THE MORNING OF THE POEM

The Morning of the Poem

for Darragh Park

July 8 or July 9, the eighth surely, certainly

1976 that I know
Awakening in western New York blurred barely
morning sopping dawn
Globules face to my face, a beautiful face, not
mine: Baudelaire's skull:
Force, fate, will, and, you being you: a
p�nter, you drink
Your Ovaltine and climb to the city roof, "to
find a view," and
I being whoever I am get out of bed holding
my cock and go to piss
Then to the kitchen to make coffee and toast
with jam and see out
'The window two blue jays ripping something white
while from my mother's
Room the radio purls: it plays all night she leaves
it on to hear
The midnight news then sleeps and dozes
until day which now it is,
Wakening today in green. more gray, why did
your lithe blondness
In Remsen handsomeness mix in my mind with
Baudelaire's skull? which
Stands for strength and fierceness, the dedication
of the artist?
How easily I could be in love with you,
who do not like to be touched,
And yet I do not want to be in love with you,
nor you with me,
"Strange business" the chinky Chinaman said and
from the kitchen window

259 The Morning of the Poem

The jays are fatter than any jays I eVer saw
before and hanging
In a parlor floor in far-off Chelsea I'm
glad there is a
Watercolor of me in blue shorts, sitting
beside a black Britannica
And a green-glass-shaded student lamp and
a glass of deep red wine
Ruby wine the throat of a hummingbird
hanging on speeding
Wings in fierce blue delphinium depths I think
About those hvo blue jays, like me, too
chubby, and Baudelaire's skull,
That sees in the tattered morning the passing of
The lost and indigent, the lost, the way
the day when I arose
Seemed lost and trash-picking for a meatless morsel,
a stinking
Bone, such as in this green unlovely village
one need never
Seek or fear and you descend to your studio
leaving on your roof
The exhalation of Baudelaire's image of
terror which is
Not terror but the artist's (your) determination
to be strong
To see things as they are too fierce and yet
not too much: in
Western New York, why Baudelaire? In Chelsea,
why not? Smile,
July day. Why did Baudelaire lvander in? Don't
I love Heine more? Or
Walt Whitnian, Walt? No, they come to my death­
bed and one by one take my hand
And say, "So long, old man," and who was it
who in the Cafe Montana told,
In all seriousness, that the triumph of Mrs S.,
;-.�
future Duchess of W., was that
"They say she's a circus in bed." I like to
dwell on that, the caged lions
And the whips, ball-balancing seals, "And now,

260
 without a net . . ." the odious
Clowns: boring Ensor and pseudo-symbolism of
something meaning something
That doesn't mean a thing at all: the simplicity
of true drama, a trained and
Modulated voice, a hand that rises of itself.
'�La commedia non par finita;
Ma pure e finita" pleasant to be
Goldoni and meet Mr Tiepolo in
The square, or Longhi, Guardi, or am I mixing
up my dates: somebody was older
Than somebody and Goldoni went off to France
on another gray morning in
Which the firs crowd too thickly on these village
lawns: Chestnut Hill Road,
But the blight came and there are no chestnuts; ·

the blight came, and there

Are no elms; only spruce and maples, maple saplings
springing up in hedges,
A skinny weed, and this weed, this wild yello'v
flower lower and larger than
A buttercup, not lacquer yellow, more the yellow
of a marsh marigold, meaty
Like it, though not so large, not nearly so
large, sprinkled in the weedy
Wild-flower lawn, for God's sake, 'vhat is your
name? "Will you have the watermelon
And the iced coffee, dear?" "Comrades, leave me
read my Times." She sets
The dishes out just so, as though to please me
and to please her, a right
Way to do things and that is how she does them. The watermelon
is fresh
And good and behind this grunt of words I see
you, Baudelaire's mask your sign,
Legs apart, addressed to your easel, squeezing
out the tubes of oils
Whose names you know: what is that green you
use so much of, that seems to
Devour itself ? Nor can I quite forget what someone
said: "I got her number:

261 The Momiag of the Poem

�Why did you tell him homosexuality is a neurosis?' "
I said, "She said
She didn't say it, but she did." Hard to
achieve with so much information
Available, so little to be believed. Last July
was an inferno, tempests of
Rain, then seared grass, this July overcast
with hottish afternoons: I
Begrudge that far-off island in Penobscot Bay,
mossy walks and Twin Flower
Corner, icy swims in early morning off pebble
beaches, the smell of juniper
Where my dead best friend will always walk
beside me, stride ahead of me.
"When I walk with you, all I see is the heels
of your sneakers": were
You buried in your sneakers? Of course not,
though in a tender joke you were:
A nosegay tossed on the coffin: but this is not
your poem, your poem I may
Never write, too much, though it is there and
needs only to be written down
And one day will and if it isn't it doesn't matter:
the truth, the absolute
Of feeling, of knowing what you know, that is
the poem, like
The house for sale buried in a luxuriance of
overgrown foundation planting
Across the street upon this hill (tax.us,
cotoneaster), the doctor has more
Patients in Buffalo: he moved there: I'd rather
stay here and starve, well,
Sort of starve: yesterday I tripped on a scatter
rug and slam fell full length,
The wind knocked out of me: "Shall I call a
doctor?" ''Please don't talk"
"Are you hurt? Can I help you?" '�Shut the fuck
up" I thought I'd smashed
My kneecap-you know, like when you really
wham your funny bone, only
More so-but I got up and felt its nothing-

262
 broken�tenderness and
Hobbled down this everlasting hill to distant
Bell's and bought
Edible necessities: small icy cans of concentrated
juice, lemon, lime, orange,
Vast puffy bags of bread, Smucker's raspberry jam,
oatmeal, but not the good,
The Irish kind (travel note: in New York City you
almost cannot buy a bowl
Of oatmeal: I know, I've tried: why bother: it
would only taste like paste)
And hobbled home, studying the for-sale house
hidden in scaly leaves
The way the brownstone facing of your house is
coming off in giant flakes: there's
A word for that sickness of the stone but I
can't remember it (you'll find
It in that fascinating book Brick and Brownstone:
illustrative photograph)
And in July you take a picture in progress out,
your street in snow,
Air conditioners capped with snow and in the
distance the problem,
An office building straight from Babylon: a
friend said of you, "With people,
He's awfully good," meaning, I surmise, '"kind,
considerate," "Oh," I said,
"When he has to, he can put his foot down," ""I'm
very glad," our friend
Said, "to hear that." Not that he or I meant
you have a taint
Of toughness, just, well, time passes and
sometimes you must say HNo"
Or, "Don't tread on me" but don't change, I
like you as you are, laughing
So loud in Sagaponack the summer neighbors
sent the maid to poke through
Privet and say "There's too much noise": we were
stunned: complaints about
Laughing? We go on, but, of course, it's not
quite the same under

The Morning of the Poem

An almost autumn sky, a swimming pool awash
with cinnamon and gentian
(The sky's the swimming pool, that is) why is
each day dawning so alike? Overcast,
Or gray: choose one: and then there was the just­
before-morning electric storm
Night before last: two killed by bolt in a
Batavia park: my room lighting up
Bright enough to read by. "Fear no more the heat
of the sun, nor the all-
Dreaded thunder-stone," funny, lightning doesn't
scare me any more, it thrills,
So long as I'm indoors, in bed by preference,
with pillows under which to tuck
My head against the louder claps. I'm very brave.
Then a shovelful of earth
Is thrown into the open grave and rattles on
the coffin. Oh goodbye, goodbye.
I want to go away into that blue or dark or
certain or uncertain land: why
Can't we know that it is there and there we'll
meet and grow in friendship
As we have here? You know that Austrian operetta,
don't you, The Land of Smiks?
That is not what I mean. I'm often happiest
walking crosstown on a bright
And icy day when up above mare's-tails sparkle and
I stop to inspect the junk
In junk-shop windows and pass on feasting my eyes
on what to me is beefy
Handsomeness, sexiness, I don't want it really,
just to recollect or think,
My, that's nice, warm :flesh on a cold, ·cold
day: today, July, country edge,
There's almost a chill, and the knee I fell on
throbs more than
Yesterday. What a drag. Michael Lally is a fine
poet and looks straight
Into your eyes. I know someone else who looks
deep into your eyes and under
The curly hair the lies are manufactured. Mostly,

264
 it delights me, like
A farce, the need to dramatize, to make out, "Oh
I was beautiful, oh the most
Famous men all fell for me and slipped it up
my cooze. I've seen
'em all!" I believe you, dear. More kinds of
conifers than spruce grow
On this hill. I wish I knew their names, I have
a friend, a botanist,
Who could tell them to me, one by one. Frank lives
in London Terrace and this
Is the London Terrace story. There's something
'
called the Poison line:
When someone, children mostly, goes, say, munching
in the woods and gets sick
_The doctors set the phone wires flashing to
hospitals, horticultural
Gardens, informed New York. It was 3 a.m., my
friend was asleep in
London Terrace. The phone. Off in Virginia a young
man had quarreled
With his family so he went out in the yard and
gathered castor beans.
They have a hard shell and if you swallow them
like that they pass
Harmlessly through, He crushed them first.
Eight is a lethal dose, He
Picked ten. A young man in Virginia. '�What happened?"
"I said, induce
Vomiting. I'm sure it was too late." "'Did he die?"
"l don't know: I
Tried to check back but I couldn't make contact."
And all that castor
Oil they used to pour down me when I was a kid!
Pity the young Virginian.
And still it's chill and overcast and in the afternoon
we went next door
To tea: a house I'd lived next door to for
forty years and never been inside
Of, not once, before. Mrs Blank, the dead, the former
owner, wasn't much for

265 The Morning of the Poem

Entertaining high-school boys. She died mad, her
little hands clenched in
Monkey fists and wouldn't eat her food. Her husband,
the arborist, he's
Gone too, and handsome Larry, crushed by a car
against the back wall of a garage;
Die, die, die, and only pray the pain won't be more
than you can bear. But
What you must bear, �you will. I've known a
murderer'(or two): or were
They only bragging? Not everyone is quite so nice
as my gentle Grandma Ella
Sleeping away off there in Albert Lea, Minnesota,
where even the lake
Is named Lake Albert Lea: who was he? A surveyor,
it seems to me: you can
See the lake in this snapshot of my mother, kneeling
on the lawn, using
Her turned-over hat to hold a big bunch of s'veet
William: stop stirring
The rice and come 'rvith me to Maine and we'll settle
once for all which
Is woundwort and which Jill-over-the-ground: but
you're painting, or sketching
In big charcoal strokes what will become a painting:
I'm posing, seated
By the tall window and the Ming tree, and look
out across the Chelsea street
And up to where a handsome muscular man in just
a towel leans out into
The snow (it isn't always July, you know) to see
what's going on: my heart
Goes pitta-pat, but you, you won't even down
your brush and take a peek:
I call that dedication: painting, stirring rice,
scooting off
To see the great Arletty as Garance: busy, busy:
happy, happy? Sometimes
I think so, surely hope so: perhaps what I mean
is happier, happier,

266
Plunged in work, sorting out your head: "Bonjour,
madame, I am little
Marcel Proust" "I take the subway, then the cross­
town bus, the small Rembrandt
On the wall," that's rather grand, you know, however
small, and to the collection
Now i.s added one by you and that too is pleasing
and not ungrand: July
Days pass, the brushes slide and pull the paint:
out your win_dow
Do the roses bloom? I hope so: how I love roses!
Bunches of roses on
The dining table, Georg Arends, big and silver­
pink with sharply
Bent-back petals so the petals make a point.
Or V ariegata di Bologna, streaked and freaked
in raspberries and cream,
A few gathered into an amethyst wineglass:
nothing like it and I
Love them, not over yet early in July, this cold
July, the grass for once
Is not overmown, burnt off: the mower is set too
close, it frustrates
Me. Typing in my undershorts, rm cold; abroad,
England, France,
Denmark, Germany (oh yes, and Italy), they've had
a four-week heat wave and
A drought. The pastures for the cows are all
burnt off, only the grapes
In France are happy, what a bonanza there will
be, wine, rich and grapy,
No treat, alas, for those who don't imbibe: rich
as those Poiret robes
And dresses I went to see in the cellar of the
Fashion Institute:
A brown that isn't purple, gamboge, celadon lined
with jade, fat fur cuffs,
Turbans stuck with black aigrettes, luxury and
wit: tell me, you who know,
What is that bird big as a duck that's not a
duck on the grass with a black

267 The Morning of the Poem

Bib and dark tan stripes, is it a kind of dove
or pigeon? What would I gain
By knowing? Like West 20th Street, West 22nd
Street, a white high rise at
Number 360 'vhere the _International Supermarket
nestles? And the Seminary
Enclosing a court of grass and trees, dark­
green-smelling cut-out shapes on
The evening we took our stroll there. Nearby,
the sadomasochistic bars
With men in nails and boots and leather and
the heavier sort of denim,
Clanking keys, the risky docks: you'd be
well advised to keep
Away from: a lot of it of course is
just for show (children playing
Dress-ups) but some of it is more, how you say,
for real: I saw a man's
Back where someone had played tick-tack-toe
with a knife. His wife has
Left him. "Have some speed: -makes you feel
real sexy,'' get away from me you
Poet with no talent, only a gift to destroy:
when our best poet was invited
To review one of your little offerings I said,
"Won't it be like
Reviewing your reflection in an oil slick?"
So many lousy poets
So few good ones
What's the problem?
No innate love of
Words, no sense of
How the thing said
Is in the words, how
The words are themselves
The thing said: love,
Mistake, promise, auto
Crack-up, color, petal,
The color in the petal
Is merely light
And that's refraction:

268
 A word, that's the poem.
A blackish-red nasturtium.
Roses shed on
A kitchen floor, a
Cool and scented bed
To loll and roll on.
I wish I had a rose
Or butterfly tattoo:
But where? Here on
My arm or my inner
Thigh, small, where
Only the happy few
Might see it? I'll
Never forget that
Moving man, naked to
The waist a prize­
Fight buckle on his
Belt (Panama) and
Flying high on each
Pectoral a bluebird
On tan sky skin. I
Wanted to eat him up:
No such luck. East
28th Street, 1950.
How the roses pass.
I wish I were posing on West 22nd Street, seated
by a window and the plants,
While your brush makes whorls in your painty
palette and I watch
The street and kids skim on skateboards: it's
summer, it's July,
Or else it's winter, December, January, February
and the kids are gloved and
Bundled up and it's snowball-fighting time: ''Gonna
rub your face in it!" and
Does and one breaks loose and runs crying home.
In the highest window of
A house across the street a German shepherd rests
his paws on the sill and
Hangs his head out, gazing down, gazing down,
gazing down and taking in the scene:

269 The Morning of the Poem

These flaming Christmas plants bring to mind
Joel Poinsett: must read up on
Him: and in September (it isn't winter, it's
summer, it's July) I'll see your
New crop of work: I'll like that: are you staying
off the sauce? Remember what
The doctor said: I am: remembering and staying
off: mostly it's not
So hard (indeed): did you know a side effect of
Antabuse can be to make
You impotent? Not that I need much help in that
department these days: funny,
I remember walking under the palms on liberty in
1943 with a soldier
I had just picked up and in my sailor suit some­
thing stony as the
Washington Monument I wanted to hide from the
officer coming toward me: I
Guess I was afraid he'd see it, get the picture
of what was about to and in fact
Did happen, and send me back to base. Key West!
the beautiful white houses
With the louvered upstairs, downstairs porches,
the heavy oaks densely hung
With Spanish moss, the tall blue-blacks with
hauteur and disdain, beyond
The chain fence, in their eyes and carriage:
"Stay out of Jungle Town" "You
Bet I will": the barracuda and the angelfish,
stars like the Koh-i-noor
And a full moon reflecting back the star-encrusted
sea, a face-
Enveloping moon I want to see again casting
black velvet shadows of
The palms and broad banana leaves. But that son
of a bitch, that_ soldier:
He was trade. I was much too young in those days
for that jazz and walked
Away and left him to bring himself off any way
he chose, by fist, I suppose.
Sitting typing in my undershorts on this chilly

270
 !?Oggy morning while the rain
Comes and goes: I'd like to live in T-shirt
and undershorts,
Bare feet, my Danish silver chain, a gift from
the one who mattered most,
Gone as last yeai's roses (Souvenir de la
�almaison): that I'll never again
Fall asleep with my head on his chest or shoulder
that kind of bugs me and
Pictures linger clearly: outside the Hotel Chelsea
he stood across
The street, in tweed, a snappy dresser, feet
apart, head turned
In an Irish profile, holding an English attache
case, looking for
A cab to Madison Avenue, late, as usual, looking
right out of a bandbox,
As usual. I won't make a catalogue of all the
·

times we were together I

Remember: just one more: slim and muscular you
come out of the shower,
Wrap a towel around your waist and lean on the
washbasin with one
Hand, then squirting Noxzema shaving foam to
smear on your
Sharp-boned face and shave. Wilkinson Injector.
Green eyes in the
Medicine-chest mirror. You said, '"I'm sorry:
everything just got too
Fucked up. Thank you for the book." That's
what I get. Was it worth it?
On the Whole, I think it was. Toot-toot­
tootsie, goodbye.
The low and seamless cloud is over us, the
all there is to it
Morning sky: again: day after day but today
is breakthrough day, the sun
Burns through then goes away then returns
more brightly, a breezy coolness
At the window and at my back stirs the
Peperomia, the grass here and acr9ss

271 The Morning of the Poem

 The street (HOUSE FOR SALE) almost glares: a
lawn mower makes its heavy hum
Advancing and retreating in a dance, a reel,
sweet Jesus, it's my nephew
Mike mowing his granny's lawn. "Mike, come in
and have a Coke" "l
Will, Uncle Jim, soon as I'm done," he wears an
Ace bandage on an elbow where
He cracked it canoeing at scout camp last week.
lie likes to
Ski, he--likes to wrestle, he has a ten-speed
bike, he likes to shoot small
Grune in the fields and wood behind their house
on the other side of town
Where you get the best views of the sunsets,
violet laced with orange and
White fritters: kimono colors: oh, I saw those
jays again at dawn
Tearing at something white and the something white
was a white petunia, the jays
Are real workers at their job and the petunia row
is shredded almost
All away: tall and sentinel above what's left
of them a dense row of lilies
Long in bud, soon to bloom with their foxy
adolescent girl smell: repellent
Yet sexy and crotch-calling: Baudelaire, I'd like
to share a pipe with
You (we could both wear gloves, for fear of
the itch) and I would be a nineteenth­
Century dandy dude smelling strongly of vanilla
bean: did you know that
Vanilla is an orchid? And so are you, my cutie,
reeking of poppers
In the parlor car, Southampton bound: you must have
had quite a night of it
At the sauna: tell me what you did: you did? Oh wow.
"Jimmy," you said, '�don't tell
Anyone you have syphilis," "Of course I'm going to
tell X, I have no secrets
From him; anyway, I've already told Y and Z, they

272
 didn't take it big and
Laughed when I said they should have blood tests."
I told
X in a skylit room and he was, to my surprise, cross,
unsympathetic, in fact
Disgusted: it was all out of his range, the range of
Things that happen to folks you know: "You must
be· more careful
About catching syphilis," "When you had your accident
I didn't say be
More careful of getting hit by trains," and "If
I'm to have any sex
At all to do so I must run a risk" (back in the
Turkish-bath days): no
One stayed mad, I got well, and when I went to my
doctor for my last
Injection I walked in on his wake. Within a week
his aide had killed
Himself, his wife had burned to death in her living
room, all on morphine
And my doctor had cared, had tried to care for
them all, others too.
In the cool insistent sun of this changed day­
Scotland has gone away, western
New York is, it seems, back to stay-beneath the north
window I see out of when I
Look left, large leaves of Solomon's-seal make light
and shadows on themselves
Moved by air, the air is like the gray-haired striding
slim-waisted
Man who went through the automatic doors yesterday
afternoon at the store ahead
Of roe: I wanted to tap his shoulder and say, "Excuse
roe, I'm sure that we have
Met: were you in the class of '41 ?" Instead I grabbed
a cart, went wheeling
up and down the aisles trying to get a front view of
him and see how he was
Hung and what his face was like. But when I reached
my goal he was wearing
(I surmise) Jockey shorts (I curse the inventor of

273 The Morning of the Poem

 Jockey shorts) and his face
Was weathered like someone who plays golf a lot,
not handsome but a kind of
Face I like: he was smelling and squeezing honeydews
(I'll be your honeydew,
Your Persian melon) when suddenly he raised
his head and passed
Me, as on a tray, a plain and questioning
straightforward hostile look: I
Dropped a green bell pepper (10¢) in the cart and
>'went wheeling on:
"What am I forgetting?": when I was young I didn't go
for guys my age, I sought
Out men his age (fifty-five?) about the age I aro
now, but now men my age are not
Interested in me, they seek out beauties, blue-eyed,
blond and tanned, or in other
Colorations, the cult of youth, I'd like to kick them
all: there's no democracy:
"Time to retire" when I saw a broad-beamed lady
also frown and give me a
Different kind of look: "I know your face . . . aren't
you . . ." you're
Right, dear, you sat in front of me in senior English
or was it chemistry
Or French or study hall? I grab a ton of milk and
head for the express check-
Out lane, first shoving the unwanted bell pepper
in among some
Dog food. The man had vanished. What a great love
ours might have been, doing
It on the golf course at 2 a.m. (he was clearly
married, all the good ones
Are). At the hardware store I bought an onion
chopper, glass and shrill orange
Plastic, and an old-fashioned mousetrap, up-dated
with a scented, simulated
Piece of wooden cheese. I hate mousetraps: waking
in the night to hear
The thrashing crashing struggle on the kitchen
floor, the hideous trapped
Scream of pain: and I'm the one ·who will have

274
 to deal with it: drowning? an
Elephant gun? Besides, what's wrong with mice? A
few mouse turds
Are soon swept up. Now rats, rats are another story.
This day, I want to
Send it to you, the sound of stirring air, soft
sunlight, quivering trees
That shake their needles and leaves like fingers
improvising on a keyboard
Scriabin in his softest mood, and the wind
rises and it all goes Delius,
The sky pale and freshly washed, the blue flaked
off here and there and
Showing white, flat and skimpy clouds haunting
a bright green, a soft blue day.
I'm sorry the full moon is past, still, there
are shadows on the grass
Fit to lie in; study the leaves or blades and let
the scurrying
Black ants traverse your ann, your hand: the dog
next door got in the trash
Again: a black and husky chummy fellow, him I
can't get mad at. The days
Go by, soon I will go back, back to Chelsea, my
room that faces south
And the ailanthus tree wound with ivy, my records,
stacks and stacks of them,
Spohr's Double Quartet, Ida Cox, and sit in your
parlor on the squishy chairs
On West 22nd Street, the Faure Second Piano Quartet,
mirrors and pictures
On the walls: next weekend I hear you're going
To Sagaponack for a double
Birthday party and half of it is you: 37 meets
49: many happy returns to
You and You and years and years to come: today
is a year, a morning, this
Morning was a year, I got up at six? six-thirty?
on the grass there lay one
Streak of morning light: the days and their different
lights: when I
Was a child in Washington they took me to the

275 The Morning of the Poem

 theater to see Edward
Everett Horton in Springtime for Henry (in which
that master of the double
Take toured for years: catch him with Helen Broderick
and Fred and Ginger
And Eric Blore in Top Hat) and when the curtain
went up on the second
Act my breath caught: it was the light: I'd seen
that light before in Chevy
<;hase: an empty living room
with chintz:
An old theatrical effect: then someone entered:
left, right, center? Who
Cares? It wasn't the play I liked-too young to
know what it was
All about-it was the magic of the rising
of the curtain and the slanting
In of dusty golden autumn light. And earlier,
before the divorce, at Virginia
Gold's family farm in stony Virginia, I \vent
paddling bare-ass in a
Brook with another little boy: when I got back
my mother raised heck:
"I told you rwt to go in that brook" "I didn't
go in the brook" (how
. Did they always know? I thought I was such an
accomplished liar: I
Became a pretty good one later) "Then why are
your B. V.D.s on
Inside out?" Unanswerable questions. The big
barn had been struck by
Lightning and burned down. The men were rebuilding
it: Mrs Gold fed the
Chickens and let me help: the pigs were big and
to be kept away from: they
Were mean: on the back porch was the separator,
milk and cream, luxurious
Ice cream, the best, the very best, and on the
front porch stood a spinet
Whose ivory keys had turned pale pink: why? There
was only one

276
Book on the parlor table and it was Lindbergh's
We: how can I know that?
I couldn't read: someone told roe no doubt and
no doubt it was Virginia
Gold, she was a schoolteacher, I'm pretty sure.
I don't remember much about
Her except her blueberry muffins and later
she and my mother had
A terrible quarrel on the telephone�the
harsh and hateful voices made me
Sick-and never met again. Mr Gold drove us
in a Model T or
Touring car to catch a train and in the Union
Station my father, Mark, was waiting
For us: heavy, jolly, well-read man, you've
been gone a long time-
More than thirty years-and time I suppose
has swept all the Golds
Under the carpet too. But I forgot: one of
the best days at the fann:
The women put their bonnets on and I went
with them up a hot dusty road
To fields with rock outcrops (watch out for
snakes) and gathered poke-
Weed. Fried ham and pokeweed, and, in New
Brunswick, a side order of
Fiddlehead fems. Europe bores me: it's too
late: I mean I'm too late:
I've been there: no, it isn't that: I love
architecture more than anything,
Bernini and Palladio and La1,1rana, a certain
church in Venice, Mauro
Coducci, Buonarroti's windows on the Farnese
Palace. Architecture?
What about Donatello and della Quercia,
Canova and Verrocchio, the Pisani?
Music and dancing, acting: the Grand Canal in
autumn after a week of rain:
The water pours from mountains and turns milky­
green, the tourists
And the vapid rich leave and you are left with

277 The Morning of the Poem

 infinite riches,
The lstrian stone with the silver-pink cast to
it of Georg Arends that
After a rainstorm enflames itself: no: that's
the bricks (lstrian
Stone and bricks contrasted) that become petals
of roses, blossoming
Stone. Black gondolas glide by, the sure-footed
gondoliers bending and
Leaning on their poles, wearing green velvet
,...,.. slippers. On Diaghilev's
Tomb a French count left his calling
card: more suitable
Than withering flowers. I left only a glance
and a thought.
But.Europe-split, twisted, shivering-leaved
olive trees,
Grapevines strung high in swags between
poplar trees-Europe isn't
Home. The rolling farmland of New York, or better still
Maine and its coast and
Bays and islands, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,
white clapboard
Houses with red geraniums inside sparkling
windows, eating lobster, greedily,
Vermont with a New Year gift of hellish cold and
deep, glittering, blinding
Snow: lie face down in it and die: please don't
die, get up and go inside
Where the logs snap and crackle and smoke and
give off their
t Heart- and flesh-wanning smell: the beautiful
humorous white whippet
No longer lies, legs in the air, on the green
velvet Victorian couch under
Mrs Appleyard's painting on velvet of an Cpergne
full of fruit: can't one,
Just one, mortal person or animal be immortal,
live
Forever? Not shriveling like Tithonus, not in
an improbable Cloud-Cuckoo-

278
Land you'd like to but can't quite believe in:
ageless, immortal, speedy
Here in Vermont, chasing rabbits, having a wonderful
roll in the horse shit:
'�Yum! Good!" "Whippoorwill! What have you done?"
(His Master's Voice), the
Graceful tail curling down and in between his
legs: can a tail curl down
Shamefacedly? His could, and he could strew
a house with trash, leave
An uninviting mess on stairs: "Surprise! Surprise!"
or the night I crone in
And found between me and my bed the contents
of a three-pound box
Of the choicest candy: a cheval-de-frise of
chocolates: and,
Most beautiful of all, on a long long lawn running,
racing as whippets
Are bred to do and leaping straight into
Kenward's arms, who
Casually closed them: quite an act! (fhat moment in
Serenade when the dancer soars across the stage,
turns, legs in extension,
Full in the male dancer's face and he
clasps her
By the waist. They freeze. .Patricia. Nicky.)
Yes, that whippet is
The one I nominate for terrestrial immortality:
'"They s�y that when
The moon is dark a thin white dog goes racing up
and down Apple Hill,
You see the white scuts of deer fly off to hide,
the skunks
Scuttle under maidenhair, a pond reflects the night
and-this is the scary part-
Out of the 'transpicuous gloom' a dog
named Nightingale
Materializes. I wouldn't live there if you
paid me." Love, iove
Is immortal. Whippoorwill, I know that.
How can I know that? God knows, I may be dumb:

279 The Morning of the Poem

 may be! Was the grave
Lined with moss, a handful of ·wildflowers tossed
in, did marl rattle
On a pine box? Or were the ashes scattered
where milkweed floss
Carry their seeds like little men?
I see a man
naked and handsome
in the pond. I
see a horse
Jumher up a hill.
i see tomatoes
set to ripen on
a sill. I see
a dog, two dogs:
Whippoorwill, of
the mysterious
determined inner life:
"Let me in, let
me out, let me wind
myself in a
crazy quilt," and
pretty, trembling,
hysterical Rossignol
leaping out of
the back seat of
an open car never
to be see!l again.
Rest, lie at rest
among these hills
and mountains
in autumn flowing
in maple colors:
crimson, yellow,
orange, green
with white:
ripeness, a resurrection,
leaves, leaves, leaves,
when it's time,
cover us all.

280
Another day, another dolor. A shopping list:
watermelon wedge
blueberries (2 boxes)
(In a far recess of summer
Monks are playing soccer)
Bread (Arnold saudwich)
Yogurt (plain)
Taster's Choice
Brim
Milk (2 qts)
Whipping cream
Dispoz-A-Lite
Lee Riders
Something for Sunday dinner
Blue Top-Siders (lOY2)
Little apples
Paper napkins?
Guerlain Imp6riale
Steak
Noxzema medicated shave foam
Alka-Seltzer
Baume Bengue
K-Y
There is not one store in this good-sized village
that will deliver. Guess
I'll have to call a cab: while I ate my oatmeal
and read the Courier Express
(that fireman who's been doing it with adolescent
girls got twenty-five years:
"Sodomy in the first degree; sodomy in the second
degree: sodomy in the third
Degree": what's that all about? and a theater group
is putting on a show called
Bullets in the Potato Salad) it begau heartily
to rain: not in drops,
In liquid shafts driving into the lawn and earth
drilling holes, beating up
The impatiens, petunias, lilies (whose cock-like
buds are turning orauge) and
The bluey-purple flowers like larkspur only not
so nice (there is a bowl

281 The Morning of the Poem

Of everlasting on my dressing table: I'd like to
dump it out: I hate the feel
Of their papery stiff petals: why feel it then ?
Can't help myself, feel, feel).
Rainl this morning I liked it more than sun, if I were
younger I would have
Run out naked in it, my hair full of Prell, chilled
and loving it, cleansed,
Refreshed, at one with quince and apple trees.As it was
it was enough to
Sit and eat and watch it, wet weavings of a summer morning,
and try to stop
My mother from slamming every window and shutting out
-�the sme!L
The sweet, sweet, sweet smell of morning rain, in
your nose, on bare skin.
"Don't shut that window: it isn't coming in." "Well,
it might come in and
I'm the one who will have to clean it up." Slam.I
open it again: "This
Rain will last about thirty seconds (it did), I'm watching
it and if
It -starts to blow in I'll close the window." "See
you do: and you can
Mop it." I read about Brian Goodell the great
Olympic teen�
Age swimmer and feel like smashing dishes (never
forget the morning when
Mother yelled, "Don't you dare throw that light bulb
at me! " I didn't: I
Smashed it on the wall: when you're sound asleep
and someone yanks the
Covers off ...).Two people obstinate as mules, who

11,�W�\r� £ihl
love each other: I wonder

�; :t,k:�r�!��;;f;�
Thou ybody?
.t i
Swtffor,.a wliifi:c;'wfii!n.:a'friei;d•ma&iafoke
''' '
·about death I
Laughed too and said, Hl'm ready to go any
time." ''Why, Jimmy!" she said:
"No, I mean it." I wish it was 1938 or '39 again

282
 and Bernie was sleeping
With me in the tent at the back of the yard
the time we got up
In the starry night and went downhill,
down Olean Road, downhill again
And through the pasture where the cows coughed
and exhaled warm breath,
Barefoot among the cow flops (Dutchman's
razors) and stands of thistles and
Buttercups the cows won't eat (if you're not
a farm boy, coming up against
A cow the size of a battleship is not unnerving) (now what
was the name of that boy, the cowfucker,
Who lived down Olean Road ? To each his own), sharp cropped
dewy grass between toes to where Cazenovia
Creek made a big bend and the warm and muddy water was deep
enough to swim in.Starlighted silent
Ripples as you stroke: the thick black shapes against the
black are old big trees: Bernie climbs
Up into one and dives: night air is loudly shattered by a
splash: the crash when the curtain rises
In La Traviata on Act One: Violetta is ��having an at home ":
we don't have towels and stand on the clay
Bank to let the air dry us off, grabbing at each other's cock:
only, it's not that kind of friendship:
Mostly because Bernie was Catholic and worried about confession
and such: me, in th�se days I was randy most
All the time. The back doorbell rings: it's the laundry
lad, he's got my slacks, "a buck twenty-five,"
He's funny-faced, skinny and muscular, red-gold hair, and, sigh,
wears a broad plain wedding ring. I make
Myself sound like a dirty old man, a hound, always on the sniff:
the truth is I haven't had sex in over a year
And a half: as Ethel sang: When the only man in the world
You care about
Talks of somebody else
And
Walks
Out .. (Mr Cole Porter, and I
.

May be misquoting)
Bob, who am I kidding? In some ways you were bright and gifted,

283 The Morning of the Poem

 in others, you were one dumb ox.I insist,
_

Though, you were gifted, much more than, somehow, you could
let yourself know: spending it in trivial
Ways: no: hiding it under the sod, where you couldn't find
or use it.Love letters are said to make dull
Reading: I have one from you that's as good as Byron, and on
it you wrote in your weird hand, "I'm not
Going to read this over because if I do I'll tear it up." I
keep that letter, but only once have I taken it
Out and read it: ouch: cologne in a shaving cut.Where
are you? I don't want to know (yes I do)
How are you? (who cares?) did you and your wife divorce (that,
I am curious about: splitting after twenty-three
Years?) who got the pretty farmhouse in Jersey where the yellow
Japan�se iris I gave you flourish? and why did
You keep saying no to a clump of big white chrysanthemums?
Splendid against deep grass at the end of August, almost
Unkillable, a perfect perennial for a lazy gardener, which you
were (so am I), again, old chum, goodbye: I
Did a better job with Donald, I winkled him out of an antique
shop and back into life and I didn't know I'd
Done it until he told me: they break your heart and then they
thank you: your heart! They break your
Balls and say, "You really helped me: you know, I
was in love with you; I think": the first,
The very first, Paul, the one in high school,
later said, after that winter of
Silent midnight walks in the deep snow, "I couldn't take it:
it was too heavy: you put on too much
Pressure: but I kept that letter you wrote me in that empty
freezing house: it touched me." Every time
He thought he'd got out from under I thought of a new trick:
a dozen dark red roses for his mother (she,
She was nice), "Paul, I'm very fond of Jimmy: I've invited him
to dinner to help celebrate my birthday, " that
Must have pissed him off: I went though and enjoyed myself:
with Paul's parents, surprisingly, I was
Never shy, bragging about my Schuyler descent and 'vho Alexander
Hamilton married (it wasn't me): or the dark
Summer night when Bernie-we were getting old, planning to
go to Guatemala, we still slept in the tent-and

284
 I crept intO their darkened house and up the stairs and into Paul's
room and woke him up: he was furious but got
Dressed and came out to the Roycroft Inn and got mildly drunk
on gin and Squirt: I knew it would work:
Paul was nuts about Bernie. All Bernie ever said about him was, ''I
saw your heartthrob the other night
At Kleinhans Music Hall: I knew him by his piggy little .eyes."
Then one day (snap your fingers, tap your toes)
It was over: I passed him on the street and looked at him un­
sheepishly and said, "Hi, Paul," he was startled into saying
"Hello" for the first time in a year: later, not much later but later,
comparing notes on our first acquaintance
With queer (''gay," if you prefer) New York, he said, "One night
I hocked my one good suit so I could go to the
One Two Three Club and hear Roger Stearns play Cole Porter: it's
cheap if you sit at the bar": "I'm well
Aware: did you get picked up?" "fm not telling": which meant
he didn't: he was not good-looking enough to
Make it in that kept-boy crowd (between sets Roger Stearns sat at
his own table with the most beautiful sailor
f--. I ever saw-on the nights when I went there). We were sitting on
a sofa, side by side, and Paul reached out and
Put his hand on my crotch and fiddled with my fly (the crust) and
got the horselaugh of his life. He sure did
Have little piggy eyes. "Let's take a walk to Stinking Pond."
"O. K.," he said: he was a realist in a
Sickening sort of way. Years aftenvard he called me at the Museum
and said, "Let's .get together": "I'd love to
But I'm going out of town: a Museum show rm working on.,,. Finis:
Paul, with the peculiar cock, short, thick,
Twisted, lumpy, like a piece of rotted rope (give it to the
oakum pickers), I'll remember you one way,
Sitting in front of me in I wonder which class, with beautiful
Patricia sitting in front of you and leaning
Back while you slowly combed her hair. You were also Luther
Smeltzer's pet: that I did not like: it made
Me jealous: Mr Smeltzer, who opened windows for me on
flowering fields and bays where the water greenly danced,
Knifed into waves by wind: the day he disclosed William Carlos
Williams to us, writing a short and seemingly
Senseless poem on the blackb0ard-l've searched the collected

285 The Morning of the Poem

 poems and am never sure which it is (Wallace
Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, I found for myself:
even then, there's a chance that I was somewhat
Smarter than Luther Smeltzer: "Who, where, when, what and
why": his journalism lessons were not too novel)-
And telling us about a book that based its narrative on Homer,
"stream of consciousness," Dorothy Richardson,
After class I asked where could I get that book? "Chuckle chuckle:
when you're in college it will be time enough."
In my quiet way I never have cared much for horse shit so I
went into Buffalo to Otto Ulbrich's book
Shop, where John Myers, to whom the arts stand indebted, then
worked as a clerk: "You look interesting:
Here's a copy of my new little magazine, Upstate." I bought
my book and hitchhiked home. Hiding what
It was like from old book burner, my stepfather, was an easy
trick: "I have to write a book report: it's
A story about poor people in Ireland. Dublin." "Probably
stinks to high hell it's so filthy. Here,
Let me see that book": he leafed through it, not knowing where
to look for Molly Bloom, and tossed it at me:
"Still can't catch: go mow the lawn": I mowed the lawn. One
day in American history class-taught by Miss
Pratt, so old in 1940 she still wore her hair in a pompadour,
combed up over a rat-I was deep in the clotted
Irish rhetoric (as Frank O'Hara said about Dylan Thomas, "I can't
stand all that Welsh spit") when a member of the
Football team leaned over: "Thafs the book that tells it like
it is: it is hot-how did you get hold of it?"
"I guess the same way you did": bright and sassy: but to be
spoken to by a football player and on equal
Terms! and the shock that anyone would think I was reading it
as porn! This was art, this was truth, this
Was beauty: it was also laborious and dull, but I plowed on.
When I first knew John Ashbery he slipped me
One of his trick test questions (we were looking at a window
fu_ll of knitted ribbon dresses): '�I don't think
James Joyce is any good: do you?" Think, what did I think! I
didn't know you were allowed not to like James
Joyce. The book I suppose is a masterpiece: freedom of choice
is better. Thank you, '�Little J.A. in a

286
Prospect of Flowers." Last evening Mike mowed the lawn again:
in the silken dawn each leaf and blade and
Needle bore its crystal drop, diamonds cut into pearl-shaped
perfect globes (I never have seen a round
Diamond: why not? I'd like a few to rattle in my pocket: a
change from rattling change), and the silk
Grew worn, and strained and frayed away and sister sun sipped
the droplets up, not all at once, nor one at
A time, a steady vanishing into the air, sweetening, freshening,
endewing the day. The days go by like leaves
That fall in fall, not yet, soon, so soon, I feel my death in
currents of damp air on the back of my neck,
Filtered through a window screen (a casement window.screen I
open �n the watches of the night, too lazy
To make it to the john, and take a moonlit piss into the tax.us),
death, my death, over fifty years and that is
What I am building toward. No cremation, thanks, worm food,
soil enrichment, mulch. Another morning and
I hand you a hammered silver brooch dripping ·wet, fished from a
stream. Like a curse in a Greek myth, water,
Not rain in drops or streams, in sheets, water solid as that in
a swinuning pool, massively falls, bending the
Thick-stemmed orange lilies to the ground, turning overmown
grass back from scorched tan to succulent green,
Curling (I've never noticed this before) maple leaves in on
themselves like cupped hands and disclosing
Coral petioles: that one red leaf bums on in rain. Here is
a story about Fairfield Porter. A long long
Time ago he went to paint in "the fairy woods'' beyond the
Double Beaches on Great Spruce Head Island.
He had his portable easel and was wearing, oh, sneakers, shorts,
a shirt, and a straw hat, a farmer's hat. He
Set up shop and got to work: a view of Bear Island (owned by
Buckminster Fuller and his sister Rosie). It
Was a fine hot day so Fairfield took off his clothes to enjoy
what salty breeze there was and went on smearing
Maroger medium on his canvas. From Bear Island put out a
rowboat or a canoe (I can't remember everything), in
It a couple, a man and a woman, rowing or paddling over the
sunny bouncing water to the rocky point beyond where
He was painting. Fairfield thought of dressing, but on second

287 The Morning of the Poem

 thought reflected, "This is my island." Now he
Was working the pigments into the medium. The couple beached
in a coign of the rocks, took ashore their lunch
Hamper, and took off their clothes. They were under forty and
handsomely built. They ate their lunch, basked
In the sun and Fairfield forgot them as he went on painting.
After a rest, the stranger got up and left
His mate to wander into "the fairy woods" (so named by Fairfield's
German governess when he was a child: because
Of the silvery beards of moss that hung from the spruce), picking
and eating wild raspberries that flourish there.
He looked up and the naked men confronted each other. Nobody
said "Hello," "Goodbye," "Fine day" or "What's
Your name?" He went back to his woman, they dressed and
returned to Bear Island over the broken gleaming water
Where seals snort and play. Our painter, in his farmer's hat,
naked as a snake-to quote William Faulkner­
Finished his painting, dressed and ankled home. A winter or two
later, in brash New York at a party, Fairfield
Noticed a man across the room who kept frowning at him. The
frown broke into a smile, the smile broke into a grin.
The man pointed at him: "I know you: you're the man in the hat!"
I wish I could say they went on to become the
Best of friends: they didn't, though I suppose they chatted:
"How's Buckie? How's Rosie?" The painting?
The painting did not turn out one of the best. I think Kenneth
Koch has it now. Fairfield's life was full of
Incidents like that, and he always carried them off with aplomb.
Like the time he was canoeing naked and guess
What got sunburned. I like to think of sunburn on a day like
today, rain in sheets and thunderclaps and
Lightning bolts: in the house the lights flicker on and off:
we may go up in a sheet of flame: would the
Rain put it out? Who knows? I wish I were paddling an Old Town
canoe with red and peeling shoulders, bouncing
Over and cutting through curling and icy water: fluent below
me the giant seaweed called devil's�apron,
While there in the pebbly shallows off Landing Beach John
gathers mussels to scour and beard with a wire
Brush and an oyster knife, tO steam and serve hot in soup plates,
rich with the salts of the sea. "Do you often

288
Experience deja vu, Jimmy?" Edwin asked me. "Why yes," I said
(old Truthful Thomas). He and George exchanged
A look like a nod, "That proves it," it seemed to say. A lot· of
people believe that a proneness to deja vu, that
Strange and not unwonderful feeling, I have experienced this, this
light, these trees, these birds, heard. the very
Words you are saying, before, or, it all clicks into place-and
I know what you are about to say: "Please
Stop picking your nose": there, you said it: they see this as
a symptom of schizophrenia. Hence
The look between wise old Edwin (the color of silvery parchment)
and knowing George (whose looks were beginning
To go: it wasn't deja vu that told me they both were hung like
stallions: only- a slight case of experience)
I was feeling upset enough God knows, the sanatorium door stood
agape: but I subscribe to a simpler explanation:
One lobe of the brain registers the event, what in simple reality
is said or happens or is seen, while the other
Lobe takes it in a split second, an infinitesimal split second
later, so, in a sense, there is a real deja vu,
Half the brain has experienced the experience: "I have been here
before": you have: so know-it-all George and
Edwin can go screw themselves with stalks of glass wheat. Like
my dream this morning, casting a pall over
This part of the day (why did it have to stop raining?): Donald
and Roy exchanged a sharp glance, it meant,
"Jimmy is going over the hill": I left in pique and took the
funicular down thf.l sandstone cliffs: on either
Side businessmen in hats and carrying briefcases were sucking
each other off in cave-like cubicles: on
The sunless beach, the day after a storm with screaming and
wheeling gulls and flotsam and jetsam, boards
Stuck with bent and rusty nails and wound with bladder wrack,
they-the border patrol, the cops, the fuzz-
Stopped me and asked to see my passport: in my mind I could
see it in a desk drawer in an orange room:
In this land you can't forget your passport: I turned and left
them and they let me go: I climbed the gritty
Steps which soon penetrated the cliff, the rear entrance to a
horrible apartment house in the Bronx: to
Go forward could only get worse: I turned and ran back down

289 The Morning of the Poem

 to where the tunnel issued from the cliff:
Below me boys \Vere gathering rocks on the beach with which to
stone me. I woke up, glad to get out of my
Fresh white bed (usually, I would rather sleep than do anything):
why should a dream like that fill me with gloom,
A kind of moral hangover: HI may want to die, but at least I
am still alive"? Was it only yesterday I
. Awoke to streaming rain from a dream, a vision, like a late painting
of Fairfield's, one of the ones of a misshap_en
Sun burning through mist over a sliding morning sea? There is
only one sky: a pewter plate, easily bent:
There are two windows: out one grass may be damp but looks dry;
out the one- to the east, enclosed by trees, the
Broad and pointed leaves of Solomon's-seal are thickly set with
water drops, as easy to gather as colorless wild
Berries in a cleft in a cliff, as beads on a Patou dance frock:
green barely freaked with blue and glitter:
Japanese lanterns and serpentine, a confetti blizzard, New Year's
Eve on a ship at sea, Isham Jones, the Coon Sanders
·
Band: "And now for your pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, Miss
Irene Bordoni." Or was it Fifi D'Orsay? Last night,
Driving to the Old Orchard Inn, a flash flood. "Why would a
bank," my brother asked, ''be crazy enough to fin ance a
House on the flat by a creek where the cellar is bound to flood
whenever it rains?" Why, indeed? Crossing
Cazenovia Creek the smoothly racing water was almost up to the
bridge, silent, smooth and creased, a tossed-
Out length of coffee-colored satin. Sadistically, I hop6d to
see a drowned Holstein floating by, a ship of
Furry flesh, its udder like a motor. Drowned Holstein eyes; but
not a Jersey.
A better morning comes to pass
Sunlight buttered on the grass
·L ate, late, I lie awake
Finding pleasure for its own sake
Reading books to pass the time
Print on paper, algae, slime
Until before the dawn a gray
Light breaks, will the day be gay
Or will thunder-stones roll this way?
The former, yes, it may turn out,

290
 Though, no, the latter still come about
In jinglejangle the day may pass
Light freshly buttered on the grass.
My mother goes o:lf to the podiatrist: she has an ingrown toe­
nail, ifs turning black and looks infected.
My sister-in-law will drive. It hurt so much yesterday
morning {Sunday) she almost didn't go to church:
Unheard-of. Every weekend we have the same talk:
''Jim, wouldn't you like to come to church?"
Sometimes I'm rude and say, "Lay off!" Mostly I manage a polite
"No thank you." "I wish you would." "If
wishes were horses then beggars could ride. In other words, I'm
not going to church." "I wouldri't object if you
Want to go to the Catholic church." "If I wanted to go to the
Catholic church, then I would go. As it happens
I don't." Then why do I carry a rosary with me? Partly because
a half-mad old woman gave me one (I have two,
As it happens). "You look like a good boy," she said, "here, take
this": a handful of beads and a dangling crucifix.
I remember the beads slipping through my fingers, decade after
decade, as the car spun east through Newport, the luxury
Cottages, the cliffs, the sea: what happened to what I thought
were my resolutions, praying in the Lady Chapel
At St. Patrick's, going to Mass with kindly Father Lynch,
attending a lecture by Karl Stem, the
Catholic psychiatrist? That was a turn-off: his idea of sin
was certainly not mine: I have never been
Sure about sin: wrong, yes, but sin and evil, it all gets too
glib, too easy. Then meeting the head of Fordham,
Like a handsome snake with George Raft hair (only silvery) who
gave me the fish eye: except for Father Lynch, I can
Live without Jesuits. I can live, it seems, without religion,
though I have never wanted to. Brush in hand,
You've slipped out of my poem: I have such confidence in your
future, in what you'll create, with paint and
Canvas, Conte crayo� and heavy paper, views, faces, a pier glass
in a long room, a fence hung with roses out a
Garden window: is the stereo playing, and if so, what? The Ring,
Scriabin, moth-wing strokes of Sviatoslav Richter's
Steady fingers? Here, I have no phonograph: television. My mother
watches {i.e., dozes o:lf) while I sit and read.

291 The Morning of the Poem

 The Olympics were fun, marvelous slow-motion underwater shots,
replays, of swimmers' arms and shoulders
Flexing and pulling and the turn and push off the wall, the
high divers leaping and spinning to straighten
And smoothly slice the water; the gymnasts, the
fourteen-year-old girl from Rumania who could do
Anything, anything she pleased, delightful, enchanting, and how
the crowd went wild when the Russian weight
Lifter broke the Olympic record and then came back to break all
other existing records: ''He's the strongest
Man in the world!" the announcer squealed. "Ladies and
gentlemen, you've just seen him: the world's strongest
Man!" His voice broke in his excitement. Then horses and hurdles
and Princess Anne: her horse was too feisty to
Handle: the royal family decorated a box: the Queen, Prince
Philip, the Prince of Wales, his brothers: a
Close-up shot: my mother came to long enough to ask, "Does the
Queen have any children?" And dozed off again.
I switch to Mod Squad: Adam Greer (played by Tige Andrews) is
shot by almost invisible poison pellets:
He passes out on the grass: will Peggy Lipton and Clarence
Williams III find out what the poison is in
Time to obtain an antidote? It seems likely. But what are you
painting, oh you who paint on West 22nd Street?
You're not much of one for writing letters, are you? But then,
you said you weren't so I can't complain. No
More am I. A bundle of postcards, all of them dull, sits and has
sat on this desk for days. This afternoon I must
Mail them to you. But it looks like rain! Not againl I wish
I could send you a bundle of orange lilies
To paint. They stand-and lean-in a row, at the top of a wall
by the drive. Their anthers are so delicately
Hung that just walking past makes them swing, and if they brush
your clothes they leave brown stains. Wake up
In the ·night, after midnight, and open the casement screen and
study the road gliding downhill, brightly
Lighted by a misshapen half moon, almost white, scooped out of
lemon ice. How can macadam (or is it called
Asphalt or blacktop?) return this lunar light as a river or
creek might? On this quiet small-town street,
Whose car coasts quietly up the hill at this late hour? Returning

292
 from a social event? A night worker going home
To bed? Haven't I seen this car at this hour before? About
now Mr Talbot used to drive home from the
Buffalo paper for which he wrote a nature column, hunting and
fishing, the ways of wildlife and what was and
Wasn't burgeoning in fields and swamps. And a little later Joe
Palmer's sedan slid by, also home from a Buffa lo
Paper, a different paper, a rewrite man. Other people live in
their houses: I know a lot of dead people: I
Don't think of them much. Standing at the ;vindow, staring at the
street, staring at the tree behind which swiftly
Slips the bright twist of a demi-moon, I wish for someone to take
a nocturnal stroll with, like the moonless
Night on Great South Beach when the waves broke and sprayed us
and you put your arm around my shoulders and
I thought, ·"Why can't we walk on like this forever?" Sandy
sneakers. A car (called the Green Bomb), a drive, home, a
S�ower, mussed sheets, bed, sleep as total black at four windows
melted into the false dawn. Sleep into sunshine,
A Crenshaw melon, and you drive away. rm chilled at this window
here in western New York, studying and losing
What's left of the moon: tomorrow night there'll be a bigger
serving. A n August morning, cool and cloudless,
Maple leaves lightly moving, conifers perfectly still, robins
skimming the grass where a fat black dog named
Cornelia just took a dump, a sky not blue but white, up the valley
from Olean a freight train passes (the distant
Sound of breakers), down the valley toward Olean the loudness and
smell of diesel trucks, .children's voices: shrill:
Back-yard s;vimming-pool voices. One train rolling toward Buffalo
right after the other. that's rare: it's
Raining not knowing why. You put down your brush and sit down
and stare at what you've painted. You light a mild
Cigarette, or a thin cigar. Whoever knows what a painter is
thinking? Is it obscure and muggy in Chelsea, or light and
Shivery the way it is here? What shall I do with the rest of
the morning? Shower, shave, write to Barbara,
Go uptown and buy cool milk in waxy cartons? Call my nephew
and go for a walk? Try to remember what I
Forgot? What I can't remember is the name of my New York
doctor: "Murray." But Murray what? I must have it

293 The Morning of the Poem

Written down someplace, and if I haven't "'you" can tell me.
When you read this poem you will have to decide
Which of the "yous" are "you." I think you will have no trouble,
as you rise from your chair and take up your
Brush again and scrub in some green, that particular green,
whose name I can't remember. Thank God the
Sky cleared: I think it's tonight that the moon is full! Round
and white as opaque ice, hung from a sky hook
Over a city avenue, tonight, riding slowly up a rural sky, a wheel
of Gounnandise with the foil peeled off, smelling
Sweetly of cherries, the colorless side of a Royal Anne cherry,
shedding light perhaps, perhaps with a ring on
The blue-serge night: does a ring around the moon portend rain?
I bet it does, I bet it will, this dank and
Somber summer. The screen through which I peer cubes all into ��
, sampler stitches: the suppertime shadows laid :-�
Out in topiary· work, a dolphin, a spire, a dog, your name, flat - ;\P,
and roughly clipped, dark on light, dark green ·�
On bright moon green, the world smells of mown grass. I think
I see a mountain it must be a cloud: there is
No mountain. Let there be a mountain: Why not? Didn't Long
Island have a hurricane last night? Didn't
I long to be there in the four-poster bed and hear the shutters
rattle and the windowpanes whistle and sing
And the thunder of the surf, wind in the giant plane tree? And
to get up in a cleared-off day and go to the beach
And the dunes and see the scattered wrack, fish and weed and
(always) some cast-up surprise: fishing
Gear, net, an ominous object of red and orange plastic, breakers
rough, dull and full of sand and the sinus-
Clearing oceanic smell. Dunes carved into new shapes, salt
air, combing through the cut grass, beach plum,
Unkillable rosa rugosa. Maybe a big beach cottage has had its
foundation o_f sand eroded by water and wind:
Toppling, ready to tumble: why so much pleasure in wrack and
ruin? A house falls into the sea: my heart
Gives a jump. But the paper says the eye of the hurricane and
the moon-drawn high of the tide did not coincide:
Probably nothing much happened. What a gyp. Or better this way?
At least I needn't feel guilty for my pleasure
In wrack and ruin. Suppertime shadows sneaking over the lawn,

294
 a buzz saw slicing a tree into portions, cars
Coming up the hill to dinner (they all eat Jell-0), me smoking
and you painting: no: cleaning your brushes
(Though about that you are not quite so scrupulous as some I
know): what's for dinner? Shrimp croquettes?
Barbara Guest sent me a card, "Architectural Perspective, Italian,
late 15th Century, u that gave me a pang, that makes
Me long to take you to that loveliest land and we could visit
Vicenza, '\Valk up the drive to the Villa
Rotunda, the building with the noblest profile in the world,
see the cut of the flights of steps as you
Slowly perambulate through grass scattered with pecking white
chickens, go to the hilltop wall and look
Down at the fields below, 'vhere peacocks fan their tails. I doubt
it will happen: still, there's our projected trip
To Washington and the National Gallery, that's to look forward to.
Paintings are such a pleasure: can I tempt you
With Cleveland and Boston and Baltimore? California, frankly,
is just too far. Suppertime shadows, my gastric
Juices are beginning to flow. Barbara writes, "I can see you working
& poking your head outdoors in the evening-or
Taking a late walk-" she may be right. She was right, I poked
my head out of doors after supper (beef in
Tomato sauce-ick) and there the tiger lilies were, in a row
above a loW wall above the drive in which grew
A few more tiger lilies, reddish orange, petals turning back,
dark brown pollen, no scent, the strong
Thick stems beaded with round black seeds. Further on, past
the birdbath, its basin partly filled with
Gunk (childhood memory: "Put down that book and go scrub the
birdbath"), to the apple and quince trees
Looking so old, so unkempt: I remember planting them, they were
just seedlings, or do I mean saplings? Now
They stand, unpruned, unbearing, smothered in swags of Concord
grape leaves lightly, heavily moving like the
Heave of the sea, leaf over leaf, and hung among them cloudy
green bunches of grapes. I would like to wait
And see them empurple, I would like to wait and taste that
particular taste, so sweet when they're really ripe: did
They tell you that if you swallow them the seeds will catch in
your appendix and give you peritonitis? I

295 The Morning of the Poem

v
Always swallow them, don't you? Letting the oozy grape meat slide
down my throat like an oyster: grapes, oysters
And champagne: bliss is such a simple thing. A faded photograph
sho\vs (it says in pencil on the back), "This is
What the woods are like": white-stemmed trees, smudges (needles),
rough soft grass. (I made limeade: sticky
Fingers: I drink and type: sticky keys.) Those woods, that
island and the bay, I won't forget them soon,
Nor that same moon I saw last night hang in glory over this small
hill I used to see ride, embosomed, in the fullness
Of the sky it lit etching the tall, still spruce and casting its
light on the rippled water. that led off and off
To ocean and to where you cannot see: to go out through the
dining porch among the daisies and the crags
And ,moon-bathe. Have you ever swum at night in water so cold it's
like ·plunging into a case of knives, your quickly
Moving limbs dripping with moonstones, liquid moonstones? I
turned my back and this small green world went shadowless:
The nimbus is back at four in the afternoon: no moon tonight.
Before dawn I woke and made my oatmeal, orange juice and
Coffee and thought how this poem seems mostly about what I've
lost: the one who mattered most, my best friend, Paul
(Who mattered least), the Island, the California wildflower paper,
the this, the that, Whippoorwill, buried friends,
And the things I only write between the lines. What can one write
between the lines? Not one damn thing. Look over
Your shoulder, into the future: one thing I want to see is heavy
snow falling in Chelsea, to walk in it, snow
Blo,ving in my face, from where I live to where you live, to stomp
the snow off in your vestibule, to punch your bell,
To hear the buzzer buzz, to push the door and see the open inside
door and you smiling there: "Hi-ee: how are
You? What will it be? The usual?" A tall cold glass of Vichy.
Winter in New York, when the big wet flakes
Stream horizontal. (Funny, I haven't beat my meat in days-why's
that?) I think it may rain again tonight-a
Shower, a smattering-suddenly I feel it in the breeze that
lifts the paper on which I type. I smell
It, faintly, the fresh faint smell of coming summer rain. I
used to climb out my first-floor bedroom
Window, naked, into it: the slippery wet bathmat grass, the

296
 rain, both cool and wann, plastering down
My hair, raill running all over me as I danced or stood in it,
the long persistent tongues of summer rain:
"Want a trip around the world?" "OK" And so it did, the
licking, bathing summer rain. Another dawn as
Gray as hands that shovel pea coal into an Aga cookstove: under
it, the walks and road shine slick as though
Greased with Vaseline: in the middle of the night, deep in
the dark of that time of the morning when it
Seems light will never return and only a weight of black go on
and on, what a storm we had, the lancing of the
Rain, the thunder cracks and lightning bolts happening as one: I
thought the house was struck, or at least a
Nearby tree, my bedroom lighting up in flares like the strobe
light in a discotheque. You bet I didn't go out
In that for· any sexy rain bath: no-siree-bob. The air is cool
but heavy, clammy, robins are garnering earth-
Worms from the lawn: I see one long worm wriggle as it's
swallowed. Early, so early, it lightly rains again: or is
It drops showering down from leaves on other leaves? So early
that the morning paper hasn't come yet: Eric
Larsen brings it, he's about thirteen, with yellow Scandinavian
hair: first his older brother passes, with
Papers for houses further up the hill, then, at, oh, seven or
so, Eric trudges across the grass to leave the
Courier Express on the brick steps: "Good morning, Eric," "Good
morning," gruff, but with a shy smile, and I
Sit down to coffee and the news: the Republican Convention, rapes
and muggings, arson: arson-I don't know why-
Is very big on the Niagara Frontier. A barn burner has been busy
on these summer nights: the Courier keeps
Pointing out he doesn't seem to want to hurt anybody, he just
wants to see the wood flame 'and roar up into
The night sky (although one herd of Holsteins were roasted in
their stalls: perhaps our friend didn't know
That they were there?): I'm glad his meat is not small white
clapboard houses. A day comes in a month, in a season, and
You wish it- were some other month, another season. I never have
liked August much, I wish it were September,
October, I wish it were the fall. Falling leaves, glittering
blue skies, in the country, late goldenrod

297 The Morning of the Poem

And asters, in the city, a crackle to the air, a crackle, and
at the same time a balminess. The Bluebird
Laundry truck comes and goes (I missed my chat with the freckled
driver), there are small dandelions scattered
On the lawn: no, yellowed Euonymus leaves blown down by last
night's storm. With all that sudden force, not
A single lily stalk was bent or broken. They stand in rows in
metal strength and curve their petals back
And give a point to August. "All he cares about are leaves and
flowers and weather": and who are you, which
Maple are you I mean, the one who curves its leaves like hands
disclosing pink palms, growing in clusters on
'Branches with silver bark and already bearing five, six, colored
(a light rich red) leaves? A silver bark?
A',swamp maple: isn't that the one whose leaves turn first? I
think it is, I remember one, deeply blazing
Full in late summer, growing in swampy ground where the waterfall
tumbled and tinkled down to feed the beaver pond.
The other evening my mother and I were watching TV in the living
room when something fell, a metal clang on the
Back stoop. I went and put the outside lights on and looked:
the trash-can lid had been knocked off and
Perched on the can full of trash was the biggest raccoon I've
ever seen: he turned his head and looked me
In the eye, hopped down and walked sedately off into the shrubs.
I put the lid back on and dragged the can into
The vestibule. "I wish you had seen him," I told my mother, ''he
was beautiful: he was so big!" ''Maybe he
Was a dog," she said, deep in her program. I don't know why,
but that breaks me up, like telling someone
You've seen a rat, and they say, ''Maybe it was a fat mouse."
rd love to have picked him up and held him,
Only, frankly, I thought he might incline to bite. I would like
to put food out for him, but how could I know
He was eating it and not the dogs that swarm around this hill?
The dogs, they get enough to eat at home.
The mail comes, the mailman smiles and goes away in blue, slowly
and steadily, to the next house behind a screen
Of trees and shrubs (spruce, forsythia). Letters from Kenward,
Trevor, Anne Porter, Darragh and "Domaine de Ste.
Esteve, Lambesc," in other words, Anne Dunn, who writes:

298
 It was nice having the Hazans here but unfortunately I had to
leave midway through their visit as my brother was dying and I
wanted to be with hirri. In so far as dying of cancer is bearable
his death was, his wife, two daughters and myself never left him,
until the last 24 hours the grandchildren and the dogs ran in
and out as usual, he was heavily doped but conscious and felt
reassured by our being there. I must admit his dying was pretty
harrowing, I have never sat holding someone's hand before as
they "take off." After the funeral Rodrigo and I went to Lincoln
to see the cathedral which was one of Philip's last wishes so we
filled in for him, on the way there we went to the Peak District
which was beautiful, rolling country flecked with stone walls and
dreamy colvs, \Ve stayed at Bakewell and ate Bakewell tarts, also
visited Chatsworth Gardens which are sensational and put the
_ Himalayas to shame, the scale is so cunningly manipulated,
extraordinary growths of giant cow parsley by rushing streams,
I wish you had been there. The temperature was in the 90's which
you wouldn't have liked much. I fell in love with the Lincolnshire
wolds. We came back by the Boston Stump (St. Botolph's) re­
stored by the good people of Boston, Mass, and Ely whose ca­
thedral I really loved, much more so than Lincoln.
How English, the children and the dogs-especially the dogs­
running in and out of the room lvhere the man-
The son, brother, husband, father, grandfather-lay slowly dying.
"In the midst of life '\Ve are in death, in the
Midst of death we are in life": I know how harrowing it must
have been for you, but, though I'm not much of
A mystic, I'm sure in that long last handclasp he gave you
something: not just love, the electric flow of his failing
Power: a gentle charge: and in exchange took with him from your
physical grip all that you felt for him all those
Years, condensed in a red pulsation. And what a fine memorial, to
take a pleasant pilgrimage he would have liked to
Take: Lincoln, the Lincolnshire wolds, the Peak District, Ely, the
gardens at Chatsworth (Paxton , surely?): yes,
I wish I had been with you. Perhaps one day I will. Dear, dear
Anne. What is "the Isle of Ely"? Is there
Really an island? And when next you come to 185 East 85th, please
bake me a Bakewell tart: I'm sure there's a
Recipe in that Florence White cookbook I gave you (and I would
not mind a Grassy Corner pudding). Here,

299 The Morning of the Poem

 Stillness, and a car honks twice, lunchtime stillness: all
morning we lived in a barbershop, the
Perpetual power mowers shaving away the relentlessly growing
grass. Peace and quiet, a sullen, sultry sun
Slants under a leaden sky. A fat woman in a loose dress pads
down the hill: who's she? A big white
· Butterfly zigzags by, and a smaller yellow one: distantly,
a dog barks, nearby, a young child yammers
And squawks (the neighbors have children and grandchildren
visiting), I subside into the quiet of ·my
Room, annunciated by the rapid ticking of my cheap alarm clock.
(The phone bill came: last month I spent
A hundred dollars on long-distance calls: I must be bored here,
without my friends: I shouldn't do it, but
Calling France is so much fun: "Give me the overseas operator":
oh to_ be rich, to do all you want, to visit
Chatsworth and Bathurst, in New Brunswick: oh, you know.)
August half over, and another dawn that is no dawn, a
Mezzotint of a morning: how I used to pore over Pennell's Etchers
and Etching, plate after plate, weird, smeared,
Sooty, scratched: Rembrandt, Whistler, Goya, Felicien Rops, an
Irislunan whose name I forget, a stream densely
Banked by unmown grass: water, sunlight, succulence, a cunre.
I'd like to collect etchings of the post-Whistler
Period, minor works by minor masters, evocative and fresh. My
heavy naked calves are etched with hairs, "'orn
Off on the inner side where my legs rub against my jeans. On
this miserable Sunday morning ("Jim, are you
Sure you wouldn't like to come to church?") I like to sit in this
Hitchcock chair and idly pull my foreskin-I'm
Sitting in my undershorts-and drink iced tea and smoke and have
a passing sexy thought for someone I won't ever
Have-the eyes, the wide slope of the shoulders, the thighs-and
let tunes play in my head: Carly Simon singing
"Anticipation," Mado Robin singing "Fascination," �golden oldies.
I know someone who when he wakes up in the
Morning likes to just lie there and feel himself all over (maybe
he's afraid he vanished in the night: I rather
Wish he would): I like to lie in bed at night and read and feel
myself, shoulders, armpits, chest, belly, crotch,
And maybe tweak a hair. Once I found a kind of a swarm of moles

300
 on my rib cage-only I don't think they were
Moles: I don't know what they were, not scabies, not a rash: little
lumps, growths, a colony. I put rubbing alcohol on
Them and in a few days they were gone. I don't like any funny
business, stuff like that. Herpes simplex! That's a drag:
Eye salve is good for it, I found that out fro_m a doc in Zurich
where I stayed in a snow-white hotel beside the green glassy
And rushing river on which swans pointed upstream toward the
bridge on whose balustrade I was drunkenly leaning one
January night when some men came by and spoke to me in
German: "Surely you speak English?" I said: they thought
I was a gas. We went somew·here to drink and soon I was in bed
with a supple, gray-haired man, playing snakes, flailing
About and knocking the bedside lamp on the floor. He ran one of
the big hotels and used to send me packets of
Marrons glaces sprinkled with candied violets: the desk clerk
gave me funny looks when he handed me
My daily tribute. How I gobbled them up! I wonder what my
chum's name was? Once, when we were dining, the
String quartet played "Wien, Wien," and he leaned across the table
and took my hand and said, "This will be our team
Song": it took a while to figure out what he meant. And once he
said, ''Come": we stepped into his bathroom,
He picked a razor up and shaved my sideburns off. What crust. I
didn't really mind though: I'd only grown them
Because what else do you do on a nine-day crossing? What I did
mind was that it emerged he was a major bore, so
I packed my duds and took an express train to Geneva, which I
only went to because I wanted to stay at a hotel where
Henry James had stayed: it had fallen on sorry days and my view of
Lake Leman was one of banks of fog. I walked past
Calvin's house on moist cobbles, bought a volume of Gide's diary,
saw George Raft in Scaiface, and took the train
To Italy, passing the inspiration of Byron's "The Prisoner of
Chillon." Switzerland, so long. July is gone,
A hunk of August, a few blank days got lost (I couldn't stop
sleeping), the sun came cloudlessly back, hot yesterday,
Hotter today, hotter still tomorrow the TV set predicts: shower
baths help: I'm well bedewed this minute, my
Hair slicked down, and icy orange juice and iced tea with lemon­
both are on my desk-no wonder my time is spent

301 The Morning of the Poem

 Hanging out over the toilet, splashing away like a mountain
rill. Late in the afternoon and suddenly a cool
Breeze springs up and streams in the window: the leaves shudder:
how sweet, when something you really enj?y
Unexpectedly arrives, like the postcard I got this morning from
Ned Rorem, with flattering words about some
Poems, how kind, how nice, but I'm glad I'm not with him on
Nantucket, where I got one of the worst sunburns of my life­
I wonder what it's like, being a composer? Writing goes by so fast:
a couple of hours of concentration, then you're
Spent: but music takes so much time: - the sounds come into your
head, but then, the writing them down, the little
.Notes.I can see Nantucket now, sand and whipping grass under a
glare of sun. There are not many islands I really
Like, the ones where the rocks are slithery under the
thick seaweed when the tide is out, where the
Heart of the island beneath tall trees is all overgrown with fems
and moss begemmed with fog and is silent, spongy
To walk on: on other days, a scented springy mattress to stretch
out on. Little boats emerge from behind other
Islands: utter peace and total privacy.Still, Nantucket has its
points, but I prefer to go north and further north:
Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. Oh, what's to make such a
fuss about? I like all sorts of places. I can't
Believe it, I have to go piss again: it's like that night in
Paris when I first got bombed on Pernod: I
Was making my way along the boulevard back to the hotel when
�
my bladd�r. fla� h� µi_e j)l��sag� that I had to go .and

1,c��� �?[��=;��i!i�5:��·;;;��·�tf'#:ffi��j9�J1�e b16ok,

But that just Wasn't close eri.Ough�- nor could I run.I plunged my
left hand in my pocket, and got a good grip, like
Stopping the flow in a hose, and walked stiff-legged along: the
pressure, the pain, was something else: "My
Brow was wet ": I made it: there I was, confronting a urinal: I
inched down my zipper and put my right hand into
The opening: hideous trauma, there was just no way I could
transfer my swollen tool from hand to hand without a great
Gushing forth (inside my pants), like when Moses hit the rock: so
I did it: there was piss all over Paris, not
To mention my shirt and pants, light sun tans: why couldn't it

302

:f'
 have been the depths of winter, and me in heavy
Dark overcoat? I was so mad I stomped on my way, thinking, "Well
if somebody wants to make something out of it . . . "

(Young and dumb, it never occurred to me that if I'd spilled a

drink in a cafe, rd have looked the same.)
But Pernod, Pernod is murder. I wish I had some now, but tea
and orange juice will have to do:
Tomorrow: New York: in blue, in green, in white, East Aurora
goodbye.

303 The Morning of the Poem