memoryhouse

The noise is always just a thought away,
one wrong turning of the mind. I hear the cries
(they’re mine) at the foot of a stair,
the end of a supermarket aisle,

and then it washes over in a tide of loss. All
gives way to chaos, or to what is always there:
that locked-out self that treads its mill of grief
waiting for his dying to die down.

What is it now with me
And is it as I have become?
Is there no state free from the boundary lines
Of before and after? The window is open today

And the air pours in with piano notes
In its skirts, as though to say, ‘Look, J,
I’ve brought these and these’ – that is
A few Beethovens, some Brahmses,

A few choice Poulenc notes. . . Yes,
It is being free again, the air, it has to keep coming back
Because that’s all its good for.
I want to stay with it out of fear

That keeps me from walking up certain steps,
Knocking at certain doors, fear of growing old
Alone, and of finding no one at the evening end
Of the path except another myself

Nodding a curt greeting: ‘Well, you’ve been awhile
But now we’re back together, which is what counts.’
Air in my path, you could shorten this,
But the breeze has dropped, and silence is the last word.

– (After John Ashbery)

I’ll bet you think the room was bare.
Wrong. There was a chair with a sturdy back.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A table, and on the table a telephone, and I don’t remember what.
A bookcase and an open door.
And an address book in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren’t in it?

No books, no pictures, no windows, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting Encyclopedia Britannica
nestled in the shelves.
Mahler and his Resurrection.
Joy the spark of gods.
Churchill stretched on a shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labours of the War.
The moralists with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the Spy’s braced their backs.

No way out? But what about that door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His one foot still on the chair.
And one fly buzzed – that is, was still alive.

You think at least the note could tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note –
and he had so many who loved him, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.

I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
on the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God’s absence,
or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for—
have faith in my chemical compassion.

You’re still a young man/woman.
It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss.
I’ll cushion it with sleep.
You’ll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.

There is no other devil anymore.

– Wislawa Szymborska