Alone and Not Alone (5 page)

Homage to Meister Eckhart

I promised myself

I would explore my void

the space I occupy

and won't

but I'm still waiting

waiting

waiting in a room

for the room to change into an idea a flower might have

The sun shines down on the flower

in the idea the flower does have at all times

and at all times you hear its thudding

and in between the thuds

is a silence in which a thud almost is

The first time I heard the word
void

it was from the Bible: “And the earth

was without form and void.”

I was a child. I thought it meant

the earth was without void.

Which meant nothing to me

because I did not know the meaning of
void
.

And I didn't know there was a comma

that changes everything:

“was without form, and void.”

The cosmos changed by a comma!

Years later a big face with no features

came out of the trees in the night

and said, brutally, “Void”

as if handing me a gift

I opened my eyes and there it was

in the mirror it was I or something else

I wasn't sure

but I was happy to be in between

My soul was growing up

It had learned how to put quotation marks

around everything

which destroyed everything

to make two of everything

one for each eye and one for each ear

but the eyes get further and further apart

from what they see

as the ears get closer and closer

to what they hear

like the dot terribly far away

and big in front of your face

at the same time and loud

So move

the mirror

the Void

into another mirror

or Void

and just let go

But the eyes eventually alight

on words like
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

printed on the side

of everyone's head

the way
CLEM KADIDDLEHOPPER
used to be

and
MEISTER ECKHART
and
MAX JACOB

all appearing nightly

in a revue set in the void of heaven,

the void that allowed God to be there

as the sole spectator

until your void and his void were almost the same

as the void of Spongebob and Max, Clem too,

but not quite, for, as Eckhart says,

“The nothingness of God fills all things

while his somethingness is nowhere”

and so “The very best thing you can do

is to remain still for as long as possible”

and wait for the nothingness of God.

The Incoherent Behavior of Most Lawn Furniture

Suddenly the lawn furniture moves to different spots and stops, overturned or sideways on the ground or hovering in the air, then the pieces jerk, flip, or fly into new spots, in no pattern or rhythm. But the wooden fold-up lawn chair, with its wide strip of canvas forming a gentle sling from top to bottom, remains still. Its striped pattern ripples in the breeze, and though its wooden frame eventually turns gray it never rots or breaks, no matter how inclement the weather. Over the years, however, this lawn chair slowly grows less and less visible, so slowly that no one notices, until it disappears. It remains there, unseen and lost to memory, until one day someone remembers its green and orange stripes, its welcoming curve, its simplicity, there in the sunlight.

The Street

The last time I came back to New York I didn't know

that it would be the last time you'd be here

though you
are
still here in the form of you

who a block away walk toward me until it
isn't
you,

it's someone with a fine head and silver hair and blue eyes

and the suggestion of not being like anyone else

and it's you I'm waiting for as I walk past Little Poland

or come out of New York Central Art Supply or stop to look

at the poppy seed cake in the window of Baczynsky's on Second Avenue,

the cake I brought up to your place sometimes

when we were working together and you'd say “Tea?”

as if it were spelled with only the one letter.

Knowing you were there made me be more here too,

made New York be New York,

fueled my anger at the new buildings that ruined the old ones

and at the new people with their coarseness and self-involvement

you avoided by going out to buy the
Times
at 5 a.m.,

then came back and made yourself a pot of espresso

and read the paper as if you were in Tuscany

which is where you soon will be

in that niche in the wall all ten pounds of you

and I'll leave the city that's slipped a little further away no a lot.

Paris Again

I'm afraid of the thrill of touching you again

and seeing you appear before my eyes

because you are beautiful the way things used to be.

One day I sat down in a café and ordered an
accent aigu

and a
citron pressé
and looked at Paris.

I said to myself This is Paris and you

are in it so you are Paris too.
Garçon,

encore un accent aigu s'il vous plaît

but he didn't look pleased he was Parisian.

Maybe I too could learn how to be grumpy

and snooty and Cartesian and quick all at the same time.

The Nord-Sud metro line ran all the way

from the tips of my toes to the top of my head

where it paused and went down again

and every time it went past Odéon I thought

of Reverdy and how grumpy

and suddenly fiery he could be and figured

he would have no patience with a guy like me

who had a touch of Max Jacob ready

to leap up and turn an angel into a sad witticism

about the God Pierre was wrestling with as if

they were both made of granite. But they weren't.

And neither was I, like those who love and have loved

and are still afraid of the thrill of the beauty of everything that is gone.

London, 1815

We go clippety-clop

because we are horseshoes

on cobblestones. O

to be a houseshoe

in a house

and resting comfortably

alongside another houseshoe!

But the horse clops on,

our echos echoing

down a dark alley

behind a dark house.

Of Copse and Coppice

When asked

if I knew the meaning

of the word
copse
c-o-p-s-e

I said “Of course, it means . . .

I think it means a field

or meadow.” One

of the first poems

I ever wrote said

“Where is the copse

with verdant green?”

because at age thirteen

I wanted to use

words new to me.

Now
copse
is new again

because I'm now not sure

just what it means.

A
coppice
is a thicket,

no?

Manifestation and Mustache

I love living here

away from a lot of things

that annoy me

and close to a lot

of things I love

like air like trees

and emptiness.

But the thing

I love best

goes where I go

and will go with me

when I am gone

from where I am

and into

where love

doesn't figure,

which I have done

a few times

in my life,

if memory serves.

Then

the mustache

comes in

and says,

“You can't be right

and wrong

at the same time,”

but I don't believe it.

Shipwreck in General

Is there no end to anything ever

I release the question mark

From its tether and it floats

Like a life jacket

In search of the shipwreck

That every question is

But today it finds no victim

No flotsam no captain's cap

For today is shipwreck-free it is

The end of shipwreck in general

And the curl and the dot below

Can go their separate ways

And be whatever they like

French Art in the 1950s

Ronnie is finding out about art in the 1950s. He is learning that it had a palette and brushes and colors, and the palette had a hole, in which the brushes were inserted and where they seemed debonnaire and ready to do something but also happy not to. There is an artist in the room. He wears a smock and a beret, and he has a pencil mustache. His name is Pierre, for he is French. Art comes from France. Pierre is going to bring some more of it to us. But at the moment he is thinking about what he is going to paint today. A pear? A young woman who is wearing no clothing? Or perhaps just a lot of colors flying around on the canvas, to represent his feelings?

But wait, it is time for lunch. Later in the afternoon he will execute his picture. For now he must go to the café and greet his admirers, who, on seeing him, call out “Pierre!” and “Over here, Pierre!” and, cleverly, “There he is, the rascal!” But everyone knows that Pierre is not a rascal. He is a French artist. You can tell by the smock he has forgotten to remove. Later, when it has paint smears and spots on it, even an imbecile will be able to see that he is an artist. Ronnie already knows.

Three Poems in Honor of Willem de Kooning

I Felt

For a moment

as if I were talking to you

and you were listening

and taking me seriously

the way a grandfather does

when he's open and kind,

you knew what

was troubling me

and you knew

that the best thing to do

was to listen

and say nothing,

allowing a calm to settle

into the grandfather

that turns out to be me.

The Door to the River

You walked through it before

you even knew it was there

The river came up to the door

and asked to come in

Then the river came through the door

and the door floated away

I once threw away a river

because it looked old enough

And I bought a new one

and a door along with it

Except it never was a door

It was a doorway

Like Norway

with windows