Book: The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems
Quotes of Book: The Trouble With Poetry - And
You, Reader
I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you, that it was I who got up early
to sit in the itchen
and mention with a pen
the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.
Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen– it was just a matter of time
before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.
Plus, nothing happened that morning–
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside–
and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.
I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another
like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time–
me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrageas, reading this. book-quotepoetryreaderBuilding with Its Face Blown Off
How suddenly the private
is revealed in a bombed-out city,
how the blue and white striped wallpaper
of a second story bedroom is now
exposed to the lightly falling snow
as if the room had answered the explosion
wearing only its striped pajamas.
Some neighbors and soldiers
poke around in the rubble below
and stare up at the hanging staircase,
the portrait of a grandfather,
a door dangling from a single hinge.
And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed
by its uncovered ochre walls,
the twisted mess of its plumbing,
the sink sinking to its knees,
the ripped shower curtain,
the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.
It's like a dollhouse view
as if a child on its knees could reach in
and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.
Or it might be a room on a stage in a play with no characters,
no dialogue or audience,
no beginning, middle, and end–
just the broken furniture in the street,
a shoe among the cinder blocks,
a light snow still falling on a distant steeple, and people
crossing a bridge that still stands.
And beyong that–crows in a tree,
the statue of a leader on a horse,
and clouds that look like smoke,
and even farther on, in another country
on a blanket under a shade tree,
a man pouring wine into two glasses
and a woman sliding out
the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper
filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives. book-quotefoodcityexposedTheme
It's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwich
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,
I am consumed by the wish to add something
to one of the ancient themes–
youth dancing with his eyes closed,
for example,
in the shadows of corruption and death,
or the rise and fall of illustrious men
strapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster.
There is a slight breeze,
just enough to bend
the yellow tulips on their stems,
but that hardly helps me
echo the longing for immortality
despite the roaring juggernaut of time,
or the painful motif
of Nature's cyclial return
versus man's blind rush to the grave.
I could loosen my shirt
and lie down in the soft grass,
sweet now after its first cutting,
but that would not produce
a record of the pursuit
of the moth of eternal beauty
or the despondency that attends
the eventual dribble
of the once gurgling fountain of creativity.
So, as far as great topics go,
that seems to leave only
the fall from exuberant maturity
into sudden, headlong decline–
a subject that fills me with silence
and leaves me with no choice
but to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vine
and surrendering to the ivory goverance
of the piano by picking out
with my index finger
the melody notes of "Easy to Love,"
a song in which Cole Porter expresses,
with put-on nonchalance,
the hopelessness of a love
brimming with desire
and a hunger for affection,
but met only and always with frosty disregard. book-quotelovehopelessnesspoetryEastern Standard TimePoetry speaks to all people, it is said,but here I would like to addressonly those in my own time zone,this proper slice of longitudethat runs from pole to snowy poledown the globe through Montreal to Bogota.Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band,sitting up in your many beds this morning-the sun falling through the windowsand casting a shadow on the sundial-consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words.They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are,or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion.Rather, they are at work already,leaning on copy machines,hammering nails into a house-frame.They are not swallowing a vitamin like us;rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon,even jumping around on a dance floor,or just now sliding under the covers,pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps.But we are not like these others,for at this very moment on the face of the earth,we are standing under a hot shower,or we are eating our breakfast,considered by people of all zonesto be the most important meal of the day.Later, when the time is right,we might sit down with the boss,wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table,but now is the hour for pouring the juiceand flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster.So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam,lift our brimming spoons of milk,and leave it to the others to lower a flagor spin absurdly in a barber's chair-those antipodal oddballs, always early or late.Let us praise Sir Stanford Flemingthe Canadian genius who first scoredwith these lines the length of the spinning earth.Let us move together through the rest of this daypassing in unison from light to shadow,coasting over the crest of nooninto the valley of the eveningand then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night. book-quotenightpoetrymorning
