Collected Earlier Poems (18 page)

                         A casual, leafy sprawl

    Of floated lights, of waverings, these are

Swags of mimosan gentleness, and all

    The quiet, bourgeois riches of Bonnard.

               Or were, until just now the air

    Came to a sudden hush, and everywhere

                         Things harden to an etched

    And iron immobility, as day

Fades from a scurry of color to cross-hatched,

    Sullen industrial tones of snapshot gray.

               Instinctively the mind withdraws

    To airports, depots, the long, plotless pause

                         Between the acts of a play,

    Those neuter, intermediary states

Of vacancy and tedium and delay

    When it must wait and wait, as now it waits

               For a Wagnerian storm to roll

    Thunder along the street and drench the soul.

                         
Meanwhile, the trustful eye,

    Content to notice merely what is there,

Remarks the ghostly phosphors of the sky,

    The cast of mercury vapor everywhere—

               Some shadowless, unfocussed light

    In which all things come into their own right,

                         Pebble and weed and leaf

    Distinct, refreshed, and cleanly self-defined,

Rapt in a trance of stillness, in a brief

    Mood of serenity, as if designed

               To be here now, and manifest

    The deep, unvexed composure of the blessed.

                         The seamed, impastoed bark,

    The cool, imperial certainty of stone,

Antique leaf-lace, all these are bathed in a dark

    Mushroom and mineral odor of their own,

               Their inwardness made clear and sure

    As voice and fingerprint and signature.

                         The rain, of course, will come

    With grandstand flourishes and hullabaloo,

The silvered streets, flashbulb and kettledrum,

    To douse and rouse the citizens, to strew

               Its rhinestones randomly, piecemeal.

    But for the moment the whole world is real.

               
Whatever pain is figured in these pages

                         
Whatever voice here grieves
,

               
Belonged to other lives and distant ages

                         
Mnemosyne retrieves
;

               
But all the joys and forces of invention

                         
That can transmute to true

               
Gold these base matters floated in suspension

                         
Are due alone to you
.

Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;

Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air

We wawl and cry
.

King Lear
, IV, vi, 182–4

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright
.

Moby Dick
,
CH. XLII

Muss es sein
?

Es muss sein
!

Es muss sein
!

B
EETHOVEN
,
Quartet #16 in F major, opus 135

At five o’clock of a summer afternoon

We are already shadowed by the mountain

On whose lower slopes we perch, all of us here

At the
Hôtel de l’Univers et Déjeuner
.

The fruit trees and the stone lions out front

In deepening purple silhouette themselves

Against the bright green fields across the valley

Where, at the
Beau Rivage
, patrons are laved

In generous tides of gold. At cocktail time

Their glasses glint like gems, while we’re eclipsed.

Which may explain

Why the younger set, which likes to get up late,

Assess its members over aperitifs,

Prefers that western slope, while we attract

A somewhat older, quieter clientele,

Americans mostly, though they seem to come

From everywhere, and are usually good tippers.

Still, it is strange and sad, at cocktail time,

To look across the valley from our shade,

As if from premature death, at all that brilliance

Across which silently on certain days

Shadows of clouds slide past in smooth parade,

While even our daisies and white irises

Are filled with blues and darkened premonitions.

Yet for our patrons, who are on holiday,

Questions of time are largely set aside.

They are indulgently amused to find

All the news magazines on the wicker table

In the lobby are outrageously outdated.

But Madame likes to keep them on display;

They add a touch of color, and a note

Of home and habit for many, and it’s surprising

How thoroughly they are read on rainy days.

And I myself have smuggled one or two

Up to my bedroom, there to browse upon

Arrested time in
Time, Incorporated
.

There it is always 1954,

And Marlon Brando, perfectly preserved,

Sullen and brutal and desirable,

Avoids my eyes with a scowl; the record mile

Always belongs to Roger Bannister;

The rich and sleek of the international set

Are robbed of their furs and diamonds, get divorced

In a world so far removed from the rest of us

It almost seems arranged for our amusement

As they pose for pictures, perfectly made-up,

Coiffeured by Mr. Charles, languid, serene.

They never show up here—our little resort

Is far too mean for them—except in my daydreams.

My dreams at night are reserved for Marc-Antoine,

One of the bellboys at the
Beau Rivage
.

In his striped vest with flat buttons of brass

He comes to me every night after my prayers,

In fantasy, of course; in actual fact

He’s taken no notice of me whatsoever.

Quite understandable, for I must be

Easily ten years older than he, and only

A chambermaid. As with all the very young,

To him the future’s limitless and bright,

Anything’s possible, one has but to wait.

No doubt it explains his native cheerfulness.

No doubt he dreams of a young millionairess,

Beautiful, spoiled and ardent, at his feet.

Perhaps it shall come to pass. Such things have happened.

Even barmaids and pantry girls have been seen

Translated into starlets tanning themselves

At the end of a diving board. But just this morning

Something came over me like the discovery

Of a deep secret of the universe.

It was early. I was in the dining room

Long before breakfast was served. I was alone.

Mornings, of course, it’s we who get the light,

An especially tender light, hopeful and soft.

I stood beside a table near a window,

Gazing down at a crystal bowl of grapes

In ice-water. They were green grapes, or, rather,

They were a sort of pure, unblemished jade,

Like turbulent ocean water, with misted skins,

Their own pale, smoky sweat, or tiny frost.

I leaned over the table, letting the sun

Fall on my forearm, contemplating them.

Reflections of the water dodged and swam

In nervous incandescent filaments

Over my blouse and up along the ceiling.

And all those little bags of glassiness,

Those clustered planets, leaned their eastern cheeks

Into the sunlight, each one showing a soft

Meridian swelling where the thinning light

Mysteriously tapered into shadow,

To cool recesses, to the tranquil blues

That then were pillowing the
Beau Rivage
.

And watching I could almost see the light

Edge slowly over their simple surfaces,

And feel the sunlight moving on my skin

Like a warm glacier. And I seemed to know

In my blood the meaning of sidereal time

And know my little life had somehow crested.

There was nothing left for me now, nothing but years.

My destiny was cast and Marc-Antoine

Would not be called to play a part in it.

His passion, his Dark Queen, he’d meet elsewhere.

And I knew at last, with a faint, visceral twitch,

A flood of weakness that comes to the resigned,

What it must have felt like in that rubber boat

In mid-Pacific, to be the sole survivor

Of a crash, idly dandled on that blank

Untroubled waste, and see the light decline,

Taper and fade in graduated shades

Behind the International Date Line—

An accident I read about in
Time
.

What are these women up to? They’ve gone and strung

Drapes over the windows, cutting out light

And the slightest hope of a breeze here in mid-August.

Can this be simply to avoid being seen

By some prying
femme-de-chambre
across the boulevard

Who has stepped out on a balcony to disburse

Her dustmop gleanings on the summer air?

And what of these rugs and pillows, all haphazard,

Here in what might be someone’s living room

In the swank, high-toned sixteenth
arrondissement
?

What would their fathers, husbands,
fiancés
,

Those pillars of the old
haute-bourgeoisie
,

Think of the strange charade now in the making?

Swathed in exotic finery, in loose silks,

Gauzy organzas with metallic threads,

Intricate Arab vests, brass ornaments

At wrist and ankle, those small sexual fetters,

Tight little silver chains, and bangled gold

Suspended like a coarse barbarian treasure

From soft earlobes pierced through symbolically,

They are preparing some
tableau vivant
.

One girl, consulting the authority

Of a painting, perhaps by Ingres or Delacroix,

Is reporting over her shoulder on the use

Of kohl to lend its dark, savage allurements.

Another, playing the slave-artisan’s role,

Almost completely naked, brush in hand,

Attends to these instructions as she prepares

To complete the seductive shadowing of the eyes

Of the blonde girl who appears the harem favorite,

And who is now admiring these effects

In a mirror held by a fourth, a well-clad servant.

The scene simmers with Paris and women in heat,

Darkened and airless, perhaps with a faint hum

Of trapped flies, and a strong odor of musk.

For whom do they play at this hot indolence

And languorous vassalage? They are alone

With fantasies of jasmine and brass lamps,

Melons and dates and bowls of rose-water,

A courtyard fountain’s firework blaze of prisms,

Its basin sown with stars and
poissons d’or
,

And a rude stable smell of animal strength,

Of leather thongs, hinting of violations,

Swooning lubricities and lassitudes.

What is all this but crude imperial pride,

Feminized, scented and attenuated,

The exploitation of the primitive,

Homages of romantic self-deception,

Mimes of submission glamorized as lust?

Have they no intimation, no recall

Of the once queen who liked to play at milkmaid,

And the fierce butcher-reckoning that followed

Her innocent, unthinking masquerade?

Those who will not be taught by history

Have as their curse the office to repeat it,

And for this little spiritual debauch

(Reported here with warm, exacting care

By Pierre Renoir in 1872—

Apparently unnoticed by the girls,

An invisible voyeur, like you and me)

Exactions shall be made, an expiation,

A forfeiture. Though it take ninety years,

All the retributive iron of Racine

Shall answer from the raging heat of the desert.

    In the final months of the Algerian war

They captured a very young French Legionnaire.

They shaved his head, decked him in a blonde wig,

Carmined his lips grotesquely, fitted him out

With long, theatrical false eyelashes

And a bright, loose-fitting skirt of calico,

And cut off all the fingers of both hands.

He had to eat from a fork held by his captors.

Thus costumed, he was taken from town to town,

Encampment to encampment, on a leash,

And forced to beg for his food with a special verse

Sung to a popular show tune of those days:

“
Donnez moi à manger de vos mains

Car c’est pour vous que je fais ma petite danse
;

Car je suis Madeleine, la putain
,

Et je m’en vais le lendemain matin
,

Car je suis La Belle France
.”

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and Constancy is dead
,
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence
.

“Greetings from Tijuana!” on a ground

Of ripe banana rayon with a fat

And couchant Mexican in mid-siesta,

Wrapped in a many-colored Jacobin

Serape, and more deeply rapt in sleep,

Head propped against a phallic organ cactus

Of shamrock green, all thrown against a throw

Of purple on a Biedermeier couch—

This is the latest prize, newly unwrapped,

A bright and shiny capstone to the largest

Assemblage of such pillows in the East:

Pillows from Kennebunkport, balsam-scented

And stuffed with woodchips, pillows from Coney Island

Blazoned with Ferris Wheels and Roller Coasters,

Pillows that fart when sat on, tasselled pillows

From Old New Orleans, creole and redly carnal,

And what may be the gem of the collection,

From the New York World’s Fair of Thirty-Nine,

Bearing a white Trylon and Perisphere,

Moderne, severe and thrilling, on the recto;

And on the verso in gold and blue italics

The Fair’s motto: “A Century of Progress.”

To this exciting find, picked up for pennies

At a garage sale in Schenectady

(Though slightly soiled with ketchup at one corner)

Yosemite, Niagara, Honolulu

Have yielded place, meekly accepting exile

In the mud room, the conversation pit,

Or other unpeopled but bepillowed rooms.

This far-flung empire, these domains belong

To Shirley Carson and her husband, “Kit,”

Softening the hard edges of their lives.

Shirley is curator, museum guide,

The Mellon and the Berenson of these

Mute instances (except for the hidden farts)

Of fustian and of bombast, crocheted, embroidered

And stencilled with bright Day-Glo coloring.

They cheer her with their brilliance, with their sleek

And traveled worldliness, and serve as cover,

In the literal sense, a plumped and bolstered cover,

For the booze she needs to have always at hand.

There used to be a game, long since abandoned,

In which he’d try to find what she concealed.

“Cooler,” she’d say, “yer gettin’ really icy,”

She’d say, “so whyantcha fix yerself a drink?”

As he sought vainly behind Acapulco,

All flame and orange satin, or underneath

A petit point of moviedom’s nobility:

A famous, genuine Hollywood Marquee,

Below which stood a spurious Romanov.

He quit because she always had reserves,

What she called “liquid assets,” tucked away.

He had tried everything over the years.

There was no appealing to her vanity;

She was now puffily fat and pillowy.

Reason, of course, was futile, and he’d learned

That strong-arm methods strengthened her defiance.

These days he came home from the body shop

He owned and operated, its walls thumb-tacked

With centerfolded bodies from
Playboy
,

Yielding, expectant, invitational,

Came home oil-stained and late to find her drunk

And the house rank with the staleness of dead butts.

Staleness, that’s what it was, he used to say

To himself, trying to figure what went wrong,

Emptying ashtrays of their ghostly wreckage,

Their powders and cremations of the past.

He always went to bed long before she did.

She would sit up till late, smoking and drinking,

Afloat upon a wild surfeit of colors,

The midway braveries, harlequin streamers,

Or skewbald, carney liveries of the macaw,

Through which, from time to time, memories arose.