Organized Religion
So did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly
turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his
devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.
—Moby-Dick
The birds were reading
the psalter again
or making the attempt.
In Sunday best, magpies
wore their chasubles,
the garden robin
in ruddy vest, swifts
darting in blue blazers.
Even our neighbor,
hair like shredded wheat,
took a rare turn
through steamy air, cane
whacking the garden walls
to an unsung hymn.
The unmown lawn stood
seeding, seeding,
as if the future would
be pronounced salvation.
❂
Delft
“How evident that in strict speech there can be no biography of an India-hater par excellence, any more than one of a sword-fish, or . . . one of a dead man.”
—The Confidence-Man
The old brick
at that hour caught
something like light,
not reflection but unscientific
glint. Red brick gone
to the dogs—to soot
and filth, I mean—detected
that crime of the ordinary
in Vermeer’s Het Stratje,
each brick painstakingly
outlined in lime mortar
(China white, no doubt)
by a painter who found
that dirty shutters, wallpapery
clouds, servant mending
in the sunlight of the door
flaunted a denial of the idle
importance of the very rich.
❂
Lost
Those skies empty of promise
came to our fishing village like busywork,
as the drivers after cod called it.
We watched the swordfish
disembark one by one, like sea-green
dragoons come to take the measure
of the colonies or reclaim land
their Tory ancestors lost to battle.
They still wore their swords—
would have worn their words, too,
the stray phrases earned by overuse.
And found, which meant the laborer
received meager coin but hearty dinner.
❂
Area Codes
“Gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster in man; to me a philanthropist.”
—The Confidence-Man
The postwar walk-up.
The fifties red ranch with the glacial
boulder like a humpback whale.
The faux saltbox on the old Indian path,
overlooking Hotel Hill as it sank toward
the skunk-cabbage swamp.
The new colonial on the bankrupt farmstead,
facing the cemetery where the graves
of our great-grandparents lay overgrown.
The Civil War farmhouse dressed up
with porch columns, acres of lawn
wrinkled with oaks (dead, dying)
and a horse chestnut shaped like a bell jar.
One by one, our houses were paid to forget us.
❂
Knife in a Glass
Richard Diebenkorn
The knife lounged in a water glass
against a pale ochre wall,
an hour hand pointing to five o’clock,
the water warm as syrup—diluted blood,
the knife lying in wait or resting
after hard labor? Or was that death
in an ordinary glass on an ordinary day?
❂
Sea Eagles
Faint odor lifted off green-gray seedheads,
insects abuzz with democracy and frustration,
like the troops brassing up Omaha Beach.
The clouds had been brushed to death
by Constable, bloated and fleshy, waiting
for regime change. The old Travelers’ Rest,
out of bounds, staked off, awaited development.
Already gravel paths crossed the fields
toward the new superstore, the rabbits
quietly slaughtered. The green and pleasant
land was still pleasant, mostly.
For years I walked the London alley
behind Blake’s back room, second floor.
Below, a whalebone merchant dealt
in corsets, I believe. Blake stands these days
like Lear’s sea eagles, coast guards
of hillock and wave, waiting to strike.
❂
Napoleon of the Treetops
The blackbird lets loose
crisis songs from its pied-à-terre,
silenced only by the rains from hell.
His version of Beethoven’s Ninth
every spring declares the same victory,
even in defeat. His emperor and empress
go nameless, his ironworks unbuilt.
Rain was the victor at Waterloo.
❂
The Horse
The sky is already arsenic, the light
orphaned, like Selene setting her horses
at the end of night. In my face I saw
the Parthenon horse ravaged, mouth agape,
nostrils flared in terror—or bloodlust.
The horses of victory galloped over plains of pity,
said the ancients, or not. I find you
tender when you have wounded me most.
❂
Waiting for the Fall
The glimmer of predawn
coated the leaves in icing. Summer
had turned hard, predictable,
every bird a predicate adjective.
Even the rabbits became some brute
species of grammar. The business
of nature in high season was grab
and smash, everything taken,
nothing returned except for display.
The whole country was a set
of HO trains, stiff cows
standing guard in the fields,
trees like paper cut-outs, the buildings
up close nothing but gimcrack.
Fail again. Fail better, said Beckett.
❂
WILLIAM LOGAN’s most recent book of poems is Rift of Light (Penguin, 2017). His new book of criticism, Broken Ground: Poetry and the Demon of History, was published last spring by Columbia University Press.