Model of a City in Civil War

UNEASE

The sun wore out
the mesh of morning
air, wind pitched
among weeds, the hum
of ducks like government
buildings. The swelling
perfectly upholstered
nursing home, the trees
sucking at the heat.
Monkfish on ice above
the slow, slick fluid
at the curb. Cabs go on
moving over the streets
like a fog, as if invisible,
as the beaked policeman
idiotically crosses himself.

COMPORTMENT

From such material it is almost
impossible to create a picture
of life. What was the color
of the travel permit a sergeant
would have needed to get from spring
to fall that year? One strips for oneself,
a kind of masochistic self-inspection
with a scarlet-billed crane outside
the window. A natural celibate,
a kind of anchorite. An event
at the limits. Outside, daylight sits
shining beneath the fog above an island
like water on a rabbit’s ear. The body
is useful, then isn’t. One goes
and sits at the mahogany desk
as if nothing has happened.

CONDENSATION CUBE

After David Alworth’s “Bombsite Specificity.”

The best way to visit Kelvedon Hatch bomb shelter is in the new
Alfa-Romeo. With its four-wheel disc brakes,
luxurious interior and road-holding ability, it’s safe, fast and pleasant
to drive. Just follow the sign: “Secret
Nuclear Bunker.” ’60’s-era mannequins in Burberry with moving legs
and breasts, loitering in corridors. A skinny husband
in the craw of a cold bed, with a snore like a toothache. Tranquil tensions
escalated. With striptease the décor is always
more important than the person disrobing. Whatever chaos reigns above — fallow
fields, the ponds cowering—
life underground is snappy, ordered, austere. A zone of leisure. How war can be
productive; constellating Nixon in the kitchen, celebrating appliances
and amenities. Baked beans, tomato juice, Nescafé, a rational level
of dread. Outside, night’s cold,
object’s cold; no different from a church. Condensation on Plexiglas. Descending
from a slope of debris, children swarm
the ruins. False-feathered cardinals for floral arrangements, pressed
& colored glassware, garden
tools. Typhoid from seashells cleaned improperly. How stupid and forgettable
adults are. To conceive of the world
as a target. Like a cantilevered goldfish. To vie for spots in the only shelter
in the neighborhood. Nowhere else
to go but another part of the airplane. To photograph ourselves as humans; to see
ourselves as bullets and bombs
see us. Children embroidered in a rug like musical instruments abandoned
in a field. Seeing all the different moments
the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains; like soldiers looting a clock
factory. Participant-observers; innocent
nobodies. The incompleteness of the past; the ongoingness of history. Dogs eating grass
beneath the dripping trees; the smell
of a white dress rained on. It is a country which you can imagine, for it is
pretty like a picture, as it lies there
amidst its landscape, like an artisanal snow-globe, which it owns.

NOTES

“Combine” owes a debt to the following:

Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia by Jonathan Brent

Wyatt Prunty’s forward to The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia

John Worthen’s D.H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider

Peter Hall in “Demolition Man: Harold Pinter and The Homecoming,” by John Lahr, in The New Yorker

“Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry #88,” in The Paris Review, interview by Will Aitken

“Anoosh’s Obituary for Himself, to His Son” features a small detail taken from an apocryphal story of Robert Creeley being served coffee with ice cream in place of cream by Louis Zukofsky.

“Winter Nights” contains a phrase reconfigured from Knut Hamsun’s Pan.

“Hiding Again, in London” owes a debt to:

Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station

“Becoming the Emperor: How Marguerite Yourcenar Reinvented the Past,” by Joan Acocella, in The New Yorker

The Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service, by Alison Light

“Sleeping with Uncle Lester” borrows particulars from David Cone’s Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South.

“Elebade” borrows from Samuel Beckett’s last prose piece, Stirrings Still.

“Undercover” features details from:

Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

Frank Whitford’s Egon Schiele

Jennifer Michael Hecht’s The End of the Souclass="underline" Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France

David S. Reynolds’ John Brown, Abolitionist

“Unfurling the Hidden Work of a Lifetime,” by Seven Henry Madoff, in The New York Times

“Apprehended at a Distance” owes a debt to Elfriede Jelinek’s Nobel Lecture, and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.

“Clean Lines, Diffuse Lighting” borrows from E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel.

“He Speaks of Old Age” quotes briefly from:

“Domains: Sir John Mortimer: The Country Barrister,” by Edward Lewine, in The New York Times

Elfriede Jelinek’s Lust

William Feaver’s Lucien Freud

John Berryman quoting from a conversation he had with W.B. Yeats, as appears in “John Berryman, The Art of Poetry #16,” in The Paris Review, interview by Peter A. Stitt

“In Mourning” features detail from “Domains: Sir John Mortimer: The Country Barrister,” by Edward Lewine, in The New York Times.

“Now and Forever” features particulars from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and Maurice Merlea-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.

Fårö is a small Baltic Sea island north of the island of Gotland, off Sweden’s southeastern coast, on which Ingmar Bergman both lived and filmed many of his movies.

“A Polite History” uses specifics from Slavoj Zizek’s Welcome to the Desert of the Real, and from the Graywolf anthology, New European Poets, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer.