Looking
for China

Selected Poems 1968-1988

MICHAEL FINLEY

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Contents

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The poems in this collection, with a few exceptions, are taken from chapbooks published between 1969 and 1985. Thanks and acknowledgments to the publishers of:

 

14 Poems a Dollar, Groove Press, 1969

Lucky You, Litmus Press, 1976

The Movie Under the Blindfold, Vanilla Press, 1978

Home Trees, Minnesota Writers Publishing House, 1978

The Beagles of Arkansas, Mudborn Press, 1978

The Woman I Love, Kraken Press, 1983

Water Hills, Salthouse Press, 1985

The Whole While, Kraken Press, tba

 

 

"Gise Pedersen Sets Me Straight on a Matter of Natural History" was awarded a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 1984, and appears in The Pushcart Prize: IX.

"The Business of Bees" appeared in The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry.


GETTING STARTED



My pajamas shoot down my legs and scamper to a corner.
The bathroom mirror yawns,
I look down its throat for miles.
My coffee cup breathes blue vapors.
The doughnut tightens around my finger.

THE MOVIE UNDER THE BLINDFOLD



When the seams ripped on the starboard side
Passengers screamed and sailed across the aisle.
Newspaper accounts stressed that no
Immediate impact was felt.
Instead, steel met steel, rock passed through steel,
Steel slid like strips of steel across rock.

There in the water I first saw the bridge,
It shimmered in the air like a bridge
Made of water, and over the bridge was
A bridge in the air, and over that
Bridge there was water;
I swam.

I passed underneath and made my way, stroking,
To a nearby island that was the head and shoulders
Of my wife rising out of the sea like a woman.

Weeks passed, the swelling went down.
Layer after layer fell off me like skin.
I shrank and I shrank until finally I
Was no greater than a man.

Then in broad daylight I found my feet,
When they stood and tested
Dry land.

ANTON'S SYNDROME



(The patient's denial that he
is completely blind. -- Steadman's)

The spotlights shine on the skaters at night --
the spiraling ease,
the thumbprint's rim --
and we dream of the light that only we can see.

What was the use of doing things and saying things
when all along
the eyes went where they wanted to.
We called our veers and bumps decisions
but they were less than that --
we thought we saw our house on fire,
and far below the safety net, spinning.

We said, we see, we see.

It doesn't work,
it isn't up to us,
some language says it
better than ours --
it goes .

Our watching builds walls,
our yardsticks mete out measure.
Pray for the world
and the insects and birds.

The magical abacus turns,
we visit the field
we thought we knew,
the familiar disc
on the familiar plow.

Certain gases contrive with stones,
and the waters we cling to
continue their long
conversation with mountain
and forest and
tree.

TRIANGLES PRISMS CONES



From a distance all we were were
big blue wheels;
we called them "our reasonableness,"
we called them "true circles,"
living in the world
and spinning with love.
It was our only course,
like the rudderless boat's,
to see land,
any land.

I was bound in copper coil,
you were a fire of slippery jewels.
From a distance we
were static electricity,
living in love with the stock-still world.

Crying under our floorboards
was our silver pyramid,
penned inside our walls were
ancient bulls
in bas relief.

Our flags were sins on lascivious oceans,
our word for regret was
"a whirlpool of blood, turning in space."

It sped on.
The dot
which was so small at first
became what it had to become,
a collapse into feeling.
Item broke down into item of light,
each one new and unknown.
It was "our home,"
a wave of slow motion,
which was all our lives forever.

THE MAN IN THE AIR



The man in the air has been falling since Thursday.
He has an appointment on Sunday, at noon.

Time is important -- he has always been punctual.
He checks his watch for the seventh time today.
In his mind he goes over the names of the clients ahead of him,
the names of their families, the memory
of the perfect handshake.
My business is people, he says in the air.
I'm not just selling pieces of paper,
I am selling satisfaction,
I am selling myself.

He is almost sure how to do it this time.
A terrific idea will come to him soon;
until then, Pleasant day,
unlike Friday, falling all afternoon and during the best hours
of the early evening through light rain.

He holds out his hand in the rush of air.
Warmer now, almost perfect, he thinks.
Already I am having presentiments of success.

The man in the air is turning and twisting,
the cloth of his trousers is flapping around him.
He is falling head first,
he is sure he will get
where he's traveling soon, flying upward
like a stone.

YOUR HUMAN BEING



Do we know what our gifts are before we give them?

Closer than we ever dreamed,
the way the members of this family
pass through one another
wordlessly, where there
is a bowlful of something
especially for you.

Let's not ever say plural again,
let's not speak in our waking lives again.
If we can't be friends let's be lovers.
We have no time for impatience.

Keep time the way you keep
everything else,
temporarily.
For your two hands are only seeds of miraculous songs,
interrupted by silences,
unfolding at the edge of what you are.

IT'S OVER



This is the end of everything so far.
Here is the beginning of everything else.
Two days ago we were in love like fire.
Now we are worrying again.

This is the end of all up to now,

This is the start all whatever is left.
The end and beginning of life on earth.

We take turns drawing the dotted line between us
Like a long fuse, and our life together
Spits like the wayward snake.

Sometimes I want to let it go,
Twist lid,
Watch it shoot from the can.

I want to see if the fire we feed
Would go out by itself,
Or if we'd panic
And reach for wood.

THE CAMPAIGN



We heard the click
when we crossed the threshold;
I entered your body and set up camp.

The infantryman, he is the backbone
of any army, he knows
when to retreat
and when to hold the line.

A month, four months, a year....
I'm getting used to the bill of fare,
to the figures of speech,
to the customs of your country.

Eventually the soldier
hangs up his guns:
I know I do.

Joining with the enemy,
we build new walls
on the next frontier.

THE LIGHT



I've talked about it, and talked about it, and now
I'm afraid to look at it.

It was supposed to be visible a long way off.
Supposed to be outside, but I could take it inside.
Though it came at the end of a long, bitter year,
and as many dry miles of traveling, it would
be perfect.

And here it is, of all seasons, summer.
It comes and it's not what I thought it would be.

From the veranda of my mother's house in Ohio,
fireflies.

I know what will happen.
In the end I will congratulate myself, saying:
I knew it.
I knew it
but no one else could see it.

THE BEAGLES OF ARKANSAS



The thin coats twitch,
The unnecessary crash
Through the bramble
At night resounds
In the scraggly hills,
And well in the wake of
Every foreign license plate
A yapping head and tumult
Of eyes plead
Adoption.

Scorpions crane their tails
To you, peacocks explode
For passing cars, mud daubers
Chew hasty cabins
On rear-view mirrors.

Everything seems to want out,
Yet it stays, captives
Of the minimum
Wage.


THE OLD BALL PARK



Ball Day at the old ball park
and before the game
Lyman Bostock throws out
a couple dozen baseballs
and all us fans
stand on our seats
and reach for them.

When Carew's turn comes
everyone cheers.
Even the kids stop scouting for
vendors and ice cream
in a cup
for a minute.

And when the vendor does come by
he stands in everyone's view.
So we watch him instead,
pouring two bottles of beer
at a time,
holding his dollars
in his teeth.

HAPPINESS



When someone is next to the person she loves,
the water in her cells laps at its thousands
of beaches, pebbles and rock
and sharp discs of light
breathe from the pores of her cheeks.
A whirlpool springs from a cloud to the west,
by an island egg in a happy sea,
a sparrow hawk flies off toward
a bank of violet mountains.
It lights on a limb of a tall green tree,
the stars alight in her branches.




PERSPECTIVE



There are no fields
Between the plane
And the ground below.
The farmlands look like
Bandaids, and the little car
On the long skinny highway
Down there looks
Foolproof as a bead
On an abacus wire,
Undeviating
As a button on a thread.

Actually, someone
Full-sized is inside,
And he has to steer
Or he'll go in the ditch.
He could hit his head.
Or worse, miss
His appointment
In a room in one of
The buildings along-
Side the road.

MY BICYCLE



I set aside this perfect day to be with my bicycle.
Beautifully red, she's been mine
for three years.
I have just bought a pair of blue handlegrips.

Now for our free pirouettes in the sun.
There is no joy like this one.
Down a smooth hill
and into the wind, the low sound of whistling
in her spokes -- I close my eyes
and trace a shiver down my spine.

Now we rest in the shade of a tree,
and my lovely bicycle, anxious
to please me,
guides herself in small circles.

Here, the figure eight.
Here, quick brakes!
I'm so proud, I applaud,
and my bicycle wheels sheepishly toward me,
sets her handlebar in my lap.

I stroke her saddle,
I murmur kind words.
When she stands before me,
her chain sags irresistibly,
her bearings rattle deep in her hind parts.

I mount her,
and we ride.

THE CLARINET IS
A DIFFICULT INSTRUMENT



I was eating minestrone
When I heard something fall
Outside my apartment window.
Too dark to see much
But a pair of hairy arms slam shut
A window on the third floor
Of the building opposite mine.

In the morning all I found
Was a bent clarinet on cement,
Dented horn and pawn shop sticker
Saying nine dollars.

It reminded me of the French explorer
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.
He too had dreams, set sail
Up the St. Lawrence, looking for China,
And wound up settling in Detroit instead.

DOG IN THE MANGER



Hard years after I first hear
the expression
I understand its meaning:
The dog is in the manger,
Napping in the hay.
When cow comes near to eat,

Sharp teeth warn her away.
But you know dogs, sooner
Or later they always repent.
Watch one as he trots out
To pasture, drops a shank-
Bone at your hooves.



THE WOMAN I LOVE



The woman I love is much smarter than me, therefore my life with her is one long lookout. Where will she turn up next? I never know.

You sometimes see me peering deep into my binoculars, scanning the horizon. And then she will be there, tapping my shoulder from behind.

You would think I would learn, but I don't. Idiotically, I still walk down the street whistling a tune or kicking a can, imagining I weren't under constant surveillance. Imaging every eye behind every drape was not hers.

Sometimes I congratulate myself, saying I did it, I made good my escape. And I run to a place that she will never in a hundred years find.

But when I get there the signs are everywhere -- the bedsheets twisted just so, the dried drop of wine on the floor. I warn the natives she is coming and they smile and nod at me. Everyone knows her name.

She says I'll never learn. I say I will when I'm good and ready.

That one time, in the delta, I was ready, poised to exterminate, but I weakened at the last second and felt pity, and put two bits in her tin cup. I figured, she's blind. She's got a monkey to feed. And with that accordion playing of hers she could not be grossing much.

And she whipped off her black glasses and I tumbled down into her eyes, screaming and waving my arms, falling like a stone, like a bucket down a well.

When I righted myself I still saw her eyes. Laughing, she bit me on the wrist and took off after me, chasing me up and down the French Quarter, over and through the cast iron rails. At the last possible moment I was able to disguise myself as a bishop in an innocent game of chess.

I nearly burst with laughter as she dashed by, teeth dripping with desire. Otherwise, she would be mine today.

You see, though she is insanely clever, I am no slouch myself.

When I was just a boy and she was my teacher I fooled her routinely. The other nine year olds hated me -- the mustache, I think -- and because I got special favors from teacher.

One day she demanded I stay after and wash her blackboard and I soaked and rubbed, smeared and stroked. She said don't stop but I stopped.

The look on that schoolmarm face! When I told her I had to "go," I had to tear the corridor pass from her clutching fingers. I gave her the slip and fled through the swingsets.

There was a supermarket in the Sandwich Islands. Everyone wore grass skirts -- checkouts, boxboys, men with cleavers and bloodied aprons.

I filled my cart with a sense of being stricken. Behind a jam jar I saw a seething eyelid. I uncovered another eye, a flaring nostril, an iron ring, a single horn of matted hair extruding from a troubled brow.

She bellowed!

Customers spilled milk and burst into tears. The holy cow of Kauai bolted from the bins. There was a terrible rustling of skirts.

I hid in the grass for forever, and when the moment was right melted into the crowd.

No need to explain it. This is not an allegory. It's her. She changes. I wasn't surprised in 1936 in Berlin when I looked behind me and she was there. I was Jesse Owens and she was Frau Cosima, an ideological gleam in her eye. She reached for my baton but I broke for the finish.

All this time I was madly in love. Here was a woman who knew about a man. The things he needs. The things he needs to need. How delicate we are like pale flowers struggling in a soft breeze. How when we say no we mean yes, yes.

You appreciate that when you are up the Amazon without a paddle. She was so gentle. I was in a tree, with a sloth and a parrot. I was yellow and had little sharp teeth and black spots. She was very white and very tall and had a Mauser rifle and two trained crocodiles.

How my jeweled eyes lit up the night. And the pounding of my heart found its place between her cross-hairs.

But she knew I was not ready and let me off easy. The bullet only grazed me. I was up all night, yowling and licking the soft wound.

I am at a party high over New York. It's George Plimpton's house. He says he is writing a book about what it is like, just for a day, to impersonate a human being.

Someone says something, four score of eyebrows arch.

Across a battery of stemware I spot her. Escape, escape, and there is no escape. Then I remembered. The Empire State Building is like the moon -- its dark side has never been seen. I look out the window -- one hundred floors of continuous fire escape.

Closing my eyes I begin my descent. Luck is with me -- I beat the elevator down.

She chases me across the Yukon carrying a sling of baby sons in one hand, a foreclosed mortgage in the other. Tweaking my sinister mustache, I weep.

When I look over my shoulder she has become a ravening wolf, bounding after me, snapping at my heels.

I hippity hop across Alaska and dive into the Bering Sea. She is equally vivid as a shark. Crawling onto dry land I take cover as she strafes me as a fighter plane from unbelievably low altitudes.

I make my way across the Sahara, panting. A dozen dunes away I hear the drone of the jeep of the woman I love. But when I peek she isn't a jeep at all. She's a mosquito the size of a jeep, something completely different.

I turn into a billiard ball and burrow into the desert sand. Foiled, she buzzes off.

I spend forty days in the desert. I am religious as cactus, pared down to the least, holiest thing. Then I hear it.

One thousand saxophones bopping martially under the midday sun! Climbing my outpost I look down as legion upon legion pass below me blowing hot jazz.

And at their head is Octavian, and this time she means business.

Fortunately my disciples had prepared for such an eventuality. I climb through a trap door in the desert and emerge at the corner of Fifth and Wabasha in downtown St. Paul. It is never far from St. Paul to the desert.

I brush the sand from my jeans and board the 21A. The driver's eyes meet mine in the mirror, but I am exhausted, I collapse in the last seat. Those eyes, I wonder, where have I seen those eyes before, like happy dragons, ready to dine, and me a porkchop pooling in its fat.
I know what will happen. She will strip me bare, and lay me open. I will be the meat braised by her fire, flayed and fulfilled, seared through to the marrow.
And I would not have it any other way.

GOD AND HIPPOPOTAMUS



In the beginning God said to Hippopotamus:
Kiboko, I want this bank kept clean.
Your job is to keep the grass in line.

Kiboko answered the Lord saying:
Your will is my will, but please, Lord,
May I loll my sun-hours in the stream?

God thought deeply upon the matter; finally
He said Oh, all right,
Just don't eat all the fish.

Now every night Kiboko mashes clay
Between her hooves. When she goes
She shits and pisses both at once,

Her tail a propeller scattering the mess
Up and down the twilit bank
Distributing it for God to examine.

See? she says, her billiard-ball eyes
Rolling up to the moon --
No scales.


BERNAL DIAZ AT PRAYER
BEFORE THE MASSACRE, 1519



We sleep in armor again tonight,
Like tipped over beetles.
We roll,
We roll,
And the roaches rattle through our limbs
And joints and iron breastplates.

Holy Spirit I lift lead arms,
My broadsword dangles at the cuff.
Even the dew adds weight to me
And the smoke and ashes
Curl propitiation
To strange gods in volcanoes.

To the true God your select ones pray
To discern the difference between
What is rust,
What blood.

When the hour to clamber upward comes,
Grant safe passage to some good place
To look down upon what is ours




SERGEANT GALLEGOS
ABOLISHES HIGHER RANK, 1913



The walls I made them run toward
Were the ones they themselves built
To keep me out and my mixed kind.
I swear I could watch these
Lieutenants and colonels drill
Like footsoldiers forever -- but
Lacking time and owing to their
Numbers, dispatch must be efficient.
Those who maintained the ancient order
must benefit first from the new.
The new justice is, they run, I
Shoot them dead, them barefoot through
The cactus spines, me resplendent
In my brocade sedan-chair!
The only peace I will know tonight
Is the balm of the butter
From the old masters' icebox
On my tragically blistered
Trigger finger.

THE FACE ON THE
PUERTO JUAREZ FERRY, 1979



Sitting beside him shames me,
me and my vacation, him and his life

and the donkey path of rings upon his face,
a rattlesnake coiled among thorns,

the rattle maracas spooled along the spine,
the crow pin feathers swimming in his eyes.

The whorls of this thumbprint ask
what thumb has had its way with him

for he's too pregnant with circles, a
target of rings, to be merely a man --

the red in the eye of the matador bull,
one drop of blood in the arena sand.

TROMPE L'OEIL



The painter's wife
Turned her back on him
And went to sleep. He
Went to his studio and
Set up his easel and
Painted a picture of
Snow falling on a small
Wisconsin town. On one
Of the whited-out
Streets was a house with
Green shutters and a
Streetlight shining on
An upstairs window. The
Man and woman inside had
Undressed, a pair of
Shoes lay under the bed.
Before climbing in, the
Man bent over and
Brushed the dust from
The soles of his feet.
I know, the stooped-over
Man was saying, I will
Rise up early and paint
A picture of snow
Falling outside our
Bedroom window.



BROWSERS



He flipped through the magazines
in the periodical room.

The Cadillac, he thought to
himself, is definitely the
Rolls-Royce of automobiles.

She sauntered through the stacks,
fingers dusting the tops of rows.
The things I don't know,
she pondered, could fill a book.

They stood in line at the
check-out desk,
shifting their weight
like two ships passing in broad
daylight.

EATING & FLYING



The one as familiar as the other,
a sleigh traversing piles of cloud,
the tinfoil peeled from
a steaming lunch. This cauliflower
seems familiar.




HOME OPENER



Cold beer bare skin hot
Sun and this, self perched
On a porcelain rim,
Prying skin,
Laying open the white
Underneath.

This is what snakes do
Every year,
Spiraling outward into time; or
Trees, whittling backwards
The bracelets of their lives.

Compulsion moist hunger and
Strange delight in
Lifting away these sticky sheets,
Funny feeling called getting
Closer.

THE ILIAD



A cavern blasted amid high-standing corn
like the swath of a broadsword
in the prayer-chamber of the house of virgins --
trampled stalks and the crushed green ear,
braid-bearded against the ground, listening
long after the final blow is hurled.

Phantom forces have met on the night-cloaked
food-strewn fields and in their fierce combat
shed blood and laid vegetables to waste.
Their waters turned clay vermilion, their dew
that skidded and sprayed through the night
now glitters in the rosy-fingered dawn.

What German shepherd made watchman by war
and named Ajax after a foaming cleanser
now perks his ears at the scent of raccoon
on potato patrol in his quadrant of corn
and unassisted pads the township road
and accosts the raiding masked intruder?

The din of crash and gnashing fills the plain,
the tears of Ceres and countless nyphs of grain
spatter the sides and gnawed limbs of warriors,
even the light in gin-soaked Yeoman Magruder's
bedroom down by Turtle Lake flicks on
as neighors near and far attend the clash.

By sun-up only the star-shaped wake remains,
and the trail of scarlet collecting in furrows,
leading through the dazed and shivering maize
to the banks of Jacks Creek's moaning curl,
where face-down in mud and open-bellied
the slack-jaw bandit sips his fill of death.

Back on Farmer Fagan's wooden porch
stout-hearted Ajax hints and whines,
split-cheeked and eyeless, ruffed collar
drips red and the faithful shepherd bleats
and nudges the screen, honored to share
good news in what moments of glory remain.

THE BUSINESS OF BEES



When prices are normal
And weather cold, bees clump
In a knot, suck sugar
And hum to stay warm.

But when sugar is high
It's cheaper to dump them
Out of their drawers and buy
A new queen come the spring.

This year the bees are
Tumbling, hear: sugar
Is dear, the snow lies
Buzzing on the ground.




LAST YEAR'S XMAS DANCE



Norwegian farmers in hospitals, islands
Of plastic tubes and fluttering eyelids
Struggle to do what they will not do,
Arise and return to their fields.

Ivor Thorsen of Glendive, Montana,
Disintegrating nerves flown in, is awed
But his speechlessness, motionlessness,
Dreams he is laughing in Glendive, Montana.

But the strings inside are all undone,
Incomprehensible to a scarecrow who
Has walked lopsided ten thousand
Crumbling furrow miles.

Mary, Anna, is it really Christmas Day?
And is it really clumsy me slipping here
With farmer feet on the Legion floor?
Oh, look at me, Mother, I am dancing.

REVOLVING DOOR



Seeing the pensioner
Step tentatively
Into the glass cylinder,

The girl slowed down,
The two tiptoed around
One another, palms high.

He smiled at his partner,
And she, who had never before
Danced the minuet, dancing

Out with the old, dancing
In with the new, did
Likewise.



LULLABYE



Rest your drowsy cheek,
My girl, quiet on my
Prickling arm. Dream
Your dream of lapping
Waters cresting on this
Human form. The tides
Are breathing, you and
I, in your small clench
And my tight heart.
Tonight we fill the
Grave with stones and
Slumber in the summer's
Dew. And all I make
Are promises which can
Not come true. I will
Not give you away, my
Girl, I will never make
You cry, nor morning
Find us far apart, nor
This hand gone away
From you.

BIKER BOB MANISKALKO'S

LIVING ROOM DECOR



Ignore the Iron Crosses
And posters of Nuremburg
And leather-breasted
Blondes on naked Harleys,

But drink in the tapestry
Tacked up behind empties
That might be a tribute to
Baked potatoes, clad in

Aluminum foil but isn't --
It's night-time on an arid
Beach, and the two
Astronaut buddies walk

Hand in hand in the
White light from earth --
Brushed on black velvet
And hung by the platters

Of Bobby and JFK.

CENTIPEDE ON CHOP SUEY



Fork and knife to left and right
But before digging in I see
Dancing like Krishna on unpolished rice
Two dozen legs rising up at me.

In Libya kids pluck them larger
Than this one by far from holes
In the sand and swallow them armored
And wriggling, whole,

But that is not our way in Brewster,
Here we give our plates a push
And pray our appetites return
In time for eggs and toast.

Little guest, just as I am
So are you, hard put
To keep to the minimum
This jitterbug on my dinner.

"THE MINSTREL & THE LADIE"



The singer's message: I am only a boy
And my songs and my fiddle
My only true friends.

But the woman banging her glass
On the formica bartop is receiving
Transmissions of life in the wild,

She envisions geese lifting
From a fern-bog in the peninsula
Of a state she has never visited.

Between numbers she buys him a beer
And for a moment there is no Ramada Inn:
Young man, I want to kiss you everywhere.

But he clings to character, stammers
His Thank you Ma'am but home's a distance,
And the roads up Moorhead way are slick.

To no avail. She's deaf. Changing.
Already she's a brute brown bear
In the northerly wood,

Already enjoying the scratch
She knows comes next on her rump
On the broken spruce branches.


GISE PEDERSEN SETS ME STRAIGHT

ON A MATTER OF NATURAL HISTORY



"No, you've got this part all wrong,"
Says Gise, swatting a poem about birds
With the back of one hand.

"You have whippoorwills sobbing in the limbs
Of poplars, but whippoorwills don't perch
In poplars, whippoorwills don't perch anywhere,

Because their legs are just tiny twigs,
They are gone into atrophy, no muscle left,
So all they can do is plop themselves

Flat on the ground and make the best of it
There on their haunches. And furthermore,
What is this sobbing business? It's poetic

But hardly accurate. Their cry is more
Like a cheer, it is a call my son Peter,
Before he died, liked to imitate

On his walks home from school.
Many times, late summer nights in our cabin,
Hendrik and I would be feeling morose,

Only to hear out there in the darkness
The cry of a creature pressed close
And shouting from the cold of this earth

To all who might hear him:
VIP-poor-VEE!"

A DRIVE IN THE COUNTRY



Summer was dry but the
Farmers forget and plow
The dead stalks under.
Today the wind is lifting
The first loose dirt away.
The elms in the Mahnomen
Park are striped for
Felling, and sugar beets
Litter the roads at sharp
Curves. Tree trunks lay
Scattered where they
Landed after the tornado
Of 1958. Outside
Crookston a yellow dog
Just made it to the ditch
To die, and farther
Ahead, a mile from the
Border, old shoes line the
Shoulders. Canadians are
Home now, wearing new
Ones.

THE DANCE OF THE DOG



The knees bend like spurs
Spun round from the
Rattling steps, shake off
The wood-stove fever
Stored from the
Floorboards through the
Night, race past the pump
To the edge of the
Cleanshorn field where
Only the day before an
Army of corn held sway.
Now on tiptoe, now
Trotting gingerly row to
Row, the pink tongue
Flagging, the keen eye
Swerves to the suggestion
Of movement, surveys the
Swath of harvest slack-
Jawed. The creatures of
The plain are dazed in a
Changed world, but he who
Sleeps on a burlap sack
Where the cinders spit is
Proud to the tooth:I am
I, he thinks, dog, and
This is my country, and
This the might of my
Accomplices.

PANDIT



The vocational counselor in Delhi
Apologized for giving bad advice:
"Not every young Brahmin with money
Is wise." Many years later,
Pandit's swami, glancing about his
Townhouse in St. Anthony Falls,
Shook his head. "Pandit-ji," he
Said, "your instincts are bad
Enough, but your lifestyle has got
To go." Every guru starts
Somewhere, and for Pandit the
Crossing occurred one evening in
1973. He had chanted a special
Intention for two nights and a day,
And now his skin began to evanesce
And a glow like radium suffused his
Features and the bones of his hands
And feet shone in the rice-paper
Silhouette like moonlit twigs.

Suddenly Swami barges in, unplugs
The lava-lamp and shakes Pandit by
The shoulders. "Wake up, Balbir,
You disgrace to your caste. When
Will you quit all this fidgeting?"

Four years of doctrine and
Contemplation and Swami Mukhtaranda
Throws up his hands. "Tell me, have
You considered a career in
Dentistry? People get toothaches,
You could be useful. We have been
Discussing your case at Himalayan
Central in the Loop. Pandit-ji,
It's not working out." Pandit
Breaks down on the other end. "But
What of my chapel, with the acoustic
Paneling and foam carpet pads --
What of the rent, the three skinny
Daughters, Irish setter, Triumph
Roadster? Give me another chance,
Business will boom."
Swami relents: "Just thank God you're in
Minneapolis where you can't hurt
Anyone." Pandit attends continuing
Education courses in business
Management at the university
Convention center, learns the seven
Words to seal a sale, prints
Meditation coupons in the back pages
Of the Sunday TV section. Hatha
Enrollments begin to swell, a course
In breathing for data processors
Draws overflow crowds, registered
Nurses from around the city salute
The sun from every angle. Suburban
Gardeners no longer worry about
Scaly-worm and red-ear mites. Swami
Writes: "I am man enough to admit I
Was wrong. You're some kind of
Pandit. Christmas is out, we're
Booked at Vail six months in
Advance." Pandit spawns a yogi
Tummy, bolstered by his taste for
Hostess Snowballs. The wisdom of
The East is born again, Midwestern.
"Shift gears with your one mind,
Retain the other for the clutch."

He hires so many assistant pandits
He doesn't know which one smokes
Luckies and lectures on the holy
Wind within. His checkbook is
Bulging, his checks in the popular
Scenic Wilderness design, the
Rockies, Mojave, Maine lighthouse
And drive-thru Sequoia. But Sunday
Mornings while the Christians pray,
Pandit snaps on snorkel and weighted
Boots, and drifts the tangled floor
Of Lake Calhoun. "On surface," he
Tells his class on scuba yoga, "we
Encounter the brunt of life's
Agitations, those waves and splashes
Which torment the honest heart. But
When we go below we feel this
Unlikely thing, the tranquil wet
Embrace." He pads through the mud,
Brushes long ropes of alga aside. I
Am I, he inhales, Thou art Thou, he
Exhales, and here in this constant
Kiss of life is the successful
Career of one soldier of Shiva in
These United States.

I

HATE IT

MORE THAN YOU DO, MARIANNE



"Imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

I hate it more than you do, Marianne, I hate
The sighing and heaving and jockeying
For position. I hate the having
To get into the mood, the
Chase, the coy
Cultivation
Of op-
Posites.
I hate the
Strutting that precedes
The first move, I hate the feigned
Surprise that follows.
I hate the protestations
Of no, no, as if this was not what you wanted,
All you wanted, all along, to be prodded
And forced through the hoop
One more time, and
The accent
And null,
And
The accent and
Null, till the element
Spurts from the unit out into
Its grin of decay, and afterward,
The depleted sag and the limping off stage,
The slight curl of smoke, propitation to gods who
Couldn't care less,
And yet,
When the fit is good,
And one's hands encompass
The soft arc of the dreamed for,
The sought after circles, and all spins
Round as new as youth and as right as truth,
Like the rise and crescendo of flat stones skipped
On the water's face and I behold anew how your slim bones
Gleam platinum in the glad light of earth,
And I enter you again with a smile,
And I think the world has no
Need of this, nor
May you, but
I do.

MYSTERY



A scene familiar from late night,
the husband in the cellar,
struggling to rinse blood from cloth.

Now is the time for the washday miracle,
what did the paper say about removing blood,
hot water sets its rusty paws as evidence

and the world will know what was done.
See how the gelatin beads along the mesh,
the plasm of life splashed the length of it, dyed.

Taste -- like coins in the pocket too long,
of things suspect, gone wrong,
of what should ever be in edging out.

Blood, blood, and the wretched Lady
wrung hands and wailed for the
perfumes of Arabia, and a gallant

man and the blade subsumed.
Blood, blood, and the last survivor
plunges the mass back into the cold.

Always the press says something snapped in him,
a stain that spread, a marinade of bed.
And the bodies lying in the room overhead

are still now, the seeping at low ebb,
and the red-eyed husband mounts the stairs
and stands beside the sleeping wife

and newborn child.

BABY DANGER



The night the baby was born,
And the midwife left,
And our friends finished off the champagne,
We wrapped it twitching in a white cloth
And set it between our bodies in the bed.

Sleeping rigid as steel bars,
Terrified we'd roll upon the being
And smother the life,
And dreamed of it sliding to its death
Under dark waters,
Dreamed it fell from countertops,
Chairs, cracked like eggs on the baked varnish
Of the world.

We dreamed of leaving it exposed
And found it blue and chapped upon snow,
Or turning one moment and looking back
To the crib rocking emptily, emptily,
All the world's reasons
Suddenly missing.

There was a decade of our lives or more
When we could lie down upon cold tracks
And drink and nod off
And not worry about morning.

Now everything is heat,
And distant thunder.
The moon puts its shoulder to the shade,
Peering in like the dumbstruck
Passenger on
Two frightened adults
And a small sleeping girl.


IN THE NIGHT



My little girl awoke in quaking with fright,
and I held her and explained
that the monsters were gone,
they were never there at all,
and the look she gave me was, I recall,
almost one of pity, as if
I were the doomed one, mine the swift
tumble coming soon.
I rocked her to sleep in her room
and thought of every plane
I wanted to see go down,
every siren shearing the dark
were heading toward my part
of town, my god, and all I
have is a child to protect me.

REMAINDERS



Copies of my poems went on sale at Odegard Books,
The precise word is remaindered,
Marked down from three ninety five to just the ninety five,
And it hit me that this gambit by the bookstore
Was just what people had been waiting for.

Sure, you expect people to hold back,
Especially at today's prices. Three ninety five is
A piece of change, no doubt about it,
And there must be people who thumb the book
And pat it with one hand as if weighing the
Poems against the expense, the expense against
The poems, take one step toward the cashier
And then fail in their purpose, put the book back
In the rack, and pick up a copy of American Poetry Review,
Beautiful things wonderfully said,
For under three dollars, a wonderful buy, instead.

But who could balk at ninety five cents,
Why, that's less than a dollar with a nickel left over,
You could buy the poems and have enough to
Handle the sales tax, nineteen for the poet and
One for the State of Minnesota and its beautiful
Forests and waterfowl.

[Actually, all nineteen don't go to the poet. I was
Promised a ten percent royalty, which meant forty cents
On the full price, and the fine print here says
When a book goes remainder there isn't really
Any royalty at all, but I don't care, I didn't
Write them for the forty cents, you see,
I wrote them for this feeling I'm having right now
Of breaking through, of getting out,
Of seeing the birds I'd stored in the box
Fly out of it, white wings fair
clapping the morning air.]

Ninety five cents for thirty five poems,
That's less than three pennies apiece. Here's one
About some weeds growing in sidewalk cracks,
So what, it's only six lines long but at three cents
Who's going to complain? Here's another,
A beautiful lyric, a love poem connecting
To the Italian futurist movement of the nineteen-teens,
It was published in a number of respected magazines,
For less than three cents you won't need a vacation tour
This year, just read the words and feel their awful power.

Or the final poem, I call it "The Light," which was all
My life in sonnet length, how there were things
I thought I always wanted, but when I got them they were
Different, or I was unable to recognize them -- such pathos
As would melt the stony heart, and I lay it all down
For you, vulnerable, small, the shattered clown,
The paper trembles with the grief of truth,

Because here it is, softcover renascence,
And all it costs is three lousy cents.
My ear to the ground I can detect the build
Of momentum, people swearing off bad habits forever,
People afraid to look one another in the eye
Now looking and seeing the pain and love that had been there
All along, now reaching out, fingertips touching,
The sting of tears collecting in the corners
Of millions and thousands, the soft collapse
Of a hundred brittle barriers of reason and attitude
Finally available, the incandescent word
At prices the masses can afford.

Let us go now, you and I, to Odegards.
For life has many sales but few true bargains.
Let us take the silver coins and hand them to the person
And remember to ask for the receipt, if you're a poet
Your whole life is deductible.
Oh daughters of Homer gather round his knees
And hear him sing his saltstrong songs.
There are myriad of you there,
A speckled galaxy of brave little lights,
Fresh washed garments tucked under your knees,
Eager for instruction and keen for meaning,
He cannot see you but he hears you breathing.




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