by Barry Goldensohn
etching by Priscilla Steele
One dim bulb
in cheap fluted glass
a half flight above
and a presence very
close that climbs in step with me-
What kind of Judge is he?
I know that flat face
and shark's flat eye
the smooth breath in the climb
and the effortless moves behind
as if he understood
all that sharked through my mind.
-You, are you kind? I know
with your steel rasp skin
and sudden irresistible plunge
and your glass eye grin-
you think what I really think,
grasp at the skull and dive.
This is the year that
death
11 robed in shit and sable
finds the key to the door
and lays himself down on our table
then gleams and cIicks and hums
all night while the wind drones,
or sits in the oak chair
and watches us flinch and veer
away from his piece of the room
and his voice booms in our ears
and his snake eyes stare
then both of us play possum,
cold, unresponsive, dumb,
while we plot our escape from here.
We are dead already, go home!
We separate in peace-not
another
body sweating, another cold mind
grasping for warmth. A]1 longing denied
to keep the mind dean at the work of ending,
having room for no attachment further.
You and the vague women pressing in dreams
I pushaway, for the sake of the housefly
shuffling on my arm, his house soon
when she lets the maggots under the skin
and drives me to greater removal from myself,
the feeling for what is-nature persistent
and self-absorbed, and making my mind its
mirror.
You lean on your elbow with a smile
that in this climate is intolerable.
The blossoms compete
for the bee,
the apple, plum, cherry
require its provident yearning,
its hairy legs, its probe,
even the useless hawthorn
in flower to mock us and sting,
blossoming, blossoming.
Et in Arcadia ego.
As I stepped out of the
car
before I reached the foggy
yellow globe of porchlight
I heard a low growl,
confident in menace,
a crash of brush, the scream
of a hare in three breaths
that stretched itself on the still
air its intense length
until a neck broke
and the bobcat bore away
through whispering uncut hay,
the grass the flesh is like,
the flesh that's like the grass-
enough for everyone here.
It is May 15th, the air
outside the house is now
in harmony with air
within. How equable,
how utterly without
boundary it feels, to turn
out all the lights and walk
in a starless, moonless night,
the house empty of me
and empty. Dangerous,
this small experiment-
abandon to reckless trust
with no inside or out
and no distinguishable space.
I like it all too much.
You remember the old
story
where the servant or the master
meets death in the garden
and runs away to a city
where death plans to join him?
Who meets death,
the servant or the master?
Who tells the story?
-Why does it matter,
the servant or the master?
She sighed and rolled over.
-The people don't matter,
the trick is everything.
Bathsheba
He is now mature in creases,
at ease in shade
only, as she bathes the aging body. The light
is all in her face and it falls like death on skin.
Her smile is inward. The watcher hidden in dusk-
the king who eyes her from his roof must murder
her husband first. Why does he love her? His sight
is inward too. He loves her. He'll get her.
She is buttoned to the
throat
with a white, formal yoke.
The massive shutters
are open
and fastened to the walI.
The espaliers around
them
are hung with pears and plums.
She leans from the dark
room
into the welcoming air
and showers the street
with light,
her gap-toothed naked smile.
The clear borders keep
this human explosion contained.
When Sappho says, "asleep
against the breast
of a friend," the breast is youthful, tender, will not
be pressed without the new moan of dumbfounding
pain,
and the head that would rest like air, like stone.
A hand is in there. My
hand.
Swallowed by steel. It can hold
a lance. Nothing more. The delicate
fingers nervelessly within.
The Bat
On the stump of a torn wing
it planted it self in the driveway
and screeched to keep me away
from doing the merciful thing
and crushing it under my foot.
I scooped it up in my cap
and hid it away in a yew
to save it from the cat.
It would starve in a day or two.
I once heard a chipmunk scream
for hours in the slow jaws
of a king snake under the house,
but the human terrified dream
in the beast face of that thing
made me unable to kill
as it lingered in suffering.
Don't test me on anything close.
Anyone incapable of
deceit
is incapable of love.
-STENDHAL
I was brought there to
be read: the message
on the blank wall waiting to be called
in to you, sweating on a sheet,
a string of twigs with a familiar face.
My mother, always steady, brushed your hair
and tied it with a red bow to retrieve
childhood, sisterhood. You saw
my face and tried a feeble lie as I did:
a clench of mind, my coached face unmasked
smiling in terror. You asked for me
knowing you could read in my deceit,
brutal and incapable, the necessary fact.
The summer that their
daughter Rachel (named
after my shining daughter) died
I paid the stern visit to the house.
Her toys and flip-flops, all the plastic colors,
were scattered around the lush uncut lawn
and piled on the porch, lights in dark places,
as if she still were balancing the sphere,
unbroken, of herself, her rule, in all this space.
I felt the need to dear things out, but all
I touched would stick to my hand in shrill silence
dolls' clothes, a yellow plastic bowl,
shoes, magic marker, bubble wand.
I am no longer the child
slashed by wire
who snaked back into the locked city
to warn Jews of the plan, the unsealing
of sealed trains, how they were killed, the camps,
the doctor-judge selecting who will die
with the flick of his white baton on the railway
siding.
I screamed, Fly away like birds! until
my throat dosed, they ~ought me mad from
loss,
everybody's loss, and brought me bread
to stop my raving-later seized by Germans
and pushed through all I had seen before, then
killed.
Today I am a man in this dream
of new terror with a man's grave face
and they believe me that they now must kill.
I play behind a veil,
reach through and snatch
them up in a baffling tempo
as one strolls in beret,
one stands in a grey suit
waiting his turn and looks
in horror at my mouth,
its convulsion as I bolt
and swallow and then grope,
wasting no time to taste them,
back in the room for more.
How many shocks can shock
the shocked heart?
one shock, two shocks, a shock a shock a shock
before the hook twists out your crooked tongue
and word all word is meaningless like shock.
Who died. You died. I died. All of us died.
Copyright © 1992, by Barry Goldensohn
The Cummington Press
Omaha, Nebraska