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Edward Weismiller
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TALES OUT OF SCHOOL
Jeremy could not fly.
Stars hung in the air
At night ice-bright
And far up there.
Robert thought up a place
Where no one hurts or spoils;
Wooded. A quiet face.
The blue was hills.
A shining hunting knife
For Christmas: the edge would last.
And no scream could be heard
Earth spun so fast.
But slowly others starve.
Nobody knows why,
Or how it feels, to starve.
Not close by.
I sit and write my book.
Love with her antic train
Spellbound and silent crowd
The window-pane.
I fly to see a friend.
Earth's colors fade from air
Somewhere below the clouds.
Down there. Down there.
THE FLOWERS
Look how ugly you've got, the flowers say to me
Every spring. And I, well, I
Temporize, what else.
But it's them, isn't it?
Everything all at once, and then nothing—
Self-crumpling, self-discarding paper; sticks.
It's them, not me. Oh, miracles
Upon miracles, you think you'll never lose
Those fragile shapings of light—God's plenty.
Then gone. And it's up to you:
Especially in the dark, it's up to you.
Finally
It's been too long, you can't remember,
And among the words that moved in when the flowers went
You do things that—.
Not once,
Not one year, have I been sure that they really would
Come back, or—lately—even that I'd ever seen them.
Then one day, or week,
The words turn water, soft earth, in a rush
Of green the flowers
Are all around, reds, yellows, pinks, lavenders, light blues—.
I never left.
OK, I say, you see me.
A BEACHED WHALE
"Hospital officials say they go to great lengths to make sure a
donor is dead. Before a heart is taken for a transplant, the donor must have had no brain
waves for at least 24 hours, no reflexes, no breathing, no muscular activity and be
certified dead by a team of doctors not connected with the operation.
"The heart is kept alive with a respirator, which forces air into
the lungs and keeps blood flowing through the dead body." [From an article in the
Washington Post of August 4, 1968.]
This is a different dark.
The ocean is on a plate.
I want to dance,
Said the live heart in the dead body.
I throw blood
Like a rainbird.
What for?
How long?
Later I might dream.
Mountains the color of knives. Lichen.
When can I dance?
Said the live heart in the dead body.
I want to hear
Something else.
Love is slow to start,
Like a clock.
Ask me what I know.
I have too much room.
When can I dance?
Said the live heart in the dead body.
ONEGIN
She married, her heart
so nearly blank
you would have thought you could
see yourself there as
in a mirror, read there
the one sentence
you need not
spell out; that is
to us illegible.
You were not impatient
enough. How many years
would it take,
and then how many
to circle the earth
blindfold, your faith
in emptiness, until
the Prince of Nowhere should
summon you to walk
one evening in the ballroom
of a palace swaying with
costumed ghosts, rented
from an expensive past?
Your friend, the angry
poet, is not here
to learn, as you are; but language
is gone, a sailing
of gowns across endless stages, a swirling
as of snowflakes, and the cold
moon stares. Why did you do it?
The question is
of no importance, but what did you
think it meant, when you
fired blanks, when you
fired into the snow?
Delay, delay. But
no matter. All are dead now.
The Prince writes no more letters.
She is yours.
EDWARD WEISMILLER'S first
book of poetry, The Deer Come Down, was published in the Yale
Series of Younger Poets. He has recently completed his fourth collection of
poems, titled About the Trees.
Click here
to read Brad Bostian's Review of Edward Weismiller's About the Trees.
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