Antiquity Read online

  2

  Out at the Mall

  after Martial

  She waltzes by

  as if we’d never met

  but that smirk

  her new petit ami

  shoots my way tells all

  Braggart with that

  sharp haircut!

  I thought I’d caught

  the difficult catch seduced

  the unseduceable

  But the joke’s on him!

  I know how that hair

  will grow back

  once she’s through

  Ever seen stubble

  return from the axe?

  Listen Up Medusa

  Seduced by your statuesque

  hourglassivity the oracles

  are all correct we’d fail

  even as tresses to exist

  and this icy innuendo

  where blades come whetted

  daily for our splattered

  scales scalding light

  welling in the cold

  as the next of those perky

  paladins approaches

  mirror-toting

  as we’ve been told

  he may Watch as we act

  on our own for once

  It’ll really fuck everyone if?

  when? reclaiming our limbs

  serpentine prelapsarian

  we just get up and storm

  right out of myth

  Riposte to Ode

  It isn’t like that Horace Life stresses us out

  However many hundreds of decades later we’re told

  to welcome anxiety is beneficial

  and to quote honor our imperfections

  You’ve got the Adriatic Sea We’ve got what

  the Finger Lakes? Not quite as conducive

  to worrying the infinite question so we worry

  about other things equities statistics

  I’m not really a wine man either

  not in the unmixed sense where Alcibiades

  might barge in any moment and out-naked us all

  I’m an American so I prefer pig iron

  Wildflowers abound somewhere I’m sure

  I don’t know anything about flowers though

  Few of us in the cities follow them

  the way you seem to as if tracking currencies

  But to speak to your point about an actual

  battlefront approaching Main Street who knows?

  Maybe we would resort to hookers and crack

  per your suggestion I can’t say Horace I wish I could

  Personal Narrative

  I’ll probably die having worried too much about morals

  The ocean harms the moon and the moon

  harms us it’s a simple narrative

  Except for the way forgiveness evaporates

  once so fleshy and red and eager to please

  it evaporates into molecules into families

  Then again I rarely agonize over the ocean

  possibly dying while it brushes my toes in search of afterlife

  as if I were its god

  Broken Home

  The Buddhas of every religion

  once rapidly lost

  interest

  Clouds like mud crowded over the driveway

  where dark nightgowns

  ignited

  The family already burned down

  swims instead

  with mastadons

  Endurance

  after Giotto’s Miracle of the Spring

  Whether the palette

  was muted by time or intent

  cleft indigo pale escarpment

  deep plum the horse’s coat

  and the robes at the rock where the fountain unfurls

  in a trickle of silk

  One turns to chastise

  one gestures back

  toward somber blossoms nicked oak

  what are these minerals

  our minds are made of?

  Oh and the idiot to my left

  who forgot the water

  is he really divine as I am?

  ache at the kidneys

  and light slate straining still

  beneath the gloss and the yolk . . .

  Frame

  after Kandinsky

  Out of whose first-person

  slopes emerge points of light

  left on in a high-rise

  junk of fog human contours

  the profile of a face receding into

  any given number of minds

  Out of whose melon-

  blue hill past telephone poles

  cilia wires extending

  unattached as the eye

  glosses from cloud

  to unaffiliated cloud

  black with blurred edges

  each limb gangly

  as in the cusp of prepubescence

  Out of whose colors

  fusing colors some total

  organism slips

  toward bewilderment

  of multiple vanishing points

  and opens itself

  finite now milky clear

  to the moon’s membrane

  starch-white actually egoless

  Phenomenon

  A goldfish glides toward me

  pond water cool against our presences

  and sunlight glancing the pearls

  Upon approach its mouth disappears

  just pops right off the goldfish’s face

  so the fins glide forward

  more as a passive symbol

  Sadness wisdom dejection

  of course have nothing to offer

  The other fish retain

  only their own interests at heart

  as the water holds its placid poise

  Nothing happens still nothing happens

  Sand flares up from the floor

  to skirt our rawish motions

  while the oblivious tail

  flitters on a cold reminder

  More and more doubt fills the water

  Restoration

  What can we live off if not little data?

  overseas news? news from the mountains?

  What can we look at

  perceiving no lack of deep space relay?

  the steeple’s black entablature?

  gas-lamped air among the greens?

  Far into the field of unbelievers

  the mulch and the mill and

  oh here’s someone who reads

  so we gather around the central pole

  updates drifting like honeysuckle

  over the trade winds and listen

  to the bouzouki’s local melodies

  intimations of miracles voices like batteries

  and fall back on a future where the price

  of wheat is again skyrocketing

  Unjustified Mood on a Monday Evening

  If in the stillness

  of lamp or carpet

  Corsica for example

  Napoleon off

  at boarding school

  his parents in

  evening mauve

  strolling their favorite

  esplanade poplar leaves

  flapping like flags

  from greenish

  balconies in Monet

  3

  Ruins

  A man picks up a piece of flint in 1982

  at home on his seaside patch of grass

  Though the earth still sits in darkness

  it is spring and there are turnips

  How can your temple lie scattered in ruins

  before it has even been built? the man demands of Jupiter

  loafing on the green run where cows graze

  Hold on the god responds lifting his left

  headphone slightly In a few years

  clouds will hardly dare to pass Gold inscriptions

  will flare in the sun archways everywhere

  plinths inner sancta neglected statues

  eyes glowing and robes painted red


  All this without fire the man

  snaps back which you insist on withholding

  Some pillars still reach the height

  of five or six drums marble with even fluting

  but most have dwindled to one or two

  maybe some portico chalk white bitten by ages

  The man is sure he remembers fire

  that first escalation of feeling

  later so controlled maybe the size of a finger

  Torches ringed the highest rows

  where Carl Lewis broke ten seconds

  and the Dream Team posed for Wheaties

  over gladiator-littered water

  riots still smoldering in streets

  everyone had thought forgotten

  Yes he’s sure he remembers

  though maybe that naked

  spiky-haired creature beside him

  twisting and untwisting

  his triceps tattoos simply to pass the time

  plunged the images into his brain

  The earth sits in darkness

  The man chews his turnips flicks away leaves

  It is spring Jupiter has gotten up

  and slumped off toward the breeze

  flowing over the dry ground

  that held his temple once The man

  senses his presence in the whitecaps below

  that tempered indifference

  scorching his forearms the back of his neck

  There will be fire soon Bibles

  glass displays of caryatid fragments

  long stretches of empty highway

  Modern Sensibility

  Everyone here

  is dying to

  arrive at some

  gravely original

  take on things

  every image every

  idea shifts

  and contorts

  all out of breath

  while along

  the edge of the

  lake for decades

  those remaining

  sit and discuss

  the reflections

  East

  Blemishes on the loop of the river

  I had to drop him

  Life or death

  for me I saved myself

  Everything happened

  in less than ten minutes

  Cracking and splitting

  roots squirming

  black mist in front of the wave

  I could see no water

  flying boards broken tracks

  a freight car over my head

  No lights and no people

  sky red to the east

  a hole in the roof or the wall

  I never knew which

  A small white house

  went sailing by

  on yellow water

  The lake broke

  then formed again

  miles from its original place

  the town shaved down to rock

  We cannot seek out

  a single soul

  the world floats on water

  boat of the moon

  gliding across its underground ocean

  I saw it coming

  a commotion among timber

  messages going out

  since early morning

  I saved them all except one

  Wall of water the color of coffee

  black care riding behind

  and punishment the imagined effect

  Porches torn loose To flee or endure

  Boards bursting open

  dead horses

  pitched into air

  Cut loose all ties fate of the valley

  decided by signs

  sand stuck to clay

  and vessels of glass

  Illness grips us

  by our soul

  A man washes

  in through the window

  then sinks back out of sight

  We must get away

  from this love of crowds

  Clasped hands folding

  into the underworld

  as the valley divides

  The last of our houses

  disappears to the tide

  Many die willingly

  Bury us with necklaces

  copper ears and gold flowers

  Nourish us only with dust

  We have lived enough Let us not fail

  in the full of our flesh

  suffering comes as profit

  Baskets of dirt offerings of flowers

  bliss in another life

  by torment in this

  The simplest boats

  begin to appear

  along the river

  planks and torn-out ties

  trees shrugging over the current

  I gouged the air

  and told them to run

  They just let me pass by

  bodies already

  pounding into the mud

  No statistics

  for anyone to go on

  impossible even

  to tell what sex

  Black waist black collar

  black dress shoes

  Estimates everywhere by night

  Wallowing in dead water

  beside the hotel

  or floating atop their own attics

  people begin to think

  about where they might be buried

  Gold earrings animal entrails

  God said God said God said

  Many flee toward the green hills

  too sacred to demolish

  with their luminous slopes

  and offerings of blossoms

  Hundreds without shoes

  churn tooth and nail

  straining to understand

  Voluptuous life

  receivers of luxuries

  once lulled to sleep by pleasure

  Let me shiver in the dark

  with this child’s toy

  a lion on wheels

  found bobbing around

  by the roof of the tannery

  Homes of brick

  where families sleep on summer nights

  God came carrying a saw

  Wading among shingles

  till the mountain advanced

  they understand

  instantly

  Steeples stick out of the water

  as pansies float by

  and ducks sport about

  in place of the street

  Examining the future by entrails

  hands clasped

  against the dark

  Though luxury though idleness

  the greater part remains

  having yet touched nothing

  I had to drop him

  A man back East

  recognized me

  Villa View Drive

  Cold house hung with dark grapes

  whose manicured acres

  sense I’m a source of displeasure

  Bright mornings live orchids

  my father from before profound

  with possibility or my father

  from when I was twelve

  or when I was dead gather in the den

  where the stakes of consciousness

  have finally relaxed Over and over

  I disappoint a pollution upon

  the rooms full of pianos

  Lingering under the creak of the beams

  where I can see him and he can see me

  my father and I inhabit the vents

  jangle the oxygen disappear

  around staircase corners

  enacting along undisciplined time

  all the hostilities we believe

  the spirits before us performed

  Dad I can see you son you too

  Hallways pool up at our feet If you want

  something from me if you want . . .

  Or maybe just this will strike fear in your heart

  West

  Each of us seems convinced he is the sole member of the family running home from t
he battle at Marathon bearing good news We have fought bravely and survived and are now fully aware of the irony that the long sprint back will kill us We ask from the outset Are those we’re running to tell really worth the trouble? and How come they weren’t out there with us fighting alongside? So we make a pact with ourselves that this time around we won’t die Or if we die we won’t reveal that we stopped a few times along the way strayed from the legend walked a little to catch our breath We won’t reveal even catching our breath wasn’t enough in the end that we gave ourselves over and savored the sight of olive leaves in the hills the smell of marshes behind us the mist in the laurels at dusk still throbbing with victory