Nothing by Design

The Soul Hovering over the Body Reluctantly Parting with Life
from
The Grave: A Poem
by Robert Blair, London, 1808; engraving by Luigi Schiavonetti (1765–1810) after Blake

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2013 by Mary Jo Salter

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salter, Mary Jo.
[Poems. Selections]
Nothing by design : poems / by Mary Jo Salter.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-34979-6
I. Title.
PS3569.A46224N68 2013
811.54—dc23     2013001009

Jacket images: (female northern cardinal) by John James Audubon, from
Birds of America.
The Granger Collection, New York; (daisy and leaves) by J. J. Rousseau from
La Botanique
Jacket design by Jason Booher

eBook ISBN: 978-0-385-34980-2
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-385-34979-6

v3.1

TO MY DAUGHTERS

Heavy in the womb
,

at birth light as a feather—

not even your own mother

can understand that riddle
,

or how you’d fill the room

although you were so little
,

or how, once you had grown
,

you weren’t there to measure

yet stubbornly would loom

larger than anyone.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I THE NUMBERS

Morning Mirror

Pair of Bells

Common Room, 1970

Fractal

The Gods

A Toast for Richard Wilbur

From a Balcony, Lake Como

Constellations

Cardinal Numbers

Our Friends the Enemy

II THE AFTERLIFE

Nora

The Afterlife

It’s Hard to Say

Cities in the Sky

Over and Out

III UNBROKEN MUSIC

Unbroken Music

IV LIGHTWEIGHTS

T. S. Lightweight and Ezra Profound

Out of the Woods

Edna St. Vincent, M.F.A.

Urban Haiku

Dr. Syntax and Prosody

Kitti’s Hog-Nosed Bat

French Haiku

Our Ping-Pong Table

Instrumental Riddles

No Second Try

V BED OF LETTERS

String of Pearls

The Gazebo

Drinking Song

Complaint for Absolute Divorce

Bed of Letters

VI THE SEAFARER

The Seafarer

VII LOST ORIGINALS

Voice of America

English Country Dollhouse

Crusoe’s Footprint

Lost Originals

Acknowledgments

A Note about the Author

Other Books by This Author

I

THE NUMBERS

MORNING MIRROR

He doesn’t see me, whoever he is, who steps

through high grass in his khakis and bow tie

at six in the morning. I’m looking through the glass

of my cottage at the inn, hours before

coffee and buns begin at the conference.

He looks as if he knows things, and will speak

at his appointed time on experiments

successfully conducted, with a coda

on unforeseen, exciting implications,

and a call for further research. The wordless calm

of kayaks moored and mirrored, the yachts far off,

the silver-pink lake’s lapping seem to please him.

He may be in a blessed state of non-thinking.

He runs a hand through thinning, tousled hair.

A witness at the window: somehow a deer

has sidled up, and is staring at me drinking

my coffee. I set it down, chastised. The same

plaintive and yet neutral gaze, as if

she knew once and is trying to recall my name.

I’m trying to unthink the expectations

of my given kind, to adopt another mode, a

curious but disinterested sense

of otherness. (Why is it for a week

all the deer have been either does or fawns?

Somebody knows the answer.) She wants more

from me, or maybe nothing; sniffs the grass,

nibbles a bit, then twitches: her profile high,

she bounds to the shore with leisurely, sure leaps.

PAIR OF BELLS

Joanna and Valerio

went up to the campanile

of the stone-deaf castle.

From across the courtyard, one

dented little bell with a skew

clapper could be seen.

I hadn’t noticed the bellpulls.

But when Joanna yanked on hers,

and Valerio took his turn,

I heard a pair of louder bells,

deeper, surely bigger—though

these and both my friends remained

entirely invisible.

And the little bell, off-key

and out of sync, hung on and swung—

a third wheel like myself, moved

to celebrate a pair of bells.

Things happen but are parables.

COMMON ROOM, 1970

And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me; and I will make you to become fishers of men.

                                        —
MARK
1:17

               It was the age of sit-ins

and in any case, there weren’t enough chairs.

The guys loped heavy-footed down the stairs

or raced each other to the bottom, laughing,

pushing their luck. But here they all crammed in,

sophomores, born like him in ’51,

to huddle on the floor of the Common Room.

               In a corner, a grandfather clock

startled the hour; hammered it home again.

He would remember that. The old New England

rickety dignity of the furniture.

The eminent, stern faces looking down

from time-discolored portraits. Or maybe some

of this was embellishment, added later on.

               The flickering, thick fishbowl

of a TV screen, a Magnavox console,

silenced them all. There, in black and white,

gray-haired men in gray suits now began

to pull blue capsules from an actual fishbowl.

(At least the announcer said they were bright blue.)

It was the age of drugs. These looked like giant

               Quaaludes handed out

by a mad pharmacist, whose grimly poised

assistant—female, sexless—then unscrewed

from each a poisonous slip of sticky paper.

A man affixed that date to a massive chart.

It was filling up already. (Some poor dude

named Bert was 7; he punched a sofa cushion.)

               As for himself, he thought

of penny candy in a jar a million

years ago, picked out with his brother

most days after school. Or times he’d draw

tin soldiers from the bottom of a stocking.

(Born two days past Christmas, he’d always seen

that as good karma: the whole world free to play.)

               A congressman was rifling

loudly through capsules, seized some in his fist,

dropped all but one. Not Jeremy? Good friend,

socked with 15. Two strangers, 38.

Ben got 120. Would that be good enough?

Curses, bluster, unfunny humor, crossed

fingers for blessed numbers that remained.

               Somewhere, sometime in

that ammunition pile awaited his:

239. He heard the number whiz,

then lodge safe as a bullet in his brain.

Like a bullet in a dream: you’re dead, you’re fine.

No need to wish for C.O. or 4-F.

Oh thank you, Jesus God. No Nam for him.

               Yet he was well brought up.

In decency, rather than dance for joy

or call up Mom right then from the hallway phone,

he stayed until the last guy knew his fate.

Typical Roy, who’d showed up late, freaked out

when, it appeared, his birthday got no mention.

He hadn’t heard: they’d hosed him. Number 2.

               Before the war was lost

some four years later, a handful in that room

would battle inside fishbowls, most in color—

and little men, toy soldiers in a jungle,

bled behind the glass while those excused,

life-sized, would sit before it eating dinner.

He’d lived to be a watcher. And number 2

               in the Common Room that day?

Clearly not stupid. Roy became a major

in Independent Projects. Something about

landscapes in oil, angles of northern sun.

By the time he graduated, he had won

a study grant to paint in England, where

(so his proposal went) the light was different.

FRACTAL

A fish-shaped school of

fish, each individual

shaped like a single

scale on the larger

fish: some truths are all

a matter of scale,

in the manner that shale

will flake into thin layers

of and like itself,

or a roof is made

of shingle upon shingle

of roofish monad.

Scale, fish, school of fish…

“That’s a fractal, isn’t it?”

was your feedback when

you ate what I said.

“A form that’s iterated:

output is input

ad infinitum.”

Must I now mull it over?

I mulled it over.