Soon After Rain Read online

  to say, whatever we’d been in life, we had died

  honorably, friends and lovers huddled together.

  To stave off that anonymous, blank fate, I walked,

  stumbling and feeling my way to closed quarters,

  but the hot air was sour, oppressively dank,

  the frightened faces green and the chairs awry —

  I had to flee back out, into cold open air,

  for another sea was swelling in me,

  bilious waves tossing me, upending me,

  but I would not collapse: I swore I’d stay

  upright and reject the temptation to faint

  into the senseless pull toward oblivion,

  and though inclined to pitch myself overboard

  I sat on the edge of the stern and faced larboard,

  black fishing cap in hand and cocked to keep

  the spray off my face, for lines of the wretchedly sick

  were hunching then heaving and retching along both rails

  while a woman who’d fallen a long time ago,

  too weak to rise or even resist the pitch

  and yaw, swept back and forth across the deck,

  her inertial bulk sliding and slamming against

  this set of shins, then that set of shins,

  and no one, not even the crew, had Dramamine.

  We weren’t even close to being able to dock

  at a place that had exploded more than an age ago.

  Like all the rest, I was sick, my world a-waste,

  but turning my gaze toward the sea’s wild pitch,

  I cursed and sang out nasty epithets

  blasting, blaspheming Poseidon, for all I knew,

  as all of us were whipped and tossed, was just

  this fact: Poseidon was alive and, like Odysseus,

  I didn’t like the mean old bastard at all,

  even if he were, some said, the brother of God.

  Revenge

  It’s time, some say, to kill those men,

  the ones who killed the diplomats,

  and many men will cheer us on,

  revenge a tonic now and then.

  The ones who killed the diplomats

  will pay a high and lethal price —

  revenge a tonic now and then

  though killing seldom stops a war.

  They’ll pay a high and lethal price

  for murdering the innocent,

  though killing seldom stops a war —

  but do we want the war to stop?

  For murdering the innocent

  the murderers will surely pay,

  but do we want the war to stop?

  Menacing talk feels so damn good.

  The murderers will surely pay.

  A certain group is now in place.

  Menacing talk feels so damn good.

  What’s bracing is restorative.

  A certain group is now in place,

  and armed and resolute they’ll spring.

  What’s bracing is restorative.

  We’re not through killing, so why stop?

  And armed and resolute we’ll spring,

  and many men will cheer us on.

  We’re not through killing, so why stop?

  It’s time, we say, to kill those men.

  The Draw of the Other

  I’m drawn, I know, toward what I do not know,

  for foreignness has never made me what

  I do not recognize — I see what is,

  I see what might have been, I see what might

  yet come to be, but most I see a form

  of clarity that’s not till now been mine.

  I hear new cries for justice, too. I hear

  cries for compassion now and realize

  I’ve pitched my tent most everywhere. I’ve been

  where there was little left but hope, and there

  I saw high bursts of mountain majesty:

  a shock of craggy forms that were not mine

  and likely never would be mine though they

  somehow found home in me, and I in them.

  I’m drawn, I know, toward what I do not know.

  It’s often otherness that blesses me.

  A Curious Man

  (Robert Hooke, 1635 – 1703)

  Few remember Robert Hooke, though Hooke,

  it seems, knew everyone and was unimpressed,

  let’s say, with some of England’s brighter lights.

  His attention and temper going everywhere,

  he worked with Wren after London’s great fire

  to redesign St. Paul’s then he built Bethlehem

  and blasted young Newton who, he thought,

  needed more than a bit of seasoning,

  and tinkering with his own machines, he worked

  with others to refine their own inventions,

  and those he made himself include the sprung

  balance wheel that clocks need (or did until

  digital circuitry), the iris diaphragm

  cameras use (they weren’t around back then)

  and, going on, the universal joint

  for turning wheels, not to mention the first

  reflecting telescope, and because so much

  in London needed reorganization

  he occupied himself with city works.

  The record’s, however, askew on whether

  he had — let’s call it — much social life.

  His diary is simply a long list of events —

  there’s nothing at all analytical there,

  and nothing reflective, and all sex gets

  is a curious symbol — his mate most often

  the housekeeper — a fair number of those,

  including his niece — help so hard to keep.

  But the subject of love never comes up.

  It was science that made the lightning strike:

  pumps, optics, various types of measures,

  but never philosophy, except to say

  England needed to be freed from Bacon —

  so said Robert Hooke who few remember.

  He’d shown up in London alone, thirteen

  years old, with plans to become a painter.

  Our Friend’s Son

  They threw me out. Why?

  I didn’t hurt them yet.

  I might. Might hurt them good.

  This street is not my home.

  I want my home. I want it back.

  But not if they’re still there.

  They threw me out.

  This street’s no place for home.

  And underneath the bridge:

  that too’s no place for home.

  They ought to go away.

  They taken all I had. I want

  my home. I want it back.

  But they don’t understand.

  I didn’t hurt them yet.

  I didn’t hurt them both at all -

  not yet not yet not yet.

  Cervantes

  His left hand mangled in battle

  and his years in prison

  magically turned into stories,

  he gave us one book, a few plays

  and a batch of poor poems,

  but also one thing more:

  Seeing a man in a wagon

  laughing uncontrollably,

  King Felipe said,

  “He’s either lost his mind

  or he’s reading Don Quixote.”

  IV.

  The Artemisia Suite

  A Finely Cold Will

  (Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, c. 1620)

  She painted grief though there is no grief

  in her depiction of Judith

  beheading Holofernes.

  The tension that structures the scene

  depicts the angle and force,

  the turn of mind one needs

  to work a blade through a neck.

  See: a bit of blood has marked her breast

  and the trim of the bod
ice on her dress —

  but stains, she knows, must be endured.

  Artemisia learned that eight years back

  when her teacher raped her,

  but that didn’t break her —

  Judith, we see, is proof of that.

  Slicing through gristle and bone, though,

  is tough, but now the job’s been done —

  the painting long ago signed, sold, and hung

  Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting

  (Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1630)

  The drama’s in the gesture,

  the sharpness of focus

  she showed herself portraying,

  but what I see tonight

  is her emphasis on the act

  of driving her fire for art

  onto a canvas we can’t see.

  But as I study the image

  that she’s presented,

  I see she hasn’t glorified

  herself, she hasn’t idealized

  her face, she hasn’t divinized

  her form, she hasn’t done

  much of anything except

  to show herself as she was

  on an unnamed day.

  And what she’s shown I believe:

  her eyes on an image before her,

  her hand and brush shadowed,

  and though she’s not looking at us

  we’re looking intensely at her

  and seeing rhythms that sing beyond our own.

  Susanna and the Elders

  (Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1622)

  If she’s looking to heaven,

  as some have said,

  it’s as a last resort.

  One of the two men accosting her

  is telling someone off-canvas to hush

  while the other figure listens

  for the rhythms of wind

  to say no one’s near

  and they can have Susanna

  in whatever way they want.

  Look carefully at her eyes.

  They say she’s been ravished.

  Now look at the eyes of the men.

  One of them is ogling her

  but the back one looks away

  to register any intrusions

  that might interfere

  with what they want to do.

  Of course, she’s afraid.

  If she screams, no one will hear,

  and if she accuses her attackers

  they will accuse her

  of luring them to her.

  Unable to scream,

  she can’t even speak,

  for all she knows

  is blinding grief.

  Corisca and the Satyr

  (Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, early 1640s)

  There’s such a curious blankness

  in the way she looks back at the satyr,

  as if there’s no worry now he might

  rise from the ground and attack her.

  She knows he’ll never turn civilized,

  he’ll never understand love’s power,

  the dear pleasure of honoring someone

  whose love you know has blest you,

  that sweet attention you don’t run from.

  She knows she’ll have to escape him again,

  that strength didn’t save her, it was wit

  left him dazed on the ground by the tree,

  that place where he’d intended to take her.

  Bearded, goat-eared, and fallen, he holds

  his right arm up, but it’s not his trophy

  he’s holding, it’s hers — he’d grabbed her hair

  to catch her, but the hair his fist has clenched

  is, he’s startled to see, a wig — she’s free.

  No pride has turned her expression smug,

  but one detail still seems a mystery:

  What was Artemisia thinking when she

  made a flash of light show a hard nipple

  pressing against Corisca’s golden dress?

  Was that a sly display of the painter’s mind

  to tease the satyrs who’d never have her?

  Or was that a sign showing fear was not

  about to ruin love, if love should ever come?

  The Sensual Miracle

  (Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, Madonna and Child, c. 1610- 1612)

  Flesh is a force and a blessing,

  Artemisia shows in her painting

  of Mary preparing to nurse her boy.

  And in both, eyes and mouths suggest

  the fact of sensuality, the fact

  that this painter knows love.

  She makes no suggestion here

  of the desert fathers’ depravity,

  their foul obsession with sin.

  She’s invoking a greater authority,

  the miraculous blessing of love —

  mother and child both anxious now

  for the blessed breast to be nursed.

  V.

  Bats in Havana

  Hearing squeaks overhead

  in Havana’s Teatro Nacional,

  I turned from the measured talk

  on the nearly setless stage

  to see what the new noise was

  in this shadow-rich place.

  Bats were circling the edges

  of the water-stained dome,

  and watching them I turned

  from what I’d come to hear:

  translations from Shakespeare.

  I began thinking about ghosts

  that rose toward the dome,

  ghosts that had come

  from tales that stirred fear:

  then other ghosts came,

  these born from the laughter

  that sings between thighs

  while others came

  from the speech of skeletal eyes

  Moonwash

  The stars are faint tonight:

  the brilliant moon has spread

  a milky wash across the sky,

  and the constellations —

  the few I can still see —

  have shifted places

  since I saw them last.

  A lot in fact has shifted,

  and is still shifting,

  and my legs feel stiff with weight,

  but I won’t say why.

  The moon is brilliant tonight.

  The stars, though, are faint.

  Seasonal Changes

  1

  Snow’s in the air today,

  with a deep bone-brittle chill —

  or will there come a spray of rain?

  2

  A thunderhead rides high

  and with it rain-promising wind —

  high heat settled in that wind.

  3

  An anvil-topped thunderhead

  crowns a high cloud,

  but nothing in the formation moves,

  as if nothing is explosive there.

  4

  A balmy, springlike day is here —

  but who knows what the season is?

  5

  Cold, the cirrus clouds drift

  high and thin, promising snow.

  The air’s at attention tonight.

  Who knows how deep the freeze will go?

  Winter

  A hawk drops

  toward a stand

  of prickly pear

  but nothing there,

  it rises

  back into sky —

  everything near

  where it was

  staying still.

  When Four Tornadoes Joined

  When four tornadoes joined and hit us hard

  some twenty-thousand people lost their homes

  and miles of wreckage kept reminding us

  repair and grief would not be done with soon.

  Some twenty-thousand people lost their homes

  and close to fifty of us died that day.

  Repair and grief would not be done with soon

  but laught
er made our conversation sing.

  Though close to fifty of us died that day

  a sense of celebration stirred our place

  and laughter made our conversation sing:

  we helped each other clear the trash away.

  A sense of celebration stirred our place.

  As if grace were with us that entire week,

  we helped each other clear the trash away.

  We shared clothing and food and roof and bed.

  As if grace were with us that entire week

  we learned reversal’s pain can mean new birth.

  We shared clothing and food and roof and bed.

  We saw the Stars-of-Bethlehem had bloomed.

  We learned reversal’s pain can mean new birth,

  and knowing grief would not be done with soon

  we saw the Stars-of-Bethlehem had bloomed

  though four tornadoes joined and hit us hard.

  A Difficult June

  Again no rain, though yesterday

  a sprinkle came as thunder cracked.

  The sky was dark awhile then wind

  blew clouds away, and everything

  went back to normal here: the lift

  moving up the mountain again.

  But the shower that came did not

  even settle the dust, and the chill

  in the air, like clouds, passed away:

  this part of the world again in heat,

  this part of the world a tinderbox:

  fir and spruce had now turned brown.

  So many trees leaning sickly,

  one wondered when the drought would break,

  and it would break, although this place

  might fall into disaster first.

  It has before and will again,

  but still its streams flow cold and fast.

  Mountain Butterfly

  Like a nymph in disguise, the butterfly

  appeared before me in the woods.

  To avoid a rapids I’d left the stream

  and tramped past brush into a grove

  of aspen and spruce, the fragrance

  of a sweet world around me,

  the butterfly staying close to me,

  like a nymph in disguise, the butterfly.

  Peripetelia

  The piñon pines don’t grow nearby

  and little but desert lies close by.

  Here summer’s scorch can sear one raw.

  In fact, there’s little relief nearby.