A Philip Larkin Poem

 Aubade                              

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   

Till then I see what’s really always there:   

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   

Making all thought impossible but how   

And where and when I shall myself die.   

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

—The good not done, the love not given, time   

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   

That slows each impulse down to indecision.   

Most things may never happen: this one will,   

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without   

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave   

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,   

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

(1977)

A Wallace Stevens Poem

 The Plain Sense of Things


After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.


(1952)

POEM: "À Jolie"

À Jolie


Yes, I did love her body
As now I love her shape
Up the tides that flow
By and down a signal

Precious like shells
From unlit depths
I listen to it right now
Sorrow at the end of beat

Tomorrow streets
Swept of yesterday
No chance to get it back
That beach or that life

Taking her body again
Brown ears behind black hair
On her stomach sleeping
O her ass I remember.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Fukushima"

Fukushima


God gives you the feeling
Not the words
You've got to find the words
By yourself

How often have words left me
Left me a husk of feeling
Rough like a coconut graveyard
Still looking up and reeling
At a sky developing more blue

When there is actually nothing
Of the graveyard or the blue
When there is actually no point
Dreaming there is any way through
Occasionally I admit there is you.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Rosa Alcalá Poem

 Fushigi na Chicharrón
 
(for Sergio Mondragón)

1.

The body's hidden face
removed of its excesses
is cooked into a codex
that reads: this little piggy went to market
this little piggy piled high
illuminates
what's meant by surface.

Everywhere a nation awaits,
a cardboard raft
soaks through. Everywhere is
a drink of water
swimming with the dead:

Leagues that can't be reached
or spoken.

2.

A man in the plaza
sweats beneath
the synthetic hide
of historical sacrifice
and does a dance
making tourists
in t-shirts
feel
so alive.

Far north
an altar will be built
for the seamstress
forgotten in piecing
such garments.

3.

The question, as we sit
by the grill, becomes:
What is the real animal
between us?

What skin do we stretch,
scrape and tension with
our desire
for expansion? For books
that leap like bodies
not our own?

So we can never end
with more or less
than this: What
does it mean to start here,
with a taco de chicharrón,
as if to say "fushigi na en"
the encounter and consumption of skin
launches every ship?


(2011)

A Samuel Amadon Poem

 Without Discussion


What people said, what left the table dark.
None stayed inside the house, nor close around.
Each direction its direction bound.
Like when you leave the arcing thing to arc.
Like papers gather papers in the park.
We note the wind is what can't hold the ground.
While hearing transfer stations fill with sound.
And let the city alter a remark
a little further from explaining what
was meant. A creak again or just a creak
right then. Like leaning forward on the cart.
A structure falls to stay its every strut.
I'd like to speak. I said I'd like to speak.
And someone sighs, they broke the silent part.

(2011)

POEM: "How You Make Love To Me"

How You Make Love To Me


Your beauty is but a mask
A tired dress upon the floor

dogs mount each other
with more urgent honesty
with fewer lies of passion

you pant before coming
your screaming orgasm

a windmill open to the winds
one higher tolerance for the pain
of the unwoken less fortunate

red arrows like snakes shooting
out of your dark closing eyes.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The Waters"

The Waters

The sun is going deeper

I hear your thoughts begin to dance

At Bethesda, house of pity and mercy

By the old sheep market

I have grown so weary of my flaws

Lord, please save me from embattled men

Their seasons are all the waters we have

The evening burns to dark, and you say

You're just jealous because the voices only speak to me

This stunning revelation, I feed you a peach of peach.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "In The Year 2666"

In The Year 2666

                                           for Roberto Bolaño 

After three wrong turns, a tractor and a flat

You're at The House Of Vanished Writers

After all, that was always your destination

You park your unreviewed car and go right in

Sitting and waiting, smoking and watching

Joe, the Indian, who never could get started

Sophia, who once was beautiful, great shorts

No power to stay long enough on the page

Fred, whose fiction fried like a skillet, killed it

And you, who are merely visiting, get a key

A towel and the schedule of daily readings

Who are these happy people you are thinking

Why do they look at me like that? One part pen

One part the next event, one part is wind

Where did all the vanished writers go?

When did they write their perfect poems

Who said they'd had enough and could leave?

Your room has a limited view of the forest

It is possible the birds will sing there again

Second seating meal is vegetable soup with bread

Dessert is an autumn ice cream you don't remember

Afterwards the word games and the music upset you.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Summer Winds"

Summer Winds

I do think of ancient fields somewhere

Stubbled, greyfrosted, with granite tors

The children might have measured

Contemplating the assault approach

And how eventually to sit on top

From slammed doors and shouting

Running from the last killed dream

After a battle surveying the plains

The number of misbegotten engagements

Decimation was not their homework

Invisible, victorious regiments 
Pennants waving, crows collected

Debating loudly half the afternoon

Just what sacrifice means in this world

What a raucous celebration of tears

Ambushed from most sides by doubt

Skeering from sorrow and other angers

If you love, then do not love your days

It is right that feelings cannot change things

Or else half the world would be in flames.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Exiles"

Exiles

It took seven years to build the box

From discarded paper and dreams

As deep as it is wide, at times you forget

Exactly how you decided its dimensions

No candy store, no Chinese restaurants

Many a stained-glass window at the top

Everything is blue when the sun pours in

Deli, record store, a massage parlour

Open all night, oddly buzzing, no customers

There's a very good small library

Of books you always meant to study

Furniture copied from another tidy book

A fireplace that heats but doesn't burn

A few students were allowed in once

They dusted off their prints and fled

On the inside an ornate exit with a sign

That reads Don't Leave Till You're Ready

Next to it a fire axe, a cheap suit on a hook

Today that box is almost empty

Outside is a sunset and birds.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Going Home"

Going Home

The day security cameras

that caught her carelessly

knocking over someone else's

parked and rusted bicycle

and just speeding away

also caught someone else

walking a bike (apparently)

very much the wrong way

in a wrong lane too slowly

thinking about the busted chain

the recent unexpected prize

all the favourable reviews

of his compassionate first book

"...true to our difficult age"

and to neither one were

any sanctions applied

spring now salting new

growth on pruned trees 

the day security cameras

switched off for the night.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

A Ron Slate Poem

The Death of Erik Satie

The arches aspire to a point
in the church of childhood,
a single note here and here and here.
Drafty gothic undertones, the grandiose
obscurity of the modern mind.
 

Cirrhosis, then pleurisy.
Hours waiting in stillness,
as in an empty cabaret.
 

A bell tinkles in the corridor, the viaticum
drifts toward the dying man next door.
Something long ago made the world
hostile. So of course one mocks
a style no longer exploitable.  

Conversation with the nuns —
You understand, the Creator
commits technical errors, he keeps us
at arm’s length, his soiled cuff
fills us with medieval joy.
The patient rebuffs Poulenc and Ravel —
but admits Braque, Brancusi, Stravinsky,
stand there and there and there.
There is nothing left to renounce.
 
Choirs, music hall songs, then through the war
anyone could witness the decline.
Curses for the idiots — Mon Cher Directeur,
you are brutal, inhospitable, you are under arrest.
The Pope is excommunicated! Monsieur et cher ami,
vous n’êtes qu’un cul, mais un cul
sans musique. One must reject the obvious.
 
Final years, cognac and beer,
then home to a dusty room with a depleted piano,
desolate possessions, scores inscribed
affectionately by Debussy, before the feud.
 
Franc notes poke from the pages
of books, advance payment for final music.
The rolled umbrella clutched more tightly.
 
A filament of notes,
each one intended. Something long ago
created this secret sorrow. Erik Satie dies
at the Hôpital Saint-Joseph.


© by Ron Slate

POEM: "The Stupa Is Grand"

The Stupa Is Grand

Minutes and seconds

blocked and re-blocked

time descends into a dance

moments of our lives

that you and I will miss

multiples that accrete

the spirals are important
the search begins overhead

strange shores appear to

the astronauts of the soul

somebody's got to go there first

we think it's all been explored.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "From The Dojo"

From The Dojo

It just got better
The training worked
Things are not the same
You came here ham-fisted
Tail between your legs
Arguing about commodities
Now the cost escalates
You are out of it my son
Eyes to the horizon
Please don’t make
The same mistake again
But should it happen
You will remember that
The training worked
Sit-ups did take notice
Push-ups away from folly
Chin-up pulling you away
The facing-grip was strong
Always running towards
And never away from
Makes the strike decisive.


© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The Great Unknown"

The Great Unknown

Keep looking till you’re zoomed in 
Close until you can see his meal
Sitting on the table the TV’s on
By a method you can’t see very well 

How that life will or will not relate
While you sit there and think about it
How you’d finally rather not wake up
To another test of your ability to know
But meanwhile he or she is exactly you
And what mastery it is of the unbidden
A plate of chillies stuffed with pork mince
Eight of them sat simply upon the plate
And two of them were really too hot to eat.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Post Coitum Omnia Triste Est"

Post Coitum Omnia Triste Est

You throw down your crown

and you look into her dead eyes

hopeful that maybe for once

the bees in your hive will settle

She stirs a bit for a stellar moment

she’d replace you with new sheets

but nothing new had led you here

wondering who the real corpse is

And why you will reconfigure

the climb back up that lonely peak

and how your pleasure came to this

amid all the traffic and the noise.

© 2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "In Space"

In Space

I.

The gray squirrels hesitate

Somebody’s got to go there first

We think it’s all been explored

II.

In the little brown room

In the box within the box

Within the box where

You play games of marbles

Against the hollow wall

III.

What is la vita mia?

Why do you whistle so?

It’s enough that you’re happy there

Holding something solid

IV.

The drill connects with the hammer

Connects with your new house

V.

Last night 3 deep in the club

All were refugees of music

Joy Division was covered

VI.

You weren’t there.

©2010 Rob Schackne

POEM: "On The Hiding Mind"

On The Hiding Mind

Lord, Lord
artifice, doubt
hesitation, impossibility
inadequacy, incompletion
limitations, mistrust
self-dismissal, the incompletely
knowable, the unsayable
and the unreadable
sounds like a normal day
in the salt mines
rattle those chains
and spin the opposite way
maybe we get somewhere.


© 2010 Rob Schackne

A Gary Metras Poem

Anonymous Donation

 
It got to twenty-seven below that winter,
which is harsh for Massachusetts,
even as far west as the hills near Pittsfield.

I mixed stucco that week, by hand.
The mixing bed was splashed with ice.
We set it on the cement floor of a large box.

The box became a luxury condominium.
With every third pull of the hoe, I rested,
to let the lungs thaw, to exhale a cloud

and waste a moment watching my crystal breath.
Such scenery would never be framed
And hung on these walls when finished.

So I mixed it into the stucco.
And quit the job.

 

From "Working Words",
Edited by  M.L. Liebler (2010)