GERALD STERN
I
I
This house shall be called a house of prayer for all people
and it shall face west on the dumb side of the street
across from the Cosmos Diner and there will be
out-of-date notices posted with rusted thumb tacks
inside makeshift windows made of plywood
to keep the light out and also to keep the eyes
from too much watching and too much gathering,
and also to keep the glass what there is of glass
from too much crumbling, and there shall be two dogs
and too much sniffing and they shall run to the back
and back to the front and one of them will be water
and one of them land and it is their teeth and nails
and it is their chests and it is their bloodshot eyes
that make you jump, but as for the dogs in I.
who also was here on Second Avenue watching,
whenever he speaks of dogs they are as shepherds
or they are shepherds and they are almost blind—
and dumb—imagine a shepherd that hardly can bark,
and loves to sleep—drowse he calls it—and they are
the worst of shepherds—and eat meat—
II
The building
is flat at the front and side, there are no seraphim
carved in or plastered on, there are no wise men
as frieze, there are no wise words added, except
the one thing I. in a moment of love in the midst
of his anger whispered, or he just thought it, he thought it
when he was eating bread and salted fish, or
he was rinsing the dirt from his feet, his ankles,
between his toes, he thought it while bending down
and he was dizzy from the bending or he was
overwhelmed by the thought and blood rushed through
the capillaries inside his eyes and he was
blind for a second for you go blind when vision
turns inward, or it was shock, though it was insight,
albeit nothing happened to cause it except the
fish maybe or the rag in his hand, so
thin the threads were visible, the purple of
kings, the red of priests, the dirty white
of sheep, he always thought of sheep,
III
and he was
full of joy for a minute, he could go
from sad to happy in only one fell swoop,
in one swell foop, or less, or versa visa
and it was the sun, or the wind, or it was a chemical
inside his heart or one of his brains or it was
seeing a river, in this case East, though seeing the
ocean, oh my, you know what death is? you know
what walking barefoot in the cold wet sand is,
you know what walking into the water is, now
think of salt, now think of riding a wave
and falling down at the end and holding your arms
in front of your head or scraping your elbows, and seeing
the plaster hotels, the minarets and palm trees
upside down, or sideways, finally turning them
right side up, the flags where they go, the flapping oh
as it should be, now think of two pelicans
thirty feet over your head, his head, now see
how graceful they are, and huge and strong and swift,
and you will never again say “pelican,
his beak holds more than his belly can” and I. said
“swift,” he never said “swift” before—
IV
The building
also has a flag—it has a flagpole,
and could have had a flag, it could have been
Americano, could it have been Cubisto?
or Cubanisto? could it have been Norweego?
why was there just one flag when after all
it was a house for every nation it was
a house of prayer for every people—or all, it
measured 90 feet by 30 feet, a
perfect rectangle although it was small,
(we should say is) a better size for a house
than for a house of prayer.
V
He thinks he likes
the flat white stones the best, it stands out from
its neighbors, soft red bricks and fire escapes
and nothing for the imagination, he stands
on the sidewalk outside, in front of the East End Temple—
that is what it’s called but there’s no inside,
it’s boarded up, he reads the notices, he
reads the work permit, Department of Buildings
expires 6–29–04, approved
12–31–03, issued 1–
08–04, work permit no. 1
03677 610,
remove the area of damaged brick
on north wall and replace, provide structural
support, install steel posts and channels, attach
steel plates and ties; but now he thinks the work
will never be done, the building next door is for sale,
the high priest lived there, now the corner is doomed,
a derrick is moving up 23rd—
VI
He walks
across the street to the Cosmos Diner, he puts
a third a packet of Splenda in his coffee
and leans on the counter to eat his arm, he starts
just below the shoulder, then goes to the wrist,
then back again, and it is the blood they mind,
though he is sucking it up or draining it
into some cups, those diner cups, an off-white
with a strip of blue a quarter inch from
the rim, it seems to hold much less than its thickness
and weight would suggest and there is a saucer to match
though there is no stripe of blue in the saucer, he knows
you don’t drink blood, oh God, you don’t drink blood,
you drain the flesh, you salt the flesh, you pound it
on marble till it’s dry, you wrap it up in a
cotton dish towel, then you burn it or boil it,
and that’s for Mom, remember, Mom? I. cooked it
through and through, he cooked the potatoes, he peeled
and boiled the carrots and then parboiled the carrots
and then par, par—
VII
And in the Cosmos, at the
counter, in front of the salt and pepper and sitting
on one of those heavenly wobbly stools the color
it turns out of blood, it matches the ripped open veins,
he whipped up his rage and yelled, he pounded his fist
and shook the shakers, he spilled his coffee, he spilled
a cupful of blood, he pulled a handful of patterned
paper napkins out of the streamlined holder
to sop up the liquids and in the midst since he
was thoughtful as well as berserk, he watched the brown
which is the color of coffee with milk spread forth
as water on sand spreads forth, he was awakened
and walked, so to speak, at the edge so his toes wouldn’t turn
too cold too soon, or walked on his hands, he once
could do that, and at a certain point in
space as well as time, the brown on the white just
stopped forever, then he took his sword,
which was a fork as light as tin and cut
two heads off—shaker heads—and he was sapient
enough to know that he was not only I.
Cervantes but C. as well, at least a little, C. from
Spain, that maimed and stricken Lanzman who
saw everything at once—I’d call it a curse—
and tilted at shakers, and so on, then he charged
at enemies and he was alone in the field
and probably had a talking horse or an unarmed
jeep with a canvas top, and fuck the trees,
he wouldn’t stand behind a tree, and fuck the
holes, he wouldn’t dig one if his life
depended on it, and surely it did,
VIII
and what he
said to the waitress is “I have kept still too long,
now I will scream like a woman; I will squat
as they used to, I will lock my legs in
one of their harnesses, I will break their
loving needles, I will labor, I will piss on
their centimeters, I will sweat and gasp,”
IX
and
he holds the shakers as if he were squeezing the red
and black wires attached to the car’s battery
and if there were something wooden, he’d put it between
his teeth and then he could scream to himself, then let them
cut his leg off, let them cut a tit off,
let them bend, as they do, above his mouth
and share their literary lives with him
or, worse yet, tell him jokes, “have you heard the one
about Auschwitz, there was a barbed wire fence
and there was a German colonel with an eye patch
and riding crop,” the while they’re pouring hot gold
into his empty teeth, the while he answers
with his mouth open and on his back, making a
sound like a seal in distress or a walrus hungry
for halibut and flapping his fins and singing,
for he was a walrus most of all and at the
cash register he made a walrus sound
which sounded most of all like someone coming,
maybe coming unexpectantly the way
it grabs you, nor can you say “oops,” nor can you
apologize, oh never that, oh never,
never apologize, not for that, apologize
for lies, apologize to the Filipinos,
apologize to the Africans, to the Jews,
to the Cherokee, the Japanese, the Mexicans—
“We’re sorry, we thought you were dogs.”
X
Imagine now
what he has to do, if he walks, say, one block east
or one block south, what does it matter? that is,
what he has to say, not do, the most he can do
is take his clothes off like his great-granddaddy,
did, or sit down featherless and drink
a chai a la mode, except in America
there is no freedom to sit or walk naked
in public and anyhow the chill wind bloweth
and what about paunches and hanging breasts and flat
unfattened buttocks, and what about Everyday Zen
and Mu and Early Capitalism and Breath and
Eye to Eye and Erich Fromm and Wittgenstein—
and Comedy and Tragedy—was I. a
comedian?
XI
Emily Dickinson Wait awhile, E., are her
poems comic? white and purple, E.?
Take one word in one poem—take “hazel”
Franklin in no. 739, “hazel” witnesses,
nor “blue” would have done, nor “brown” and it is shocking
when it comes, it is an affront, a heavenly
affront, to speak of eyes like that, or take
no. 903 the lark, and cut him open to find his song,
that’s the literal option, sorting through the
guts, or call it the stubborn, a clown say
cutting open a crow and looking up at
the bleachers and scratching his head with a crimson knife,
rubber, of course, and asking for help, maybe finally
Moses playing a tune on his baby fiddle, then M.
God, Abraham talking to G., or A. to G., a worm
and a robin, talking in Worm, of course, “oh, robin,
how could I look at your beak and live?” how you do
shake the ground with wonder, but I. is furious
at his own thoughts for he is not that which eats him
and G. is not that which eats the eater, nor will he
degrade himself that way.
XII
And what is language
anyhow, if Worm, or Polish, or Upper
Chinese, or Lower Nebraska, and if A. talks
to G. it is that only he is enflamed and
is made a lower equal and lifted up,
so to speak into the upper registers
and not a worm, for God’s sake, not a worm.
XIII
(A.) And if he is delusional it is that
he knows not what it is he talks to, he talks to
wind, to bushes maybe, to water when there is
water to talk to, though he mostly talks to
Sky and he calls it Lord, and it is dust and
ashes that plead for he is moved by Sky,
though M. talked to thick darkness, to a cloud
Cecil B. DeMille of sorts, with trumpets to match for Cecil B.
was not so bad after all when you consider.
XIV
Though what redeemed it were the words, the words,
King James whether James or not-James—they consoled the mountains
they relieved the baby Christians though they
hardly understood why, they didn’t know
that much about words, they knew about pictures, they knew
about M. and his itchy beard and G. the trombone,
they loved the golden trombone, all seven positions
sliding and sliding—but there are two voices even if
one is nervous with apologies and
somehow voices are by their nature equal
at least I. thought that as he practiced voices
looking in the diamond mirrors and studying
the pies and cakes, and ate his cold broccoli,
preparatory to his short walk to
Madison Square and his meditation
Exodus on M. and G. in 19 and 20 and so on,
and how it was a voice, and voices, two voices,
both together and one at a time, and so on,
for pictures spoil and one of the voices even
Ex. said that and I.’s own favorite was 33,
Ex. only the back displayed, and 34,
a veil over his face, and I. himself
was a voice though he was sometimes occupied
and he was the other voice, for poetry
is like that.
XV
And while he ate a bird he moved
one dish to the left, one spoon to the right, for he was
also compulsive and counted steps for starters
and with his mind and its fingers he moved the shakers to
each side of the dish for they were now cherubim
and underneath the chicken was the mercy-seat
King James which James in its wisdom calls the Ark’s cover
and it was made of gold which I.’s dish wasn’t
and there was a length and a width described, for G.
he also was compulsive as well as pure.
XVI
And I. had a mother who washed her hands three times
before she did the dishes and used in her wisdom,
only Ivory soap though she did kosher
when her mother lived with her but it was
(G.) all about a home for the lonely one
he called a refuge that they carried from
place to place by the staves which were inside
the golden rings and they couldn’t be removed
and so on, and as for the shakers they both had wings
and looked at each other’s faces and even more
compulsive were the tables and candlesticks
on which they put the bread.
XVII
And I. re-read
Ex. 26 through 31 although when he left
the Cosmos—just as they were molding the calf—
he felt ashamed for he had ridiculed history,
although he had two hearts, Red Emma, for example,
one of them, Voltaire, par exemple, the other,
and when he faced the music walking east
at 5 a.m., wasn’t it Kipling? wasn’t Brooklyn
“China ’cross the bay” ? weren’t the colors
the same colors, didn’t he love the rose
most of all? and didn’t he bow from the waist
and hit himself with the knuckle of his thumb
against his forehead just ten minutes before
and bend his knees and kind of spring and soar
above the others with that newfound tenor
voice of his?
XVIII
He sprang forth from the Cosmos,
he didn’t just leave, he sprang forth most of the time
but this time he was Mozart and Oswald Spengler,
and Samuel Coleridge, for he had something over the
First, Second, and Third I.s whose Spenglers and
Mozarts were already buried, or digested,
or they were absorbed and they were accommodated,
the way it happens, and he was springing forth
unto the river and one thing was on his mind,
or he could have divided it in two although
to I. it seemed like one continual thing
and he couldn’t wait till he got back to his books
and only he wished he had his books while he stood
above the water, though he knew other waters
and he was never without a river.
XIX
And spring
is what he did as he walked down 23rd
and it was spring two thousand seven and G.
already forgave him now for each of his ears
were open for every roar but also his eyes
as he passed first the foundry then the derrick
and had the moment where he saw the long robe
and the roomful of wings, one of which touched his lips
as a moth does with a coal unbearable
reminiscent of the other hot touches
and the dreams he had of coal when he shook the lever
and dropped the red-hot ashes into the bucket
he wrote about a half century ago
and how his mouth was ruined then giving him
his sight at last he called his birth for he traveled
all over again through the passage with steel walls
surrounding him.
XX
And there are many ways to
get down to the water, either by steps
or knee-deep through the mud or over the
rocks, my love, and what they say is the water
broke but it was not the water, it was
a kind of skin—though something broke and the fluid
poured down—should he delight you with his stories,
child after child, RR tracks, windows, bags,
sandwiches, taxicabs, snow, and water supreme
the subject, where cherses are made, and this is the street,
the corner supreme, and he has got to deflate,
(ah world deflated), and he has got to make
one of his cherses, look at him postulating,
look at him posturing.
XXI
He hates to think
of poesis negativa, he hates the Possum
more than he does the Pound, he longs for a thing
he only has a thought for, he regrets now
more than ever the language he used for that thought,
the stubbornness, and lack of knowledge, how he
struggled, how he just couldn’t focus, how
the words and the feelings took such a long time to come
and that is why in his eighties he does as he does
and it is blood now he thinks about for blood
is just underneath the skin and just prick it
with one of his needles and look at the meter and what
stands for meanness and what for stupidity
for which he closes his eyes to wait for the number, for
he has squeezed the skin already and watched the
drop of blood appear.
XXII
And as he walks
along the river, half a mile from the Cosmos
or 15,000 steps if he counts the left one
and does the every other or the one in
three sometimes he does on his other river,
and as the sun sets and the foghorns blare
he watches the bodies swimming back to Brooklyn
for he is near the V. A. Medical Center
near the New York Skyport where the cormorants
dive for your amusement and to fill
their empty bellies with the oil-drenched fish
where, if your eyesight is good, across the river
against a wall and certainly in Greenpoint
you can see the large sign “Huxley Envelopes,”
which gives you so much peace, nor are there giant
frogs nor are there glutinous nor muscular
sucking eels nor for the moment, even
suckholes nor, for the moment are there motors
threshing the water, only swimmers and waders,
and he could swear they had on wool bathing suits
and men and even boys had tops and women had
skirts of a sort and most of the costumes were black
with a stripe or a little star both here and there
and some walked into the river for they never
learned to swim and some held heavy suitcases
over their heads as long as they were able to,
and they broke into song, both Jimmy Durante
and Fats Waller and everyone imitated
radio voices and I.’s dog’s heart was broken
for they were mayflies and they were fluttering seedpods
though who was a widow and who was an orphan and so on
it was hard to tell in the bathing suits,
though you could say that even wearing swimwear
was a privilege for there is a style in swimming
just as there is in dying.
XXIII
And at the gas station
where you’d expect a hundred Uzis were ten
or twenty sharpshooters and they had air guns
and shot the 22s for they believed in
giving everyone a chance and you could
hear the pumps clicking as they reloaded
and most of them were fat for it was too much
meat and cheese ruined them and I. remembered
♪ that twelve full ounces was a lot when he was
in his teens though nothing compared to the giant
sweet bottles they drank
XXIV
And it was in that Greenpoint
one or two landed who called themselves by the weird name
of remnant for they were at most just rugs that you could
flatten and pile them up on a table and sell them
cheapo, though the ones who arrived preferred
by and large “you people” as in the phrase
“you people, for sale, cheapo” and some felt they
were on the road back, since it was Brooklyn and some
felt they were going forward for east was east
one way or another though maybe they were
getting it backwards, given the phrase “go west,
you people,” sunrise, sunset, you people had
it all, for quickly go the years, and I.,
he knew the words, and he could sing and it could
be in Poland, and there’s an oil spill underground
and you should hear the Mobil/Exxon people
deny, deny; and I loved most the moss that
covered the rocks and the waves coming in and the rats.
XXV
And there he was, he parked his car beside
Huxley Envelopes and he could see the
Williamsburg Bridge from where he stood, and the squad
of shooters, most of them had glasses, and they couldn’t
see the bridge from the west-side side especially
standing in front of the row of pumps and in back of
the low iron fence and I.’s bad memory tells him
the gas was three ninety six a gallon for regular
and it was the end of May, two thousand and seven
though he was prophesying when it came to the squad,
and one had a T-shirt that said on it Nebuchadnezzar
and one said Stalin and one said Shitty Cheney
and it was hot for the end of May, the temperature
was over ninety, maybe close to a hundred,
especially in Poland by the river where
there were only empty factories, weeds,
barbed wire fences, and dead-end streets and one
had a pink that was much too tight and the suitcase
was maybe a baby for her arms were waving
or maybe a watermelon and the remnants
could float all by themselves and that’s how they reached
Brooklyn without the aid of branches.
XXVI
Though no one
can make you cry anymore unless like I.
you have the heart of a dog for dogs still cry
and lick your mouth and eyes and those in the costumes
who turned into rags and remnants their hearts were still open
nor had the hardness entered for they were poor—
although that wasn’t the word—I got it from Stevens,
of all people, you get a free creamsicle
if you know the poem, though he meant more than money
or other than money, imagine Stevens like Amos,
imagine him like Jesus, the opposite,
what is it? What is a rich man, stubborn, blind?
callous, corrupt, cruel, brutal, haughty?
Or arrogant, or just indifferent? Or
most of all, entitled, as in the phrase,
Xerxes “X. feels entitled.” But is it money? Sometimes
it’s money, sometimes it’s partly.
XXVII
I.
he should talk, he’s rolling in dough, and feels
compromised—and abandoned—he should change
places with the one in the dirty red T-shirt,
the one who asked him for four dollars to buy
a Metro card, then he could live with the fleas
and smell the river forever—maybe it’s hardness,
hardness is the word—that’s better, he thinks
than just “indifference” but he still likes “entitled,”
as W. is entitled, he sneers when he talks,
and he can’t bear opposition or disagreement
and scolds with a quivering voice; as there are skunks
in chairs who dip their tails in ink or their assholes
and spread their stink—though no one can make you cry
again for you are dry and what is the use of
going through that again; but I. can’t help
interfering for that is what he does, he
intervenes, he is insulting, he lost
jobs, he was shunned, he embarrassed his
wives, he was emotional, wasn’t G.
himself emotional? Didn’t M. make him cry?
XXVIII
I. studied the afternoon sky, for 6 o’clock,
June seventh, two-0-0-7, the color
was vaguely lavender, I.’s favorite, and Greenpoint,
because of the light, was all but illuminated
and he looked up, as if for instruction, but there
wasn’t even one cloud to distract him nor were there
pigs lying down with porcupines nor had
Grumman and Lockheed started making kiddie-kars
under the aegis of the Free Methodists or
in Cheltenham north of Broad Street the Reconstructionists.
XXIX
And as for dawn, for he got up at four
o’clock the next morning there wasn’t one color
to speak of although the sun made a kind of highway
and you would say it went southeast although
that’s only describing the course of the river which though
it was East it wasn’t exactly east
and it was a brilliant highway, you’d have to say sparkling
and be forgiven, and it was delineated,
at least from where I stood, and there were watery
unlit shoulders, miles of shoulder, and I.
loved burning like that, it was the moment, he wanted to
shout something, when he got back he’d sit
with both his bibles but first he’d stop at the Cosmos
for eggs are eggs and if the sky was bland and
cloudless, it also was creamy and he would say
the highway that morning was a beam of light
and if it wasn’t “sparkling” at least it was glinting
and he couldn’t get over the freshness, in spite of the paper
and bottles and piled-up garbage and what had to be
hot subways and stinking buses and noise too
much to bear, then it started again, you’d call it
“pellucid distinctness of objects” and it has to
do with wind and water and light though I. was
tempted to call it by its other names.
XXX
And you have
seen a lot, but I. was almost exhausted,
sitting in state over his uncooked bacon
and shook the waiter up for he was from Naxos
and understood guts, but he was more used to fish
and it was walls I. talked about for he was
already ruined by walls and he said walls
destroy you and asked the waiter to think of walls
in his own life and it was Mexico too and
Palestine, for he didn’t mind the literal
and even he loved them too, and he himself
built one once without cement and spent
months on the puzzle and stood thirty feet away
with his right hand over his eyes, more like the hat’s
green peak than anything else and planned the table
next to the stone and thought of the path to the kitchen
and how the herbs would be at eye level
though sometimes it was abstruse and sometimes even
Cosmos Diner too confusing for both of them at the booth
third from the door looking out Twenty-third.
XXXI
But he was angry—that wasn’t even the question
and there were words enough; and let’s agree,
I. barked in one of his New York City voices,
that you are alone when you take off your clothes
and slip into the water, and it’s too late to
learn another language, and what they should have
done is breathe quietly in the small space
below the shoulder to the right of the neck,
and maybe the Hummer can lie down with the Hoover
and birds of a feather, and let’s just see who gets
to live longer, and so much for straw.
XXXII
And there were
motor boats in the offing and wind-up keys
in all the metal rabbits and real flowers
James Joyce in all their paws and naked and barefoot she came
into the living room, and I. remembered
the dead-man’s float, the body goes this way and that
and you’d be surprised how long you can hold your breath,
and there will be chickens cooking in every trash can
and you should hear the toothless sing and given
how sycamores get so fat you shouldn’t be surprised
at wood coming back, the demented eyes staring
at you.
XXXIII
And he predicts the sale of body parts
behind the barbed wire fences, and there’s one thing
he’s sure of, if there’s money enough and the barbs
are rusty enough the ones outside will live
till fifty maybe and the ones on top of the
golf little knolls and fiber holes till maybe
a hundred and twenty, that’s the toast in the red-brick
glass-bound dining room the end table
by the unused fireplace, a bottle of schnapps
and three or four of them left for they are greedy,
and that was the toast they made before swimming over,
and there will be a difference between the chickens,
not to mention the corn and the creamed spinach,
not to mention the cushions they use and how
they look at one another and what they flee from.
XIV
And one thing more, there was some room for affection
and I. brought a flower with him, mostly he hid it
but on the bus he held it in front of him
as if it were a cup of wine or a candle
and he was going to proffer it—oh Lord—
eleven years ago—and when he walked
down the two great steps onto the curb he
raised it up, it was his own pitiful
candelabrum—one poor wick—and more for
balance than anything else and he was anxious
to put it in water so it could bloom again
and all for an older poet who was herself
younger than him, though she is dead now and I.
never talks to the dead for they have nothing to say
about their world but only yours, such as
does the apothecary still have ice cream,
or is it the Crescent that goes to New Orleans,
or how much do you weigh now—never never
what it is like or if there is consciousness
or where the others are—and she has written
one book I. loved and she adored the flower,
it was before she died; he used to give quarters
on this street, one day he chased someone for
two or three blocks to give him more money, it was
his dog, a black Labrador, who wore the
sign of suffering more than his master, I. felt
they were all helpless together though his quarters entitled him
and now he hates the quarters nor can he be free
for even a minute, you might say he’s on duty,
and he spends half his days studying ineptitude
and lying—you call it false witnessing?
You call it a crooked mouth part? You go to college
to study advertising? You lie in stink
for half a dollar? You fuck the language? You rape
nouns, verbs, adjectives? You like raping
adverbs? You like eating rye bread
at city dumps? You like creamsicles?
XXXV
I. has eaten at the Cosmos veal
and chicken two hundred ways and he has studied
out-of-date notices posted with rusted thumb tacks
inside makeshift windows made of plywood
to keep the light out and also to keep the eyes
from too much watching and too much gathering,
and also to keep the glass what there is of glass
from too much crumbling, and I. can smell a rat
for he has lived with dirty nests in his cellar
and he sings love songs now among the spiders
for he hasn’t lasted for eighty-two years for nothing.
When I came back to visit the East End Temple after an absence of six months or so I saw what I had predicted (prophesied)—the building was gone, the house next door was torn down and the cranes and hard hats were busy at work—a 16-story apartment building—said my favorite waitress at the Cosmos, but it was too obvious, even too banal for too much attention, let alone sadness. I am no prophet, but I suppose the wise and bearded ones also dealt in such banality. I was chagrined, bored, angry and I had it with both the lords and their critics. The building will be ugly, the ceiling will be low, the walls will be thin and it will start wearing out even as they nail on the sheetrock and make holes for their wires. Welcome, shitheads! Be sure to try the Greek specials across the street before they start serving Belize coffee at three dollars a swig—and good swimming in the East River. 