Red Elegy

For elevenses the children drink chocolate milk from wax cartons. Some use

           straws. Some build sand mounds. There’s running and chasing and so

           much falling you have to believe they don’t mind the earth. Because of

           the dark clouds, the tree house is off-limits and therefore, very tempting.

           Very precious. Crows gather at the edge of the playground waiting for the

school bell. They don’t mind waiting for their food.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight

Red sky in morning, sailors take warning

The domino effect will be massive: plankton, at the bottom of the marine food

          chain provide for animals, which are then prayed upon by larger species.

          Eventually man will hear ticking from the stars, the sound of little legs

scurrying across a bare floor looking for food and place to sleep.

My neighbor is one of those men who is building something in his garage—a

roadster, a time machine, a brewery.

On TV a football player removes his helmet and his bald head steams. The

           fighter jets do a ceremonial fly over. The crowd cheers wildly. I count:

           one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and my house shakes. My windows

rattle. My windows are sealed in plastic wrap. Seven.

Chinese astronomers have launched a robot spacecraft to study the mysterious

bursts of gamma rays.

~

You know the story, the Princess drinks white wine from a plum goblet and falls

head over heels for the glassblower. Head over heels.

~

In the hey-day, in the mid-90’s, I sometimes drank coffee at a Euro-style café in

          Brookline. After nine, after the businesspeople and students had left and

          an impromptu stock club ensued. Mostly men—old, retired, many with

foreign accents—the Ukraine, Brazil, Greece. They spread their Journals

          and swapped tips and told jokes and stories. If you listened for just a

          week, you heard about old jobs and families. Money was made, hand

          over fist. I listened and wrote down names and numbers. Not that I had

          the ante. Like shooting fish in a barrel, one would say. I wonder about

          those men today. I hope they didn’t trade their memories away. Do they

          live in a daughter’s guest room? In a son’s grease-floored garage? Are

          their skulls smoking? Hand over fist. Are they scratching weird numbers

over blue paper?

Sailing over a cardboard sea . . .

A whale is not a fish, Jonah—it’s a mammal. Now drink your milk.

At the start of the story, empty pockets are a virtue. At the end of the story? A

          lesson, a time machine, a sardine tin, beer cans, margarine tubs, a punch

line.

A favorite story: when I was twelve our town librarian wouldn’t let me take out

           Soul on Ice without a note from my mother. That was the early 70s when

           it was quite fashionable to say: the Great Wall of China is the only

manmade object visible from outer space.

Towne. Soule. Donne.

John Donne sometimes felt that an angel guided his fingers and sometimes not.

How many children, if given the opportunity would turn themselves into birds?

On the train:

                     MAN

Do you have the time?

                     WOMAN

Yes.

She takes out her Ashbery PDA

In October, the sunset trappers made a mint.

                     MAN

Damn—I’m late. Thanks!

~

One night, when the sidewalks are lunar, I walk. The Japanese maples that line

           the avenue are like marble nerve nets. They were a gift to the city from

           the Emperor, so during the war there was a campaign to have them

           destroyed. But what about German shepherds? people asked. But what

           about Italian ice? Would we bother to ask, today? The blossom-filled air

           makes my eyes itch. I think it’s fine that we can’t see at the subatomic

           level—or else I wouldn’t leave my bed. And I’m happy I don’t have

           infrared vision. It’s best we leave the hard looks to bats, children and barn

           owls. I see a cane leaning against the park’s iron fence. There’s a story

           there—probably not a happy one. It’s good that I’m walking alone, or I

           would worry. It’s good that no one knows that I’m not home. This way, if

           someone calls my name I’ll know how to answer. I’ll bark like one of those

           bats with puppy faces. I live too close to downtown to see more than a

           few stars, a few planets. But I don’t hear the worms, those fingers, those

souls; I don’t hear their complaints. Thin light films the park.

Bleue.

Dark storage.

Scientists in India are helping me to find my lost cat. They’re building nanos

           that will collapse quantum mechanics. I’ll be able pause in any time.

Here, Kitty, Kitty.

Thin light limns the park. Spooky steam leaks out of grates like movie adverbs.

           One thing after another, that’s life, says Echo. Walking this way, mind

           like an outline escaping it’s single page, is a form of prayer. An owl tips off

           the lexicographer. My foot finds a plastic bottle. I pick it up to toss it in a

           trash can or leave it on a bench, easier for the collector, but think about

           putting something in it, too. A note—a poem—a fortune—advice—a

           joke—a sardine tin—a phone number—a clipper ship. A whale is not a

           fish, Captain. I toss it into the pond. Bad citizen. The water’s sarabande

           can make you shudder, can make you weep. It’s not our fault, we’re built

           for sorrow—why it’s all that I can do not to wade in and reactivate my gills

           and swim down, flicker my tail and fins and slide into the mud and bury

myself in the burnt ochre mud, until spring.

~

You know the story. The young princess rides her carriage to the glassblower’s

           hut and finds that the man is old and, well, unfortunate in the looks

           department— like a rhino with alligator skin. How lovely is god, she

           thinks, that this hideous ogre is endowed with the lips and lungs and soul

           of an angel. He can breathe life into sand. They kiss. They marry. They

           ascend. The taikonauts in Space Station Li Po blow up asteroids in their

honor.

~

Rothko’s Harvard murals are now in Dark Storage—an undisclosed

           location—wrapped in negligee-like super-fibers that curator’s call body

bags.

Rothko painted the murals using Lithol red, a commercial paint, a fugitive

           pigment that washed out after only a few years of direct sun—no one

knew.

We breathe so we don’t have to think.

He loved those poems wherein red ink is blood and wine is blood and sunset is a

deep scar, a sad heart, a tongue in your ear.

The five panels of the commissioned mural were hung in a distinguished dining

           room in 1964. By 1970 they were in sad shape—fading and scarred and

           torn—the fiberglass curtains, specially installed, were left open; the private

           room was given over to student parties; the panels were cleaned with

           ammonia by the staff, which were given no instructions. Alan C carved

ALAN C into one of the panels.

After Oedipus left the place where three roads meet, a tornado of red dust

swaddled the spot in wound.

In 1979 the murals were disappeared.

~

Lithol sky at night, painter’s delight

Lithol in morning, curators take warning

~

A note—a poem—a fortune— a phone number—a clipper ship. A whale is not a

fish, Captain.

~

The bottle bobs like an abandoned shell. Scientists in Australia are teaching a

           sect of crustaceans to use trash— soda bottles, sardine tins, beer cans,

           margarine tubs, plastic cups, match boxes, hollowed-out bibles, soup

           cans, a can of Nerval bisque, Tupperware, a ballet slipper, a wine goblet,

           a shoe, an old shoe, a cobbler’s form—as shells as there are no more

shells to convince the crabs to live.

Scientists in India are converting rats from warm-blooded creatures to cold

           blooded creatures to induce metabolic quiescence. You see, hibernation

           may be the salvation of mankind and therefore, plankton. You see?

Reverse psychology.

I wonder if I should have dropped bread crumbs or tied red ribbons to the

branches of trees.

                      THESEUS

What, Ma?

                      AETHRA

I said don’t forget your ball of string!

How many days it took for me to see

that everyone was wearing their wetsuits.

Yes, the floods were taking their toll, but each

night brought more moonlight. I sat on my porch

and dried out. Soon, I thought, I’ll be an onion

under the earth with my mask and tank.

When you spend your days playing leapfrog, you no longer hear the translation

for splash.

~

I claim there a point in every elegy where the piece turns from eulogy to Euclid.

           The pivot? The volta? Where the voice speaks about the voice. Addition

           and subtraction. Adduce, spin. The spun? You know; where the

           quotidian inchworm jumps are swamped by fear, by the appreciation of the

           poet’s own heartbeat. Put a finger on the vein. Lick the sapwood. Blue

hours. The homestretch? The focus? The aiming?

Signal the missileers! —Father, it’s time to fire the mother lode.

From eulogy to euphony.

Hear? Hear the little feet trying the steps? The children believe that a rabbit in

           leather hip-boots lives inside the tree house. And really, who can blame

them? A hare in Lagerfeld’s is just common sense.

~

Let’s say the elegy’s gone red. The lights are blinking. The sirens are

           screaming. The teacher has led her lambs into the corridor to put their

           soft heads in the ovens; they’ll be safe there, under bookbags and sardine

           tins. Not me. I was left in the classroom, forgotten. See, I talked too

           much. I grew up on an apple farm, mostly alone. So when the yellow bus

           deposited me at the red brick school I began to gabber and I didn’t stop

           until I was returned to our orchards. So Mrs. Curtis put me behind the

broken piano with a book, so I wouldn’t distract the other kids.

I’m six.

The birds have flown.

The sheep are in the manger, the fold, the dugout; they’re in the cradle.

The black keys, the white keys, the red keys, the president is playing the music

           that will burn our throats but I can’t put down the book—the lost boat has

sited land—the red, the white, the black.

It was a red brick schoolhouse where my father and his father had also

matriculated.

This is true. Then it was the town library. Now the bricks are for sale on eBay,

not the building, just the bricks. Whew.

~

The princess marries the old glassblower. They ascend to the throne. They

           have a son, an heir—a prince named Alan C. Just in case, the old

           glassblower has his apprentice arrested and disfigured and imprisoned.

           That’s just politic. That’s just common sense. That’s just what they tell

you to do in those books that tell monsters what to do.

Jeez. Don’t you read?

~

At the museum:

          MAN

Do you know what this painting means?

          WOMAN

Wait.

She puts in her earbuds

Red—it means red.

          MAN

Damn—I’m late. Thanks!

~

And of course, it’s the glassblower’s apprentice, all along. He’s responsible for

           creating the enchanting goblet. And he’s handsome to boot! —so his lips

           are sealed. Hot wax. And his fingers are in a box that the old glassblower

           buries in the old graveyard. Sharp axe. And his brown eyes are sewn

           shut with a needle and fishing line. But he lives; in a cell, in a cold tower,

           waiting. Plotting his escape. Drawing up plans— kidnap their son?

           Assassinate the glassblower? Or fashion the greatest goblet…ever! Wax

           melts. Whales can escape the fishing hook. Something scuttles across

           the stone floor. The rat in his lap is sound asleep. I know ways to turn a

           boy into a crow, he sings. Or worse. Yes, I can breathe white sand into

death.

~

I touch my sagging body and think, how much air I will find in the water. In the

           water? Did I think that or did someone say that? I hear wings above my

head and giggling.

I hear a voice (Boris? Bela?) gurgle from beneath the water’s skin, “Life! Sweet

life!”—and then my bottle bobs-up

and then my bottle bobs-up and comes ashore, little feet scurry it past me and

into the ash copse.

I smell ginger.

I see red stars smear the red water.