The Vanishings
Stephen Dunn
One day it will
vanish,
how you felt when you were overwhelmed
by her, soaping each other in the shower,
or when you heard the news
of his death, there in the T-Bone diner
on Queens Boulevard amid the shouts
of short-order cooks, Armenian, oblivious.
One day one thing and then a dear other
will blur and though they won't be lost
they won't mean as much,
that motorcycle ride on the dirt road
to the deserted beach near Cadiz,
the Guardia mistaking you for a drug-runner,
his machine gun in your belly—
already history now, merely your history,
which means everything to you.
You strain to
bring back
your mother's face and full body
before her illness, the arc and tenor
of family dinners, the mysteries
of radio, and Charlie Collins,
eight years old, inviting you
to his house to see the largest turd
that had ever come from him, unflushed.
One day there'll
be almost nothing
except what you've written down,
then only what you've written down well,
then little of that.
The march on Washington
in '68
where you hoped to change the world
and meet beautiful, sensitive women
is choreography now, cops on horses,
everyone backing off, stepping forward.
The exam you stole
and put back unseen
has become one of your stories,
overtold, tainted with charm.
All of it, anyway, will go the way of icebergs
come summer, the small chunks floating
in the Adriatic until they're only water,
pure, and someone taking sad pride
that he can swim in it, numbly.
For you, though,
loss, almost painless,
that Senior Prom at the Latin Quarter—
Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and you
just interested in your date's cleavage
and staying out all night at Jones Beach,
the small dune fires fueled by driftwood.
You can't remember
a riff or a song,
and your date's a woman now, married,
has had sex as you have
some few thousand times, good sex
and forgettable sex, even boring sex,
oh you never could have imagined
back then with the waves crashing
what the body could erase.
It's vanishing
as you speak, the soul-grit,
the story-fodder,
everything you retrieve is your past,
everything you let go
goes to memory's out-box, open on all sides,
in cahoots with thin air.
The jobs you didn't
get vanish like scabs.
Her good-bye, causing the phone to slip
from your hand, doesn't hurt anymore,
too much doesn't hurt anymore,
not even that hint of your father, ghost-thumping
on your roof in Spain, hurts anymore.
You understand
and therefore hate
because you hate the passivity of understanding
that your worst rage and finest
private gesture will flatten and collapse
into history, become invisible
like defeats inside houses. Then something happens
(it is happening) which won't vanish fast enough,
your voice fails, chokes to silence;
hurt (how could you have forgotten?) hurts.
Every other truth
in the world, out of respect,
slides over, makes room for its superior.
Photograph of Me
It was taken some
time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background
there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph
was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake,
in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult
to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look
long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
You Fit Into
Me
Margaret Atwood
You fit into me
Like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye.
Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance:
"The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the
saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like
this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me,
sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the
saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
To hear the immense
night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter
that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That's all. Far
away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring
her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night
that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love
her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else's.
She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love
her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights
like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this
may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
Dorothy Parker
By the time you
swear you're his,
Shivering and signing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying--
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Robert Service
Three men I saw
beside a bar,
Regarding o'er their bottle,
A frog who smoked a rank cigar
They'd jammed within its throttle.
A Pasha frog
it must have been
So big it was and bloated;
And from its lips the nicotine
In graceful festoon floated.
And while the
trio jeered and joked,
As if it quite enjoyed it,
Impassively it smoked and smoked,
(It could not well avoid it).
A ring of fire
its lips were nigh
Yet it seemed all unwitting;
It could not spit, like you and I,
Who've learned the art of spitting.
It did not wink,
it did not shrink,
As there serene it squatted'
Its eyes were clear, it did not fear
The fate the Gods allotted.
It squatted there
with calm sublime,
Amid their cruel guying;
Grave as a god, and all the time
It knew that it was dying.
And somehow then
it seemed to me
These men expectorating,
Were infinitely less than he,
The dumb thing they were baiting.
It seemed to
say, despite their jokes:
"This is my hour of glory.
It isn't every
frog that smokes:
My name will live in story."
Before its nose
the smoke arose;
The flame grew nigher, nigher;
And then I saw its bright eyes close
Beside that ring of fire.
They turned it
on its warty back,
From off its bloated belly;
It legs jerked out, then dangled slack;
It quivered like a jelly.
And then the
fellows went away,
Contented with their joking;
But even as in death it lay,
The frog continued smoking.
Life's like a
lighted fag, thought I;
We smoke it stale; then after
Death turns our belly to the sky:
The Gods must have their laughter.