Melodic Trains

A little girl with scarlet enameled fingernailsAsks me what time it is—evidently that's a toy wristwatchShe's wearing, for fun.  And it is fun to wear otherOdd things, like this briar pipe and tweed coat

Like date-colored sierras with the lines of seamsSketched in and plunging now and then into unfathomableValleys that can't be deduced by the shape of the personSitting inside it—me, and just as our way is flat acrossDales and gulches, as though our train were a pencil

Guided by a ruler held against a photomural of the AlpsWe both come to see distance as something unofficialAnd impersonal yet not without its curious justificationLike the time of a stopped watch—right twice a day.

Only the wait in stations is vague andDimensionless, like oneself.  How do they decide how muchTime to spend in each?  One beings to suspect there's noRule or that it's applied haphazardly.

Sadness of the faces of children on the platform,Concern of the grownups for connections, for the chancesOf getting a taxi, since these have no timetable.You get one if you can find one though in principle

You can always find one, but the segment of chanceIn the circle of certainty is what gives these leaningTower of Pisa figures their aspect of doggedImpatience, banking forward into the wind.

In short any stop before the final one createsClouds of anxiety, of sad, regretful impatience

With ourselves, our lives, the way we have been dealingWith other people up until now.  Why couldn'tWe have been more considerate?  These figures leaving

The platform or waiting to board the train are my brothersIn a way that really wants to tell me whey there is so littlePanic and disorder in the world, and so much unhappiness.If I were to get down now to stretch, take a few steps

In the wearying and world-weary clouds of steam like greatWhite apples, might I just through proximity and apingOf postures and attitudes communicate this concern of mineTo them?  That their jagged attitudes correspond to mine,

That their beefing strikes answering silver bells withinMy own chest, and that I know, as they do, how the lastStop is the most anxious one of all, though it meansGetting home at last, to the pleasures and dissatisfactions of home?

It's as though a visible chorus called up the differentStages of the journey, singing about them and being them:Not the people in the station, not the child opposite meWith currant fingernails, but the windows, seen through,

Reflecting imperfectly, ruthlessly splitting open the bluishVague landscape like a zipper.  Each voice has its ownDescending scale to put one in one's place at every stage;One need never not know hwere one is

Unless one give up listening, sleeping, approaching a small

Western town that is nothing but a windmill.  ThenThe great fury of the end can drop as the soloVoices tell about it, wreathing it somehow with an aura

Of good fortune and colossal welcomes from the mayor andCitizens' committees tossing their hats into the air.To hear them singing you'd think it had already happenedAnd we had focused back on the furniture of the air.

The Painter

Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas

Until the people who lived in the buildings

Put him to work: “Try using the brush

As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,

Something less angry and large, and more subject

To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer

That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?

He chose his wife for a new subject,

Making her vast, like ruined buildings,

As if, forgetting itself, the portrait

Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush

In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:

“My soul, when I paint this next portrait

Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”

The news spread like wildfire through the

buildings:

He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Too exhausted even to lift his brush,

He provoked some artists leaning from the

buildings

To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer

Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,

Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.

Finally all indications of a subject

Began to fade, leaving the canvas

Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,

Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of

the buildings;

And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a

prayer.

After the Last Bulletins

After the last bulletins the windows darken   

And the whole city founders readily and deep,   

Sliding on all its pillows

To the thronged Atlantis of personal sleep,

And the wind rises. The wind rises and bowls   

The day’s litter of news in the alleys. Trash   

Tears itself on the railings,

Soars and falls with a soft crash,

Tumbles and soars again. Unruly flights   

Scamper the park, and taking a statue for dead   

Strike at the positive eyes,

Batter and flap the stolid head

And scratch the noble name. In empty lots   

Our journals spiral in a fierce noyade   

Of all we thought to think,

Or caught in corners cramp and wad

And twist our words. And some from gutters flail   

Their tatters at the tired patrolman’s feet,

Like all that fisted snow

That cried beside his long retreat

Damn you! damn you! to the emperor’s horse’s

heels.   

Oh none too soon through the air white and dry   

Will the clear announcer’s voice

Beat like a dove, and you and I

From the heart’s anarch and responsible town   

Return by subway-mouth to life again,   

Bearing the morning papers,

And cross the park where saintlike men,

White and absorbed, with stick and bag remove   

The litter of the night, and footsteps rouse   

With confident morning sound

The songbirds in the public boughs.

Still, Citizen Sparrow

Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call   

Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air   

Over the rotten office, let him bear

The carrion ballast up, and at the tall

Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you’ll see

That no more beautiful bird is in heaven’s height,   

No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller

flight;   

He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free,

The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you   

Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he   

Devours death, mocks mutability,

Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new.

Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget   

How for so many bedlam hours his saw   

Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw,   

And the slam of his hammer all the day beset

The people’s ears. Forget that he could bear   

To see the towns like coral under the keel,

And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel   

How high and weary it was, on the waters where

He rocked his only world, and everyone’s.   

Forgive the hero, you who would have died   

Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide   

To Ararat; all men are Noah’s sons.