The Gestures

Poetry is about something. It is neither wordplay for its own sake nor navelgazing. I believe with the ancients that “as above, so below”; but for me “below” is the self and “above” is history, which includes the future.

The Gestures

Gestures remain. We could do
without stiff steepled fingers.
But late antiquity’s orant – both
hands raised as if in shock –
may yet serve; or the Moslem palms-out, reading –
if they meant a variety of books
and real surprise.
The head still bends in Grief
as if looking for a lost contact.
Or in Thought – but too often rises
to mimic a screen. The same holds
for excitement, even inspiration:
the face, no longer corresponding, twists;
the archetype hovers, empty.
A hand is extended only in cliché.
The instructor keeps his to himself.
Evangelicals stroke the suit of a brother thief.
Only Love subsists, where it does,
for it looks only at another.
Almost invisibly, the gestures dot
the landscape, not like statues, more like holograms,
and only vanish when you come to fill them.

Net Effect

That night in the dream it wasn’t I
but Hegel who held her in his arms.
Wearing full professorial portrait garb –
fur collar, the immense cravat and coat.
She was that irresolvable memory:
nude, one would think (I would think) for love –
her scent, like a distant orchard,
there – but the long neck bent,
face hidden against his shoulder,
not mine now … His (gloved?)
hand on her back seemed mostly comforting,
though I was jealous of that too.
Had he gazed at her before the dream,
established that the Weltgeist had
as he had predicted crossed the Atlantic,
was moving towards China? Asked gruffly but gently
her social status and ethnicity?
I sensed he was embarrassed,
though the look was the expected basset hound’s,
and when, for him too, she vanished, thinking
Goodbye to all that, whatever it was.

Shelter

At first she hardly notices
the women who treat her wounds,
calm child or children, record what facts
she can give, find her a shower and a room
(This is our room! she tells the kids,
her first new words): they are the state
of being helped. Then, often, panics
about the strength of door and windows
and must be shown each lock and alarm;
and only then may see
that some of her helpers are young and have not
been hurt. But they merge
with the older ones. 

Somewhere outside, feigning
purpose, a man roams, thinking
that of course he was only meant to be
a loner; or raging because
he can’t be comfortably home.
He imagines punishing, which entails, implies,
justice; is as close to him as his blood, his
hands. Fathers, brothers,
aunts, their cousin agents
also somewhere search and patrol,
alive to the outstanding debt
owed a whole clitoris, outraged wealthy
suitor, God or that nearer god,
honor: those ideas that need not be thought. 

She meanwhile, hearing every
security measure repeated,
learns them. The kids settle in; though the room
is small, it can be kept neat. She
meets and finds she can
be talked with, talk to, even suddenly pity
some of the others. They discuss what
they’ll do more than what they suffered.
They discuss how rare
a place like this is, how lucky they are, how
one shouldn’t have to be lucky.
Civilization is the kindness of strangers.

In the Tent

for Vittorio Sereni

Whispers at night, reminiscent
of youth camp, whether
you were among those plotting to torment
or the one beaten. But you’re no longer young,
and the enemy whose watchtowers light
the waste is relatively civilized:
he didn’t shoot you all,
feeds you, only moves you as his lines
advance. So you and the others act
also as if you represent
civilization. But the whispers continue. 

Silently you rise and walk
between the rows of bunks. Nights here are cold,
blankets adequate; many heads
above them sleep with eyes half-open
yet deeply, viewing war and prewar scenes
that now will never be completed.
No bodies move; nobody talks
except that whispering and seated
figure you don’t remember seeing before. 

You crouch beside him and can barely hear
your voice or his. Are you praying? you ask.
He says, I am reporting to the future,
although it has no need or wherewithal
for spies. It has two exits,
through one of which you live
not always in the sound of gunfire;
provided for, with simple rules,
required only
to recognize that one is always captive.

The Welcome

What remains is a sense of preparing
for the arrival of an honored guest.
The impressions were unfamiliar:
arranging a high-piled, powdered wig
on a shaved scalp, choosing and tying
a cravat, donning the calf-length open coat
with its polished buttons, re-exposing and smoothing
the lace ... Besides arising,
like a bubble from oozy depths, from an alien
past, all this involved servitude, servants –
as well as ignoring them, which
was even more uncomfortable. A branch
rapped on a window. How many apartments
could fill those vast and varied grounds,
providing toilets to peasants, and could one keep
the fountains … The guest, moreover
(male, female, plural? And bearing
whatever sash, jewels, medals, sword) – the honor
wasn’t in them but in me;
they were, in fact, irrelevant …
I couldn’t see how that was possible.