for Marya Zaturenska
TIME EXPOSURES
When the exposed spirit, busy in daytime, searches out night, only renewer.
That time plants turn to.The world’s table. When any single thing’s condemned again. The changeable spirit finds itself out,
will not employ Saint Death, detective, does its own hunting, runs at last to night.
Renewer, echo of judgment, morning-source, music. Dark streets that light invents, one black tree standing, struck by the street-light to raw electric green, allow one man at a time to walk past, plain. Cities lose size.The earth is field
and ranging these countries in sunset, we make quiet, living in springtime, wish for nothing, see
glass bough, invented green, flower-sharp day crackle into orange and be subdued to night. The mind, propelled by work, reaches its evening:
slick streets, dog-tired, point the way to sleep, walls rise in color, now summer shapes the Square
(and pastel five o’clock chalked on the sky). We drive out to the suburbs, bizarre lawns
flicker a moment beside the speeding cars.
Speed haunts our ground, throws counties at us under night, a black basin always spilling stars.
Waters trouble our quiet, vanishing down reaches of hills whose image legend saves: the foggy Venus hung above the flood
rising, rising, from the sea, with her arms full of waves as ours are full of flowers.
Down polished airways a purple dove descending sharp on the bodies of those so lately busy apart, wingtip on breasttip, the deep body of feathers in the breastgroove along the comforted heart. The head inclined offers with love clear miles
of days simple in sun and action, bright air poised about a face in ballet strictness and pure pacific night.
But in our ears brute knocking at all doors, factories bellow mutilation, and we live needy still while strength and hours run
checkless downhill.
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Flattered by grief, the changeable spirit puts on importance. Goes into the street, adventures everywhere but places fear is absent. Everywhere the face’s look is absent, the heart is flat,
the avenues haunted by a head whose eye runs tears incessantly, the other eye narrow in smiling. Everywhere, words fail,
men sunk to dust, houses condemned, walls ruined, and dust is never an anachronism.
Everywhere the eye runs tears. And here the hand, propelled somehow, marches the room pulling dark windowshades down around the gaze. And now, stately, jotting on lipstick, she
prepares to sexualize her thistle thought. Loosens her earrings, smiling. Drives
herself far into night. Smiles, fornicating. Drives herself deep into sleep. Sees children sleep.
THE CHILD ASLEEP
What’s over England? A cloud.What’s over France? A flame. And over New York? The night.
Night is nameless, night has no name.
The crane leans down to drink the pit. Look from the blackboard out the window. Walk down the streets that lead to school.
Study, h’p! Pause, h’p! Recess, h’p! I want to grow up.
Can you be direct as snow, straight to the face? When the ball arrives, catch it! Who loves you? What’s around you and under you,
who bends above you?
Immortal is miles away, and age. And Europe. But not so the sea. The sea is near, mother and father near.
Not with the dirty children, dear. Not to look at the sea.
Quiet, music is playing! Never move your face. Wear a mask if your face moves with your love or anger moving. God first, then us. Friday candles. Never discuss.
See the full street—the war is over! The birdcage swung open to the storm.
Do not love so much. Keep cool. Keep collected. Keep warm.
“And the harsh friend, pushing away the music.” The sand-pit high with money.The limousine. The chauffeur filling the frost with suicide smelling sick in garage. First strikers seen.
Death first, the stiff knees pointing up, gone breath. “And the harsh lover: suddenly magic, making me forget mother, sob through shut teeth, seeing the kiss full on the palm erase the touch of death.” What’s over us? The fancy snowfall.War.
What’s at our hand for truth? The curious windlass going into the well. Quaint.Why do those men parade? What’s after sitting at the window, reading?
Lying hot in the bath, weeping at night? Going to bed at night and at last sleeping?
ADVENTURES, MIDNIGHT 1
Give a dime to a beggar for I have seen a sight children grown tall and tragic reason slight charity dealt the poor again
I drove with my last love last night
through Clinton Street where sick, sick, sick the pushcarts screened with oranges staggering avenues of brick
and wealth and love were long away and this man wished the old love quick. Give more and get your dollars back all dimes
small change of love: so lied, and kissed him tight. I saw his tired body gone to crust
and chuckling pigeons take him in their throats. —Now see us older, foolish, refugee,
the child awake with an advertising look gathering speed in motors, love in dimes— what’s after driving at night, answering joylessly? The wasted pity.Thieving charity.
2
With those two I went driving in the dark, out from our town in a borrowed car whose light ate forests as we drove deeper into the park. Beloved, spoke the sweet equivocal night—
those two stood clapped, each breast warmly on breast, I stood apart to remove them from my sight:
The creased brook ran in continual unrest, rising to seastorm in the rioting mind.
Here night and they and I—and who was merriest? He turned his face away refusing, and so signed for her to stop who too was comfortless and equally needy, as tender and as blind.
On the road to the city stood the hedge whose darkness had covered me months ago with that tall stranger as foreign to me as this loneliness,
as enemy to me as tonight’s anger
of grief in the country, shut with those two in the park: this crying, frantic at removal, the dark, the sorrowful
danger.
3
Watching, on piers, exuberant travellers enter the ocean where the beggar sits desperate at exclusive waterfronts, see how the feasted boat leaves port covered with singing birds.
Cruising to cellophane islands, shaking off this city’s rock providing lonely tours, grim single passports, persevering winter, the ship slides down midnight’s imperious harbor The gilt-tiered galleries awake and dance. What is it rippling across the deck? What rising? What memory of ocean? What is it ripples and rises?
The drowned heart, lifted a moment answers clearly Here it comes.
And get your feet wet in a drowning world? Stand on a rotten dock, obsessed with tide?
The boat’s condemned, the pier sinks.The long port offers an only country to you, traveller,
a chance of upper air to hopeful, smothering heart.
NIGHT-MUSIC
When those who can never again forgive themselves finish their dinner, rear up from the chair,
turning to movies are caught in demonstrations sweeping the avenues—Meet them there. Watch how their faces change like traffic-light
bold blood gone green as horses pound the street,
as plates of sweated muscle push them squarely back into retreat. Notice their tremulous late overthrow caught irresponsible : as the first rank presses up at the brown animal breast of law defying government by horses.
And after the quick night-flurry, the few jailed, the march stampeded, the meeting stopped, go down night-streets to unique rooms where horror ends, strike-songs are sung and the old songs remain. Vaguely Ilonka draws her violin
along to Bach, greatest of trees, whereunder earth is again familiar, grandmother, and very god-music branches overhead. Changeable spirit! build a newer music rich enough to feed starvation on.
Course down the night, past scenes of horror, among children awake, lands ruined, begging men.
Rebel against torment,
boats gone, night-battles, the sleepers up and shaking, fear in the streets
cruelty on awaking.
Make music out of night will change the night.
DRIVEWAY
Speeding from city, feeling day grimmer and more opaque,
a thousand times more Death than night
here on the pebbled roads, bled of all light and kind, hastening darkness to the impatient mind,
we shook off nights our fever watched the street, besieged by laughter from the outer room,
heard the pang, pang of bells bury our hope for private warmth or time or bed or house free from the failure public in that place. Here was to be moment of proof, if any conspiracy of night and speed and river could lift us whole from danger, and make real the veiny tree, the gleaming parallel
of railroad tracks and water, using our trespass well to heal all breaches, prove our hope’s disease curable by annealing, bandage night,
blank out the city’s bricked-up doors, the glare of the night-watchman’s ray, No Trespassing,
Don’t Walk Here, Stay At Your Window, Keep On Looking. Reaching the full-grown field, danger slowed down, darkness enlarged around the blind, parked car. No need to look; the brilliant fatal skim
of light swung over the acre, striking the night-proof dead, the Caretaker’s flashlight sending his shadow up ahead.
LOVER AS FOX
Driven, at midnight, to growth, the city’s wistful turnings lead you living on islands to some dark single house where vacant windows mark increased pursuit, chasing the runner outward beyond bounds around the wildest circle of the night. Circling returns! the city wreathed in rivers, streaked skies surrounding islands of blank stone— into this mythic track travelling breakneck, a streaming furnace of escape, you, fox, pursued, brick-red and vicious, circling bricks, are followed as nimbly all mottled cloudy night; fastened upon your path, the Floating Man
face down above the city, as shadow, changing shape,
as shadow of clouds, flying, and swiftly as indifference running mad around the world. Speed now! see city, houses across the water, mosaic and bright over the riverfall
remote from the bursting eye, the open nostril, flared lip (an image of angels singing speed), caught in a nightlong visionary chase. See the entire scene bright as you fly
round lots pauper all year, shacks lame with weather, this sour fertile time teeming and ramshackle before you, loving, clean sight in spyglass air. And around town again. River, river. Why do people live on islands?