you’re concealed there behind

that innocent handful of flowers.

Come out.

Don’t worry, I promise you.

Listen…

There is the rap on the door.

But the man who was going to deliver this

instead points a gun at your head.

I will not go when she calls

even if she says
I love you
,

especially that,

even though she swears

and promises nothing

but love love.

The light in this room

covers every

thing equally;

even my arm throws no shadow,

it too is consumed with light.

But this word
love
—

this word grows dark, grows

heavy and shakes itself, begins

to eat, to shudder and convulse

its way through this paper

until we too have dimmed in

its transparent throat and still

are riven, are glistening, hip and thigh, your

loosened hair which knows

no hesitation.

Nadya, pink-cheeked, happy, her eyes shining with tears

in expectation of something extraordinary, circled

in the dance, her white dress billowing and showing glimpses

of her slim, pretty legs in their flesh-tinted

stockings. Varya, thoroughly contented, took Podgorin by the arm

and said to him under her breath with significant expression:

“Misha, don’t run away from your happiness. Take it

while it offers itself to you freely, later you will be running

after it, but you won’t overtake it.”

—
ANTON CHEKHOV

“A Visit to Friends”

Naches River. Just below the falls.

Twenty miles from any town. A day

of dense sunlight

heavy with odors of love.

How long have we?

Already your body, sharpness of Picasso,

is drying in this highland air.

I towel down your back, your hips,

with my undershirt.

Time is a mountain lion.

We laugh at nothing,

and as I touch your breasts

even the ground-

               squirrels

are dazzled.

I have always wanted brook trout

for breakfast.

Suddenly, I find a new path

to the waterfall.

I begin to hurry.

Wake up,

my wife says,

you’re dreaming.

But when I try to rise,

the house tilts.

Who’s dreaming?

It’s noon, she says.

My new shoes wait by the door,

gleaming.

He holds conversation sacred

though a dying art. Smiling,

by turns he is part toady,

part
Oberführer.
Knowing when

is the secret.

Out of the slim briefcase come

maps of all the world;

               deserts, oceans,

photographs, artwork —

it is all there, all there

for the asking

as the doors swing open, crack

or slam.