STAGE POETRY COMPANY

APOLOGY

Long ago, the children in the street
Gazing past the smoke hae seen
Us, standing in November.

Before the year he chaotic leaves
Drift from the trees and into
The hand that remember.

Ride past the yards in the burning streets
While the family bends and picks
Under the magic autumn sky.

Before the dog barks and day is gone,
Familiar voices will call
From the doorway of home.

The chld is taught of the ancient root
To lead the people to the orchard
Where apology hangs from the trees.

THE ASTERISK

Apart from what is a passing use in some
Prose piece assembled artistically for
You, who have retreated cozily with the
Book to a corner bathed in yellow light
In a mountain-top ski resort, with your
Friends who ski alot more than you, or
Wherever you are presently--apart from
Any use, the use I mean of a word--and
Again I’ve jumped in at the wrong place
In the sentence, and can hardly climb back;
Apart, I say, from the fixed place in a
Printed page that a word (or even a phrase)
Comes unblinkingly to seem to occupy
For the reader, it’s true that the the author
May have stared in the face more a thing
Of multiple associations, maybe chaos,
With several meanings and all meanings
Briefly exhilarating,
Maybe crippling him in a forest of never
Before explored contradictions, and that
No reader can peer below like did the
Author, for all the seedlings.
Well then! With some irony, which may be
Madness, or a genius liking to embrace the
Obscure, I am going to drop all placidity,
And put an asterisk on the word asterisk,
Ah, dig and plunge therein head on
Into the demonstration of what a dullard
Thinks futility. I have a vision--that I
Can find truth and humility, right in
The face of exploding meanings,
And that maybe, if we right now digress with
A footnote dealing with the word asterisk,
As if bogged down greatly just by a title,
Yes, we might overwhelm eventually
Both the scholar who uses
Footnotes in an attempt to clear things up,
And the prose writer, who is usually glib,
Overwhelm all timid employers of the word
With--well, probably--the universe again,
Where artistically there are no
Fuzzy phenomena
But only revelations, overwhelming reason.

So this is for the reader of poetry, and
I shall laud it, the asterisk, gloriously.

Now was this term (a single world, remember!)
Ever employed with full discretion, did
Ever a writer yet work with dictionary at
His elbow? Yes, you say, precisely, with
Care one can differentiate its meanings,
Which have accrued to it from different
Intended uses; surely a word represents
An intended thought--this is common wisdom!
Why it’s the dream of the space-age century
That the aggregate history can be taken
Apart, and the author be accused where he
Spoke; you can pluck the word from his mouth,
And even strip away what looks like mere
Style, to come up with one literal use
For this word . . . or any other. Well, no!

And no again I say to this plebeian science,
I say the word was originally sprung with
All power, with a latent ambiguity, sprung
First unassailable by its first speaker.
Oh yes, half-patient, half-peevish exercises
Said to disentangle the star-cluster of
Notions contained in this artfully simple
Term, this one word asterisk, have
Already notoriously failed!
Were criminally plotted by mean intelligence;
Though they, the researchers, have fattened
The provincial literature most horribly,
And made the kind of searching like that
Because so futile seem almost heroic--and
All the more necessary to a mind bent
On squelching natural paradox, even here,
Like in the language--the poet’s very refuge!

Oh, I suffered education in the academy, I
Nearly went deaf with the piped-in music
In the hallways, and blind in the library;
I saw philosophy turn into linguistics,
Heard all dialogues end with the
Appeal to semantics,
Saw so many pretend not to be awash in
Real confusion, ah, like victimized by beauty!

But I escaped, with my vocabulary intact.
The word asterisk itself does not partake
Of all that degradedly lies before it
From the time of its invention,
Surely. It is enabled in origin to survive,
Like a prophecy, to resound, mockingly--
It has a simplicity that denotes
Nothing less than enormous complexity,
I mean it is directly inexplicable, from
The start, has the ability to protect
Under one umbrella
Some notions too fragile to survive alone,
Notions that have at least incidental
Quite spectacular, life under its cloak,
But quickly fall to being a sub-species
Of some botanist or astrologer,
Academician or novelist,
If left to languish in a private scrutiny--
I mean a scrutiny ignorant of public truth,
And of the words that are a record of
Survival for pale human thoughts, words
Larger by far than what one of us can make
Of them. This is a system of divine origin;
We can speak, when thoughts are perishing.

So, now that we know the word is uttered
In freedom, that to be pontifical and
Cite some mundane origin, for the word,
Is only to indulge in a mean and modern
Scorning, we will ourselves explore, let’s
Say, adjacent uses, corollary miracles
All wrapped in the seeming single glitter
Of the word spelled for our title; then
We’ll see what prophesy lay already
Enshrined in the . . . oracle--
For after a certain point, like after a
Gospel that plays to every audience, the
History of man is a long backward striving,
An even half innocent, but half conniving
Attempt to recall the sound of a choir
Of angels. We better sing, now, and not
Worry about resuscitating the great arts.

I have the knowledge (like a vision!) of
The asterisk that was, or will be, a
Little star-shaped instrument
Put above the chalice to keep the veil--
In a familiar religious ceremony--from
Contact with the elements prematurely--
These represented by a fiery painted dome;
Well even this, one archaic meaning, can
Be referenced in a thick dictionary. But
Then, like to make the task tremendous and
Explicit, we must attach the notice that
More asterisks (the modern use) are
Immediately here needed--
Needed to keep us in close contact with
Every word in the ancient definition! What is a
Chalice? What is a veil? What is
A religious ceremony,
And what are these figures in the fiery
Dome? What is this asterisk? No more
Than a technical term? Or is the
Star-shaped instrument a symbol,
The making tangible of the mystery of the
Word? I mean, chalice contains the cup,
And the cup the wine, turned from water
Which even the hands can hold. And the
Wheel, in the dome, is a figure born
By circular motion of the moon. And the
Universe may have begun with a scene
Like this, with some few elements or things,
Radically incomplete,
A scene half painted and put now in relief.
The edge of a sofa, the curtains half drawn,
The sound of hoofs, a rider in the sky . . .
You see, all these words may contain what is
Gone, and beyond us still--
What we have to take up in thought;
When all we have to start with is a little star,
Roughly shaped at that, or--to produce it
Right now--a pinpoint of light made by a
Closed fist held up to the lamp. But this can
Demonstrate the shape of what can barely
Be seen, make a point of reference to
What might be the rule of God,
As we kneel here in this vale of tears.

Then again, and here we go into the
Fabulous region
Conjured up by the word in our hands, the
Asterisk as it comes to us is not so
Sharply defined as a star, a bright star--
No I will not be led away to worship a
Bright star; but the asterisk, as a star,
Has more vagary and makes blunt rejection
Of the long gaze of the too serious eye,
Like real stars that refute the
Contemplation
Of where they really are, or what they are
Made up of. The word asterisk serves better
As a regular cluster of stars, I see
That is an ancient association too; stars
In a vague group never yet set asunder,
And producing necessary confusion to that
Eye, receding finally in a nebular haze--
Like just the signpost or dashed marking
For an area (like the night) that one
Always has more checking on to do. And
Thus, nearly magically, this symbol can
Be made with any handy writing tool,
And can relinquish its religious status
Altogether for a time, or its part in
The creation, and become a playful part
In a game of dots invoking
Classical constellations!
Yea, and serve the flight of imagination.

Now with all that, no one will be shocked
To find asterisk, well-travelled anciently,
Secondly in association with the flower.
We can praise the actual light; the light that
Shows in the dew on the grass has still
The strength of the sun. Ah yes, and the
Stars that fell littered more than
The apron of a saint
Lit more than the taper of the monk in a
Cell. And the flower aster, or the exotic
China Aster, retains the shape, why of the
Star! bringing all the kingdom of heaven
Into temporary focus for the stroller
In the autumn of the world.
We don’t know everything, we don’t know much,
And we may never know in a lifetime, it
Might be wise to say, whether this aster
Plant, or that aster star, and all that
Proliferates in various other notions
Of asteroids and aster pods, and astronauts,
Yea all borderlands for thought,
Whether this one or that
Was once preeminent and therefore is now
The ruler, like in a delirium
Of chance perception.
Truly, to learn anything is to swoon with
The sense of what a perfect mystery life is.

And now the modern, ironic value of the term
Asterisk, thus come to us in a wild frenzy,
Is, per se, like some fitful entertainment,
A new meaning that seems nearly separate
And is merely dutiful to a use, set in
Concrete, a symbol pretty shapeless, nearly
Ugly in fact, a typographer’s tool, or
Anybody’s fast marking method with a pen,
With nothing at all behind it--just to
Indicate a little addition to the regular
Text, or a supra-explanation, or a
Reserve for a place for a vaulting piece
Of rationalization, or credit to a mentor,
Or shameless apology for lack of logic
Above, or whatever . . . all optional
Instructions to a half attentive,
Half frightened general reader.
Good Lord, we know this is no diminution
Of the asterisk, but the humblest use yet
Devised for its immemorial sacred freedom.

This literary asterisk is still more than
What is used by editors galloping in on
The text; the text full of words still drew
Us by the magical act of persuasion, and
Is everywhere enjoining true ambiguity;
We should not automatically think that
The reference to the margin is always a
Bad effect, or has broken up the dream of
A seamless text, or is only a housekeeping
Measure, or--in other words-- we should
Not resent it, the asterisk, for various
Ways that it aids in the organization
Of books, which are all in process;
But now cautioned by
The word itself, from our own pausing
Over it to hear the word behind the
Symbol, see the complex face behind the
Deliberating mask, and always react
With delight like it were a runaway star
Or the first in a trail of new flowers,
Ah yes, inviting comparison to our own
Readerly marginal notes, gazing up at
The ceiling, glances out the window, all
Suspiration for what aids being alive.
The use of asterisks should denote . . .
Some search.
There is a tension between thought
And after-thought
Threatening to swallow first impressions
Altogether by unloosening a flood tide
Of neighboring associations. Well, yes,
Like revelations are expressions that
Enable the reader to leave the page; it is
The word bearing witness to thought,
Thought that has a trail of glory
That once seemed to it ineffable, even
Seemed to it like it should quit, relax
In a deep silence. But then the never spoken
Is the essence of what the spoken word gives.

I think probably an image, lately had
By a generation grievous of their sources,
Of a masterwork piece of art all seamless
In its construction, like a genius man were
God representative, like an icon of the
Modern age were to be flashed before them
On the screen of a neurotic awareness,
All surface symbols and submerged structures,
All very deep in its metaphors, like
Diagnostic of the wary brain that cannot
Find reference to truth in ordinary things--
That this image was raised like an awful standard
To rule out with its hogging of the page
The other grander, most humble; more common
Method of straight telling, with stops--
Straight telling always has these stops--
For wayside ruminations, in wonderful
Recognition of the fire of language in
The trying author’s hand. For the author
Was never a god, but only trying his hand.
It was something like that, colossal
Mistrust of the process of life, that made
The asterisk grow even plainer in the sight,
Plainer and plainer, until nowadays,
The asterisk is, well, kicked aside,
Like stars and flowers,
As archaic, historical, a thing understood--
Without being looked at. I mean the asterisk
Proper, the great risk of a digression
Over matters embarked upon with some cause,
The rope thrown to a visible craggy tree
On the mountain slope while climbing,
Not the asterisk; more mechanical
And idiotic, ambitious progeny!, the footnote
Plainly reactionary, dear God. A real
Asterisk only lunges within reach of the
Page it’s on, which allows the reader to
Leave the room anytime, of course. The
Mere footnote is a device developed by the
Academy, to keep forever employed the
Dull-witted professor, false brother to
The artist of the sublime.

But then if these be asterisks, stripped of
All reference finally to God, which all
Things once had (we know from our reading),
These footnotes we see fairly littering
The outcropping of a certain type of book,
Like so many clovers (another image alright!),
No longer representing actual leap of thought
But mere downright admission of dependence
On sources only politically bound up with
The corruption of a new thesis trying to
Remake the world--well then, obviously,
These footnotes can be lifted, or harvested,
Easily, they have not root in any soil
Anyway, are just filed at the back, and
Known by the number, they can march off to
Hell in quite regular order, or be the
Never looked at confession of little sins
Provided by the author even--from within
His prison. It is funny; no it is sad, to
Watch these fakers counting their indebtedness
And usually to one another, like a group,
To see them open wide the gaping scene of
The omission in the patched together
Review of common, so common, wisdom, as
They develop in their careers--or later
Under the lash of a publisher, ah yes!, who
Must know the warden in the hall of lies,
Yea better, personally and closer, than the
Man just in the dust jacket, the man in the
Photo, though he, the victim of the illusory
Death of the asterisk, the sucker sold out
To the idea that this is progress, be
Cursed with fame and fortune forever.

I say we better prize what we have,
Without benefit of that system. I want to bring
On the real masters of the friendly old
Asterisk--my old masters, like DeQuincey,
Who only descended to the infinite margin
When he thought to talk within the
Apparent great outline
Of the article under his command, (while
Knowing by inspiration that could lead him
Anywhere) when it was a question of
Delineating something truly fascinating
To the mind engaged in the actual topic
Of life before and beyond the consciousness,
Like (and he would!) digressing on the twilight,
The twilight seen in experience, known
Therefore as a composite truth to be further
Learned, or on the mysterious dualities
Themselves at work in an actual word-
Employed at risk,
Like we have tried to do right here, in
The asterisk on the word asterisk,
All the while perambulating, like
From Bridgewater to Grassmere.

The rule of the asterisk, the honoring of
The history, the gesture containing love
Of subject and recognition of the reader,
The humility in the face of all meanings,
Is like the law that governs aviation of
Any type. Do not try to float without
Keeping the ground somewhere in
Sight. It’s only a fear of life, and the
Illusion of the spage-age century, that
There is another zone inhabiting the
World marked off by . . . stars and flowers.
The rule of the asterisk is that all
Asterisks should be kept in reach
Of the world that flung them into being.

Edward Williams

from "STORMING THE ACADEMY"

The Minor Enactments of the Moon

Actually, we’re all zealous in pursuit of
Religion. I was pretty eager, on my way
Across the parking lot, though puzzled at
My own alertness and suspicious, as usual,
As stark in my fears as the
Cold, white moonlight
Was clear on the black tarred surface of
The parking lot, there, outside the church-like
Buildings of the Divinity School. Like I
Was bounding forward but still halting
Between every step, like I had hoped to
Lose track of my gray car right where I
Nuzzled it up against an immense tree that
Night and take on foot a moonlit path
To truth, or the sense of truth, again--
That’s my recollection of going to the
Lecture Wednesday night,
To hear Raymond Brown, scholar, on
“Jesus and the Kingdom of God.” And this

The preserved address, may be all my own,
To the scattered, the innumerable, whom
I will never know except by the analogy
Of shared experience,
Like we were forbidden to meet and talk--
And this occurs as the content of thought
Between two steps coming out, with the
Rest of the people streaming about me, and
Seeing the moon over the parking lot--
Dark heads, and hands reaching for the keys.
I thought, well the dead are all believers,
We here are awake to minor enactments: A
A scholar in trouble, as if jealous of history;
Or a baseball player, sliding into home plate.
A modern entertainment,
The rapid footsteps.

I am pretty certain God rewards the fanatic,
Say, the helpless, deluded slave committed
To a fixed idea, before He rewards or even
Slightly encourages the
Author of a . . . commentary!
I mean falsehoods, trenchantly held or
Passionately stated, are more the order of
Our Father who is in heaven, than
Scholarship that takes no stand,
Oh, yes, the weakest song is the critic’s song.
It is always a song of self-defense, surely.
Mediocrity yet shall whine and challenge
Everything, and even to cite a tradition
In the halls of the modern academy
Is to increase the complaint and grovel
At the feet of the fundraisers and their
Literary wives, who built the place and
Put the books all in air-conditioned stacks
To make the librarians dream they have
Conquered Babylon. I’m pretty certain not
One single question currently posed
Upon the ancient Bible
Will ever be answered--for analysis is
Nothing but evasion, evasion, nothing else.
Even the rank, hard-hearted atheist who
With scissors and paste cuts up newspapers
And harasses the heads of State, is more
Likely than the professional lecturer,
Parking one observation after another like
Cars, to have revealed to him (the lunatic, I
Mean) the broadly grinning or frowning
Face of truth. For God is merciful, yes--
I’m pretty sure of this, God favors the
Lunatic first, and from on high, not because
(God forbid) of a theory I have, but
Only judging from specific examples!
I mean, I’ve seen all family quarrels and
Intramural squabbles and rasping debates,
Seen Christianity discussed by believers,
And I don’t think hell could be more
Interminable, nor could the devil more
Completely miss the . . . point of a religion,
Than to skirt it, so nicely, with opinions.

Good evening, said Dr. Raymond E. Brown. Amen,
And amen. Thank you for the sterling kind
Words of introduction, he said to the
Current President of the Divinity School
Who had just sat down in the chair angled
In the melancholy shadows behind the podium
And who was now looking up at him sideways
Like at the darling speaker of an era. And
Now I must say, Dr. Brown intoned, all it is
Is . . . here I am. Many times he’d tried
Not squeaking, at that moment, but there
He was again, hardly sounding like himself!
Again, he said, in the position given me
By kinder colleagues, than I--I mean
By the more deserving--
Damn this style, but I guess it’s necessary,
Said Raymond to Raymond. Ah, so, I repay,
And give back, make public testimonial, I
Digest, and speak, and publish now I must--
He turned his head like someone was
Signaling him from the wings,
And in his head a boy went out for a fly
Ball. God, I mean if God ordains a little
Understanding, that comes by no means without
A good deal of pushing and prodding from
Folks like you, oh yes, the Christian
Community is
One of manifest good intentions and
Multiplying laurels and multicolored ribbons
And I thank you, really, sincerely, yes
I mean it. I do. Thank you. And the hush
Here is deeper, more reverential than any
Prayer. Though banish that thought! Well?
He says, consider me as one with laudable
Good intentions merely. Well, Brown plays
Good on the open field or in the public forum,
He acts like the whole world were watching
Him, watching him, well, wind up before
The delivery. And well, again; he’s almost
Played that word, well, like a harpsichord
Over the years.
It has . . . tonality. Well,

Before I get into the subject of my talk
Tonight, I want to reassure you that your
Car is still there, in the parking lot, where
You put it. And it shall be, when you leave.
Amen. “Jesus and The Kingdom of God,” the
Lecture, is adapted, well, from an article
Published in “The Christian Quarterly”, in
The issue appearing, in mailboxes, next spring.
What? Did he say that? “Appearing in the
Mailbox.” How refreshing, I mean--how odd!
Words can quickly paint a scene in the mind--
I see so many quiet suburban lawns, so
Many postmen skipping on, and flags and
Markers of the future, like. Oh no, it must
Be my imagination, at least to carry it that
Far. Raymond Brown is a man of
Colossal presuppositions!

Really, here the Doctor of Biblical Theology
Only paused most grandly, or seriously,
And severely gripped the teakwood, or oak,
The cherrywood, the slick-stained--podium!
Like he was about to be hit by a train.
Well. Inwardly, yes wholly inwardly, he
Reeled for some reason he wasn’t clear on,
And nearly revealed that he was tempted
To tell an anecdote highly amusing
About something that happened
In the page proofs of the Christian Quarterly;
But he skipped it, and took a sip of water
Preferably. Like it were transitional--
The wetting of the lips--to his embarking
On the crisp, no sagging, pages of the
Article authored in his hands.
If you think
This ceremony is merely idle preliminary,
You are wrong. It is vital to have a
Starting rigamarole,
As vital as the modest reception following.
For the great middle part, the lecture or
The bulk of the time spent, before you,
Containing all the doctor’s misgivings,
Is lacking enough in drama to make
You long for life.

To make you long for life, on this cold night
In October, nineteen hundred and eighty-six . . .
It is a symbolic and necessary move, the
Pause in which Raymond, I mean Brown, stands
Before you. Before I mean us (myself and
The others) in the audience captured quite
In metal chairs in the half-light of the
Auditorium at the Divinity School, in
Late October--I think I
Said that. Oh right, I know what is wrong
Here---I don’t know whether you were there;
When I said “myself and the others” I became
Vitally aware, that you, of course!, were
Probably not there, for I seem to have the
Burden of the report entirely on myself, I
Mean I must be recovering this for someone
Else. And surely I did gather the scene,
Surely I was there only to make a true report.

Now the burden of the report says it was
Clear Raymond was profoundly fumbling. I
Mean, I had the piteous thought, watching
The lecturer begin to begin his
Portentously only beginning
Exploration of “Jesus and the Kingdom,”
That the article, the text all typed out
And held now in his hands, struck him now
As the concealing of ineffable wisdom.

Not a broadcast, but
An apology really. This is awfully sad--
This is the never expressed emotion, ah
The invisible sweat of many hours, years!
Of thinking and reading, reading and thinking,
Or rather, to be really honest, going slowly
Blind and maundering finally to the effect
Of a few, or rather countless, subtle
Excretions, little teased out observations;
Plus the total squandering of all his youth--
Here was what Raymond really had to confess, I
Thought as I stared at him so cruelly.

You can see the bodily frame on exhibit;
He is ghostly pale, his hair is thinning,
As he delivers the slow and wretched boring
Lecture to a few hundred students and
The whole host of admiring faculty,
Various wives and husbands, maybe friends
Pulled along for one reason or another,
On a Wednesday night--and the same night,
As luck would have it, that the
Boston Red Sox and New York Mets,
Two baseball teams, were meeting in the
First game of the World Series. Baseball

Is a game somewhat schematic in the
Memory; it is a game about to . . . begin;
Every autumn, if you watch, the basic
Storyline is overlaid, and the weather
Well, when we were young,
Was perfect like the blue skies were not
A factor. Baseball takes place in the
Wide-open life,
Without suppositions. On the way driving
In from Philadelphia Raymond Brown thought
Up a casual reference to the feeling he
Had had that, well, his somewhat weighty
Lecture was taking place in, well,
Comparative oblivion
To the diamond with the players in their
Spaces. He could say like, well, thanks
For coming out to hear me, I know there’s
A big game tonight. And yes the baseball
Game caught more of the autumn air; and
This reference he should save for the
Question and answer period, poignantly
For a friendly farewell gesture to the
Crowd attending him, tying this like a
String to the kite of his high-flying thesis,
Or something. Just making himself a
Regular guy.

While the moon rode high over the Divinity
School, and the moon rode over the stadium
And the people were able to remember the
Night, and feel the night air, and know the
Season and year, and keep attuned to the
Baseball game like a basic religion, and
Hasten their steps to the car radio--

And I was there,
And I felt crazy, I was bouncing in my chair
With successive revelations, hearing again
The admissible history of Jesus Christ,
Saviour and King, raked over by the
Skeptical, kindly, most thorough
Speaking scholar of the current era,
Yes! All dealt to us with a hearty dose
Of current wisdom and prevailing good intent,
Conforming strictly to a view of this
Pleasant reality we all inhabit. For you
Can have both, the study of scripture and
The lively static of the airwaves. What
Is there now not open for broadcast,
)r seizable for review,
All items of strange poetry of the modern day,
Yea, all emotion, and news, and song, and
A quotient of very interesting
And novel commentary . . .
Yes, I was naive to think, as I always do
That a lecture entitled “Jesus and the Kingdom,”
Should undo the timing of the pastry. I
Guess God chose me . . . to write the satire.

So, they were taping Raymond Brown’s talk,
But I never bothered to get a copy, nor, I
Know, did the news reporter who captioned
Him in a photo the next day. A photo tells
All, from a familiar angle, the meditative
Angle. Only a part of the mind is
Listening, the rest is in the eyes, which
Are staring without blinking like trying
To get the knack of seeing, trying not to
Ask any questions, or rather trying to believe.
Well, I am playing this back from memory.
I thought, this is Christianity--for believers.
And I want to sweep right off the moonstruck
landscape where high school lovers walk
This shadowy Jesus of the historians berth--
I mean his bed of study, of foam rubber
Pillows and facts collated with paper-clips,
This history that fits on file cards and
Is indexed, conveniently, to a scholar’s dream--
This anachronistic bum who floats from town
To town, and stays in other people’s houses,
Telling them he is really the right-hand man
Of God. Oh yes, and then I’d stage the drama
Of CHRIST THE KING, soldier of mercy.
Soldier of mercy!
I’ve always thought people know alright
That whatever God was doing sending his
Only son down into history in Galilee,
Two thousand years ago, it would still be
Crazy to think life was over yet, when
It is right before you--life I mean,
Despite all this mystery.
Whatever the story is, even if the basic
Story were tenable in a rough outline,
Which it isn’t, you can’t even think about
It, it’s constantly needing to be pared
Down and put in proportion--there's the
Service it seems the gentle scholar was
Born and trained for! Well, it’s poetic,
The task of the speaker, or at least his
Listeners, you’ve got to synchronize
the incredible with the twilight,
With the moonlit, real October night,
The crisp cold and the sound of footsteps,
Going back to the car--where you parked it.
Ah, Raymond, he’s a dealer in rugs, a buyer
Of the sky, a doctor with a bottle of pills.
Believers are only those who manage to repeat
The terms of belief every ten minutes or
So, through any artificial means. Nothing
Is in conflict, we have learned to believe
Anything looming in the shapes of the
Present evening;
Everything is an entertainment, under the
Moon, an intoxication, like with details,
An injection, and a thinning of the blood,
And another reminder, when it’s said and
Done, of the absolute futility
Of a demonstration, now,
Any outward show . . . of the inward faith.
Faith in God, who rules unseen. Faith
In procedure, faith in the calm and
Sensible approach
Of the man with the microphone tonight,
Who might be--this is all so erratic,
The devil in close company!
In the ears you hear the crack of a bat,
Not a whip on the back of a Jew in a
Faraway century. Nothing is on trial now,
Nothing lost in an evening of watching.
The minor enactments of modern knowledge
Are all non-threatening, we know, just
The ganglia of some footnotes, some trivia
Very interesting, even pleasing, to see--
No one has to take any deeper interest
Here, or actually play baseball for a living.
A chair is all you need in later life,
And a car that stays where you parked it!
The moon doesn’t cry, when they pave the
Earth over. The moon is a watchdog, the
Moon knows true sorrow.
When the people are
Inside the auditorium with big windows, or
Inside the stadium, under the dome lights,
The moon reigns free in the parking lot.

The speech only lasts an hour in the ear,
Or less, and the game only lasts
In the imagination--
No one needs to have that game going in
The autumn year after year more than the
Scholar, who was a preacher in a former
Era, maybe twenty years ago in a small town,
And who now (oh, I thought about him) is
Riding in his car on the black highway
Back to Philadelphia listening to the
Post game show, and the interviews with
The new national heroes.
The moon has no
Face, the moon is erased of all lyricism
And emotion, the moon has been there
Well nigh four thousand years, or more.

This is the dawning of infinite appetite,
The dawning of clear-headed statement of
Fact upon fact, and the shimmering surface
Of total nonsense.
I am the only lunatic
Left, I know; looking for the combinational
Magic or the mood formerly caused by
Religious fervor. I’m putting too much
In, even now, I know--for you and I. You
And I, like witnesses of the disappearing
Terrain of the creation with only
Words that catch in the throat.

No one in particular is guilty of that
Which the satire, in a sharp-tongued style,
Will bring home--the indictment that says
All this is the behavior of people afloat
In the place, or in the hour, or in the
Century just liable to be missing
In the record of truth.
It is only a flash, a summary, a slip
Into total expressiveness that just passed
Into my mind, between two steps, barely
Halting, as I went back to my gray car,
And caught--and tried to hold--
The moon in the awareness.

Edward Williams
from "Storming the Academy"

Morning Star

The Persian rug fades far into the corners of dusk
To the edged of the inverted stariway,
And from its cellar the darkness crawls, as it
Crawls defining the table where I write.

The promises recovered in dawn,
A memory of fresh snow, bells on
My heels, the first steps, a chariot.

A jacket of roses lies across the naked chair.
My finger traces a thought along the border
Of a tapestry; a single figures awaits command,
In the lonely borders of descending heavens.

Some Etrusan trumpt calls--
The poor devil has never slept
For life, it seems, is a waking dream.

He parks in the car in the bare lot
Near the corner below the pencilled moon,
And stiffly, hearing the gravel talk,
Follows the walkway into the sun.

April and the Sacred River

The river that divides the city’s heart
Is lined with spectators--
Children in rags,
Women in bonnets,
And the catalogue of time goes by us
In its various and precise history.

Now it is April, not a moment in time
But time itself, immutable;
A burlesque face,
An immovable body
Gone to a source having once lived, now
From the wooden skiff having us singing,
Drowning like memory.

In the background stands the imperfect city
Once hoisted from humanity’s shoulders
By winter’s perfect, reticent light.
Known of no triangle whose apex is sky.

Now the boatswain has red eyes,
His dog heaves the river’s slumber.
Death assumes no veil but simplicity,
Waters colored by myriad eyes.
Sing, sway, they long to be forgotten.
Remember the life they long to sing.

The child breaks the frayed rope,
Escaping the forearm of a crowd,
Runs the angle to the muddy shore
And finds it sand, finds them all again
Letting the years sift through their hands.

The dream continues on the beach,
Where the wind is kneeling.
So comes the accolade . . .
The child runs with heavy legs,
His heart sinks with the bay,
Arriving only one life too late,
On the last stetch of land,
To shield his eyes,
At the sea’s navel.
To believe
In a ship consumed in waves of sight.

The dream has continued, the people resume.
Recognition, and time, like an encore, passes.

Spreading the map of seasons full size
My fingers like pins know internal journeys.
And it is true what the mind tells you,
You have been everywhere as a child.
We built a wooden ship in the backyard,
Layed it with straplings, stood on the keel.
And the rain erased it one afternoon.

The neighors stood still as harbor lights,
And the day moved around them, clumsily,
Until they went down to the river with its gowns.
And April carried even paper boats
To their source, an outstretched hand--
When water was a miracle, a child in rags
Saw suns in tiny mirrors of sand.

Time would never dissolve the faces
That line the shore, like it dissolves itself.
Water is immune to change. A child
Runs to see the year break his stride,
And April is a prayer again.

Pianoforte

His fingers dare not touch, so
Gentle is this night, so
Terrible would be soft light.
He dare not speak for fear of
Shattering sound like ice,
In the mercy of light.
Because he is not alone, he lives
To watch himself--
Opening the glass, peering into the
Depth of cities, souls, or their mirrors.

Sounds drop like icicles and disappear
Into the depths of infinite ponds.
His eye’s angle penetrates
The folds or the ripples of sounds
On curtains opened faraway,
Letting the night onto a balcony
Where her image fades, her
Steps resounding singily, rising
On the stairway like piano keys.

Lines to a Prophet

You have already heard; why do you stare
At the slammed garden gate?
At the chipped red rail, at the
Last wisp of sky?

You decided; head bowed, knuckles firm
On the ancient table,
In the assumed shroud, as she
Turned from the porcelain stove.

Winter knocks gently on the pane.
There was storm already in your head,
As you gathered miles in a glance,
Saw them running with sleigh dogs--
Turned down your collar on chance.

There is pity in nature. Why else would
Snow hold so fast, in diverse worlds?

But walk halfway round the room,
You have already turned your back.

Twilight and Prokofieff

An arch stroke; a slash across the human
Sky, or a thought preserved, like the end
Of day, and then sprung loose.
I might have glanced at you, ironing a shirt
In the broad day; but I am already given over
To night, loose.

An arch stroke, a master's stroke,
A glance sideways in the day, the
Clatter of a knife on my plate, a violin!
Only now do I hear how mad is the young
Lady, playing in the parlor, on the black keys.

A glance sideways across the evening sky
And half my face is gone to a thin reflection
On the dusty window.

This suppliant is wit herself
Come at last through the spaces
In the twilight.

A cat sleeps near the radiator.
Is this existence, or my death,
Laid away in some warehouse in the sky?
A mellow note, a cello, a picasso.
The strictly human.
Evening will wind toward
Its conclusion, and following like a child

I will go with it.

Scene from the Life of a Dedicated Mortal

The action in here is short, but so unheralded
You're liable to miss it anyway, like the blase
Listener to the true news reports of your friends;
When bigger fare, stories fat and familiar, hog
The attention and keep you tuned to all society,
One practically forgets about the human wiseguy
Resident in the soul, who is wandering here freely.
Someday you will be quiet, and admit the miracles
That forced life upon you. And when the audience
Wanting to hear about your life struggles gets
Some time . . . you'll make a preface, just like I
Do here. God took a deep breath,
Before amazing us.

I was marching, or lolligagging, on the sidewalk
Back from the corner grocery, with a plastic bag,
Coming under the streetlamps growing brighter down
The block, toward my house, pretty unsettled,
Thinking furiously, like life were a jigsaw puzzle . . .
I was the missing piece, getting back in sync, I
Had some supplies to make the evening complete.
Who knows what I was thinking about, it should
Have been simple enough, walking back down the street
From the store, you'd think I'd done this a thousand
Times, there was no issue in it. Hardly part of a
Story, then, I kept putting my feet in motion, and
When the bag grew heavy, I switched to the other hand.
Still, amphitheaters in the heavens, marked my
Progress on this night in history,
I knew . . . implicitly.

That's pure vanity, which is admissible, I'd say
Particularly in this neighborhood, where the houses
Tend to grow dark, a little after eight thirty, and
People, from all reports, are watching the television
And growing mighty inward and disrespectful . . .
Like the next day would provide ancient sunlight.
I was just walking down the sidewalk with a bag of
Groceries at night, hardly with an argument that I
Was even alive, a dedicated mortal,
Not trying anything.

Suddenly--well, not really suddenly--but looming
Upward, in my path, I caught the fact that there
Was this large grey obstacle, in the shape of a van,
Right in my path. Somebody had parked this van
In a driveway, and I thought, I've seen this before,
This is typical, this grey van blocking the sidewalk,
I guess I'm supposed to interrupt my thoughts and
The pleasant, sort of pleasant, free wheeling foot
Motion I've established, since the traffic light
And the store, and all episodes gone entirely by,
And have to swerve around this obstacle van, while
Not mentioning it ever, to anybody. Jesus, life is
Full of little adjustments! I was growing tired
And out of breath from talking to myself so much,
Like nobody but God heard
All my . . . articulations.

I was kind of floating in these preliminary
Observations, the small duty had me fascinated.
And then I thought, oh why do I conform so often
And with such automatic diligence, to every grey van
Presenting itself so suddenly? Hell, I could walk
Right through it, if I enacted the moment of belief;
If I really needed to, I could do any thing I pleased!
I was still a good ten paces from the blockading
Grey van--very grey was this van, right in my path-
And the idea occurred to me to just walk through it,
Bag of groceries and all, all my past life intact.
It was not even a matter of concentration, but it
Was simple belief, I had reality by the throat, if
Reality was this night street, or this the challenge.
That grey van is not an obstacle, I thought. Okay,
Right in this time, for the hell of it,
I walk through it.

As I got within a mere second of enacting this
Miracle (and hearing the transcendental applause),
Which I never doubted I could perform, though no one
Would see me do it, no one in the neighborhood of
Course, would see me walk through the van unscathed,
Or the van unscathed, actually nothing interrupted
Maybe . . . as I got to the very time of decision here,
Well, I swerved to the left and went around it, so
Clumsily I thought I might get injured. And I was
Protecting the bag of groceries from knocking into
The fender of this stubborn reality I had admitted
Without really wanting to, acting out the scenario
Of a man sort of silently dealing with things he
Runs into, anyway, or in spite of his eternal soul,
His previous dealings with angels and spirits and
Promises of retribution for any sufferings in this
Life, his connection to God, his position established
On high, before he got to
Seek out his mortality . . .

So with this kind of blind adherence, I swerved
In the available direction, off balance and no more
Thinking clearly, to get immediately as a present,
I mean a token, for my diligent behavior, I mean
In thus conforming to ordinary existence, like I
Never had a thought otherwise, I was forthwith, I
Mean without delay stepping broadside in a puddle--
Puddle like all puddles you get off the path of
Any nonchalant walk, like you weren't watching out!
And I was losing my grip on the grocery bag, too,
Stumbling back onto the sidewalk with a soaked foot,
On the far side now of the van, the van now in
History! Life, I thought, are
You there to amuse me?

I was clutching the bag, and desperate to just
Continue. I was very deep in thought, about my
Actions I guess, what actions I took or didn't, my
Thoughts about my actions, feeling still like a hero.
The trial of my near miraculous pass-through of the
Grey van consumed me the entire rest of the journey,
Several hundred yards, past many houses, to my house--
Which I always feel it's extraordinary to recognize,
Like I came back from ages, from aeons, to come inside.

I found the porchsteps, and the door like untried
By any mortal. I was looking to get home at last,
And well, I simply went inside. Ah, everything still
Existed as I remembered it. In fact I had brought
The groceries, and it was with fervent sentiment
I set the trophy down, cast my keys into the dish
By the telephone, and greeted my kids and my wife,
Suppressing for the moment all
Combat in that war outside!

I was thinking, well it's really most incredible, of
All things in heaven and earth, to be human and survive
For an hour, than anything that one can imagine. Ah,
How did I get here? What a saga of joy and confusion!
By avoiding all impulse for supernatural action, I
Say we survive, outflanking the gods, outmaneuvering
All generations which have gone from here since,
On an instinct which the gods could not manage,
Survivors in the most unusual of experiments. Yes,

This path down the sidewalk, so totally obscure,
Has led me here, to where I tell of true adventure
In the world. Signposts in the neighborhood, the
Streetlights so incidental in the universe at large,
All seem to proclaim the news now . . . no gods, but
Only dedicated mortals, walk in these nights where
Life is provided in the character of an opportunity.

Edward Williams

(7) The Morning Star

"The Red Dawn" Douglas Lazarus . . . Colored pencil

You are somewhere else in the city, lost,
Alive, and there is no description
In which you exist, busy and transcendent.
Nothing can cover this large setting,
No panoramic view from an uptown window,
Containing us both, our real acquaintance.
No one isolate--or narrate--our meeting,
Beyond the occasion of a perfect chance,
Talking in the rapid air on the street--
For when I speak, then you are here.

Already our knowledge is manifold and vast;
Only, laughingly, everything about myself
Is built on prophecy, doomed to suspense,
Desire experience in a circle of memory,
While you, and the rest of the people
(Not an infinity, but a simple multitude,
Hardly a populace, to fill the theater,
Just a personal network which I can gather
On a optimistic weekend, for a picnic
On the bluff overlooking the city, or a
Solstice, mid-afternoon, in the kitchen),
You, and they, are alive, busy, somewhere
Else in the city, real voices in the mind,
Thriving in remoteness. And it easy
To fail, and fail again, fail privately
In the night to establish anything . . .

I conjure the fatal scene, the blind pass--
With sealed lips, he hands you the book
Of night, the book of the false witness.
You sit, in the open room, at the table.
He parks his car in the bare lot,
At the corner below the penciled moon,
And swiftly, hearing the gravel talk,
Follows the walkway into the sun--the sun
That spills forth in his headlong path
Buildings and people . . .
The morning star, across from the sun,
Is lingering still in the absent sky.
He is going nowhere, but wandering around.

How long has he been wandering around?
Longer than it could possibly take to find
Anything in the imagination;
Deep in his coats, ponderous and abstract,
Among the happy idiots, who contradict him!
The world cannot be found, like this,
It must be saved, by fatal demonstration;
And he leaves a trail of judgements behind
Him, grounded, which leap into reality.

You are somewhere among these facts,
Assembled--it is wonderful to doubt the
Presence of things--it happens to someone,
At lunch, in the car, on the elevator,
And when life becomes a palpable dreams,
He barely recalls how he came here at all.

And you look, and you see absolute promise,
A silhouette to watch the morning star.

When he is called to turn and wonder
At the city drifting in the air.
Difficult words, beautiful to recall,
Famous thoughts
Thoughts which pass in the atmosphere.

The sunlight is totally given away,
Fainting in the sky on a summer day,
Absorbed by the pavement, pink and grey;
And the moonlight is aptly converted to use
In a thousand diverting while spectacles;
The whole city is under a reading lamp,
While dawn, outside, is drenching the fields.
These are visible lives, ideal people,
Who should be expertly portrayed--
Linked to one another only in scenes
By secondary lighting and choice fixtures,
While outside whole, customary crowds
Drift without design along the empty lanes.

"Pipes of Dawn" . . . Sidney Lazarus

--------------- THE END -----------------

Edward Williams

REALITY, a poem in 7 parts
posts begin on July 8th, 2007

(6) A Plural Heaven

He is closing the door, against the city.
Another nice barricade is up;
He advances toward the crowded living room.
Several guests, now, have left, and the
Others have relaxed--he is sliding
Into a forum, or a world of people;
Standing, or talking, he is in the open,
Or between rooms with a tray of drinks;
He is answering a specific complaint,
Then he finds, while speaking, whole
Worlds of space to continue thinking,
As a host to similar voices and pleas
In another scene or composition
When, toppled among the furniture and drapes,
He argues the privilege of being alone.
He is setting himself an impossible task--
Grabbing the back of an armchair,
In flight; replying, with customary
Tact. Whole crowds are gathering
Under storm clouds in the street.
He is leaning way back, and would venture
To guess what someone is thinking--

I think I will publish
This history of thought, its reiteration
Is infinite and amusing; I am only
Sitting by the charming, affluent light
Among the friendly party of souls
To discuss an individual death--
What it was, the floating universe,
Before my life,
What it could be, the abandoned life
A couple of days past my private death,
An absence echoing in the city and field.

Again, straightening his cuffs, he must
Apologize to the guests for having fun;
He is trifling with their lives . . .

Death, is a large and serious personality,
Inscrutable, wearing a mask of stone,
A bad joke among a group of friends,
An idea unfailing, always the same,
Severe, expressionless in all weather
Like an alabaster soldier in the park,
A giant figure planted against the sun.
Death is behind all tragedy, it is plain,
Topical, changeable in form, it is with
You in a step, like a giant, in the park;
Deep in the mind it dreams of a crude
And natural summons, it is staying around.
Death is a necessity for thought, it is
Nothing at all, and growing wild.

It is not that we, uniformly crippled,
Cannot sketch the course of this story,
Or attach a terrible significance, here,
To the wind rushing in the blind alley,
Or to the black roses, sheltered, there,
In transparent vases on the windowsill,
Or painted, with consummate skill, on
A canvas, framed, hung upon the wall--
Nor that anything lies beyond the grasp
Or such a society, such happy decadence;

But that everything, lavish, intended,
Is here already, in this locality--
All the mystery, our full attendance,
The entire future of speculation.
There are spectacles lying in waste,
A virtual city, with its fated monuments,
Structures blasted out of sunlight,
Antiquity in the colored rust, in the air,
Machines that carry materials here--
Things more fantastic than the complex spirit
(What is more doubtful than this rude stone?)
Reality in question everywhere--
His doubting thoughts, passing in bald
Mimicry on the assembled faces, his
Dancing hands, requiring real participation,
Whilst he is proposing a heaven on earth.

I was singing in the yard, I had
A whole imagined time to grasp, before
Me, a terrain, a solid mystery
Behind me, I had, flatly, no origin--
First, an ecstatic cause, then a lifetime
Of beauty and distraction
In which to encounter a sham mortality.
You are a baby in such matters, I remember
Life, it springs without a premise,
A great religion lies proven in the grass.
It is controversial to be in the world,
And youth, at first attained in years,
As the summit of a first chronology,
Is permanent, now, in the mind--

Memory of Childhood . . . Doug Lazarus

Memory is close, closer than life was
In that yard; I pause, and suddenly the storm
Is upon me, in a rush--hasn’t it always been
Like this, just looking around; like now,
When we are gathered here in a scene,
Entertained, in our mutual disbelief?
I am inspired to tell
You comedy of my long privacy,
The ridiculous deaths suffered alone,
In roadside woods, in underground cities,
How I stood up, confused, or laughing,
Walked into the old living room, renewed.

It is detail the nervous man is wanting,
Lest he dwell, fatally, in a world of ideas.
Shall I jump, struck, knock down the statuettes;
Or succumb most slowly to a disease?
Will this define, at last, that circle
Of family, dead, dying, and living, that
Famous crowd of spectacular friends--
No long encountered
On apartment house stairways (I see them
Walking, on future errands, easily past);
No temperance, finally, in their references
To this unfortunate early victim,
Already while strolling in the springtime
Graveyard, so many brave survivors
In a strange reality . . .

And shall I forgo, entirely, the figure
Of myself, calmly watching it?
Isn’t this myself, the
Soul of long observation, in this hour?
How, having watching so much, could I miss
The very scene so often considered--
One is tempted to say there isn’t anything
For which I am so well-equipped,
As a hero, than to die a specific death . . .

There is great safety in this awareness,
The fertile and absurd creature of life
Abounds in gentle reasoning.
He is constrained in eternal victory,
The author of innumerable scenes,
Shattered in the act of planting his hands
Upon a disappearing face. Are you dying?
He asks. Of a paradoxical wonder?
Half the people he has set to mourning,
To anticipate a slow and terrible dawning
Of an ancient wording upon the lips,

Revelation upon revelation, mystery growing
Worse--because death cannot be imagined,
It is is dull, implacable, it lacks occasion,
It does not exist. It is wonderless, a common
Ruffian, it is does not complete what is
Incomplete, like life!, whose causes are
Absolutely gone, erased forever, laying
Elsewhere--grandly. And nature has become
A secondary thing to this ecstatic strangeness--
A picture book compared with bright language.
I remember life--it is a plural heaven.

Dance of the Survivors . . . . . . Doug Lazarus

Why do I, as I say, know exactly what
I am talking about?
And why do you, who are in the room?
We had an idea of life, it was a plural heaven,
Because the question was not only mine.

Very few can die, and create a vacuum;
Few can escape, be the subject of important
Telegrams, cause a shuddering void
At a dinner party, making you think
They long to live a few days further,
Leaving things undone
That never will be done--
A trellis in the yard, a book upon the table,
Left to the wind and wandering children,
A point in a pleasurable thesis unpinned.

For most begin, long years before, asking
For help in a torture of the self,
A self uncreated without that consent,
And fade away through multiple arrangements,
Complicity, and betrayal, and are
Literally forgotten, wasted in the mind.

Rare is the man growing gladly weaker
In an armchair in the sun, or the warrior
Struck down on a foreign border, with
A dispatch behind him, the globe going
On past his thunderous fall on the forest
Floor . . . and in the city, I know,
They are lingering, in the hospitals.

Solitude is what is finally a lie,
Crippling the neighbors, the guests
At the banquet, those tamely and rationally
Talking of life. We have no speech
For the grim dialogue, but can only supply
A mockery of looks, outrage and denial,
For the desperate man of silent years
To take, indecorously, to the end,
Crashing or slipping,
The world without entirely rejected and
Defeated in his aging subjectivity.

And by then, the commodious thinking
Goes, who needs them--or anyone--anyway?
A storm will come up, from cursed heavens,
And carry me away. Who can say I cared?

How many have died like that! Many times?
(This is the beginning of our hilarity.)
How many rank suicides are among us?
You see them, ashamed, coming back in the light.
Escorting them to the door, you hear
Their ambiguous footfall upon the stair--
Who was that man? Ah, here he is again!

He is in the middle of a conversation,
Several people are expected to arrive;
He is bowed in thought, staring at the carpet,
Automatically charmed; he is rising to
A pitch of feverish attention; he keeps
Learning, again, the first thing learned
In a controversial presence. There is

Nowhere for the wind to fly, mystery
Among the roses, sheltered by the window;
You have that, don’t you, in your eyes?

Edward Williams

"Night Performers"

NIGHT PERFORMERS Sidney Lazarus (1955) Colored Pencil

(5) The Experience of the Street

You are caught, in a moment, crossing
The room or the street, wondering
About place, you are landing on your
Feet, the memory of life is sudden
Enchantment, when shafts of light fly
Back toward the open sky, drawn back
Through the rough geometry of the windows.
You have some idea of the sun, pulling up
To a stop in its running course, some idea
Of the night, flooding in from the shadows
Crossing your path-- This must be a
Hallmark in time, such memories of life,
Of light, flying down the open street,
Past dangerous alleys . . .

These ideas are mixed, irretrievably,
In burned spots on the oak paneling,
On the lampshade arched above the
Aged book, swirling, as you take a
Consummate glance at the world . . .

Should I begin, tamely and rationally
Again, to list for you the natural rumors
That plague and besiege our poor city--?
We are settling down for another evening
With everything once again at hand;
I am mindful of your simple inquiry.
I would introduce torrential affections,
Violent weather into our painted rooms,
Purple designs mottled on the lampshade,
Rough hands overturning the china . . .
And outside, too, a tremendous chaos,
Cuffed and collared shadows running at you.
Can I practice again this conscious amusement?

When you walk you see the ordering
Of the towers, the algebra of the lights--
You would suffer an exquisite pleasure
In such an open life;
Far too many topics or attractions
Commingling in the mind of an attentive
Listener--high comedy in the thought
Of the printed matter, problems, danger,
The population swarming upon the ground,
The difficulty of the traffic at dawn--
Mere coercions of will,
Resulting in so much literal junk,
Like overturned treasures in the river,
Clocks and statuettes on the mantle,
Poetry in the moment of things observed.

You have collected much arcane debris,
All the images alive in the clashing city.

My famous visit, later, to the newsstand
At the corner trapped by the weather,
Is all destined-- What destiny finds
Is the rudiments of an idyll, workers
Shouting to one another, newsprint
In bundles, thrown from passing trucks . . .

The dawn will touch the minor scaffolding--
The city is hardly there at all, when your
Footsteps alight on the grey and pink
Pavement. Then, walking, the night begins.
Who can question the greatness of the setting?
You can walk all night, laden with suitcases,
And never find an exit;
You rest at the corner, trapped by the weather.
Knowledge is sad--
Ruined men sit in the parks all night,
In the green shadows, by ineffectual lamps.

I am going to explain the purpose of reading,
Or the experience of the street.
It is to implant specific dangers--
Serious thoughts, which do not cohere;
It is an armament against an empty fear.

Eventually I am sent, in naive wanderings,
To the cheap food shop, or coffee stand
That never closes (that is eternally closed
To my view of my contemplation, while some
One of the owners is always sweeping
The aisles or corners), directly behind
The awesome printing factory, in the lost
Center of the city--
But fronting for the public walker
(Who is a common joke on the interior)
The pearled and grimy avenue
Rearing and fading
According to a thousand seasons that make
A calendar impossible in this region,
So that I can never enter, at my leisure,
But am caught, in sudden weather, below
The fading shopsign, in the fugitive breeze.

It is better-advisable--to find the side door,
Where the workers themselves
Enter and leave from the printing factory
Night and day; they go in and out,
They are putting away tremendous sandwiches,
And equal rounds and coffee and beer
Which are made here in limitless quantities,
Flowing from tubs. The deliveries are coming in
Quite directly to the kitchen, the kitchen
Help there is versed in a kind of swearing,
Which the customers are trading--trafficking
In polite talk. The exit light,
Beyond the dancing television and smoke
Settling over the pool tables, is blinking;
And everyone is here, no one is staying;
It is the middle of the night--

These are the other men,
Whom I am required to misunderstand, to
Whom it is mere vanity to speak.
They are non-existent, between us, you know,
Hardly a gesture of pity could dislodge
Them from their seats.
The lighting is bad here, the murals on
The walls are vague, like mythologies--
Representing an age of brutish leisure.

Never has firelight greased the flesh
Of men so rudely awake, stained with ink
Amid the childishly whirring machines,
Interested, solely, in meat, cook with
Iron tongs upon a beastly fire
Until it is rubber, like the rubber belts
From which they hand, over the machines
Until in a moment of great surprise
Distant whistles release them to another errand.
Quick exits are made,
And blue vans cruise the dawn.

And hardly have I returned to sleep,
When suddenly the dawn in happening.

To think of a language as severe
As the clanging hello, the doubled fist;
This drawing of nature is easy, and
False-- I had a mission to complete;
I went outside, and the city was unfinished.

This was a kind of nature, dreaming itself.
Nature never likes the sidling intellect,
It is busy blasting holes in the sand,
Sliding vaulting doors in mountains of rubble,
Burying the tiny communities.
The workers sit, exhausted, in the street.

These are the other men! What a
Fearsome lot, with what unwieldy toys.
It is hard to defeat the cowardice of
Our poetry, its simpering tones, its
Universal empathy. It’s granting to
Mere colossus of form, lost intensities.

Are you reading this? The city was built
At night, the city is being built, it is
Night when you walk with large steps
Like an architect through the
Rough geometry of the air,
Avoiding the black holes in the ground,
The ladders that hold aloft high towers
That disappear in a sharpened gaze
To implume the night with glittering dust.

It is better to buy, hurriedly from stalls,
Food, clothes, random furnishings,
Than die, subtle, in the electric light
Advertised the magazine swimming overhead.

Step, once again, aside to assert
A large window in a three story dwelling--
A figure at first too boldly outlined,
Come to dwell within the idle shadows;
It is these shadows you must accept--
The city is absolute farce of shadows.

Jump, at the sight of the streetlamp
And its narrow definitions,
hurriedly, to buy a pack of cigarettes
In the incredible world.

Edward Williams

(4) Open Window

"The Suns of Evening" (Lawrence Lazarus)

It is incredible to think of the sun
Rising in some local dominion,
Calling within its description an
Actual morning, someone walking
Through the eastern sector,
The people gathering at the pier,
The mounting light on the slow river--
The sun I would haul from the burning mind,
Where it dwells in a circle of memory,
Half-forgotten, seizing the horizon.

The room is open, casual windows
let onto the street, where no one can pass,
For the city is folded into the night--
The night made real by my waiting,
The dramatic visit to be paid the dawn,
The place, tipped, shining, correct
In the disconnected light. I cannot
Trace these power lines, this noise,
The slight chill upon the glass of water,
The soft rumbling of the furniture.

These are partial victories, absolute
Thoughts, producing action. I am quite awake
To isolated facts; I am standing here
Incomplete in the absolute night . . .
There is just this small galaxy, riding,
Shining, starting up from this bright
Necessity, the objects that are gleaming
In the white electric rays
Coldly touching everything,
The marble bodies and oval lampshades
In the yellow and green living room.

The man is standing there--who pauses,
As if to consider himself, thinking--
Who is all action, who is dressed
So formally in a harlequin apparel,
And provided with a vague history,
The checkered man, in the completed room,
By the table, the lamp and chair.
Regarding them, piously from the mantle
And the adjacent mirror, quite crowded
In the guarded interior . . .

The city cannot be described, again.
That I cannot do, now, without cause--
But only dwell here. There! he dwells
Behind the yellow windows, the opaque walls,
The show him off, so seemingly alone,
The windows open upon the infinite night.

Whose imagination tyrannizes the night?
While outside, in the city, which is denied,
A thousand eyes, unseen, staring in at him/
Who is so deftly looking out?

I have no other speech, no speech at all,
Just the scene itself brightly voiced,
No person, known, who can be placed,
Just the careful, complicated room,
Someone living . . . Who is living?

Who is he? He is no one. He is thinking.
Counting the realities before him.
The close setting, and its formal silence/
The chair ideally spaced, giving a long
Address to the spectacular darkness
The runaway sun has given him; he dwells
As on a planet, in a lost reality.

One needs only to walk, to the desk drawer
Of the instrument resting on the wall,
To assert a point in an accepted philosophy.
What content can be given, if given outright?
Of else could total comfort consist
Than this idea of happiness . . . ?
I will never be done preparing the setting,
Nor describing, every night, with precision
Every item’s doubted and exact history,
Prolonged by penetrating sight--
Effortlessly looking around at the room.

This is where the controversy lies,
Why there is a limit to the expression,
The obvious mean of things, held slightly--
With powerful thoughts
Within worlds of night,
Lent to the profound occasion
Of a stand of wax plants, a music stand,
The carved footrest, grey etchings on the wall;
The distance from the chair
In which he cannot sit without a purpose
To the tennis racket propped on the wall;
Paths on the carpet, which is green,
Defining small futures, apprehending
A lurid calm, like a sunset on the river.

There is where the controversy arises,
And the necessity of pity,
When he is, in his regalia, thinking
Earnestly, with the window at his back,
About moving within the tiny room,
Learning, crazy, hopelessly creative--
Cheering, wild, the rush of the wild
Ungrounded sun, thru dark skies,
Athwart the tremendous, unfinished city.

He becomes magnanimous toward the small
Concerns, the grey newspaper turned,
The bowl of shadows, the flowers raised
In paint, cold, in the stark ceramic;
And he turns--he is sacrificial--
Upon the attention of an inner public.
For he is no one. He is not alone.
There! The air is more conspiratorial,
The light in prepared . . . mere beginnings,
Stirrings, conferences of chairs,
Then nice balconies hanging in the
Open night air, in the quiet window.

"The Open Window" (Lawrence Lazarus)

Nothing, in fact, would prove excessive. He
Affects a dull pirouette, a half-spoken word
In the measured, faintly ecstatic gloom,
Among the multitude of props,
Performed, as if absurd, with stolen commands,
Whispers, a riotous vacillation
That is the commotion in the basement theater
Of a ceremony midway, (the dancers
Stunned, by a sudden lights, on their feet).

It is always this way, the night to
Reconcile, the day left unplanned
Beyond a dramatic appearance in the crowd
Of people streaming upon grey streets,
In a lavish dawn, in sudden weather,
With a ticket to the public hall,
In the balconies hung on a summer evening.

I take this central figure upon myself,
So not to worry the doubtful voices . . .

Where did he get these other scenes,
And how could he ever go anywhere,
When it is so difficult to draw a breath
In this cultivated recess, or to break
His enchantment with open question . . .
The grandiloquent pause of the man, alone,
Figured into the room,
Whose ambiguous attitude, whose horned words,
Draw up from the exercise of a style,
Forlorn from any thought, this excessive
Wish, which is just catching up,
To express the misgivings of the crowd
Assembled somewhere else
In a defiant plural heaven.

What is real must be accountable,
The whole city in the act of collapse.

He wants to assert, maintain, broadcast
A line of strict and gentle meaning,
Forceful and sad, half-moving with
His brilliant hand the papers, his plans.
He wants to say the thing not quite said,
In the damned texts of a difficult past,
Construct a body out of cursed gestures
(These are remembered, awkward deaths),
Something missed amidst all those
Hatcheted and wrought vignettes, black
Humors and ill-timed requests, the million
Dead references, and the several
Thousand leagues gone by, a
Quite large sum of his mental history
That swarmed in his great boar’s head
And now lies inert, when he begins to dwell
Upon some actual use or authorship;
Though the cause, in the delirium of truth,
Remain as real, as local, as sure
As a lamp, open on some scripture . . .

All his testimony needed, not quite exact,
Just stolid, historical, maybe sad,
A rundown graveyard (the mind is compared
To everything in its time);
Where it seems he can only stand
In his windbreaker and rubbers,
Very tall, much taller, too tall,
And strange to learn, even more sensitive
To certain realities, certain rheumatisms,
Wishing his invocations whirl and rail.

It is easy to progress this far
From the room
To which he always returns--

And why is he so alive to the fact?
He is going to say, lyricise, prevail--
There, in the vast, personal, unreal hall,
Here, in the decorated room,
Deep in the night, alive in the city,
Lingering here in the lighted arena--
With the sad, clear, credulous tone
Of a man speaking to whoever he can . . .
The whole effort, dear unknown friends,
The experience itself, such as is life

This thing I was thinking of, a line
As beautiful as--say, this thing
I was thinking of . . .

Standing here with the windows open,
Imperial, extending the motion,
A thought--it is incredible to think
Of the sun in some local dominion,

That the table, the chair, the lamp,
The distant mantle, the open window,
In the transient power of his mood,
Are so concrete, when fleeting, so real;
So misplaced, when claimed to such advantage.

Edward Williams

(3) City Limits

I know the city was made at night, I saw
It constructed, out of weightless beams
With tools grasped in the twisted white
Light from the scarred and sacred moon--
Awatch, hung, not far in the dark region,
To be replaced by a gaunt streetlamp,
Primitive and graceful,
Presiding in the lunar park
And repeated, like a symbol, up and
Down the broad and ruinous avenues.
I saw them reason . . . pacing the lots,
Draw with chalk across the frozen mats;
I saw the counterfeit in the silent cars.

The art is direct, it is total concealment.
To place in storage incorporeal things--
Ransacking the dead landscape,
Finding uses for everything--

To make an industry, a working city
Out of the fond and meaningful rubbish,
Left in the yard, discovered on the beach,
In a desperate dusk or lunatic spring,
Revealed by the loss of winter snows,
Contended for in the clearing winds;
Literal junk in a poverty of light--
The mud, trampled, the fences, down,
All the shapes of a lyrical confusion;
These meaningful things, these toys,
Old picnic tables and fishing poles

Upended, turned, extended, studied--
An exhortation, become a fabulous building
Full of men, the workers, themselves,
Engaged in minor chores.
I saw this activity, this chaos, the
Cause for the utterly human city;
I watched them fabricate instant ruins
With determination and magic arts.
And I saw the men, glowering and pale,
Number their tools and manuals,
Publish their symbols--to wait upon
The pleasures of a grim anonymity;
To walk without the sun on their backs,
Unwatched, alone, busy, lamenting;
To excise pain, take clarity from shadows,
To create the death of the moving sun.

The sun, which for humor, was painted
Omnivorous and rotund, worshiped again,
Rising in the dome of the opera house.

And I am so impressed by this event, I
Can merely keep walking, for my wisdom
Is reiterate, it is dazzlingly finite,
Proven and correct at every step. And
I saunter like a fool down the broad,
Barricaded avenue, immodest, intense,
Thinking about the daylight in the city.

There never was a beginning to this,
Just a crisis in the memory--
No land of discovery, only a field
Whose origins lay wasted, partial forms
Of understanding, esoteric skills,
A personal night
Deeper than thought, longer than history.

Just distraction, a fit, bolting from
The room or the pretended dwelling--
A backward or an alley to wander around in
Neglectfully, scouring the dim ground,
Picking up chairs and misplaced equipment.

And that is where this exile finds
Its fortunes, working under cover,
Sheltered in the night, raising the city
Around oneself, upon the margins
Of the arena--so deep in its center
The unresolved scene can occur
Or stand, imprisoned and preserved:

The yellow and green living room,
The many simple exhibits--
The table, a lamp, an empty chair
Regarded, piously, turning from the
Mantle and the adjacent mirror . . .

The whole city is just a visible map,
Something to make while
Planning the route back . . .
I saw how carefully they put in the posts,
Bound and plastered the walls,
Laid in courtyards and passageways--
So when the yellow windows showed
In towering folds of darkness, in lanes,
The many strangers, themselves, that roam,
Could look in, could gaze, see the
Detailed interior of the lost reality.

So it is merely an elaboration,
The nice history of a private conceit

When I stride, when I lapse,
When I hope, or meander, or saunter down
The streets of the false and physical city,
Among its jagged horizons, glass towers,
Its neutral shadows and inert forms,
The stalls that display the same old tools,
Axes and prongs, geometric utensils
Wielded in a dream--the long hallucination
Of a brave insomnia, last year or century--

The city proud in its power and misery;
The city that is a series of exit signs
Ladders and ramps and logical gardens,
Exploding machines, bombs in drawers,
Signatures in wax, directions for traffic,
Black fire escapes, stairways in the earth--

And the workers who prepared this dawn,
An imagined class of men, asleep and roaring.

Edward Williams

Illustration by Douglas Lazarus "City Limits"
Listen to Live Recording
at Stage Poetry Company link

"Soliloquy"

Color Pencil drawing by LAWRENCE LAZARUS

(2) The Great Errand

Outside, everything must be discovered,
The time from the tower clock. I think
I have a memory of some spectacular
Purchase, but it is spring in the shop
Windows, summer at the curbstone;
Ruined leaves fall upon the statues.

So I am walking--what always happens?
I mark a refuge in wide open doorways,
Because the streets are not amusing,
Wide, infinite, ruinous, the progress
Of the long avenues . . .

This is a very popular sport, spending
One’s presence briefly among the crowds;
It is a constant leaving, thinking even

The sun is thus harassed and chased
Or made to wait beyond the skyline,
As the factories pile up on the city
Beach, where the wind is kneeling,
Where the thieves make startling entry
Into the abandoned railroad cars,
Admidst the cargo and the fugitive birds--
We would not have thought the river
Contained such a world of floating debris,
Or could linger so
In the neighborhood of such heights;

But exotic flowers spring from the mud,
Airplanes wait behind the tall buildings,
The railroad cars are rusted, orange,
In the air and the light--a picture
Of exhaustion, to supply the local traveller
With visions rare enough.
I would journey toward those windows,
Windows piled against the horizon.

And I keep turning, jumping onto the sidewalk,
And strolling through wide open doorways;
I keep going outside, leaving by the alley
Whose stones broaden in the slow dusk,
Opening onto a courtyard, a stairway,
A department elevator, a sudden rooftop--
Or a quiet streetcorner where a globelamp
Hangs, like the moon, near my shoulder.

Then I encounter the broad afternoon,
The sourceless daylight, white,
Flooding the air, just adventuring a step
Toward the avenue--
It is present to my thought,
Or if I stop to confer with the reflected
View possible in the gleaming facade
Front the closed shop.

There is nowhere to proceed without
Serving the plan of this great errand.
One can experience infinite pain,
Danger, ora colossus of memory,
The crisis here finds only simplicity
In the regress of one’s casual footing
Along the neutral walk.

Simple entrances are best.
The building, when chosen, is wild,
Featureless, its material is stolen,
The rooms progress in a faint narrative;
There are distant murals, black swirls
In the linoleum at my feet, canvases out
Of reach, indecipherable mappings--
Hanging curtains conceal the deft hammers,
The continuous and idle working,
And I turn, going inward, only halted
At the brink of a far gallery.

The auditorium is trained upon the empty
Stage, filled with people
Sunken in velvet chairs.
And I have come in very late;
I am formal, strict in my expectations,
Attired in a suit of black and white--
Wrong, but exact; punctual, late--
I have the whole scene in view,
And the actual stage is very far away--
Whole buildings or city blocks it seems,
Because the city is just interior space.

I have nothing with me but the story
Of a long affiliation,
Only the proportions of the city,
The stage beyond the gallery of seats,
The aisles, the distance, the orange light
And painted dome, the sun I am letting
Fall, lag, or plunge from its local summit
Into this deep circuit, where it rises
Again, again already seen, in my trouble gaze--
Flooding the air with realizations,
Seizing the event
Removed to a remote and central room--
There!, transfixed in a beam of dusty
Light, near a table and chair and
Glass of water (a simple exhibit),
Isolated in the orange arena,
Hardly material, just standing there
Is a sad, aging man, arrested in the glare.

Why do our performances take on the
Character of some great need,
A long planned eloquence, some buried
Grief or wholly personal theme?
Why do we resist all forms of knowledge,
Wanting to maintain a stance
Or strict naivete? . . . rather than seize
From the raised hands of the ladies
In the balcony the iconographic program,
The directions to the lobby . . .
So eager to phrase the episode anew,
Its literary content, its actual meaning,
Its place in the serial drama of the evening.

The speaker is the only one who is not
Deluded. He is well-lit, but wandering
Alone, slightly turned away, addressing
The Table, the light, and the chair,
Resurrecting with a flying hand
His immediate setting, the painter floor,
And referring by pauses and gestures
To the audience that is not distinguished
From the the hordes of dust spinning toward him
In the beam of light from the far ceiling.
He reads in a clear, credulous tone
A black script from a gleaming paper.

Everything is a lesson in rhetoric,
Not a thing said, but a style unveiled,
A terminology becoming ironclad--

Sometimes the whole gesture will remain
When the thought is gone;
The wind is playing on the city beach
With a scrap of light tin;
And these studies these cruel equivalencies
That seem to victimize him.

Dark is the population before him--
The longer he speaks, the more truthful
He seems. he is making admissions;
He is not even saved
By the moment of his passing before
The dead silence audience, some audience
That to him is not quite a fulfillment,
But a tenuous throng, a sudden flock,
A large duplicate, is all, to the
Scene he staged long ago when alone.,
When he teeming, interminable pen
And a brave gaze past chaotic papers
Made the dark vacuity all of necessity.

Such is his residence on this stage;
So doubtful an driven--self-confessed.
He hardly has the time to study this,
Another great and pitiful image:
The audience, some audience!,
Luring and likened
When he catches their massive grumbling
To the thunder that jostles him working--
The burst of applause all mistaken
For a sharp breath, alone in his study;

The gallery filled, notified of his presence,
But his cause, so ancient, remaining blind;
Only a general beseeching, a needing,
A company or souls in ironic parlance,
Some draft of inexpressible emotion
Invoked and known
By the loud demands of his solitude.

I am distant, a spectator, aligned in
Remoteness-- I am tentative, hardly apprised
Of the description, seeking to locate
Reality, flourishing, in the secret city.

Edward Williams

REALITY (a poem in 7 parts)

Book Cover by Lawrence Lazarus

(I) The Death of Metaphor

The world will fail in your description;
You arrive late in the ruined house
To wonder at the immediate tasks, the
Mere beginings, stirrings of light and air,
The exact picture of your distraction,
Dictating a steady presence--
You will not yield, but what is given
Shall deaden to your advantage the
Speech that praises only the condition,
Partial justices made wholly bitter . . .

You will not abandon this deep sorrow,
Thought upon thought to oneself, proud
In its power and misery, rigorous,
Interested in solitude--plaintive,
Gazing below and above
The useless lawns and sprawling lights
For some chief expression, some phrase
That has, and yet conceals,
Priceless metaphors, tired appeals.
Words that contain antique meanings
At least good enough for private use,
When required--not now, but at the end,
In the scene advanced: declarative faith
As the heir and son of rank mystery.

And meanwhile, after such salvation is
Got-- What will you say to reality?

The high sun, it is left behind, like
Some discarded sign; your grandiloquent
Arm, lost in a fervid gesture . . .
Credible doubts, dusk, and suspicions
Thrawt the eye, blur the ground--
That mirror you found, it was carved,
It is pale, its depths are grey and white;
It plays, it jests, temporarily,
The mirror whose strict regulations
Sought more obscure lineaments,
Gross and vacuous, logical and odd.

It is incredible to think of the sun
Out of its natural firmament,
Waiting, below the horizon, at night,
Lost and forgotten, absurd, orange,
Tangible . . . and consigned
To a prison of choices and beautiful
Illusions, through a loss of real sight.
The sun! . . . that you would call
Like an aging and demented czar
To supervise the stark and weathered plain,
The opaque city walls, all the figures
Of woe, scenes of natural devastation;
Humanity, immolated by a great fire--
That originated in the glint of an eye,

The eye that might have caught the light
Falling softly on the wooden floor,

The mind that might have imagined the sun,
The hanging bulb, the private noon,
Any present arena, new or old, or strange
Or fond, where it remains, burning,
Close, volatile, unharmed, and named.

But it takes this much thought, this
Much strain, to learn the literal phrase--
Years in which, by absence, you force
A conjectural turning;
To abandon those universal idioms,
Thoughts of despair born of leisure,
All the subaltern woes,
For real pain that bears direct solution.
The sun at rest, the mind in command,
Exercising its high pity,
And the consequent death of metaphor.

Edward Williams

Dream Syllables

Last night we rode through candles
Quickly wth the snow, hands cupped.
And on the lips of flight, time’s dream
Syllables escaped, or were sown up.

Halfway up the mountain rope on
The airway, was a parley with friends--
Some lost, some merely gone away.
Under French palms, languishing,
The echoed moonlight held our sway.

By her china dish full of the sun
My aunt is scribbling flowers on a vase.
On a bridge, three generals from Bombay
Set up a red-checkered tablecloth,
Bandy in the unequal winds
Concepts like war, or the priceless poor,

Water below the surface of dreams.

If I was a mystic yesterday
All is forgotten to no intent,
Like a world of lost continents.

In this sleep, the aesthetic is complex
As the border design on medieval texts.
And worlds are created and destroyed.
Three brush strokes make a museum door.

Sunlight prys open the lid of sleep,
And we are surprised, or do not awake.
The voices of departed souls, the
Dead more certain than the living.

Time’s dream syllables take shape.
A face falls through all the skies
Headlong to the newborn grass.

Edward Williams