A Collection of My Poems Reflecting on the Planned Demise of the Soviet Union and More Is Now Available on Amazon

 

 

Why Did Trump’s War on Iran Bring Back That Old Memory to Me?

 

It must have been in the fall of 2008
when I went to Boston to attend

one of those Northeastern political-science
conferences the East Coast Ivy circles

hold within their princely dominion.

Long had they mastered
the art of playing god—

though as subtler Machiavellians—

and never addressing directly,
or otherwise in ethical honesty,

the great and burning questions
of their own age.

Instead of truth, they preferred
the complexity of the trivial:

minute kinks and polished twists,

together with that well-rehearsed art
of playing one’s cards

without ever laying
anything essential

upon the public table.

It was there that I saw
a large poster

advertising the Mariinsky Theatre—

and a ballet close to my heart:

Swan Lake.

I had seen it many times before,

but now with Ulyana Lopatkina
dancing both Odette and Odile—

the white and black reflections
of the fatal feminine,

now with wings,
now shedding them.

So I did what I used to do
back in Moscow in those days—

simply walked to the entrance
and trusted I would find

someone again
holding out a spare ticket.

And so it happened.

I bought one
and entered

to see Lopatkina—

tall and taut,

the greatest living Swan
of that age.

Soon afterward
the man who had sold me the ticket

came in as well
and sat beside me

there in the orchestra,
first-class row.

Between acts we spoke.

Perhaps his companion
truly could not come,

or perhaps he too was lonely
and thought our lonelinesses

might briefly align.

And so he opened up.

It was just after the election—

the end of George W. Bush’s second term—

with its vast war
built and funded

upon so many lies

that they had nowhere left to go.

I think he was somewhat younger than I was,

and he truly believed
in the ardor of his heart

that the party of war,

having ostensibly lost the election,

would finally be indicted,

arrested,

and tried.

How Quietly Memories Form Mortals’ Private Underworlds! / Avec quelle discrétion les souvenirs forment les enfers privés des mortels !

 

In this quiet beginning,
something has already been set—

a reason unaware of itself,
a trace without a trace.

And thus, with a pale green smile,

those more deeply enamored,
more thoroughly charmed,

let one another’s light
shine further still.

And memories—even as
they seem to rush downward—

do nothing else

but fathom and pursue

whatever dares
to become profound

through lives and deaths
pierced through,

and through loves—

and thus the soul persists,

searching always
for scribes

to resound her heart.

---

Avec quelle discrétion les souvenirs forment les enfers privés des mortels !

Dans ce commencement discret,
quelque chose est déjà posé—

une raison qui ne se connaît pas elle-même,
une trace sans trace.

Ainsi, avec un léger sourire vert,

les êtres plus profondément épris,
plus intimement charmés,

laissent davantage rayonner
la lumière l’un de l’autre.

Et les souvenirs, même lorsqu’ils semblent
se précipiter vers le bas,

ne font en vérité

que sonder et suivre

ce qui ose devenir profond—

à travers des vies et des morts traversées,
et des amours—

ainsi l’âme persiste,

cherchant sans cesse
des scribes

pour faire résonner son cœur.

Why Did the Pagan Statues Never Look Obscene and Why Did the Baroque Succeed in This at Last? (A Little Meditation on Opening Lines of Howl)

 

What eyes do cities wear
when all the horns proclaim
that beauty is mere guff,

an overrated surplus?

And what, meanwhile,
do all the scholars of war do
on such a pleasant May weekend

with their Argus Panoptes eyes,

after spending breath and brain
fanning those gyrating mills

that grind whole harvests
of human seed

into mortar
for posthumous pedestals?

In the backs of rooms I used to listen
as, juggling one contrary against another,

they reduced truth
to a clever gag,

relying on the lethargy
and impoverishment of eyes

already hollowed out—

eyes denied the apples
distributed by the same exclusive growers
with the same certified grip.

For truly it is said:

where bliss abides,
fruit reveals mutual nakedness—

even that of the Emperor himself,

a nakedness starved
of its madness

and its furious, unending
Sisyphean fixation,

which turns even pharaohs and kings
into busy dung beetles,

dragging the world and its sun
downward into the nigredo pit.

How else could they burn away
the ancient heavenly bond

in exchange for a supernatural darkness
that “bears all to El”—

as does the Don-El Motel

in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Falls?

Thus the ghost drifts
across its old aqueous flats,

forever anxious, forever jealous
of someone else
baring it all

in verse or jazz.

What Does It Mean When Memory Speaks and Sings in Poems?

That little café, daring to claim
that behind its door awaited
another kind of space and mind,

used to have short, off-white curtains,

as though they were mockups
for chance ivory gates of dreams,

either woven or drawn
by Penelopes at night.

But each of those now-vanished blinds
seemed like a piece of blouse

hung silent before a bath,

where the light poured in subdued
through that yielding passage.

And beneath such mellow shade,
now and again I would jot a verse—

perhaps even a poem
caught while merely passing by—

made of distant meadow scents,
honeyed by dew and sun,

and longing to refresh
the feet no less than the mind.

And so it is no less strange
that simply by remembering
how it once was—

a Muse, a butterfly,
brushes my face again.

Not Every Mirror Taps the Chosen into the Timeless Otherworldly Ritual

Not every mirror inspires
one to raise her arms above
in a convinced, meticulous rush,

as though the arms were wings
opening all the rest to sight.

And not every woman can be
stirred that far—

before such a strange space,

where she rests face to face
so differently with her own self,

and in such a candid, effortless act,
refined to an apogee of art,

she now could almost perform asleep—

were it not for those eyes,
exchanged with her own shade.

Being One of the Veronese Della Scala, However Uncertain and Much Distant, I Too Went Down Where the Sea Is Trying to Give Birth to a New Atlantis

 

Los Angeles—oh yes, that living emblem,
America writ large beside the sea,

just as New York City is—
that dented great apple
of knowing and not knowing
much of good and much of evil—

or like Las Vegas,
the den of thieves
and bacchanalias of rushing nights,

where all who enter somehow remain
within that desert Garden of Eden,
its money minted from fever and dreams.

So what then of Los Angeles
and its Orpheums?

Do pagan Hades and Christian Hells
likewise keep their homeless
upon the streets—

within the selfsame pageant, revel, and reveal
of basic human need
and this Divine Comedy?

Surely there, everyone—
everything that, despite itself,
still manages to remain human
to even the slimmest degree—

must be one of those lost, yet brimful angels,

hovering and circling
like the terminal, falling stars
of The Republic,

thirsting after oblivion
while standing on the brink
of bringing back Atlantis—

in defiance of the sidetracked celestial gods,

that Emporium leaving
the Gates of Horn wide open,

so that what is above
and what lies below
may mix and flux
until who is who dissolves—

an Empire of Water,
souls deliquesced and loosed,
each surrendered
to its indiscriminately chosen poison.

Oh yes—where else
would the powers that be
place a hive

for so many angels with broken wings,

whose stumps are growing
blades rinsed in Styx?