My Poems Won’t Change the World Read online

  while gazing with sketchy senses

  at disappearances and reappearances

  ins and outs and the minuscule gifts

  of memory soured

  in boxes and smaller boxes.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  As though out of register

  the too white light

  enveloped me coming all at once

  out of season and I was unprepared

  I didn’t want to think about it, almost didn’t look

  at the balding fields (but why

  if it was springtime?) tinted by new dawn

  and I locked myself into the symmetry

  of the rooms. But there was my father,

  his head off the pillow, laid out crooked,

  not properly arranged, with slippers on his feet,

  and only half covered so as not to seem

  really put to bed

  but as if in transit—I rest

  a moment and start again—

  ready to drag himself to the control room,

  the kitchen, and go wild before the table

  in a grand shuffling of dishes

  and little bottles to burn in square centimeters

  the sweet movements of life.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  After years of torment years of regret

  what I discover and what I have left

  is a banality fresh and hard to digest.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  Two hours ago I fell in love

  and trembled, and tremble still,

  and haven’t a clue whom I should tell.

  MARK STRAND

  FROM

  THE ALL MINE SINGULAR I 1992

  * * *

  L’io singolare proprio mio

  Onto your sea my ship set sail,

  into that sea I sank and was born.

  I am struck by how strange a season it is

  and by how my body feels the cold.

  From figure to figure love migrated,

  now it stops and shows itself.

  I recognize it in that crimpled current

  on your forehead, small waves alike

  and contrary—and on the surface a kind of awe

  moved, surging through

  whatever seemed rigid, and gave way,

  was transformed into tenderness.

  J. D. MCCLATCHY

  Having reached the point where memory

  by way of too much light almost loses color

  I gathered up your forms in prayer.

  The immense weight of your absent body

  bathed me in sweat at night

  and when I awoke unmoving I prolonged my waking

  to warm myself inside your cloak.

  Then I dressed up in that cloth

  and it was all wrapped up with my breath

  and I strode across conversations

  trying not to wrinkle my dress.

  But sometimes by sheer distraction

  giving in to the questions of my guests

  a corner got caught by boredom

  and slipped away torn here and there.

  To restore the weave to perfection

  uncertain of my hands alone

  I resorted to the virtues of the telephone.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  If you knocked now on my door

  and if you took off your glasses

  and I took off mine which are like yours

  and then if you entered my mouth

  unafraid of kisses that are not like yours

  and said to me: “My love,

  is everything alright?”—that would be quite

  a piece of theater.

  GEOFFREY BROCK

  The Atlantic Day

  When I use my judgment to open up

  to the mild peace of everyday,

  to docile afternoons, to broad and natural sleep,

  no longer unhappy with the climate

  that caresses me, regular, changeless even

  —the clot of voices unknots and calls to me

  and the smells of the streets seduce me

  and I give myself to the corners the piazzas

  the faces of old men and girls, and chastely

  in love I find every excuse for staying—

  suddenly the Atlantic day returns.

  The high light, the high sounds of the light,

  and distance opens. That milky twinkling

  on the shutters is all it takes, those dense, deep

  cracks in shadows, the glare of freshness,

  the waving branches from the balconies,

  and look: it’s summer, and the sky is sea.

  The city lifts and quivers, sailing,

  moved by the breezes. Called from the heights

  unanchored, weightless, my senses

  no longer gathered but wandering freed

  alone and absolute get lost in the air

  and send home news of terror.

  News: while at home each object

  finds its drawer, its shelf,

  I become marginal to myself.

  My matter evaporates.

  The dark, dense island reappears.

  Thick substance, promise of cure,

  let me enter. Bring me back to my boundaries,

  embrace me, mark my contours with your caresses,

  embody me with the weight of your body.

  But it’s the remedy that makes the illness.

  JONATHAN GALASSI

  O lord, lend me virtue,

  undo my laces! Cheer draws near,

  how could I have imagined it?

  Where would I like to be now?

  Naturally unnatural

  always with you who are always the same.

  I linger in millimeters

  of a detail: inner part

  of the lower lip, cistern

  into which I fall dazedly—kernel

  of a medlar, to reach

  a wet smoothness

  I peel off the skin eat the medlar.

  Where would I like to be now

  with the sun half-asleep

  and noise at a distance?

  Well, here, no doubt. I had

  the answer and I said it.

  O spiritual spirit of the bicycle,

  if I were a boy and you

  a girl, or the other way around,

  I could kiss you, I could get close,

  I could suck the kernel of that medlar.

  When I buy fruit I have to taste it

  right away out on the street.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  The body was a sheet it laid itself out

  to receive the morning damp new

  and once again in the light it would appear to me

  the face the adventure. So walking

  I abandoned my journey

  to follow those shoulders, proud shoulders, mutable shoulders.

  Oh how many loves! Until I would stop and think

  and search for the virtue

  at the core of my thought.

  JORIE GRAHAM

  Again it has prepared itself for my awakening

  the intransigent horizon its landscape its hills

  empty of images empty of thought

  except for the unending gloom into which

  the accountants put forth their modest spreadsheets.

  And at the edge of my sleep always the sentinels.

  Always at that hour coming to find me.

  They set the alarm they set the awakening.

  And yes immediately they add up the years, the terrors, the losses, the gains,

  in their hands time the ribbon consumes itself

  subtracting adding how is it that life

  got lost or left behind, and where down that road?

  In broad daylight on the other hand I shall mistake them,

  I shall not compete with them,

  I shall act like it’s nothing, absolutely nothing, and gag them

  and cover them with rags and exhaust them
/>
  showing myself to be ever more uncouth and vain.

  They too shall die. Yes. Let them die.

  Scoundrels, rogues—what do they know?

  How would they ever know I am the error?

  JORIE GRAHAM

  To get out of prison do you really need

  to know what wood the door is made of,

  the alloy of the bars, the precise hue

  of the walls? Becoming so expert, you might

  grow too fond of the place. If you really do

  want out, don’t wait so long, leave now,

  maybe use your voice, become a song.

  GEOFFREY BROCK

  Don’t count on my imagination, no,

  don’t count on that, I won’t preserve you,

  won’t put you on the shelf till winter,

  I’ll open you now and swallow you whole.

  GEOFFREY BROCK

  Thinking about you

  might let me forget you, my love.

  MARK STRAND

  Now wine in my blood I turn again

  to my real thrum, my pulse, and climbing these stairs once more

  lean to the wall to steady myself, for there they are again the veins their marble,

  my prison my transfer station my place to fall

  into your presence beloved nothingness

  who seem like a waste, you, luscious posthumousness,

  yet are so real. Let me swim into you.

  JORIE GRAHAM

  Just hearing a verb

  that sounds true to me

  I feel my blood spurting

  towards salvation. Like coming home

  and finding the merciful fresh sheet.

  DAVID SHAPIRO WITH GINI ALHADEFF

  We’re all going to hell in a while.

  But meanwhile

  summer’s over.

  So come on now, to the couch!

  The couch! The couch!

  GINI ALHADEFF

  This was the mother I wanted

  dark and melancholic

  far from the world

  anxious.

  She hardly speaks and chews her words.

  She falls down sometimes and gets up quickly.

  This was the mother I wanted

  dark grieving

  lame

  and I struggled against the sisters

  demolished the brothers

  because this was the mother I wanted

  willing ample closed imprisoned.

  I wanted no other mother,

  badly grown hair that finds

  neither form nor peace, the shabby copy

  of herself, undone by sweetness,

  the only luxury was her escape

  before the mirror

  as she dressed.

  Before the mirror as she dressed

  her glance would stray

  to a future image,

  I saw in her the first thief

  who stole from me the safe image,

  took it outside and dispensed

  what should have been mine alone.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  Vacant head. Uninhabited shut woods.

  The grass the flowers the pollen the leaves

  flying out now through my window.

  For now it endures, nature, for now still safe.

  This year growing colors crueler than ever.

  JORIE GRAHAM

  Chair, stop being such a chair!

  And books, don’t you be books like that!

  They’re there the way you left them, jackets sloughed.

  Too much matter, too much identity.

  Each one the master of its form.

  They are. They are what they are. By themselves.

  And I see them separate one by one

  and I’m planted too like a little square

  for these objects—solid, single, frozen.

  It will take a lot of airy tenderness,

  a sympathetic flurry to move and rearrange

  these master-forms that never change, because

  it’s not true we come back, we don’t go back

  to the womb, we only leave,

  we become singular.

  JONATHAN GALASSI

  Something that the object never can take in,

  an empty bucket that won’t carry me.

  I held the silent months in a wide weave

  which was supposed to flash forth in full voice.

  I tried to speak and it unraveled on my tongue.

  It’s neither net nor coat, it’s only a screen;

  I capture nothing and it won’t cover me

  but separates one silence from the silence.

  That other labyrinthine and interior sound

  practiced alone as I walk along the street

  or waking up, did not emerge,

  held off from me.

  ROSANNA WARREN

  You sit at the head of the table

  heady with wine,

  and hold forth,

  made proud by my tears.

  But I’m the one who’s crying

  and I won’t move.

  So you get up, be useful,

  pick up the plates!

  MARK STRAND WITH GINI ALHADEFF

  Now it’s sure, the world doesn’t exist

  its labile matter that transforms into

  joy or damnation. That wall,

  that wall, that street, that building side,

  the infected happening in my head.

  Those little thoughts. And time.

  The spirit slips away

  and I don’t hold it.

  JONATHAN GALASSI

  At first the little thought was easy

  a carnation bud

  that only wanted to open narcissistically,

  for if it stayed shut it would wilt.

  Now this hard new thought

  that will not open or decay,

  this spiny bush of evergreen

  which cold won’t burn, which sun cannot ignite,

  which hugs the ground

  bent on itself unchanging

  and contortedly won’t rise,

  compelled, by being born, to last.

  JONATHAN GALASSI

  Christmas. Festival of light.

  In other words: you must begin again.

  Oh savage fear.

  So build the little house again

  and gather yourself up into it

  hot-blooded swollen torn.

  And even if the beginning

  calls to you ferociously, furtively,

  you will not listen, you’ll want to flee, to

  test the strength of

  limbs, to give yourself

  to the woods, to the cold. Let’s see

  how long I’ll last—

  you think to yourself—

  among the boars.

  JORIE GRAHAM

  “I’m going, but where? Oh gods!”

  Always to cafés, restaurants, museums,

  swaying anorexic or bulimic

  between two mothers as always

  this one who loves me falsely

  and would deny me all food

  that one who loves me falsely

  and would kill me with food,

  and me forced to choose one or the other

  starve or binge and meanwhile

  I’m staring at a boy’s beautiful face

  a far cry from my true loves,

  hounded into tourism by those

  wretched roving watchdogs.

  GEOFFREY BROCK

  Scientifically I wonder

  how it was my brain was made,

  what I’m doing here with this blunder.

  I pretend to have a soul and thoughts

  so as to better be around others

  sometimes I even think I’m touched

  by faces and words of people—not much;

  being touched I’d like to touch,

  but then discover that every one of my emotions

  is due to
some approaching thunder.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  A narcissist no more, vanity gone,

  what’s left? A mix of waiting

  and headaches. Thoughts fail me,

  I drag my feet, my latest sin

  sanctity.

  MARK STRAND WITH GINI ALHADEFF

  FROM

  THE FOREVER OPEN THEATER 1999

  * * *

  Sempre aperto teatro

  O loves—true or false

  be loves, move happily

  in the void I offer you.

  GINI ALHADEFF

  I am the mild and obedient nurse

  to this worn-out love.

  I care for it, cradle it,

  hold my temper;

  I satisfy its few needs,

  make good dinners, go to bed;

  then all of a sudden

  I say to myself: “What if I killed her?”

  MARK STRAND WITH GINI ALHADEFF

  When, thanks to the virtues of wine,

  I let go of solid memory and a certain pleasure

  seems almost real to me

  having secretly picked up a scent

  in the john of a friend who uses that scent

  and I’m about to park,

  and I say to myself: “Go on, move, drive around the city,

  you won’t find anything, but maybe

  you’ll see a light on. You’re in love, aren’t you?

  So act like someone in love! Don’t people in love

  drive up and down streets like crazy?”

  But then, because I found easy parking,

  I stop, and while I’m stopped, comfortably stopped,

  I imagine you, in the helpless delay of my love, as mine.