It's long past midnight
He iies awake pondering
What it's all about
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When Writers Lose Confidence In Free Speech
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I read my cheap novels again
and again I cry: What a beautiful death!
Indeed. That’s all I long for. My last
request will be: Give me a beautiful death!
and give it to me quick.
If I don’t say please or thank-you
don’t be mad. There’s an unwritten law
inscribed on the tombs of Old Cathay
that reads: “Let the dead be rude” and why not?
But back to my misery: I dream each night
of a long straight road littered with sunglasses.
I’m in the back seat of a light
blue convertible screaming: I want
to escape, sail to the edge and jump
as the ivory steamships wave. But I’ve been told
the world is round, and you and I are nothing
more than giant handfuls of atoms clicking
together. Have you heard the music of the spheres?
It’s one note played over and over.
Yes, you and I will meet someday
in the tourist section of the astral plane. We’ll float
like heavenly barges and spit
on the men below. When they get good
and mad enough they’ll say: Aren’t they rude?
and we’ll smile, recalling
the green silk lining of our caskets.
One thing leads to another, not always for conscious or logical reasons, though sometimes the linkage is obvious, as with the poem “Down-to-Earth”:
“In the field the coyote yip-yips imminent danger;
the dog in the kitchen rumbles a basso growl;
the field sends back a shrill elastic baying;
the kitchen gives a soprano howl.
“These two aren’t discussing climate change,
war, flu, layoffs; in this dialogue
a well-informed coyote’s not relaying
to a pessimistic dog
“grounds for worry—national cases of mange,
the mountain lion population swelling,
a cougar-sighting fifteen miles away—
only a future close enough to smell.”
Time slows down, the light smoothes out surfaces, seeps
into old closets, drawers, and underneath the beds;
dries the pillow’s saliva, abrogates the winding of the stairs,
puts words in iambic order. And now the man
who had only a long, threadbare coat to hide
inglorious scars, the grey hairs, is obliged
to stand naked in the light, pretending to be
the statue of a youth, over whose marble curls
some fatuous passerby has thrown a beat-up straw hat
with ribbons and wax cherries from immemorial summers.
—Translated from the Greek by Martin McKinsey
