What game is this
Oh we are clever
alive
with escapade and risk
inventing and becoming
rich
The game is gelt
or gold or gilt
whatever gilds our trade
And trade it is
that makes us tick
move quick
move quicker
move quickest
to the goal
what is the goal
what game is this
8/5-10/11/95, 4/7/96
Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Reading Sartre's "Baudelaire"
(and other Haiku excuses)
I
Hidden sun today
August expectations fade
I too invisible
II
Windowsill of day
Slowly onward a beetle
I watch it glide
III
Falling the ant rises
And falling rises climbs again
Say we two are free
IV
Where there was nothing
Dams tall cities voyages
Where there is nothing
V
Charity of spring
A democracy of flowers
Paint for all I know
VI
In every weather
Love worn like a shoe
How thin the soul
VII
Smell of cut grass
Through tightly drawn blinds
Rescues me from sleep
8/18-9/6/96, 1/31/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
To Have Lived This Long
To have lived this long in admiration of children authors of the book of
laughter cartographers of the map of solutions whose commentary can
always be trusted
To have lived this long in fealty to women without understanding them yet
knowing their value as they melt or harden with the changing seasons
To have lived this long scowling at the genuflectors the cringers the
clingers the gossips especially the barren patriots
To have lived this long among these barbarians even perhaps to have
supported them by inaction to have tutted and tsked but not to have
risked my body
To have lived this long clinging to this fractured bone yard into which I
mumble even to think it worthy to lave it stuff it wrap it in cloth guard
it from its just deserts
To have lived this long disguised as human as man as poet as comrade as
lover as culture-carrier all these but masks of my strident my querulous
mortality
To have lived this long tried by the body's ailments the mind's enigmas
squirreled beneath shame's bravado the vulnerability of this sack of
sorrow that bears my name
To have lived this long vain as any carrion humbled yet arrogant stumbling
yet upright doomed yet in denial sitting here near noon forgetful of
food of water of tasks of trials dumbly tapping out a poem:
madness ecstasy affluence
12/21/04, 12/30/04, 1/6/05, 10/7/07, 1/20/08, 1/24/08
Copyright 2004, 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
The Candidate
(for the victims in Texas)
With his bouillabaisse of pieties
The Governor savors eternal life
Or a helping of reelection
He spreads his godliness
Like jam on stale bread
Starchy as his shirt
Hard as his cosmetic head
We do not deserve this
We who laugh lest we cry
Who cuddle our children
And dare not die
We do not deserve this arch betrayal
At the hands of a theological lie
We want our State kept separate
From panderers of the faith
We'd rather the poor be nourished
The ailing nursed to health
The schools proffer truth not fiction
And just uses for wealth
As for these "suits" trailing hosannas
Dante's lowest Circle for their derelictions
And if some among you find this frightful
I view the prospect as quite delightful
12/1-2/07,12/30/07, 1/2/08
Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Girl at the Electronic Catalogue
The bright screen as I pass
Alive alas with "Suicide"
The catalogue in dialogue
With a young girl's queries
And jocular I close the gap
To where she's fixed
With my crude question
"I hope it's not a choice"
"It was my brother's
I want to understand"
Such weighty mystery
The urge to leave
With or without goodbye
The leap across the space
From live to die
And though it seems volitional
We sense it is not so
These few less choosers than chosen
Go without a will
But not against it
Yet they think they will
Reaching for self-mastery
Or dreary and forlorn
Against particulars of bond
Against all other selves
To silence what offends
Not comprehending ends
I wish the girl well
Embarrassed to have stumbled
On the face of hell
8/14, 11/4/94, 4/7/96, 3/18/08
Copyright 1994, 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Thoughts After Snyder's Poem
What you should know
The poet said
To be a poet
To which I add a word:
Know who you are are not
Where your darkness starts
Words' weight in drams and scruples
What other poets do
The way the world works
How money hurts
Children's dizzy ways
Love's anagrams
The universe asleep
The space you cannot keep
The sound that needing makes
What you must not forsake
8/13-10/12/95, 10/31-11/17/95, 3/13/08
Copyright 1995, 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Trio
1. Lake
A day in the country
Herb and I in a rowboat
Except I can't swim
Despite the lake enticing
Herb says jump right in
You can grab the boat
Or its mooring rope
You'll soon swim
So I jumped but stayed near
Cool water icy fear
And the fear held sway
I did not swim that day
2. Matchmaker
For Herb a painful favor
Some words with Jean
To bring the two together
Did I not suppress desire
For myself just silence
But verbal for the other
And the service rendered
Love children marriage
Modest happiness quiet
But darkness not long later
His body lost to Hodgkin's
Sweet Herb gone forever
3. Jean's Cousin
A rage of rubies
Summer coral ebony gleam
Body like a flame
How could a straw man
With tongue of sand
Presume to love her
Now only time's pity
The memory of pain
And blandness without her
4/2-4/19/97, 4/16/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Elevator Ride
My sluggard lift's
unhurried levitation
or descent
seems time ill-spent
departing from
returning to the firmament
Still better though
than bygone days
toiling the leaden stairs
and grateful for
a moment's breath
aspiring to the final floor
Thus on reflection
I learn time used
proportions to
the time we're in
and history
leavening impatience
brings perspectivist duration
to the time that's now or then
although tomorrow's time
continues dim
Unlike the present din
the past seems sensible
like the ride that's been
declines to jar repose
lets measure in
Oh but today does hurry so
as if fulfillment
is the only map we know
as if the little in our squint
if rendered with dispatch
would enable us to show
how it is we come
why it is we go
7/94-10/30/94, 11/3-11/17/07, 2/10-2/13/08
Copyright 1994, 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Flyer
I
I see by the A&P flyer
That Passover foods are a feature
Am I the only Westchester creature
Who doesn't post a calendar
Alongside his refrigerator
What a shock to my delicate nature
For holidays to burst upon the nation
In the midst of my disorientation
I'm a boat torn from its moorings
A pigeon whose cage has been hidden
A Muslim with no sense of direction
If indeed Passover is cooking
Why then Ramadan has gone wanting
And Easter verges on rising
II
When the gods have left the field
And calendars have their pages sealed
When celebration like menstruation
Bows to change of life
And a bored world surrenders
Theology to euthanasia
Then oh A&P oh Winn-Dixie
Oh Ralph's oh H.E.B.
Oh Stop and Shop oh Giant Food
Oh Safeway oh Grand Union
What ungodly but delicious specials
Will in your luscious flyers brood
Absent occasion to inspire your milky pleadings
Such as Season's Greetings and similar poop
3/17-3/23, 7/16-7/25/96, 6/13/07, 2/10/08
Copyright 1996, 2008 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Unafraid
I'm not afraid
I have my tasks to pass the time
I keep a monthly calendar
Hang up my clothes at night
And like a pilgrim to a shrine
Appear every ten days
At the washing machine
Month after month
I welcome the cleaning woman
And I freely admit
I delight at the gleaming
Washstand that she leaves
Deep in the dead of winter
I count the days to spring
While ambivalently
Savoring the coming snow
And what is more precious
Than a steaming soup to take
The chill from one's bones
I would drink
But my doctor forbids it
Leap but my leg is lame
And were it not for my breathing
I'd be without complaint
At night I keep my clock in view
And from time to time
I check its progress toward the dawn
I feel a small uncertainty
Not really fear
Just a vague suspicion
I'd rather be awake
1/6-2/11/96, 6/22/98, 10/7/07
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
What We Do
Though blind we be we act as if we see
Pursuing sun or shadow whatever fits the game
And with each play a loss astride a gain
And something banished pleading to remain
What's done is never gone nor we the same
Be it rich in ribaldry or poor with shame
It spreads a gloom upon our history
Enshrouding innocence with mystery
Our choices grown of nature's very grain
Are footprints by our own dimension bound
We trample over loss to reach the found
And every sacrifice survives in us as pain
It is the reason for all song our screed
Of sorrow the hunger moving us along
An anamnesis in the bone that seeks the dead
Love's liquefaction down a waterfall of dread
And what begins in passion ends as moan
Our century exhausted the past a brackish crone
And that which we've diminished in our brazen grasp
We weave into a dream upon a loom of loss
We are wrapped in a round expectancy
Like a bracelet formed of snow
Faithfully intoning the poem of what we know
To give us ease my dears as we wait to go
12/10/94-4/5/95, 6/7-10/4/97, 6/28/98, 7/12/98
Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Metropolitan Museum (7/22/98)
Under the full-breasted dome of
Heaven corridors of giant vases
Announce the empty opulence
Of Egypt's vanguished throne
Van Gogh crouches under a moon
Of strangers spreading the starry
Pigments of a hundred soaring
Colors across his canvas nights
Rodin broods in the hallways among
Alabaster women entwined in a glaze
Of passion who sip an endless kiss
Most of us have missed
The walls are draped in innocence
And lore with only naked Unicorns
To protect us from a swarm of
Peeping Toms who cry for more
From my balmy balustrade I gaze
Above bouquets of trees past Central Park
To the silent stands of stone and steel
That shield each day from art
On the terraced steps the tourists quaff
Their bottled fizz The poor assemble for
Admission but the doors have zippered lips
I slip them through the walls
Around the Met's escarpments pennants
Celebrate the shawl of sun and breeze
The city overflows with honey
Green as the ooze of money
7/24-7/29/98, 8/17-8/19/98, 9/4-9/19/98, 12/24/07
Copyright 1998, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
A Talk with A. Zagajewski
(After reading "A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche")
--No one tells me anything new so I tell myself
my own story-TSZ: 56, Friedrich Nietzsche
I imagine you writing on a balcony in Paris
You float in freedom which at last you savor
Your words are tall as if on stilts
Moving above the history they try to capture
As the long reach of words moves over you
A fine hand cups your neatly bearded chin
As you try to understand how words catch fire
Your lyric ambiguities fan them as they burn
You know that Celan drowned them in the Seine
For in the end we are betrayed by words
I see you've built this dialogue in stone
And scrawled N's name upon it
Some shallow dream has beguiled you
Into mistaking the witness for the deed
As if guilt were nimble and like a cloak
Might be removed and transferred to another
Better seek the Nazis who rule death's lovers
Whose visions are blades burnished in ovens
Who call themselves Only Ones and have no mothers
They live today as if we had not suffered
In a world eager to be blinded by words
Where friendly absolution dances to their summons
They leave few traces they even wear our faces
But you will not find their seed in N's remains
The piety of cowards put him in their place
Giving him as ransom to obtain forgiveness
Sometimes the borders of the kingdoms blend
Sometimes the great dreams twist and bend
2/28-3/3, 6/5-6/6 96, 5/14/98
Copyright 1996, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
On the Way
On the way to growing up
I kneeled in a farmyard
near an old Connecticut town
pellet gun in hand
sighting a sleeping feline
curled around a fence
Henry the farmer's city son
beside me as I peered
softly purred instructions
to keep my purpose clear
Here the task before me
was to incapacitate a cat
unknowingly recumbent
and incidentally fat
with shot of great potential
to wound or swipe a life
A life but just a cat's
immobile in my sight
not I nor it or daylight
stirring as I set
The universe breathless
sensitive to a sneeze
poised to shift its purpose
should I in a breeze
lend a hand to chaos
needing but to squeeze
this trigger near my heart
and break the puss apart
Which I did not
but put the weapon up
put aside that sight
seeing another setting
where cats belong all right
I could not hit the kitty
glad glad of that
returned the gun to Henry
saved two lives one the cat's
7/30-7/31/95, 1/26/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Reading Sabines in the Parking Lot
And looking up as you go by
I take you in
To see if there abides within
A dirty woman
One who laughs
Spirit with a glint
Wit pointed as a pin
I do this out of reverie
Boredom's affectation
And vanishing
You have no hint
Of who you'll come to be
Now that you belong to me
6/22-7/24/96
Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
When the Poem Was Done
When the poem was done
Again old sorrows spun
The painful course rerun
As antidote to dying
And drained silence won
The welcome apathy
Of greying light
And day retired sighing
A warm particularity
Mulled over him
As if the dim objects
Dozing in his room
Were pooled in light
Shimmered where they stood
And tempted him to yield
And love the world
But then he heard
The beat of wings
An airy timber
From some graceful thing
And glancing out
Saw not some bird
But waves of memories
Upon a sea of words
And at his back
The room was black
And in this night
He turned to write
1/7-3/1/97, 1/31/98, 5/12/98, 3/20/02
Copyright 1997, 2002 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Something I Forgot
We're sitting side by side
a woman half my age
and I both waiting
but for different doctors
We chat softly as if
we have been friends for years
beginning when an addled patient
marches across her foot
and I respond sympathetically
But then she's called
and then I'm called
and focus shifts to pain
Later as I emerge
she appears again I hear
her doctor tell her to relax
I see the band aid spot
where blood was likely drawn
As we settle up we talk some more
I diagnose amnesia when
she tells the clerk she's forgotten
something the doctor said
she repeats the word as if
in recognition but then
I'm done and so we say
goodbye goodbye
Outside in the parking lot
I remember something I forgot
and head back just as she
comes out a woman wearing
shorts sandy-haired no name
As I rush by she asks if
I'm all right just something
I forgot I say and dart inside
This is when a great sadness
settles over me
And does not leave
6/15-6/29/96, 6/15/07
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Squandered
We squander our hope
On those who possess us
Each of us tugged
This way and that
By desire's calculus
Its glib technology
Both sexy and fat
And the hoary ballet
Of the ritual ballot
The candidates preening
In the shadow of death
Makeup lights money
Their vanity glowing
The people unknowing
For what they are given
Is that which they'd given
To those who have taken
All that they had
10/29/99, 1/11/00, 1/20/00, 1/24-1/26/00, 9/22/07
Copyright 2000, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
In Time of War, 1942
Weekly assembly
Bible reading
Principal intoning
Everyone white-shirted-bloused
Except for me
Whose sole white shirt
Unworn because unwashed
Which did not go unnoticed
An Assistant Principal
Castigator of trivial transgressions
Breathed fire upon me
Before my stony class
Melting me to a puddle of disgrace
In which I lay bleeding tears
And I never forgave
Even to this very day
What festered within her
To prompt such eager disdain
Heaping helpings of ineluctable shame
Upon a child in time of war
I see me weeping yet
Raise your hand who share my pain
Applaud she is by now forever dead
Whom lightning must have struck at last
10/3-10/6/07
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Used Book Sale
(sponsored by "Friends of the Library,"
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.)
Sarton, Blackmur,
Deutsch, Wilbur, Drew,
A Controversy of Poets,
Ariel, too,
Unlucky seventh at the top,
My modest cache of books
Culled from a skimpy crop.
To pay, I stop
Where the library's "Friends"
Stand about.
A young girl
Counts them out.
"She was my classmate,"
Says a "Friend"
Seeing Ariel
Above the pack.
"So much, of late,
About her."
It takes her back
To days at Smith
(With her, without her).
"You wouldn't know
What was in her, though,
Quite ordinary….
She tried to be…"
She hesitates.
"Like you and me?"
"Yes, but later
She was suicidal."
(But she was not idle.)
Pure white her hair,
Quite elegant and fair,
This "Friend" who stops to share
Her being there.
Her friend
Who steps across the floor
Makes quickly clear
She's heard these words before.
The girl hands my change to me,
Modeling impassivity,
"Enjoy," I think she said
(Although Ms. Plath is dead).
I bag my books,
The "Friends" have turned away,
I've bought the only copy
On display.
What more to say?
n.d. (ca.'95), 5/28/98, 9/29/07
Copyright 1998, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Julian Sorel
In college I gave a talk in Comp Lit
On Le Rouge et Le Noir
The hour before class
I sat in the john
Trying to figure out what to say
Then stone-cold without notes
I walked in and talked about Sorel
For almost an hour
I may have told the story
Like a kid doing his first book report
But the students were held
As if mesmerized by my recitation
I recall being amazed at this
Afterward the professor said
You tell it very well
Which I thought a back-hand compliment
He was a continental but not German
It's a good story and if I told it
Then I'm glad I told it
Let someone more detached
Provide a fitting commentary
I felt too close to Julian
To judge him
Certainly not in public
7/10-7/11/95, 6/10/95, 6/10/07
Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Poems-II
Poems in the roadway found in tire tracks
Poems on soiled napkins rescued from trash
Poems inside matchbooks like something to buy
Poems on toilet paper unrolling without end
Poems in cereal boxes like prizes to be tried
Poems shaped in seaweed delivered by the tide
Poems on pink confetti dropping from the sky
Poems swallowed with my soup the letters warm inside
Poems etched in snow banks carved by careful birds
Poems slipping down my driveway out of melting ice
Poems in dictionaries that have rearranged their words
Poems under my pillow whispering in my ear
Poems in my fireplace born of ash and spark
Heat poems quivering as the noon ignites
Dream poems vanishing the moment I arise
Dust poems sun borne dancing down the light
Cloud poems leaf poems flying geese poems
Turd poems wind poems surf poems blood poems
Sand poems drift poems poems of blowing dirt
Death poems ringing coffins wrought by wriggling worms
Love poems found at morning drying on the sheet
Poems poems poems poems poems
1/9, 2/3-2/10/96, 6/10-6/11/97, 9/3-9/5/07
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Poems-I
Poems stuffed in margins left and right
Poems alongside poems snug and tight
Poems intertwined like snakes
Like supple dancers
Like woven threads
Poems astride poems
Poems embracing
Poems spawning poems
Shadows of poems bleeding into space
Waves of poems flowing down the page
Only the poor may know this
For whom all things are precious
All scraps all spaces
For the rest to each her space
To each his lonely separate thing
Blessed be the poor
And the love of words
Of space for fullness
Of meaning for place
And of the whole for every part
May they be fed
9/28/94-3/31/95, 1/9/96 2/3/96, 1/30/97, 2/20/97,
6/10-6/11/, 9/3-5/07
Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
The End of Mythology
A sudden glow; the crowd struck dumb recoils.
Another sun more proximate alights
Upon the curled and breathless mass. Frail hands
That cannot fend the fluoroscope are pressed
Upon the eyes, heads bow as if in prayer.
And then the blow that ravishes our myth
Impales the earth and ricochets full force
Upon the throng, a sound of many million wings,
The graveled shriek of vulture flocks upon
The corpse, and rising like a blossom from
The pit, a diadem of smoke and mist.
Transubstantial in its subtlety
The flower flows upon the wind until
The lurid form dissolves while essence lurks.
With time, the consummation of the innocent
Is done, extinguishing all scent of life:
Desire and the mother laid to rest
Amid the tranquil objects of decay.
ca 1955, rev. 1995, 7/9/07
Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
No Hope
I am a long way
From making good poems
As I draw a bit closer
I feel further away
As I become more certain
I experience great doubt
As I grasp what I must do
My hands lose their strength
As I learn I grow foolish
As I succeed I wallow in defeat
There is no question
That I am making progress
For I am convinced
That there is no hope
9/29/94, 7/5/96, 6/25/07
(adapted from an aphorism)
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Love's Dying
I miss love's blindness
reckless with impiety
I miss love's unity
selflessness variety
I miss love's courtesy
grace beyond mortality
I do not miss love's dying
Still lingering…not quietly
3/17-7/12/97, 6/25/07
Copyright 1997, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
UT Library
Striding through
the reading room
his eyes a dog
a blind man is
pulled around the corner
padding out of sight
As if plain seeing
were all of life
I go on reading
glad of light
3/11-3/16/96, 5/5/96, 6/25/07
Copyright 1997 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
Comforted Not Free
(Valery)
Vague amnesty of fact or fate
The knowledge of some deep mistake
When blood danced at soul's accession
Though moon-eyed whining murky woe
Still wheedles for propitiation
I kneel to memory's truncheon
Rehearse my clammy exculpation
Thoughts recover me of one
Whose passion craved to lie with sense
To marry act and consciousness
His history a slow agility
So luculent with avid reason
Entwining love's frail glitter
This cache uncovered in the mull
Drenches my cairn of pain in light
I burn for youth's high giddy flight
And fevered blazoning upon the sun
It leaves me comforted not free
5/16-8/25/94, 4/19/07, 7/22/07
Copyright 1994, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Very Well, I Will Be Forgotten
Very well, I will be forgotten, have already been by most.
Why, I'll probably forget myself as I've forgotten earlier selves, moments,
emotions.
And the words I write-and too quickly forget-will last perhaps a
generation
Before the clutter of books records papers will bury them out of sight.
For a time, some there are who will remember, even with feeling, well-
meaning. I will be briefly missed.
But, then, these others, dear people, in order to bear their present, will
move beyond me as I moved beyond so many, earlier,
With only an occasional glance at the complexity that was theirs.
How, now, shall I excuse them in advance, who struggle against chance
and time, parcels of joy and sorrow arrayed before them?
How shall I caress their innocence in my silence, my necessary silence,
fearful of startling them?
I pay my homage to past and future, to the dead, to the young, my own
memory a paltry offering, my few words, trinkets of my journey.
I am embarrassed to raise too many questions, to speak of love, to describe
the pleasure I have been given.
Perhaps it is proper to please briefly, to be savored now and for a time in
memory, then to fade softly leaving the future to find its place.
12/24/01, 6/15/02
Copyright 2002 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Perfect Dead
You are improving
as you die
you will be
perfect dead
Rimbaud's life
by contrast
flowered early on
wilted and went wanting
while live enough
to rue it
each man his
own invention
each season
has her fugue
Descendants
eye us passing
as we push on
up the hill
look to us
for meaning
and we to them
for meaning
as buffaloed
as they
on our way
to dying
on their way
to rue
12/27/94-1/18/95, 1/20/96
Copyright 1995, 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Theater Death
I am in the Theater Death
Alone but not feeling alone
If dead not feeling dead
I go about my business playing out my role
It is not a time for taking chances
Everything is very serious
Scenes started cannot be stopped
Actions must be taken to conclusion
I know that if I begin to speak
My sentence will proceed inexorably
But what is my role
It appears to conform to the character
I remember to have been mine in life
My part consists mainly of inaction
A simple exercise in expectation
I am not Everyman I am Readyman
Although I play in isolation
I do not think I am the only player
I am confident of this
I expect others to step
Onto the stage at any moment
And perform some action in line
With what I do or do not do
I reassure myself about this
Saying I am not the only one
Someone has always come along
Death will not be different
I begin to imagine characters
To complement my performance
An old man sweeping the stage
Silently absorbed in his work
He passes close to me shuffling
Along uneasily the broom whisking
The boards but disturbing nothing
He does not greet me
He does not seem to see me
Yet I could make him notice me
For I have imagined him
But I will not do so deliberately
So as not to step out of character
And jeopardize my authenticity
Alone ignored but expectant
I feel almost like an exile
Whose task is to await a summons
To return perhaps in triumph
But to where seems not to matter
The old man continues sweeping
Except for him the stage is empty
How cleverly I have imagined myself
No doubt others would play this differently
In a bucolic setting or as a celebration
Say a gathering of loved ones
Full of warmth and good feelings
Such scenes are not in my nature
But were they to pass upon the stage
Absorbing other players I would understand
Might even applaud were it permitted
I think of those whose lives were unhappy
Tortured foreshortened exploited afflicted
What roles would suit them
In this Theater Death
Would they repeat their troubled days
Or alter them to suit some need
Replacing the grim with the halcyon
For me that is not an option
The Theater Death is the Theater Life as well
I lack the device to make it otherwise
I need to be what I can understand
Death must be the familiar thing
Were I to put all cant aside
All of this would be impossible
One cannot have a Theater Death
The roles fixed the script written
And nothing left to chance
If doubt waits in the wings
For even as we make our preparations
Moving about as if we are alive
We must know the drama's certain in the end
Thus confident we live on in rehearsal
Of Death as life's reversal
Mirroring the little that we comprehend
Think of God as Pirandello
8/15-10/21/95, 6/27/98
Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
This Special Time
This special time
Immortal yet
Loud we trumpet
Inconvenience
The clothes are old
The neighbors loud
The grass is brown
The roses bowed
The night too loud
The sun so pale
The food turned cold
The rain now hail
The paint job flaked
The traffic dense
The mail tardy
The news nonsense
The belly flabby
The book too thick
The door still jammed
The salesman slick
And on we rant
And on we gabble
Alive but slack of purpose
And every day
We sputter and flay
Until we dribble life away
9/24-12/30/94, 6/10-6/11/07
Copyright 1994, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Lesson Two
I
A false word makes
A doomed poem
Throws no shadow
Won't show on film
II
Easy virtue
May cozen you
Seeking comfort
You lie with it
III
But writing
A voice will say
Wrong wrong
The poem will die
IV
And choiceless
In the hard dark
Heart stumbles
At soul's flaw
V
Which it must rout
Like alien spawn
And for art's sake
Forsake the poem
8/15/96-4/23/97, 1/27/98, 2/9/98, 4/6/98
Copyright 1997, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Lesson One
The lesson of objects
Is they do not mean
There is no wisdom in a thorn
Even if you bleed
No absolution in a stone
Though it be smooth
Stars neither dream nor grieve
The owl does not frown
No paragon of patience is the oak
Things do not teach or sign
Put mooing approbation by Be strong
Your seeming mysteries are hollow
Nature although wonderful is shallow
Even the grandest poet may be wrong
7/21-8/3/96, 6/30/02
Copyright 1996, 2002 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Lauded Poet at Home
The gardener does not know me
I drop the coins my fingers will not hold
My food I take from a tin
Soon letters will be coming
To tell me I am loved
My days were always numbered
Now they are numberless
Although I make myself ready
It is better just to live
Nor am I done forgetting
See you my slippers of gold
My medals prizes worthless amulets
Come we will exchange forgiveness
Come we will share a joke
7/30-8/24/96
Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
It Is Well To Be
A poem is always in me
I rhythm with it daily
It ticks in me
It is my true time
The world otherwise being
Nothing really winning
No lapse in living
Loses it
And all grief
Which shadows me
It grows
To tops of joy in being
Nor is it less
A well for loving
Which music
Poems my body
As my lover
Is my meter
My hands and lips
A diction of desire
Thus while not
Immortal made
I sense the how and why
This breathing business
Is well to be
Glowing me with dark elation
Lighting my soul's parade
n.d. (prob. 60's or thereafter), rev. 5/18/94
Copyright 1994 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Immortality
No one among them had died for years
Or thought they hadn't
Perhaps that explains
The people they had killed
Thinking: I cannot die
We cannot die
Only they can die
It does not matter
That we may deserve to die
We will not allow it
11/22-11/23/02
Copyright 2002 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
How Do You Like Austin?
Where am I?
In a room somewhere on the planet.
Is anything outside?
Don't know. Doesn't matter.
Have always lived inside.
The rest being interlude.
How do you like your new home?
It's still new, may always be.
I visit myself from time to time
Being careful not to startle the walls
Or step too confidently on the carpet.
But isn't it different from New York?
I am different from them both.
Once the sightseeing is done,
There is really no place
That is not home.
And the weather?
Not where I am,
But what I do
Will shape the climate.
If too hot, I will hide indoors.
I'm good at hiding anywhere.
3/9, 3/11/02, 4/6/07
Copyright 2002, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
I Remember
Beating the pillows on the open sill
Sheets billowing above the street
Look out down there we'll smother you
But the bed cool from airing
Laundered fresh by daylight and breeze
- - - - -
The wooden bridge across the bay
I fearless nightly crossing
My innocence left in lamplight
With fisherman in stillness staying
Not bridge but water swaying
- - - - -
Summer's sweat and soaking sheets
The hopelessness of heat
Inescapably imploding
Until 4 AM's cool breeze
Rescues me near morning
- - - - -
Blinking my brights in Georgia
On a lonely two-lane night
To greet the truckers
Coming myself going
A foolish camaraderie yet
Soothing this silent hallooing
- - - - -
Readying raw greasy ground beef
Washed under running water
And sculptured into patties
Faithfully four to the pound
Scooping samples from the plate
My chubby pre-teen hands
Slippery and glowing
Wishing to gorge on all of it
Dispense with the rite of broiling
In those sweet days before
The pathology of knowing
- - - -
Homeward from the library
With an armful of juicy books
To find an overlooked paperback
That I'd slipped into a back pocket
My first though inadvertent theft
The book I found I kept
4/20-4/28/99, 4/7/07
Copyright 1999, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
I Wake Up Dying
Instead I Write
l
Who
is this man
who rises at dawn
no longer in command
of his body
in
manifest fear of death
who opens a book
begins to read poetry
and
reflect on the art of expression
There's pain in his head
his
heartbeat is dizzy
he gives himself up for dead
so he takes up a
pen
some scraps of paper
and writes this down
Who is this
man
whose poem
is his only friend
2
Years now
studying the poets
trying to find my voice
I want to speak with
authority
recognizable unique
I want you to know who I am
But I've
lost all patience
with trial and error
I'm getting pissed off
you've
got to be young
for this work or unselfconscious
Sometimes I think one
voice
is as good as another
if you've nothing to say
it won't
matter
if you do
a way will be found
3
I was born expecting this dying
I can't remember it
otherwise
how many others can say
death is their destiny
as I feel it's
mine
Sitting here this morning
clutching my symptoms
throbs jabs
jitters in the frame
sensing surges in my blood
it seems so
right
I've been preparing for this
all my life
I'm not
prepared
4
I've awakened thinking I'm finished
my
body in distress
but peace of mind eludes me
my dignity out of
reach
Is this the naked aloneness
I was promised
is this the
denouement
from which nothing follows
I feel let
down
5
Now at this moment
when death possesses
my mind
as I sit here convinced
that I'm done
I hatch a great
hoax
I'll leave a note
announcing my conversion
I'll speak of the
afterlife
and my joyful expectation
I'll include a prayer
No dice I
can't do it
maybe my life was a hoax
in some sense or other
at least
let it end
as it began
No crutches
6
But
writing poems when you
wake up at death's border
perhaps that's a
crutch
what proud man
with some minimal honor
needs words to talk
himself off
As if death were just
an extended conversation
as if
silence were the danger
as if language were life's answer
to death's
beckon
Asked for the answer
She asked for the question
I say
keep talking
7
Some would call this therapy
but
they're still immortal
and think words a buffer
between themselves and the
end
but I have been waiting
for this conviction of dying
to free my
life
Death is of course no freedom
it's simply nothing
but the fear
of death
adorned with imminence
is art's prize
non-being's muse come at
last
bringing the freedom to speak
It is speech unlocked
raised to
the light
It is flight
8
Why this is my own
Thanatopsis
(how when young I loved that poem)
my encomium to death
a
tribute to the majority
I will join
and an affirmation
(my only
one)
that what I was
I am
At such moments
one states things as
they are
only infancy or innocence
would not understand
how death
serves life
All the doing
loving building
is its tithing
without
it we languish
with it at least go on
It is life's yardstick
its
engine speed thrust
it is the countryside
through which life
travels
the force which moves my pen
It is the stage
for last
words' drama
as for long-range plans
the spur of all invention
and
motive for some lies
Why without it…
why there is no such
thing
9
I find myself thinking of blood
like a Latin
poet
the blood of others
as in some novel
I conclude death is
political
in the sense that love is political
when by its intimacy
it
rejects tyranny
and possession's bondage
And as death excludes life's
baggage
takes only the body
and shortly dissolves it
so death is the
witness
against ownership
and imbecile acquisition
life's blood given
to gaining
and of the bled little remaining
its residue so
trifling
when compared to any body
10
Last will and
testament:
Unsound as I am
I leave you my name
and my freedom
my
goods are worthless
use them up
Pass this to five
others
9/7/96-2/19/97, 2/7-2/9/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
To My Friends
To my friends from
Greenwich Village
whose
footprints fill those streets
to Jerry Margo Nellie
Stella and
Ron Cherney
and the Ones that I forget
I hope you're living yet
or
have you joined the angels
in a party for the rent
4/13-5/4/96,
12/22/06
Copyright 1996, 2006 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
Freedom
Loneliness
and the TV
captures me
Saved only by
the mute button
letting me watch it
While it's quiet
silence precious
after stridence
VCR even better
tapes the nonsense
while screen's a blank
I'm reading Rilke
hearing Schubert
hoping…slightly
Later during dinner
fast forward
through it all
Keeps me active
pushing buttons thinking
how I hate it
And other forms
of conversation
with myself
America
she's all right
I'm free to watch
A lot
or not
free to rot
2/4-2/10, 8/3/96, 12/29/98, 2/11/07
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
What Is It
What is it
I always return to
that sometimes leaves me grave
And when luck
deserts me
threatens as it laughs
An ashen laughter
like dead embers fanned
a lean laughter
Thin as a branch
a pale laughter
gray as a trance
A laughter helpless
as a severed hand
a dry laughter
Like tears under sand
a laughter naked
as the end of man
What can this be
that clings to me
unlucky as I am
10/5/96-2/17/97
Copyright 1997 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
The Coming Storm
Sky trailing gloom
lathered clouds roiling
like the grume
of spent soup boiled
the croup of thunder
groping upon the raspy
cusp of dark and
machinating storm
disrobing to extend
its carnal grasp
into the brooded nest
in which we frown
asleep beneath the warm
impenetrable dream
immune to harm
omnipotent for
night's brief term
ca. '95, rev. 6/20-6/26/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
The Shill of Progress
("breu chausson de razon loigna")
Watch how he sweats behind his mask
Your burgher-man with clammy hands
The suave bourgeois who holds you fast
And whom you give complete devotion
As though a shill were not a shill
You spend your days pursuing him
The tales of progress that he weaves
Dispensed in increments that please
The vision his but yours the hunches
You plead his case with patient craft
Wisdom sprouts from you in bunches
You fill your shelves with artifacts
Adrift in history's discarnation
You find your ease in stale emotion
Lured by his lubricity of passion
You lie with him he lies to you
What can you do but wish it true
By promise gulled by time mislaid
Your book of life once like a dream
Its song grown faint and lost the theme
n.d. (ca '95), 5/27-5/29/98, 8/22/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter.
Posted with permission.
Ephemera
The light flicks on
the bulb glows green
the bulb glows red
we buy we sell
and think we understand
We only clutch
upon a thread
some call
enlightenment
It will not last
a winter in the mind
For now we keep
some measure and
struggle to divine
a pinhole into pleasure
the portents of decline
5/10-6/15/96, 5/28/97, 1/26/98, 5/12/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Expectation
It was all a mistake
Lines around the building
Phones ringing without rest
Mailbags in the doorway
Not to mention faxes
And the internet
And we responsible for the records
Sitting at our desks
Confounded by the fuss
Unauthorized
We denied all callers
Refused admittance to the crowd
Opened no envelopes
Pulled the plug on the rest
We waited for instructions
As we had been taught
Then a message
From someone in authority
It was all a mistake
Tell all comers
Whatever it was it isn't
That's that
Which is what we did
And went about our business
Following the rules
What we had we filed
We accepted no more
Soon we reported
Normalcy restored
11/27-12/1/95, 6/1/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
Epitaph
He insisted on placing an epitaph on his ashes
Who could deny him this expectation
While he still lived
Afterwards is a different matter
He disliked the cold the heat as well
There were few places he could live
No matter he said because wherever he was
He was elsewhere all the same
He loved poetry
But grew impatient with his contemporaries
His complaint: they didn't write about anything
By which he meant anything that mattered
This was symptomatic of his austerity
He desired little for himself
Even companionship except for children
He would have been happy to be one of them
In many respects old-fashioned
Just now in error (?) he wrote old-vanished
Yet prided himself on what he termed his anarchism
His long-standing unadorned and thorough radicalism
Having lived alongside a plethora of American wars
Spain Korea Vietnam Iraq Greenland? France?
Couldn't remember but knew that all wars are lost
Only the dead survive the living are forgotten
And of the epitaph was there nothing to tell
And about whom to tell it The man he is
Not the man he was even his childhood unlike him
So in the end he wrote Anon and then anon
12/5, 12/9/04, 1/5-1/6/05
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
January’s a Lake of Ice
January’s a lake of ice in suburb’s blur
The autos grumble east and west
Nothing stirs from in the nest
Each in a bubble laid to rest
The people next door are dead for all I know
Dead these several weeks dead beneath the snow
In backyards icy with hard smooth snow
There’s not a living face to show
For all these chimneys row on row
The dark is light because the earth is white
The streets are still save crack of tire on ice
The bare trees pine against a vacant sky
No human eye no human cry
To tell where all the life has gone
Or been or if it’s still within
This calm’s all wrong all winter long
This gravelike residential balm
This crusty cold around the fold
That lets no controversy sprout
No way to say what living’s been about
No sign of goodness or of sin
The ice is thin the ice is thin
ca. ‘75, rev. 2005
Copyright 1975, 2005 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
Snow
Snow falling. Fallen snow.
Night windless, roadways white.
White the branches and the earth.
The special silence of a snowy night
Stopping what we ordinarily do.
We feel no need, the whiteness is enough.
Were we lonely? We are no more.
Here's a peace that's free of cloying,
This calming plainness over all.
What mystery is unfolding here?
How does the innocence of season,
Mere concurrence of the elements,
Bring hope? Because the rain has chilled?
But it also covers death, the fallen,
Guilt. Jars memory. Melts.
And it will turn to filth.
Here is winter after all, the grave
Of growing-and the poor are cold.
Still promises are stirring,
Resolution's aura swells.
While the moment's white and still,
We will survive. Though brief
The respite, whatever ails us will
Stand aside. While snowing, while quiet.
10/8-ll/24/95, 2/10-2/13/98, 12/18/06
Copyright 1995, 2006 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
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