The Death of the Encyclopedia Salesman

1

Among the incidental motives

for a virtuous life is the dream

of the North Atlantic fisheries, dark pines

outlined with a setting sun

and you scouring your breasts

in a shallow tub.

The cat screaming outside by the barn.

And I’m entering the macaroni fog

of the kitchen pulling my red wagon

filled with the first half

of the alphabet, canvas

over the books and the hairless dog sitting on it all.

The smart women

who want the Knowledge

are the ones who are most poor.

the salmon are lancing like tattered

women’s parasols,

volleying their thoughts of rocks

with the faint images of turtles.

I was an engineer fitting bronze

cuffs and knuckles to clay type, miles

of it across tundra. Well, or so

I believed. Then on Tuesday the Union boss

gave me a yellow slip

of dismissal, by nightfall

the dog and I were down by the Jewish cemetery

with my boy’s red wagon

and of course the Knowledge . . .

half of Western civilization under a blue canvas—

someday it will come

to this for all of us,

save the boatmen of the North Atlantic fisheries

who grieve and are illiterate . . .

the sky now is a scalded milk

with a stupid egg in it. And my glove sticks

in the cold to the handle

of the heavy red wagon. This is dispiriting

even for a man

who lives without the confusions of virtue

or a personal relationship

with the incipient samples of Jean-Paul Sartre.

2

this is the dungeon of semester weather

for any salesman.

The cows reciting Ovid on exile

to the three active white goats.

It will snow all night . . .

fish blood and tissue from an ovum dark

occurring not on the linen moon

of an ice pond.

The knowledge is not systematic

but passes in drought, famine, and pestilence.

You repeat

while pouring tea,

it will snow for most of the evening.

3

It is the linen moon of bluish tissue

and secretions. I am reading

about Abraham Lincoln

among the toss of Jewish gravestones . . .

it is the hour of my noon meal.

The radishes are poignant. The cake

is now stale. The goats

are grazing across the lawns. These creatures

avoid the headstones of inclining sticks with demons.

The deceased sister of an old plumber friend

has knee-high grass over herself

and the entire family.

It was no surprise to me. You will

be scolding this husband all evening.

4

Lincoln’s wife ruined him for cake

and all tea. She did

love him to distraction—yes, the past

century’s euphemism

for madness

and general despondency and gout.

I sold a used set of the Knowledge

to our mayor’s first cousin. She,

you will be furious with me,

also bought the hairless dog.

I have replaced him with

a small granite block. If we

had given him a name

I might have been reluctant

to seal the transaction.

But we didn’t.

The man in the next bed

says we are in a fortress asylum.

We have been

for several years. He thinks

the veil of the hairless dog led directly to the committal.

I told him with blithe aggression

that you love me

to distraction, beyond betrayal

and he said,

perhaps, Rabbi, but you are now as good as dead

and she loved that dog, Alphons,

more than her own children. I nodded a heavy head.