letters:notes :: words:music

The word goes round Repins, the murmur goes round Lorenzinis, at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers, the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club: There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing: There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps not like a child, not like the wind, like a man and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow, and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo or force stood around him. There is no such thing. Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood, the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children and such as look out of Paradise come near him and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit— and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand and shake as she receives the gift of weeping; as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance, but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing, the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow, hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea— and when he stops, he simply walks between us mopping his face with the dignity of one man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower  Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees  Is my destroyer.  And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.  

The force that drives the water through the rocks  Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams  Turns mine to wax.  And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins  How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. 

  The hand that whirls the water in the pool  Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind  Hauls my shroud sail.  And I am dumb to tell the hanging man  How of my clay is made the hangman's lime. 

  The lips of time leech to the fountain head;  Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood  Shall calm her sores.  And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind  How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

  And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb  How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

I was a boy when I heard three red words  a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--I asked why men die for words.

I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns, lilacs, told me the high golden words are: Mother, Home, and Heaven--other older men with face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality -- they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.

Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks of doom and damnation, soup, and nuts: meteors flashed their say-so: and out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by--gimme a plate of ham and eggs--how much--and--do you love me, kid?

Your stomach, darling, is upset. Your head runs its cold, yet From your bed you smile on the room For love of love; your head assumes A bright sickness and your eyes Flavour our dry temerity. Our quiet is the spoken words of fear, Yours the waxy entering ear That takes your sick-room pulsing in Through the wireless anodyne; Ours too this waiting, healthy on chairs, For further lovers down the stairs. We do not know whose kiss has bled The pale lips on the vivid bed But wait still as the coughing comes For your eyes, some sick-bed crumbs.

When I lie down I think, ‘How long before I get up?’ The night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn. (Job 7:4)

You’d think, bedraggled as I am by the illness of my age, I’d be able to lounge a little.

That I’d shut out the noise, as others do, and I would sigh and sleep.

Let me eat Tootsie Pops, I’d think. Let me lay in the moonlight and grow the opposite of babyfat.

Lie, I mean. Let me lie. I have had to wrestle with grammar all my life. And what people call ideals.

I used to love ideals, but that wasn’t cool. Plus there was money to be had. And ass. Scads of ass.

Now I forget. The principal’s your pal and not the principle. At least I’ve retained that.

Give up your sleepless nights the man on T.V. said. Talking to me. Like, how did he know?

I could have dozed through half a dozen shows and all the ads. Even commercial noise

might have eventually been absorbed into my dreams. It might have become my dreams.

But it’s hard for me to lie still (lay still?) while I am getting fucked. Sorry.

It’s late and you been at me all night and I hadn’t risen from it. I was tired.

I’m even more tired.

But now I’m up.

Language is a whore, a mistress, a wife, a pen-friend, a check-out girl, a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette.

Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries.

Language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm, wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy,

the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.

Every morning I look up at the moon and I think You are a kiddie-pool and I will drown in you. I think about field trips and cold cuts. I think about dividends and other words I don’t understand. I make five hundred lunches in advance. I want to be prepared. I want new shoes. I want them to be waterproof and unforgettable. I want the kind of resume that takes home all the prizes and a salary commensurate with thunderstorms. I want to believe that there are people in this world whose lives are the size of houses and their bills are paid on time and when they see birds in the sky they think that’s a nice thing to see. In my free time I clip coupons and put them in my wallet where I forget to redeem them and this gnaws at me day in and day out and when I close my eyes I can feel my heart and it is trembling.

In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Because the white truck traveling the span of the Williamsburg Bridge could be the white fastener traveling the top of a ziplock bag, the East River and tugs might be contained without spilling in today's October light, along with this new spray of trees and picnic tables which appeared when the industrial tide of Williamsburg went out. If these could be contained, then likewise the two cyclists, now dismounted and steadying their bikes as they kiss, and surely it could hold the music they heard last night eddying again around their thoughts, and the memory of their first idea of the future loosed when he held her in a doorway lit by cobwebs of spring rain.

Not long before she died my mother told me that her one regret was never to have traveled and that since she had just read about it or somewhere that reminded her from sometime Venice was the place she would have gone to and might still in her haunting of the afterlife. She had already questioned God in heaven and the heavy Bible verses she was taught and now saw death as her last chance to live, her last chance to spend the green-gold leaf pressed into books each October on her birthday. She wept, she understood the innocence of dying. And here she was propped up against her pillow the way she finally would be in her coffin with her eyeglasses held between the light and open page. She wanted me to hear the article that said that Venice would be filled like all Italy that season and that Venice in particular was vulnerable and small, weighted with the souls of travelers, and that in the Grand Canal rivers of dark waters moved.—Would there be space?—It said, salotto citta, that Venice was a city the size of drawing rooms, lit with the flowers of funerals and weddings.

When your father dies, say the Irish, you lose your umbrella against bad weather. May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh, you sink a foot deeper into the earth. May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians, you run out of excuses. May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French, you become your own father. May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Indians, he comes back as the thunder. May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians, he takes your childhood with him. May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English, you join his club you vowed you wouldn't. May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians, your sun shifts forever. And you walk in his light.