On the Continent

 

There is, it turns out, a Europe of the mind

Where all the memories from all your visits go

To drink their cappuccinos in the shade

Of German French Italian Spanish trees,

 

And to recline, half-drunk, below the winking stars

Of Paris, and Milan, and even Bruges,

Sun-sated, having seen their fill

Of bikes, cathedrals, and big-bellied men,

 

Content to dream their European dreams 

That harken back and back, down endless years –

Because everything has happened a million times here,

And will probably happen again,

 

And it was no great bother, then or now;

Nothing to miss a cigarette for;

Nothing worth giving up the splashing of the fountain,

The ankle of a girl, or the swaddling night.

Who You're Kidding

 

When someone asks you

“Who do you think you’re kidding?”

The answer is always:

Myself, myself, myself.

Itinerary

 

Go wash your blackberry hands
In the iceberg water
Before the bauble sun
Kisses the trees.

Everything is done.
There will be no tomorrow.
But this night is endless
Like the million murmuring stars.

Champion

 

Occasionally a stranger 

Will come up to me 

And tell me how much 

My father meant to them.

 

The ones who met him 

Were amazed by his kindness,

His utter lack of swagger -

The champion with the humble smile.

 

I try to explain

That was just how he was.

It never would have occurred to him 

To behave any differently.

 

There was nothing performative 

About his humility. 

He felt in his bones 

That everyone is a champion.

 

He was, on every level, 

The genuine article:

Man, athlete, thinker,

And, above all, human being.

 

It may sound like hero worship -

Like boyish idolatry -

But not to those who knew him. 

They nod, and they understand.

 

Sometimes it almost seems 

Like they’re expecting me to argue. 

Your father was a great man, they say,

And I think: You don’t know the half of it. 

Cathedrals

 

Cathedrals were built to glorify God,

Because we don’t yet know how to glorify ourselves -

Although God, after all, is touchingly human:

Violent, insecure, making worlds in his spare time,

Occasionally torturing himself to death -

A cry for help if ever I saw one.

 

He made us in his image, didn’t he?

And we’re such fractured, ungainly things.

It’s all well and good to blame women and apples –

But who made those? The answer writes itself.

 

So God, perhaps, is the most human of us,

Which puts cathedrals in a different light,

As monuments to human frailty, and 

The lengths to which we go to dress it up.

TGV

 

The sun is still low

As the train gathers speed,

Knifing westward 

Through the wakening fields.

 

There’s mist in the hollows,

But the steeple is crowned with light 

Above the clustered village 

Where an old man walks alone.

 

There is something healing

In the fact of movement.

You do leave worries behind,

If only for an hour.

 

In an hour you will be yourself again,

With all your familiar self-torture;

For now you are only a speeding body

On a French train, headed west.

La Vie

 

La vie est simple; elle est belle;

Il n’y a que de bonnes nouvelles;

 

La vie est simple, triste, et douce;

Le loup qui chante, le vent qui pousse,

 

Ils n’apportent que les bonnes nouvelles:

La vie est simple, triste, et belle.

Frank

 

The man behind the desk

Is always smiling.

Are you from here? I ask.

I’m practicing my French.

 

No, he says.

I’m from Normandy.

I knew my great-grandparents.

They spoke Norman patois.

That world has vanished.

My grandparents remembered the war.

They left their house

An hour before their village

Exploded.

My grandmother turned to my grandfather.

“That’s it,” she said.

“We have nothing.”

They ate grass for a week,

Like cows.

 

It was the same last year,

When the Ukrainians began to come.

Two women arrived – rich women, beautiful.

They had beautiful hats, a baby,

And nothing else.

I gave them a room, a meal.

They hadn’t eaten in a week.

People told me I was crazy,

But we have to look out for each other.

That’s vanishing too.

People are out for themselves.

 

What’s your name? I ask.

Frank, he says,

After Frank Sinatra.

Really? I say.

Yes, he says.

Goliath

 

Technology companies 

Are always reminding me

That I used to be younger,

Greener, more smiling,

And that things which feel very recent 

Are at least five years ago.

 

I don’t know why they do this.

Does it make them any money?

Does someone get a bonus

For making me feel old?

They’re selling my own past back to me,

But they’re selling it for nothing,

As if their quarterly profits

Take second place to causing people pain.

 

I have to get out - out, in the bright sunlight,

And leave my phone in the car,

Or better yet, at the bottom of a lake.

I have to defeat

Three billion-dollar companies 

Just to take a walk

In the shadow of the shifting leaves.

And Sometimes...

 

And sometimes you’re in Paris,

Wandering along the Seine,

Killing time till a café dinner

And a long-awaited sleep.

 

What can you say about Paris?

Everyone already knows.

Paris is books, baguettes, accordions -

A string of clichés

Pulled tight around the heart.

 

Layover

 

Glorious Dublin,

Green in the golden sun,

Hedges and lanes along the shore,

Winks past in the tiny window.

 

I’d like to vanish

Into the emerald heart

Of the happy island,

But Paris is beckoning,

 

And I only have time

For an hour of Irish welcome,

A Guinness for breakfast,

And a promise to return.

Apocalypse

 

We sat on the deck 

While trees cracked in the wind;

The wind sang like doom, and lightning danced.

 

It felt like the end of the world, 

But we knew it wasn’t. 

 

It was only a late-summer storm

Battering a sturdy house.

Liminal

 

“We have common cause against the night.”

-Ray Bradbury

 

The buck is vanishing into the mist,

Which is vanishing into the dark.

Outside the house the world is dissolving,

Yielding to entropy, while inside,

Things are only brighter, better defined,

As we make our nightly stand

Against the night.

Look, I Didn’t Make the Rules

 

Hope is mandatory.

Everything else can be faked.

The reckless optimism 

It takes to open your eyes 

On an ordinary morning 

Is nothing to sneeze at.

 

We’re hopeful things at bottom;

Maybe that’s our tragedy.

Hope is the mother of disappointment,

But disappointment is the mother of wisdom,

 

And wisdom brings new hope,

Completing the circle,

Because hope, after all,

As we know,

Is mandatory.

The Good Stuff

This is the good stuff.

The air, the sun,

The luxury of breathing,

Stolen time between time.

 

The towers of ambition crumble,

But even their ruins make enough shade

To sit with a sandwich in,

Watching birds play,

 

Dreaming of nothing,

Blank as a jewel,

Letting the light

Fade slowly into the dark.

Equinox

The world sits on a knife’s edge,

Teetering between light and dark,

Summer and winter, heat and cold,

Drowsy noons and drowsier nights.

The balance is always changing,

Because that’s what balance is:

An endless wobbling between two poles -

Practiced, unconscious,

And somehow beautiful.

What I Know

 

I think that I’m weak, but I know that I’m strong.

I think I’m alone, but I know I belong.

 

I think I’m unworthy, but something deep-furled

Still whispers to me, You deserve the whole world.

Deserving

 

There’s a poster of Churchill

Pointing like Uncle Sam

With the caption DESERVE VICTORY.

I gave one to Mike Lavoie.

 

The slogan is agnostic

As to whether you win or not.

In war, as in the ordinary,

Nothing is ever certain.

 

What you can always do,

Always try to do,

Is deserve.

When you fail, fail gloriously.

When you triumph, do it with grace.

 

Nothing is final

Except the final defeat,

After which they may say of you

“He deserved better.”

Make it true.

 

Untitled

 

I am not entitled.

I am the windfall heir

To a thousand centuries

Of toiling humanity

 

And a few billion years

Of bubbling universe;

I am one of the bubbles -

A poem in space and time.

 

To what could such a creature

Be entitled?

Who would write up the deed,

Or notarize the claim?

 

In what court of justice

Would it plead its case?

Before what judge

In star-bespeckled robes?

 

A bubble owns nothing

But its moment in the light -

A moment to dance, be grateful,

Marvel at itself, and die.

Emptying

 

When you are full of memory,

Sloshing it, overflowing,

Burdened and bewildered with it,

Lay yourself down.

 

Let yourself empty,

Seeping into the warm sand,

Until the sky and the clean mind -

The ocean too - are one blank sky,

 

One sweep of nothing,

Innocent of all meaning;

One radiant void

Foaming with unborn thoughts.

 

Then rise in the twilight,

Brush the sand off your knees,

And get back to the business of living 

In a brighter and better world.

Fear and Stillness (A Fool’s Prayer)

 

I have become afraid
Of the one thing that will heal me:
The lifesaving stillness
At the center of the mind.

I try to find ways
To avoid dropping in
To the pool of forgiveness
Ringing deep in the dark heart.

Like the wounded animal
Hates the sting of the balm,
I hate my own wisdom,
And I cannot see why.

Grant me the courage
To do the easy thing.
Give me the strength
To abandon all striving.

Only there,

At the bottom of everything,

Is the peace I need

To be human again.

Epitaph

 

We jumped-up monkeys

Wallowing in pride,

We lived like others,

Like others died;

 

We strove and suffered,

Loved and failed to love,

Awash with yearning 

For some grace above,

 

And never rested

From one hopeless quest

Which plagued us only

And passed by the rest:

 

Half-mad for stories 

From our tender birth,

Of all the creatures 

On this killing earth,

 

We were the ones

Who wondered what it meant -

Just hounds for meaning

Following a scent.

A Word of Thanks

 

I’m thirsty, but there will be water soon.

I’m hungry, but the stove is lit.

All my deprivations are temporary,

At least for now,

Which makes me one of the luckiest people

Ever to walk this earth.

An Old Man Speaks About Death

 

“Well, I don’t see the percentage in it,”

He said. “What’s in it for me?

What do I get for my trouble?”

 

I told him it was traditional,

But this failed to impress him.

 

“You might get tired,” I said.

“Sure, I might,” he answered.

“I’d lie down for a spell.

No need for more than that.”

 

“You may not have a choice,”

I resorted to at last.

And he screwed up his face,

Suddenly sly.

 

“I’ll allow as how,” he confided,

“They may get me in the end.

But they can’t make me like it.”

And he moved on to other subjects.

LaGuardia

 

I thought I saw a rat

Out of the corner of my eye,

But it was the reflection of an airplane

Scurrying across the polished floor.

 

Now, in my imagination,

The sky is filled with soaring rats,

And cats are chasing phantom airplanes

Into their bolt-holes,

Where I suppose they refuel.

Flea Market

 

I love the useless boxes,

Too small for anything much,

Ornately carved

By an idle hand

With an artisan’s kindly touch;

 

I love the faded papers,

Replete with faded news,

That tell the tale 

Of ambitious men

And their antiquated views;

 

I love to stalk the aisles 

And handle the debris,

Part treasure

And part flotsam,

That makes our legacy.

Falls

 

The leaves are already letting go,

Letting the dream of summer fade

Into the gauzy gaze of memory,

Where everything is golden light.

The swamps are red again,

Early as ever,

Canaries in the autumn coal mine,

Dying for their promptitude.

And morning is crisp

As a fallen apple,

Crisp as a song in the shallow air,

Promising months of mellow glory

Before the pall

Of winter

Falls.

Finality

 

There will be no tribunal

There, at the end of everything,

To tally up the value

Of everything you ever did.

 

No scale will tremble

Under the weight of your sins,

Or wobble with admiration

Of your love and sacrifice;

 

Only a final ripple

Coming out of your final breath

Will testify, for one moment,

That you ever were here at all.

 

Everything that matters

Matters now, and only now.

The future is too late;

The past is ashes;

 

And the infinite weight of the present

Is light enough to carry cheerfully.

Age and Wisdom

 

Thinking the thoughts

Is only the first step.

You have to find a way

To make them a part of you.

 

They have to soak down

Deep below the skin

Into the secret place

Where the old self hides:

 

The primal self,

The heir of millennia,

The bashful soul

Unblinking in the dark.

 

Knowledge is nothing

Until it’s instinct,

Sewn into the bones,

Felt in the dangerous heart.

Age

 

He wore the years lightly,

Secure in the knowledge

That his soul was not changing

Or shriveling up.

Only the body

Showed marks of wear,

And even these

Were not all for the worse;

He had more texture,

He told himself,

Like a pencil sketch

Lovingly filled in.

 

Besides, what’s a body?

A physical thing.

A chemical miracle

That somehow can think.

His thoughts were not aging;

They were bright as ever,

And much too absorbing

To let him worry much.

Small Blessing

 

God bless my little life,

As petty as a dream,

As vanishing as sorrow,

Both silly and supreme;

 

God bless my meager worries,

My underwhelming pain,

Small joys and smaller comforts,

The muttering of rain,

 

The having and the yearning,

The butter and the knife,

And all the towering moments

That make a tiny life.

Edna O'Brien

 

She stirred her Manhattans

With her finger.

The ice would clink

On the side of the glass.

 

She kept every issue

Of the New York Times

And smoked like a chimney,

But with more delight.

 

She had been in prison.

She had written a book.

She smelled of Manhattans

And musty dogs.

 

Her house burned

With her inside it,

Blazing like tinder

On a windless night.

 

It was like the burning

Of the Library at Alexandria –

All those old papers

Going up in flames –

 

But the real loss, of course,

Was Edna,

Her stirring finger,

And her innocent dogs.

Lights on the Potomac

 

There were lightning and fireworks,

Each with its own thunder,

Glowsticks on the water,

Headlamps and headlights,

 

Even a campfire

In the bed of a canoe,

Torches on shore,

A lit-up American flag.

 

The summer darkness

Was filthy with light

As the sky faded

And the show began:

 

A passing plane

Blinked;

A mansion glittered;

Fireflies danced.

 

Every year this country

Is born in fire,

Etching its light

On the canvas of falling night.

The Window

 

For now, the window is open.

Light comes in. The air is clean.

Darkness is gathering,

Always gathering,

But even the twilight

Is bright enough to love.

The Earl of Pembroke and the Nuns

 

This story, from Walter Scott’s Notes to his novel Rob Roy, struck me as hilarious.

 

“The nunnery of Wilton was granted to the Earl of Pembroke upon its dissolution by the magisterial authority of Henry VIII, or his son Edward VI. On the accession of Queen Mary, of Catholic memory, the Earl found it necessary to reinstall the Abbess and her fair recluses, which he did with many expressions of his remorse, kneeling humbly to the vestals, and inducting them into the convent and possessions from which he had expelled them. With the accession of Elizabeth the accommodating Earl again resumed his Protestant faith, and a second time drove the nuns from their sanctuary. The remonstrances of the Abbess, who reminded him of his penitent expressions on his former occasion, could wring from him no other answer than that in the text—‘Go spin, you jade—go spin.’”

Estate

 

The plan, of course, was to keep on living.

That’s why three jars of preserves

And two dozen medications and supplements 

Are part of the estate sale today.

The family album goes back

To 1881;

The rugs are from Persia;

The DVDs are eclectic.

Some things are tacky;

Others are frankly beautiful,

And everything is half-off today

Because next week is another sale,

Another home turned into a market

For indifferent strangers to wander through,

Some of them not far from their own estate sale,

And buying things, perhaps, to fill it out.

Land of Mist

 

On a foggy day,

The light comes from all over,

Soaked up in the humid air,

Permeating every living cell,

Catching the world in the amber of itself.

 

Some would call this day gloomy;

I see a landscape drenched in light,

Suspended in luminance, underwater,

Rescued from time, forgiven everything.

On the Best of Days

 

He could imagine a clean, bright, spacious mind,

As plain and pure as the white November sky,

Across which armies of well-marshaled thoughts

Paraded splendidly, in blameless glamor,

 

Instead of the higgledy-piggledy retreat

Of a ragtag, shrapnel-studded crew

That passes, on the average, workaday day

For a train of thought – a travesty of a mind.

 

He could even get there, for minutes at a stretch –

That place where everything is grist for the mill,

And the mill moves evenly, pushed by limpid water,

Never rushing or ceasing, grinding as fine as sand.

 

And why not all the time? He didn’t know.

There might be one or many thousand reasons.

He was, after all, a cracked, ungainly creature,

But his mind was infinite, at least on the best of days.