I ', I ) I 'I'( )I' POETRY NORTHWEST I );(( i<1 (V;(~ SPRING 1968 I:l>l l < )RIAI. CDNs t ) I .TANT s : In truth, the diabolical comes with its desolations, Its voices, its sulphurous shimmers, On desertand plain, over the warped bedstead, T he wavering delusional flowers.. . Change of Address The minute rages in the clock. Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP Code numbers. My bane, my joy, Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change. My bandy-legged boy, Came roaring down that manicroad .. Harvard is not enough. I walk in this great decay: The woods wet by the wind, The dying moss, the brown F eatures of time's delay.. . I seem to be in darkness all the time. NORTHWEST He believes too much, and he knows too much, That's what we call mad. Now certain names knock on us like a bell. Who would believe the meaning of a stick? There's no one here to tell us we are ill; Reared in another place, he came to woe The loved adore the loved; the sick the sick .. As to his dinner: it was the thing to do .. I am undone by knowing what I've done. Shall the gnarled soul Be reminded again Running from God's a long race, and it always ends in a dead heat. Of anold motion, A slapping of water? For hell is always here: upon the chair And in these papers strewn upon the Hoor. There is suffering and imaginary suffering. Both can be productive of art. I'm tired. Is that maturity? I lost what I found On a dark day, Do I stink the rolling air? A mind unsound This guilt's enough for towns of men: I n extremity. . . I keep it navel-tight; My pride tilting at sticks, I put this darkness in the air. . . The mirror told a dirty joke. When shadows start, a changeling steps Into my dearest dream. A heavenly swearing, tearing off a piece of the wind with his wild w ords.. . I'm waiting for what I am. He stretched himself into the greatest good, I'm feeling with my feet Only to break the borders of his mind: To make myself complete. All these went spinning like a cloudy day. 0 God, we' re all so full of splits. Can I have Blake cutting an orange'. There are brains strewn with nothing but bones. My hair and my ear, my most local condition, O.K. You' re in agony: make with an agony poem. My mile-high meringue, my prodigious pudding .. I tasted, and I ate the world. A mere dying-beetleenergy. I once took third place in a hog-calling contest. POETRY NORTHWEST I fear I have no mind at all. Curolye Stolon 0 ye motions in air, the chameleons of disorder! Four Poems The shape of the mind changes, and we move slow and silvery. What stamp is on my brow, most particular Toe? IS THIS THE P L A CE ? The bright features of lost angels: Yes, yes, T he bright stars say.. . Awakened from death in a strange city by a bolt of sun, or a maid's key Something in me doesn't want to be a poet. the closetdoor isajar in a hotel room that smells of hot paper. I praise myself with howls. Voices scribble the ear; a bell rings; there's a squeal in the works of a clothesline; This swarm of swells betrays, engines rattle the knobs of a chest; The small trees swirl around, scooped out, we have no defense. From nests And only motion stays The thin wafts of the ground, of linens we rise damp stripped T he chilly, daft profound. . . of familiarhands. There's nothing to do but ripple the broad calm of avenues I was not good enough for my own madness. trailing a wing and a shadow across the piazza at noon. If we dip The birds are going, and their slight songs. I am ready fora deeper silence. in narrow streets to pry for local graffiti we see pigeon women at windows, heavy breasts on sills of their arms, For a moment, he almost knew what he was doing. mouths full of names: Giovanni, Leonardo, Armando, plump as worms. No way back through the long arbors of the dead. Our parade ofloons floats by A desire to love myself in another world. . . unconcerned policemen; greedy eyes widen to old geography. We pass barriers of backs. Is this the place? When am I sick? When am I well? Not even God, I think, could tell. We feel a tug at the sleeve and wheel, ready to dive. I feel sorry for the cave, said the Bear. A boy with something to sell! We reach out — to touch a wall. In his grave he went on dying. (arranged by David 8'agoner ) POETRY NORTHWEST I inch my way bhndly CHRONICLE through midnight, the deserted avenue. for Jean Where is he? I clutch the hilt Lost in the shower of faucets my hand closed on when I fell. in clashing cymbals of dishes it's March — I' ve lost my hands Does it hold a steel blade? or the prop of a spoiled child. cold crockery cuts my ankles and the wheels split This must be my street. Though he holds my thumping heart in his pocket The children tug my apron the wounds of their mouths open I drag my meat from folds of his cloak and hope the cop on the beat they squeeze me, screaming, with tears in April a clatter of hail will stroll through the bar door the roof of my mouth is frozen twirling his stick, that he' ll look up and down when I call They mount my thighs their ponies and not mistake me for a criminal. to pummel the toys of my breasts the toys of my breasts — their rabbits Yes, the hand of authority to pick at my eyes' raisins lifts me, slips me my key. as their fevers rise in May Mother croons inmy ear: I am here, I am here, June — Ivacuum around them roots stamped in the soil as I splash in her warm spring not to be reached with reason opening circles into morning. their thorns in my mesh all winter their joints the hips of my roses. P OET IN TOW N FROM A CRIB W IT H H I G H S I DES Eyes rising from under ponds of classes, you, scholarly to the blunt At the throat of the cathedral he pulled point of a pun, run the wool over my light. I toppled from those who love you, who would hold like a paper doll, my hat you even by a long cord began to bite my temples. like a dog in the dangerous country. Lonely loose-jointed and afraid of nothing Skin numb, mouth dry, but nobody, quietly frantic in your hotel knees dragging snow, N ORT H W E S T POETRY you call from the deep dictionary well And now I spin on the silky tide for a touch of warmth, a short stop In a whirlpool wider than my heart, in somebody else's tomb. A seance Vowing, "no matter who goes down, of lips, a clutch of fingers across I will save myself, myself." the tilting table of your sleep, and you drift off dazed, an avatar wrapped II in unraveling momentary cloth. I think I shall go to the city But I shall not go today. I am sent for to sign a, treaty, To mine bridges, and teach ballet. I must ride to twelve crosses on asses, Carol Ha/l I must paint in Peru and Algiers, But they' ve hidden my hat and my glasses THE ABSENT QUARTET And I know they have need for me here. I think I shall come to the country I found a family once But I shall not come tonight In the rushes, rushes. Though I' ve given my word to gentry Their hot hidden breath was on my hands, Who are tartars at any slight, I let a tear fall in duty to them. And I'm needed in Nome as a witness. In love with days I floated safe I have access to key and to file, On the leaves, the leaves. But I have my own feeling of fitness And I tell you I' ll stay for awhile. When robins' songs stuck in those throats, I folded hands to hug my mind. There are fishermen willing but weary I lost a family once Who are waiting to hear my good word. In the dark of the dust, They need intellects even but fiery. Cruel to myself I closed my heart I could give them both peace and the sword. Like aclapped hand on the mouth. Oh, the man with the pouch and the packet Now when they howl in the dark of the moon Is attentive on pike and on pier, At my windows, windows But they' ve hidden my hands in a jacket, I letmy ha.nds fallopen, leave So I know they have need for me here. Them to their shallow graves. When they walk at night I close my ears To the worn wail of their creaking breath III Saying, saying with my mouth Father, Idreamed the horses came, "I will save something for myself." Their nostrils red and wild. When their clenched hands opened to my oar, Our dreams are slow and all the same, I dragged their fingers from my boat So sleep, so sleep, my child. 10 POETRY NORTHWEST Mother, I dreamed you left my god Lenis Turco And ran to wed another. Your fancies are so nild, nzy child, THE SIDEBOARD I only kissedmy brother. The monster in Cousin, Idreamed I loved you, the corner the tame gargoyle kisses But you were not in danger, the daily china guards So why was I afraid for you > the stainlessservice Miss Smith,you are a stranger. serves as reta.incr swallows towels and sustains this daily bread Iv My long legs are old till it is And my kneecaps are skinny, served sets the tone complacent against It is many long years since they were skinned. the wall which like I wear glasses, not braces, my hair is not shiny, I have already dined. the lining of Years ago I whistled in a new way, a belly envelops the hours envelops Walked the street with the step of an angel or a boy. the food of hours Dry greens are gathered now, and why I have remembered, telling of them, is a mystery. heartbeats watchticks pulses and upon the top shelf of My neck is not nice. I have a mole the corner familiar there I did not have, on my right breast. But formerly No one couldjump as high at a new word spoken. xs enshrmed an Oh, millions could I suppose, but they are unwell. old heart a windup clock its All fact is formal now, seeded and sold, pendulum counting meals stainless The cakes disposed of, all the pledges made. Strangers saw to it I am afraid, service linen and At least not strangely. And if I thirst for joy conversation ruminant browsing continent the familiar I shrug. It passes. My losses are not new. monsters inthe corners. POETRY NORTHWEST 13 Robert Hershors 3. EVENING Two Poems the same black bird flies toward the house again THURSDAY, JULY 27 we do not sense 1. MORNING the variety of his circle waiting for coffee shadow not shade smoking reading the grass rapidly upgreen a 1961 ladies home the ice melting journal another dinner bugs on the big window probably the same black bird some inside probably the same some outside last boat on the bay probably the same wanting fallen channel marker 2. AFTERNOON we fight during dinner sitting on the queen i slam a door you throw red tens on his thigh a plate the children hide the weather will clear we attack our guests by noon still it grows dark look for kings again his mother said 4. NIGHT rain ending by two a moth in the room the three of clubs wings against the window tom the flve the nine the jack in the toilet thunder. the storm moving closer. children will awake. weak sunlight you dream always around four of lightning. 14 POETRY NORTHWEST the moth will fly Alviss Greeeberg into my mouth. i will eat its dusty wings. NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1966 lightning. the same face at every window. a dead gull now's not the time on the lawn. headless. I said, for watching a thousand silverfish devoured. the time, just time tom moths on the waves. scream of a boatman. vomiting for some few things hunchback under the house. instead: say, get this mess cleaned darkness again. insane whispers up, kids off to bed, of children in night. then silence, cards put far away, fraud. everyone awake. waiting. lights out, and you Willgs. to party though you don't like that word or deed and in mere waiting answer now BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA the question of my temporizing, or: how I am fading from the bed and reappearing on the floor three feet to the right, reformed by these late is it, anyhow, compassionate machines, the oxygen, the blood, when in another room the intravenous feast, the pump that drains my gall. the kids are playing An uncle shaves me and cries. The wallpaper dances. poker, and the seas The tools of my living flow from a painted bullseye are full of bright slit, my heart staining the sheets, my lungs blue jellyfish, when slapping to the floor, doctors wade in my juices. the southern cross lies so badly tilted I am in a boat, eating transparent sandwiches down on the horizon; with the father of the nurse. We are kelly green. in short, the day is We are thinking of pie. Banana pie. Only pie. Moving to the right. Dante thought of pie. Coolidge. gone that I wanted to dive in, the tide is out, that kite shaped constellation can't cut loose and POETRY NORTHWEST soar, the beach is now sleeping in his room, dark with still blue whorl of blond hair pressed lumps and the dealer to the flat, square cribsheet, takes two (one for breathing the dark world in, me and one for you ) exhaling himself molecule and has to smile at by molecule into air some secret in his hand, a change in flowing over the sill rules, the game is and touching the twist-p lumed cypress that shadows his window, fish, all the suits are blue, they play drifting to feed black flames by starlight, bent of bushes, settling on ivy down over numbers, coiled thick about the house, all goodnights said, counting the costs as his white dreaming settles and determined that upon me softly: manna in the mind's wilderness, tonight it must be we, not they, who quieting the murmuring tribes have to go to bed. of thought under the cold moon of fatherly wisdom that faintly outlines the rock-strewn spiral path James Muuch of forty years' wandering. Three Poems Love leads me tohis door, I stand there, a cut-out man in the squared moon, F OR MA T T H E W A T T W O Y E A R S my sha,dow reaching out, Chance of a stardust speck split by the crib slats thrown OG a galaxy, into fingers, lies across him my seed whirled from love's flash like the soft hand of death. to reach out and join into the God-willed iniracle of this billion-celled boy POETRY NORTHWEST THE ALTERNATE W ORMS AFTER BATH ING MY SON D A V ID (For Kay) The water spiraling into the drain takes your eye, ... the lover, unlike wren or stallion, enchants,perhaps even frightens you: Allies himself with worms, his alternates. the trembling wreath uncoiling, momentarily beautiful, — Thomas Hornsby Ferril drops down the black hole. Lashing my face and hands, spattering the mud at my feet, (That's right, it's trickling through the sewer pipes the first hard rain of winter whips in from the west out to the river, through the hedge of poplars that point their branches, and the river flows to the sea.) long, bare,and white, upward against the murky afternoon sky. The elements have their way: A long time your eye will sight down the line of my finger Birds, animals — all living things have settled into place. I' ll show you the shape of rainwater cupped in a leaf, a rainbow flag hanging in the mist off a fountain, I'm left with my life. suncaught spray as a dog shakes off (silver porcupine! ), Between heaven and earth, without roots or wings, a point of fog moving across the marshes like a sow I walk into my thirty-fifth year. swallowing up glints of sunlight with her reeking mouth, (Time's truth clipping, severing, laying open to the quick. ) and when the moon lifts her hand from the Pacific hump, A slender self is finally letting the harbor waters slide back out the channel, the self. Fragile. Free. you' ll hear the suck and hiss of jetty rocks and pilings that have eroded like milk-teeth roots, I know another world, the creak of straining hemp and the thump of wood over in the the ground heaving, splitting open to bare the slime moorings, of worms, chaff of moles, snake refuse, the sigh of newly-cut runnels the burrowers coming up to scurry in panic about my feet; that crack the sandspits with dark threads and the sky dropping, draining the tidepools.... impaling itself on the racks of trees, shrouding, isolating me Little boat, I' ve seen too much. from all but the scream of bewildered birds. You' re tied to a rotting wharf, a wharf that quivers as each feather wake crosses underneath. One wedge keeps the world level, The most placid day, there's a storm between hull and piling, a blunt steel fact you' ve driven home: and I' ve watched a too-short painter lift a prow out of the water we love each other. as well as pull it under. Pilings buckle, planks sag into the mud, harbors silt .;p. I walk through the poplars to a bare hillside, Water takes it all. gladdened by the sting and chill of the rain, You will go with a floodtide, the numbness in my soaked feet; the sea's shoulder nudging you into the current. the flat gray sweep of heaven focuses down to the joy of my eye; Love will cry out in the snapping of lines. in the soil beneath me, pledged to us forever, lie the supplanting snakes and moles, the alternate worms Let them now keep their place! NORTHWEST POETRY Stephel Kessler I whip my doughy thank-you's in a flower print Apron, at an underwater flame, this two a.m. The dish Wheels wonderfully, hung on a tired eye's pull, A SONIC Imagined out of round. Currents make the back Door swing; you sleep. The curtains hold the rod. BOOM! awakens you at dusk. (I' ve been asleep) but now the broken glass of every dream you ever had prevents your bleeding eyes from opening (So this Stuart Silverman is it) you think (I see it clearly now: it's growing dark) / I f you begin to move you' ll trample on the many-colored frag Two Poems ments (And if I do not?) you' re bound to bleed to death (I see) /This is the way the world PHASE TWO begins: not with a bang, but syllables (I hear decisions climbing up my throat ) a pair ofsneakers for the voice whose hopes Homuncuh fascinate me are your descendants (They — ) descend: they move I almost could be one, travel back from the womb, ever socarefully across the crack wait for the right time, the moment waiting for me, ing dome: they feel their way along the air and fling myself out in a great mob happv to be part of that froth of being. I remember the row of bottles in the castle-shack in C tea, evil liquids shiny like oil covering midges. Heather MeHugh They were said to hold souls those tiny forms and in deep nightmares they moved, only slightly, STREAM OF K I T CHENESS floated in the oil, their unshut eyes filmed with lust. Buttery and balmy in my slip, shod Barelyby the bottoms of my black Alas, poor Tristram! Defrauded of half your vital spirits, Feet, full of blown-ups, full a lady's whim scuppering your currents, Of you, singing like the needled fish That slide still with a guilty glint the old clock tittering in its beard at the stairhead, The length of my midnight veins. and Walter, who in his fifties grew exact, humping his beef down the hall to cornet time. The cake swells out past all Thermometers, the oven bursts, the wall Tristram, I often think of you Wells up like an eye. Swimming, I'm insane; ebbing into the dark, waiting for time to catch you at the end of a tube POETRY NORTHWEST 23 and spew you into the world wet and spongy as a newt. MOVING IN What ever became of your violet eyes and lashes tipped with jet, and who, once Yorickdied, shoveled you into your mound Junkies, tramps knocking snow out of their shoes, soft and furry as man's first descent? whores with bad teeth, winos, people on the beach, sailors tilted in hammocks over rough water, III clerks on their day oR, men going to the cha,ir Out of the startling cinema of dream I broke, scratching through to reality. build fabulous structures that squat in the mind. There was no one there. The walls pushed the paint The poet, too, only he kicks them out by words in green slabs against the powerful air. into the wind's cough, down the crow's slack craw, Sunlight moved in New Guinea. The Red Guards broke down and inoves in later, when the sound has stopped. in tears unable to focus their violence in Peking. Our leaders fled from desire moving into a gray of being, not quite satisfied with what they said but finished, and plotting something on the Big Board in another room. Craig Curtis On the Chicago River ice slowed, the river went underground. Two Poems We saw University Hall, through snow, unable to come down, stuck in the sky like a gigantic lob. "I built that thing" I heard a workman say O N THE STRAFING OF A CHU R C H waiting to complete Phase II despite snow, ice, and an air IN BARCELONA, 1937 dirty with Gary, Indiana, and South Chicago blowing between the vanes of that stone rubber. One of theirown came down on them today. Accelerating smoothly out of the sun IV It made the beads treinble on churchyard tables. I grow not better as I grow older. Sellers scattered with that buckshot run. Like Tithonus, struggle to be young wasting night after night, Now vague, now out of breath, tradesmen sort feed on the thought of ageless cells frightened into movement, Their ware. The quarrelmay go on now, content itbegged gathering by stages as salmon do, moving like eels The question admirably where bodies nestle by the door to seed-grounds a thousand miles away. In the mild catholic noon and flies dream on still legs. What larks, Pip! it looks like going on for rain! That plane may climb and follow down a threadbare If, in all this hall, I could trace a human form, Road its map and plan. But can it, its drift my touchy flesh might tighten like my tie. Wide and generous,escape the modern night Those cannon make? Do any go anywhere Understand: a full professorship is not the end of my ambitions; Over the dead? Or do they only lift I' ve even stopped eating in the faculty lunchroom, in protest. A bruised face toward unimaginable sights? POETRV NORTHWEST LORCA WIIIianz Barroom In the afternoon, through the heat and bicker, a loyalist Two Poems Found him. Recumbent, very quiet among others In the shadows, among coats and faces missed By country buses, his eyelids silk with dust. LITANEIA Brothers, those in Granada, those few in Madrid, Shall hear of it. Touched by a partisan, too dark below the road Rose of Sunrise For the view of generals, Lorca lies. What he did Ourlady of the Time of Disease Proved little, only that he lived in a childish mode. Pinetree green green under snowdrop showing His killers might have stopped him for the heckle In his words, but few saw greater danger soon Rose of Terror Or late in a song. To know what Lorca wrote Ourlady of the Prime of Erotic Money Was to know it useless — as useless as freckled Pinetree green under snowdrop Leaves in autumn courtyards, where pale half-moons Do nothing for those Spaniards vagrant in their coats. Rose of Suicide Ourlady of the Clime of Flowers Unfolding Pinetree green green, u~der snowdrop growing Breret Logal Rose Inexplicable Ourlady of the Lime of the Firing Squad Pinetree green under snowdrop SONNET IN HE R A B SENCE Rose of However She had no place, particularly, to go, Ourlady of the Crime of Imaginary Numbers so, going, went her pretty way wherever Pinetree green green under snowdrop blowing she was sent: loved all her family through their differences because the Bible told her Rose of Heresy to, believed the Bible at her priest's command, Ourlady of the Dime of Upward Mobility obeyed her priest lest God object, and, as Pinetree green, under snowdrop reward, was blessed with beauty and a mind that never questioned where her conscience was Rose 0 Flower Unsyrnbolic it went its subtle way wherever it Ourlady of the Mime of Orthodox Roses pleased: ignored the ugly, praised itself, and more Pinetree green green under snowdrop going than eagerly accepted what it felt rewarding to its conscientious tour Rose of Yes de force: it pared her pretty soul to the bone. Ourlady of the Rime of Nevertheless She had no place to go — and soon was gone. Pinetree green u~der snowdrop POETRY ORTHWEST 27 THE BLUE DRUNKARD breakfast no thanks blue spring suit unyieldmg The blue drunkard who whste shirt grey tte with numb to intercourse sore red dots aching fell naked off his black shoes no Sunday own frenzied front porch school he step and spent all night Saturday snoring attended only in mud and pine-straw the foulmouthed morning mulching among the worship service at boxwoods woke on his eleven in the bad back Sabbath dawn stained light and peeled pink eyes to an absolutely beautiful morning glory growing blue around his hands and 88psgrs'Izzsfl $@lftpzptl fingers and winding up a long white string beside a spider' s SUNNY ENGINES elaborate web connecting rib cage Now I'm 40 armpit elbow and I seethe machines. hump of hip and there Machines love the light. captivating a Even the stars are oiled. couple of odd gnats A human face grows white, and moths the eyes coiled in the head, Sudden emphatic but machinesare better fast American than that. panel truck passed with its polychromo Toward evening the bridges encylopaedic have baby cars, load of sweet-smelling winter sunset traffic is frail, Sunday papers up wrapped in orange flannel the empty street of flown out from the town. the development Why put down machines? laughing Reflections rise from deep sides of the cars Dizzy teethbrush no like water. 28 Po ET R Y NORTHWEST Her mouth cool at the window, Father for a Day the sun combs Would bring in the Marines: her dangerous long hair. The sentry games, the wa,lks. I have no wife or child so fair. Every fourth-week Sunday We' ve failed so far, The Movie Ladies, the walks: or I' ve failed, A thousand and one hugs looking this way and that, In the hush of Fairyland, swerving, duplicate, Rock candy, honeysuckle. changing only lanes. I fall home nervously, Now in this time was a boy we' re nervous At war with a billboard Camel, on the mildest winter nights. A boy more strange than Sabu, Streetlights and headlights, A Camel as real as Japanese. chrome goes wild in the underpass. Each night from our monkey bar jungles, Our earth rocks its children The matrons asleep with their radios, in curved glass. Everything twinkling and ready, We awaited the first Jap-shadow sign, When down the fireescape he would come, Crawling on his belly to the fence; Then up, up a.nd over, assaulting The smoke rings with his stick David Wideees While kissing his wrist with his teeth, The Japs falling back, falling back Two Poems In the circling heat of that Camel. Up, up on Suribachihe climbed, THE ORPHAN'S WAR To sit like a blue-eyed jelly ad Wiping the smoke from his eyes, It was in the time of Ali Baba, As Hollywood, that golden snake below, Jap flags and Sabu, Curled into her warm Pacific. Dry Bones on the radio, And rock candy from RKO. Soon he would jump off with his shovel, That stick that is all things to a boy, It was at the Home during the War, To bury the dead of his war, Where children put in their time: Licking the blood from his wrist. Nice if you were pure orphan, But okay if you were not. POETRY N ORT H W E S T CELEBRATION Jobgg Tuylor The sirens sang the War out Two Poems and I was eager to be the firstboy over as I crouched by the fence that night, IMMOR T A L ITY THR O U G H F R E E ZING each tree beyond a quick Jap waiting, huge beneath the August stars. Frozen like cod or haddock, drowned Inside my chest In liquid nitrogen that smokes castor oil spoons beating, beating, From cold, no mourners will surround drum roll for the first boy caught. Your solid silence. Only jokes Slowly, up the vines, Will follow you into the sleep honeysuckle buds at my neck, Until the final trumpets sound cold wire gashing my thumb. And wake you though God knows you'll keep. Then over and running with blood in my pocket, Birdseye has frozen peas for you, the wind like a sponge in my throat; Spinach and broccoli are green, running running from the Horne But you are white and are the true into Hollywood, into the celebration: Inheritor of this unclean white paper snow Jumble. Eat the frozen host falling in the hair of women Although your lips are ghostly blue; lifting me up in their joy; Nitrogen is the Holy Ghost. fire high beneath the Warner clock the Ali Baba dwarf Stiff as the crucifix you wait waving the news of the Peace; For resurrection on this earth, dancing without his boots Kept in a can like catfish bait. a drunken soldier with a silver dollar, You are a thought for present mirth "Here kid, go buy a wash cloth." But we may change our minds. You try Then deep in the Chinese, A gambletime may consecrate taking the stage And only rnystagogues deny. with my best Jap yell; Rashlights closing in I looked into the future and to shush my dark captives, I saw you thawed. The room wa,s packed though waking the old man With hungry faces; every hand who lived behind the curtain. Reached for a steak. The butcher cracked Then out the exit His knuckles, and began to cut. with a bang to be heard in China; This is my flesh, you said, demand the War going on,going on The best. I saw your eyes were shut. the cop coming out of the night like Clark Gable. POETRY NORTHWEST 33 A ROTTING LOG These days, its skittery ways a problem Child rocked in the womb. The public Falling away to dust, Waiting to brand us by insult The log becomes itself It nightly thinks up — pulling the bed More completely the more From under us, inventing what today It settles slowly down Shall pass as good and valuable. Into its own slack length Always a new game groomed to throw us off, And lies sleeping, dull Or a new cloud, seeded for storm, As that other sodden log Bring us up short of the house, The beached alligator, The door only to enter And as it sleeps digests Our lost children, playing old Itself in slow decay, Spoons for music, Falling, falling away. Plates spread out on the lawn, the hve Of us wet from the descent down. The silent, smothered fires Glow coldly at night, Mere rumor to the eye The log is its own ghost, A body that haunts itself T HE EXECUTION OF OR D E R Although it is dead, Possessed and possessing Hearing the longstream go With its muted violence Again, beneath, after the rains, The saprophytes that feed I know, that to have you Upon this density For the woman you are Keeping its proper silence. Is to come out of that sleep When the servant, sent By the king, went whipping The evening flowers, Arthur K. Oberg That sleep we put right TVYQ PQelTls By love, annealing The uncoverings of lash, fury VOYAGE Sent out before us like a Hame. To scamper back,out of the long dream, Must we have always the thin glass Shattered overthe sink, sharp shards In our hands? Love has been difficult ?|4 POETRY hTORTH W EST Afkhae/ Val Wa l l e ghel that things look much the same, Toro Poems that the same few graves, the smallerheadstones near thefence, remain THE MOO N K ITES decked sadly out in last year's green 0 solitude whence come the stones and plastic evergreens of which, in the Apocalypse, the city of the great king is built. and that the mausoleums still manage somehow to suggest Are you conscious. .. of the stages of your growth? Can you fix the time when a sinall grimy compromise you became ababe, a boy, a youth, an adult, between an old unhappy school an old man? Every day we are changing, and its adjacent church. every day we are dying. ... — St. Jerome Somewhere beyond the mausoleums, This is Maple Grove fluttering somewhere and no one comes here much over the used up place a few kids now and then where the monuments or from the new have settled, tilting neighboring apartments oddly in the weeds, some retired fireman perhaps two kites are rising to exercise his dogs. are floating like the rnoons No one seems tomind. you might iinagine They bury now across the road. keep rising still over childhood's leveled Well, this spring, after months and disremembered town, of pacing in your room the silly moons of love or staring absently moons of that moonlit at books at letters saved and leafy entropy or never sent of random stones or looking simply towards which the blank at whatever monuments white and real moon of absence distance or decay or even love itself the day might balance nicely so irretrievably depend. on the back of a hand, Still, how colorfully they speak you' ve come once more our need for flags to Maple Grove, reading out bright signs and metaphor as absently the names for such simple you'd memorized last fall celebrations ofthe weather and are vaguely pleased as the forever hovering and impossible angel POETRY NORTHWEST might afford those saints from the parking lot. like bald Jerome Tense, vibrant, competitive who, though sick I crouch and stare and altogether weary into the far court nonetheless sat quiet listening... in his wilderness, as the slow stars neither wary of the lion revolve and flutter nor bruised enough over the blinding lights with the wisdom of stones. which fi~ me here. THE TENNIS MA T CH Robley Wino~, Jr. Midnight. My serve. THE MARAUDER A darkness stirs in the far court When they shot the bear out of his tree, the tricky competition North, on Monday, inCedar County, warming up, rehearsing now It occurred to us the bear knew, too, with either hand Something was not enough — a stirring, some deadly fore A yearning forsweetness buried deep or backhand shot. In the shrunk gut, portentous forage. The banl'ed lights hum. We knew and he knew: it was something In the first rows Not to perish of capture, sloven the faces tighten And soft from caramel corn, smarting and then diminish With mange under the fur, with cinders into tather's best Lodged in the cracked pads. Something — at least disapproving squint. Not a cage — but not truly enough. This helps. I wave When they shot the bear out of his tree, and give it all I' ve got. A single shot, and the limber trunk The ball drones importantly Yawed with the target, sprang back, sang out then leaps off... where P As green wood does in the springtime, stopped Into nothing. When the bear chose to drop, swam the air The void perhaps. Littered by yellow buds, pulled with him Perhaps never to return. The slim top twigs to the populous My father finishes his beer Field — the tree bled; the earth at its roots bends the can Shook and worms far under felt: waking. and leaves. The crowd leaves. For them, too, not enough, but something. Doors slain. The last beer cans tinkle softly 38 POETRY NORTHWEST Stanley Coopernzan plunges at the moon, spitting children Tvro Poems w1th the red weapon TIRESIAS of his love. You: what did you eat la,st night? what books HANNAH'S VISIT have you swallowed, which dreams, whose women? Like Sabbath flowers sewn What shirt did you tear to the jaw of an old man, for from your brother's eyes d ecoration, for love.. . to hang or a nightingale dripping plucked with scarlet buttons to its poor wrinkled skin, on that clothes-line she enters stretched between your. arms? the deepest room of your house cannibal .. with all her fingernails broken pirate .. into colored paint, and S1tS Whose words holding pierce your throat, the points ot her knees. and why are your pockets filled with gold Eggs 1 1pped fry in the corners of her smile, from other people's mouths? their yolks screaming conceptions Under your collar a fat at midnight, when thighs Nero open, and green owls scrapes his fiddle hunt rabbits with the legs of girls in her private jungle; or grandmothers, her voice circles once and behind your brassiere or twice, and lands a white bull on the knobs of its claws POETRY NORTHWEST in the middle of Platinum waters creep up the shore, little boys seasons are folded in a fan. Hands rubbing themselves all over the rug. and whispering heads are here, now. Is she pregnant? I have come to this knowledge will her father ride with every tooth and grain of light. black Knife, spoon, even the rocks, breathe. horses on her best friend's bed? why ha,ve her teeth turned into glass, and who polished her brain SERENADE TO M Y W A L K IN G STiCK until it gleams (for Fernando Mercado, who carvedit in a knot ) of crooked mirrors? Whittled from a mop handle, painted blindman's black and topped with a carved wood head, you, stick, Norton Na rcus stride through the fields and heaving hills Two Poems without bending a knee or taking a breath. W HAT I K N O W I'm not so perfect: heart sags in my chest, What I know outlasts a tooth, even my wrists sweat, is larger than a year and my knees, my knees, or a wife pregnant with rain. old creakers w o rse than an Erector Set. I know what words cannot spell, intricate engines of light Don't look at me that way, alive in the middle of seeds. wooden head. You are no better than a mandrill's mask, I say, believe in common things: an African witch doctor' s the leer of a spoon, the knife cheap disguise. that gets straight to the point. And you, stick, tattooed Have faith in weather, rocks, all the way down the damaged screens of lust. like a drunken Dyak Become what your dreams create. paralyzed in sleep POETRY N ORT H W E S T your looks leave much and wanted you to be desired. to share my weight Even the bearded old man, and stride with me the patriarch across this world half-way down and know your hipless form, the things I loved. is no one to talk: But you were what you were, his pursed lips and like the others are chiseled and cracked kept your secrets and your face, and always prepared unable to release to admonish or deride. affection or anything that's passionate Stick, I stood you and reciprocates against the wall with more so you could rest. than cordial grace. Why do you question me so Stick, with your swirls you' re more my deputy of' circle and line? than my friend. Every night, your silence and your stares, So stand like that your perfect posture against the wall though you lean until I grab you against the wall. by the head Say something, tap and make you walk, against the bookcase, propel you through or do the dance the empty that's sacred to the trees. evening streets like a grandfather Stick, you are not guided a companion I enjoy. by a bullied son. You show rne how For even though you show me all objects nothing but contempt, are separate and alone it's true you make me swagger and only keep when we walk the place they occupy. and are an almost I feltthe past human presence was carved into your frame. in my hand. I thought each face would speak unwritten laws POETRY NORTHWEST Frances Colvsn llarnona Weeks T HE GREAT M U S EU M R O B B E R Y Two Poems Feeling that someone must have painted her THE POPCORN DAY portrait, long ago, she kept walking through rnuseums (Uffizi, Prado, Tate) looking for her face. What is that old man doing, said my friend, Today's a frame that will not hold peeking out the curtain of that dead house me; I must be embraced in gold. No weather's sa fe where upstairs lived a poet with the face unless it's wailed, air still, light constant. of his grandmother on the ceiling of his mind I am so old. and in the front room lived a merry chase But she found nothing like herself: of fairies. In the house behind no eyes, no smiles, no fingers scorning the green satin they caressed and pinched. lived an old man, a moldy turnip-top, Yet in this gallery o f glances Iam surely here who hung his underwear out in the rain my other sel f, the one original to dry, and had a phiz like a valentine Velasquez or Vermeer, gone to seed. The noise shot like a thunder-clap to straighten my bewilderment. over that neighborhood, a dinosaur spine Among the Picassos crumbling, a loud, ransacking Hindenburg pop. her eyes seemed out of place. She felt her cheek and staredand stared. The colors rose; she fed. It was the garbage burning in a barrel, No obscure corner was unvisited. but it was more: the Saturday uproar Louvre, Orangerie, she was the last to leave. of ricocheting popcorn in a pyre Beneath her hedging tweeds, Rubens and Titian fought for master. . of red and white and yellow. The old fossil's She gained some weight. put popcorn in his garbage! The backyard air When morning came, the guards were stricken by was full of whizzing, blossomings, and whistles. pallid Cezannes, Rembrandts with faces gone, Degas without a single dancing girl, The old man looked bright and unbelieving. da Vincis stripped of everything but sky. The popcorn jumped for joy; parachutes Onto the streetonce more, unrecognized, and yet landed on the embattled yard in small ca.hoots my face, my face, this blur, this flap of flesh, like cauliflowers; punctuating in uneven, somewhere looksdown on crowds, replete, magni f icent. dying syllables, forlorn dashes and dots, Until I find mysel f, odalisque, saint, or queeri: leaving a cloudy littered trash of heaven. sustain me. I hear there is a small museum in Ghent. 46 POETRY N O RT H W E S T THE PERILS OF NY OKA +dpi ee Stouteeburg "Allah be praised!" the girl was always saying in the Saturday serials, crisscrossed SCIENCE NON FICTION upon the torture racks while the ceiling fell with spikes and the turbaned hero Qou will not live here, arrived with a lever in the nick of time. nor your children, nor the old, laughing coyotes Somehow before she was pulled into the cave who once sang in these hills. of everlasting winds, her fingers slipping, We are leaving here soon, sarong tearing, and the sheikh massaging as the grizzly left, and the condor. his moustache, help always came: (Who has seen such claws or wings?) the legionnaire who had forsworn his fortune, the little dwarf who loved her more than life. There is a moment yet, before the engineers arrive, She was the missing daughter of an earl: to watch hummingbirds in an impossible plot, the Arab villains strung with garnets, knew she had the famous Inshallah pearl, madrones brown as the wrists of Indians, but didn't know it. And the legionnaire bay trees that smell like green candles, came riding out of some old guilt to find her there and listen again for the silence that made a darknessfor owls upon the burning pyre, while vultures danced with horned mouths in the ascending smoke, longing for her eyes. speaking like the E string of a guitar. In the last chapter, which I always missed, she was restored to wealth and joy, the famous pearl The termite with his sad drill a pasty landslide on her heaving breast. opposed our tenure, but could not defeat us, Her father beamed a foolish, carlish smile nor the bats strumming their teeth upon his daughter and inquired what he could do within the wall where the telephone snickers for her. She begged for and received a pardon (they have always been there, for her savior. See them ride out, unparalleled, in strange cradles to meet the dawn. Long will the iron maidens a tiny echo of dark wires) languish empty, the bright knives hack the air, nor the wood borer on the sill the vultures hang doleful in a fireless void. with his attic dream. Always a bridesmaid, never yet a bride each Saturday she tried to lose the world. Our trunks are ready, a funeral of hinges and locks stuffed with snapshots, rose pips, pencils„ and cool clothing for the desert the compass at hand, POETRY NORTHWEST the water bag hanging from the bumper But I went after you, like a leaky, gray pillow. mother tomother, put you together (Who has not seen the latest clover leaf, when your bones rode you the wind socks, orange cheeks blown out, apart. Something above the black-topped bay, was always breakmg and freight trains hauling greater hills? down inside you. Who, on this coast, has heard Save me, you sob any word of the ocean in a dream, but nobody since the last cement truck passed, runs hke a friend starfish still burning in its wheels?) to your door. And I'm in my own garden this time, digging a ditch for my heart. Shirley Kuufman What did you give me mother Two Poems that you want it back? An empty book to put my poems in,peeled I HEAR YOU apples, Patsy dolls. The promises of mother smiles, soft fingers Each day I sucked children could not touch. at your virtuous breasts a,nd I'm punished You and your sisters gliding like fish anyhow. (the tank was full of your stare) to market, to market, sun in your scarves, the ripple of exquisite goiters. MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS You never wore a hat Through everynight wo hali'i except in mirrors, preparing the next ilay's your eyes were violet war. She bangs the tin~a. under the veil, Her face laps iip»iy owu under the knotted squares despair, the siuii, liiowu «y i ~, calling me child. the heavy knit tile wi»i'l 50 POETRY NORTHWEST tie back. She's cruel, W; R. AIoses as if my private meanness found a way to punish us. A UGUST: LAKE OF THE W O O D S We gnaw at each other' s skulls. Give me what's mine. I I'd haul her back, choking The hand of the shriveling prisoner in his dungeon myself in her, herself Reaching through bars for the water out of his reach in me. There is a book — No, of course not. But I feel the stretch called Poisons on her shelf. Of secret roots down a rock slope covered too thinly Her room stinks with incense, With earth, for the last, least undryness, and only animal turds, hamsters Finding more dryness. The sun, you could say, has won. she strokes like silk. They The birchleaves above those roots have become sun exercise on the bathroom Color. They are very lovely, the most charming floor,and two drop through Incongruity of color, congruity still of shape the furnacevent. The whole With green leaves near them on lucky trees rooted deep. house smells of the accident, the hot skins, the small Some losersare fiercely open about their trouble. flesh rotting. Six days Many an island pine has been heavecl by the wind we turn the gas up then Down; all the high, feathery grace to fry the dead. I'd fry Without grace sprawled, flattened, skinned. her head if I could until Wherever that happened, look what the roots have done: she cried love, love me! Hauled right out, for the inspection of anyone, A root-clutch of soil, to show how poor, meagre, All she won't let me do. Thin it was, clipped weakly to unhelpful rock. Her stringy figurein Sometimes they have hauled out a big slab of rock; the windowed room shares That wasn't good enough either, when things got serious. its thin bones with no one. Only her shadow on the glass II waits like an older sister. The poor old assaulted water: Now she stalks, leans forward, How pieces from above, from the smug air, concentrates merely on getting Keep poking a,nd altering, probing and shoving it! from here to there. Her feet Sometimes propellers of active outboards are bare. I hear her breathe A~Vill pour it all of a swirl, a dizzy twining. where I can't get in. If I Sometimes paddies, or ambling dull oars, break through to her, she will Will punch deep, angling and dipping and jabbing. drive nails into my tongue. Bright plastic lures, armed mean with steel hooks, Come plump down against it, and sinuously bore it. NORTHWEST POETRY Well, up here there are acrobatic, tough pike; Now she leans close to the ritual Hook one, he's likely to air his pugnacity Of knifing filets from the bone. Like a bass or salmon. And now, plunge, What can such eagerness require Yank! I have hooked one. Agile,no prudence, For satisfaction, for relief? He flares from the surface. Abruptly I picture What he's really like, the avid, high-pressure I' ll never know. Composure comes. Leanness — a club the angry lake plunks Hard against air, and leaves it all pulsing; I watch excitement sublimate And against my vision, and leaves it all pulsing. Into the dignity, repose Of a sculptured black Egyptian cat III I saw in some inuseum once: It's an old, old concern: emptiness that isn't empty. The dog sits, staring with zircon eyes Cavemen side-squinting into the dark; soldiers Toward wave and tern and island line. Side-squinting into the dark. ... Now, this water V Opaque in the cliff's shadow — is it heart-certain Slow gases now expand as smoke NQ fangs can rip from it? Is it sure no force Above the cabinchimney; good. That animates granite can slam down a cliff-chunk We need a counteractive for On trespassing heads? The past hour, when we opened up — These are just exercises The motor widefor home, because In atavism; they pall; they don't last long. The day drew tight with rain. Riding But now, from the cli& top, from brush we can't see Squeezed tight away from icy clothes, Comes a crash,a big crash, perfectly here and authentic. Seeing the downdrawn vegetable, The dog, by her angry fear, declares bear. Fancying the indrawn animal But we can't see. We wait; only silence. Along the shore, we seemed to know We wait; only silence — but what an odd silence! Contraction is a movement in There is nothing there, yet the emptiness isn't empty. The pain direction, the fanged clutch. IV On slaty riding waves that ride Amorousness? Greediness? The lake,some brown mergansers ride I don't think either, But see our dog Down near the rock shore. They look pert Kiss, kiss, and again kiss And pleased under the rain and wind. The scales of these two fish that sag When the lively flock has drawn too tight, On a stringer: our noon provision: They do what flocked mergansers do: The walleyes we have kept for lunch. Run on the water, spraying out To make each bird more water roo»i And see her hover cheek by jowl On slaty waves. Thus expanded, With me who crackle twigs for fire. They settle, looking pert and!il< a;;« I. POETRY' x o R r a w E s ~ About Our Corri butors THEO>>OREROKTHKE, at the time of his death in 1963, left hundreds of notebooks and thousands of pages of worksheets full of fragments of poetry and prose, chiefly unpublished. "The Things I Steal from Sleep" is one of the first few suites or monologues, in imitation of Roethke's methods of composition, to be made from these materials. CARGLYN STGLGFF lives and teaches in New York City. She won this magazine's Theodore Roethke prize for 1967. CARGL HAI.I., who lives in Seattle, is the author of a book of poems, Portrait o Vonr >Vieee, published by the University of Minnesota Press. f L EwIs TURco teaches at State University College, Oswego, New York. H i s first book of poems will be published this year by the University of Missouri Press. Wanted: Patrons for Poetry Northwest's Donors' Fund RoBERT HE< POETRY