Gerald Stern

Look what it is to have forgotten
the torn coat of  “Vecchia Zimarra”
from Puccini’s  La bohème and to remember
the other coats from Mt. Horeb on down,
and look what it is to give your own coat away,
three times now, and to walk shivering
in three different countries, oh tears
for the opportunity and tears for a horse,

At the confluence of tea roses and Russian sage
we made a right at the curved iron fence,
one of my dead friends beside me explaining how trees communicated
but I couldn’t understand a thing because it was all blurry — 
the way it gets — and though I knew him well
I couldn’t say for sure now whether it was Larry or
Phil or Galway or Charlie until I realized it was me
talking in some kind of Hebrish they spoke

I was waiting to try out one of my inventions
from the flattop garage roof — parachutes this time — 
when I tasted a black cherry from the next yard, wondering even at that age
who had prior rights and what was constitutional
so instead of  jumping I wrote a brief brief
called Yaakov vs. the Tree Trunk
where everyone laughed herself crazy
at Marlboro vs. Madison

Nothing by or for itself, the sound of
eggs hard-boiling in the hot water
echoed by the heavy rain that pours
down the broken spout, the cowardly lion’s
roar answered by the moos of the buffalo
the bloody mouth of the one
by the sharp and polished horns of the other,
even Nelson Eddy

Much better than a goat it was to drop
an anarchist from a Park Row window
because he wouldn’t confess to federal agents.
He fell to his death while sitting on the windowsill
holding a pamphlet close to his eyes and maybe
waving his arm in appreciation, and no one
heard him screaming — they were wearing earmuffs
or just they forgot to bring their earpieces
but it was nothing, he was a fiend and a cutthroat
and he would have murdered Rockefeller if he had the chance,
for which reason I have locked my front door
for I can’t find a rat trap big enough.

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,

He was cleaning leaves for one at a time
was what he needed and a minute before the two
brown poodles walked by he looked at the stripped-down trees
from one more point of view and thought they were
part of a system in which the dappled was foreign
for he had arrived at his own conclusion and that was
for him a relief even if he was separated,
even ifhis hands were frozen,
even if the wind knocked him down,
even if his cat went into her helpless mode
inside the green and sheltering Japanese yew tree.

Having outlived Allen I am the one who
has to suffer New York all by myself and
eat my soup alone in Poland although
sometimes I sit with Linda he met in Berkeley
or San Francisco when he met Jack, the bread
just coarse enough, the noodles soft but not
thin and wasted, and not too salty the way the
Chinese further down sometimes make them, the
name still on my mind whatever the reason for
mystery, or avoidance, though rat Netanyahu
and pig that swings from a needle or lives in some
huge incubator, they do darkness where there
was light, the name hates them, the name
in hiding, the name with a beard, and Linda she
loves the name though she invokes her Christ

Me trying to understand say whence
say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,
say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval
Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,
William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke
and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?
Or thinking in line, say the 69 streetcar
or 68 or 67 Swissvale,

In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake’s
lily and though an angel he looked absurd
dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store
wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping,
nor was it useless—you who know it know
how useful it is—and how he would be dead
in a minute if he were to lose it though
how do you lose a lily? His lily was white
and he had a foolish smile there holding it up like
a candelabrum in his right hand facing the
mirror in the hall nor had the endless
centuries started yet nor was there one thorn
between his small house and the beauty-bright store.

How dumb he was to wipe the blood from his eye
where he was sucker-punched and stagger out
onto the Plaza blind. He had been waiting
all night for the acorn moon and eating pineapple
topping over his ice cream and arguing
either physics or philosophy. He thinks,
at this late date, it was the cave again
throwing a shadow, although it may have been
only some way of reconciling the two
oblivious worlds, which was his mission anyhow—
if only there was a second moon. He had a
kind of beard and though he could practically lift
the front end of a car and was already
reading Blake, he had never yet tasted honey.

This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich
with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped
on my arm and half hung on to the food and half
hung on to my shirt and coat. I tore it apart
and let him have his portion, I think I lifted him
down, sandwich and all, on the sidewalk and sat
with my own sandwich beside him, maybe I petted
his bony head and felt him shiver. I have

So one day when the azalea bush was firing
away and the Japanese maple was roaring I
came into the kitchen full of daylight and
turned on my son’s Sony sliding over the
lacquered floor in my stocking feet for it was
time to rattle the canisters and see what
sugar and barley have come to and how Bolero
sounds after all these years and if I’m loyal

I tried one or two but they were stale
and broke like sticks or crumbled when I rolled them
and lighting a match was useless nor could I
put them back in the refrigerator—
it was too late for that—even licking them
filled my mouth with ground-up outer leaf,
product of Lancaster or eastern Virginia,
so schooled I am with cigars, it comes in the blood,

After fighting with his dead brothers and his dead sisters
he chose to paint the dead rooster of his youth,
thinking God wouldn’t mind a rooster, would he?—or thinking
a rooster would look good in a green armchair
with flecks of blood on his breast and thighs, his wings
resting a little, their delicate bones exposed, a
few of the plumes in blue against the yellow
naked body, all of those feathers plucked

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,

The thing about the dove was how he cried in
my pocket and stuck his nose out just enough to
breathe some air and get some snow in his eye and
he would have snuggled in but I was afraid
and brought him into the house so he could shit on
the New York Times, still I had to kiss him
after a minute, I put my lips to his beak
and he knew what he was doing, he stretched his neck

Every city in America is approached
through a work of art, usually a bridge
but sometimes a road that curves underneath
or drops down from the sky. Pittsburgh has a tunnel—

you don’t know it—that takes you through the rivers
and under the burning hills. I went there to cry
in the woods or carry my heavy bicycle
through fire and flood. Some have little parks—

As far as clocks—and it is time to think of them—
I have one on my kitchen shelf and it is
flat, with a machine-made flair, a perfect
machine from 1948, at the latest,
and made of shining plastic with the numbers
sharp and clear and slightly magnified in
that heartbreaking post-war style, the cord
too short, though what does it matter, since the mechanism

Bing Crosby died in Spain
while playing golf with Franco
but who could care less, and at this
writing only a few of
my dear ones are gone—ah I
could make a sad list—the swifts,
as if to prove a point,
fly into the light and make
a mockery out of our darkness.
They scream for food but in
the world of shadows they only
make a quick motion; I have
studied them—the whiter
the wall is—the barer the bulb—
the more they scream, the more