Rain falls, the cobbled streets grow black.
Little abysses open between the stones.
BLAKE
I watch William Blake, who spotted angels
every day in treetops
and met God on the staircase
of his little house and found light in grimy alleys—
Blake, who died
singing gleefully
in a London thronged
with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,
William Blake, engraver, who labored
and lived in poverty, but not despair,
who received burning signs
from the sea and from the starry sky,
who never lost hope, since hope
was always born anew like breath,
I see those who walked like him on graying streets,
headed toward the dawn’s rosy orchid.
NOTES FROM A TRIP TO FAMOUS EXCAVATIONS
You suddenly surface in a city that no longer is.
You turn up abruptly in a vast city
that isn’t really there.
Three scrawny cats meow.
You notice campaign slogans on the walls
and know that the elections ended long ago,
emptiness was victorious and reigns
alongside a lazy sun.
Tourists wander nonexistent streets,
like Church Fathers — afflicted, alas,
by deepest acedia.
Bathhouse walls are bone-dry.
The kitchen holds no herbs,
the bedroom is sleepless.
We enter homes, gardens,
but no one greets us.
It seems we’re stranded in a desert,
faced by the dry cruelty of sand
— just as in other places
that don’t exist,
the native city
you never knew, will never know.
Even the death camps are lifeless.
Some friends are gone.
Past days have vanished,
they’ve hidden under Turkish tents,
in stasis, in a museum that’s not there.
But just when everything is gone
and only lips move timidly
like a young monk’s mouth,
a wind stirs, a sea wind,
bearing the promise of freshness.
A gate in the wall leans open,
and you glimpse life stronger than oblivion;
at first you don’t believe your eyes—
gardeners kneel, patiently
tending the dark earth while laughing servants
cart great piles of fragrant apples.
The wooden wagons rattle on thick stones,
water courses through a narrow trough,
wine returns to the pitchers,
and love comes back to the homesteads
where it once dwelled,
and silently regains its absolute
kingly power
over the earth and over me.
Look, a flame stirs from the ashes.
Yes, I recognize the face.
ZURBARÁN
Zurbarán painted by turns
Spanish saints
and still lifes,
and thus the objects
lying on heavy tables
in his still lifes
are likewise holy.
NOTO
TO GEORGIA AND MICHAEL
Noto, a town that would be flawless
if only our faith were greater.
Noto, a baroque town where even
the stables and arbors are ornate.
The cathedral’s cupola has collapsed, alas,
and heavy cranes surround it
like doctors in a hospital
tending the dangerously ill.
Afternoons town teenagers
gather on the main street
and bored stiff, whistle
like captive thrushes.
The town is too perfect
for its inhabitants.
III
TRAVELING BY TRAIN ALONG THE HUDSON
TO BOGDANA CARPENTER
River gleaming in the sun—
river, how can you endure the sight:
low crumpled train cars
made of steel, and in their small windows
dull faces, lifeless eyes.
Shining river, rise up.
How can you bear the orange peels,
the Coca-Cola cans, patches
of dirty snow that
once was pure.
Rise up, river.
And I too drowse in semidarkness
above a library book
with someone’s pencil marks,
only half living.
Rise up, lovely river.
THE GREEKS
I would have liked to live among the Greeks,
talk with Sophocles’ disciples,
learn the rites of secret mysteries,
but when I was born the pockmarked
Georgian still lived and reigned,
with his grim henchmen and theories.
Those were years of memory and grief,
of sober talks and silence;
there was little joy—
although a few birds didn’t know this,
a few children and trees.
To wit, the apple tree on our street
blithely opened its white blooms
each April and burst
into ecstatic laughter.
GREAT SHIPS
This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans
And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks,
But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence,
Divided by height, category, and class, just like our societies and hotels.
Down below poor emigrants played cards, and no one won
While on the top deck Claudel gazed at Ysé and her hair glowed.
And toasts were raised to a safe trip, to coming times,
Toasts were raised, Alsatian wine and champagne from France’s finest vineyards,
Some days were static, windless, when only the light seeped steadily,
Days when nothing happened but the horizon, which traveled with the ship,
Days of emptiness and boredom, playing solitaire, repeating the latest news,
Who’d been seen with whom in a tropical night’s shade, embracing beneath a peach-colored moon.
But filthy stokers tirelessly tossed coal into open flaming mouths
And everything that is now already existed then, though in condensed form.
Our days already existed and our hearts baked in the blazing stove,
And the moment when I met you may also have existed, and my mistrust
Brittle as a faience plate, and my faith, no less frail and capricious,
And my searches for the final answer, my disappointments and discoveries.
Great ships: some sunk suddenly, arousing consciences and fear,
Gaining deathless fame, becoming stars of special bulletins.
Others went peacefully, waned without a word in provincial ports, in dockyards,
Beneath a coat of rust, a ruddy fur of rust, a slipcover of rust, and waited
For the final transformation, the last judgment of souls and objects,
They still wait patiently, like chess players in Luxembourg Garden nudging pieces a fraction of an inch or so.
ERINNA OF TELOS
She was nineteen when she died.
We don’t know if she was lovely and flirtatious,
or if perhaps she looked like those
intelligent, dry girls in glasses
from whom mirrors are kept hidden.
She left behind just a few hexameters.
We suspect that she strove
with the secret, uncertain ambition of introverts.
Her parents loved her to distraction.
We speculate that she wanted to express