Written by
Howard Nemerov |
He didn't want to do it with skill,
He'd had enough of skill.
If he never saw
Another villanelle, it would be too soon;
And the same went for sonnets.
If it had been
Hard work learning to rime, it would be much
Harder learning not to.
The time came
He had to ask himself, what did he want?
What did he want when he began
That idiot fiddling with the sounds of things.
He asked himself, poor moron, because he had
Nobody else to ask.
The others went right on
Talking about form, talking about myth
And the (so help us) need for a modern idiom;
The verseballs among them kept counting syllables.
So there he was, this forty-year-old teen-ager
Dreaming preposterous mergers and divisions
Of vowels like water, consonants like rock
(While everybody kept discussing values
And the need for values), for words that would
Enter the silence and be there as a light.
So much coffee and so many cigarettes
Gone down the drain, gone up in smoke,
Just for the sake of getting something right
Once in a while, something that could stand
On its own flat feet to keep out windy time
And the worm, something that might simply be,
Not as the monument in the smoky rain
Grimly endures, but that would be
Only a moment's inviolable presence,
The moment before disaster, before the storm,
In its peculiar silence, an integer
Fixed in the middle of the fall of things,
Perfected and casual as to a child's eye
Soap bubbles are, and skipping stones.
|
Written by
Norman Dubie |
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights
He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns
And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience
Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look of his; the hall fell silent
And violently he threw his hair to the side and up
Went the baton, the recital ended exactly one hour
Later when Illya suddenly turned and bowed
And his mutes bowed, and what applause and hollering
Followed.
All of his cronies were there!
Illya told us later that he thought the voices
Of mutes combine in a sound
Like wind passing through big, winter pines.
Mother, if for no other reason I regret the war
With Japan for, you must now be told,
It took the servant, Illya, from us.
It was confirmed.
He would sit on the rocks by the water and with his stiletto
Open clams and pop the raw meats into his mouth
And drool and laugh at us children.
We hear guns often, now, down near the village.
Don't think me a coward, Mother, but it is comfortable
Now that I am no longer Czar.
I can take pleasure
From just a cup of clear water.
I hear Illya's choir often.
I teach the children about decreasing fractions, that is
A lesson best taught by the father.
Alexandra conducts the French and singing lessons.
Mother, we are again a physical couple.
I brush out her hair for her at night.
She thinks that we'll be rowing outside Geneva
By the spring.
I hope she won't be disappointed.
Yesterday morning while bread was frying
In one corner, she in another washed all of her legs
Right in front of the children.
I think
We became sad at her beauty.
She has a purple bruise
On an ankle.
Like Illya I made her chew on mint.
Our Christmas will be in this excellent barn.
The guards flirt with your granddaughters and I see.
.
.
I see nothing wrong with it.
Your little one, who is
Now a woman, made one soldier pose for her, she did
Him in charcoal, but as a bold nude.
He was
Such an obvious virgin about it; he was wonderful!
Today, that same young man found us an enormous azure
And pearl samovar.
Once, he called me Great Father
And got confused.
He refused to let me touch him.
I know they keep your letters from us.
But, Mother,
The day they finally put them in my hands
I'll know that possessing them I am condemned
And possibly even my wife, and my children.
We will drink mint tea this evening.
Will each of us be increased by death?
With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it
Represents less.
That's the feeling I have about
This letter.
I am at your request, The Czar.
And I am Nicholas.
|