Stranger Music

barren,
congregations blink, agonized and dumb.
     In the turns of his journey
heavy trees he sleeps under
mature into cinder and crumble:
     whole orchards join the wind
like rising flocks of ravens.
     The rocks go back to water, the water to waste.
And while Isaiah gently hums a sound
to make the guilty country uncondemned,
     all men, truthfully desolate and lonely,
as though witnessing a miracle,
behold in beauty the faces of one another.

FLOWERS FOR HITLER
WHAT I’M DOING HERE
I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi
Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess
I WANTED TO BE A DOCTOR
The famous doctor held up Grandma’s stomach.
Cancer! Cancer! he cried out
The theatre was brought low.
None of the interns thought about ambition.
Cancer! They all looked the other way.
They thought Cancer would leap out
and get them. They hated to be near.
This happened in Vilna in the Medical School.
Nobody could sit still.
They might be sitting beside Cancer.
Cancer was present.
Cancer had been let out of its bottle.
I was looking in the skylight.
I wanted to be a doctor.
All the interns ran outside.
The famous doctor held on to the stomach.
He was alone with Cancer.
Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!
He didn’t care who heard or didn’t hear.
It was his 87th Cancer.
THE DRAWER’S CONDITION ON NOVEMBER 28, 1961
Is there anything emptier
than the drawer where
you used to store your opium?
How like a black-eyed Susan
blinded into ordinary daisy
is my pretty kitchen drawer!
How like a nose sans nostrils
is my bare wooden drawer!
How like an eggless basket!
How like a pool sans tortoise!
My hand has explored
my drawer like a rat
in an experiment of mazes.
Reader, I may safely say
there’s not an emptier drawer
in all of Christendom!
THE INVISIBLE TROUBLE
Too fevered to insist:
“My world is terror,”
he covers his wrist
and numbers of the war.
His arm is unburned
his flesh whole:
the numbers he learned
from a movie reel.
He covers his wrist
under the table.
The drunkards have missed
his invisible trouble.
A tune rises up.
His skin is blank!
He can’t lift his cup
he can’t! he can’t!
The chorus grows.
So does his silence.
Nothing, he knows
there is nothing to notice.
OPIUM AND HITLER
Several faiths
bid him leap —
opium and Hitler
let him sleep.
A Negress with
an appetite
helped him think
he wasn’t white.
Opium and Hitler
made him sure
the world was glass.
There was no cure
for matter
disarmed as this:
the state rose on
a festered kiss.
Once a dream
nailed on the sky
a summer sun
while it was high.
He wanted a
blindfold of skin,
he wanted the
afternoon to begin.
One law broken —
nothing held.
The world was wax,
his to mould.
No! He fumbled
for his history dose.
The sun came loose,
his woman close.
Lost in a darkness
their bodies would reach,
the Leader started
a racial speech.
IT USES US!
Come upon this heap
exposed to camera leer:
would you snatch a skull
for midnight wine, my dear?
Can you wear a cape,
claim these burned for you
or is this death unusable
alien and new?
In our leaders’ faces
(albeit they deplore
the past) can you read how
they love Freedom more?
In my own mirror
their eyes beam at me:
my face is theirs, my eyes
burnt and free.
Now you and I are mounted
on this heap, my dear:
from this height we thrill
as boundaries disappear.
Kiss me with your teeth
All things can be done
whisper museum ovens of
a war that Freedom won.
HEIRLOOM
The torture scene developed under a glass bell
such as might protect an expensive clock.
I almost expected a chime to sound
as the tongs were applied
and the body jerked and fainted calm.
All the people were tiny and rosy-cheeked
and if I could have heard a cry of triumph or pain
it would have been tiny as the mouth that made it
or one single note of a music box.
The drama bell was mounted
like a gigantic baroque pearl
on a wedding ring or brooch or locket.
     I know you feel naked, little darling.
I know you hate living in the country
and can’t wait until the shiny magazines
come every week and every month.
Look through your grandmother’s house again.
There is an heirloom somewhere.
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT ADOLPH EICHMANN
EYES:.......................................................Medium
HAIR:.......................................................Medium
WEIGHT:..................................................Medium
HEIGHT:...................................................Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES:......................None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:....................................Ten
NUMBER OF TOES:..........................................Ten
INTELLIGENCE:.........................................Medium
What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?
Madness?
SKY
The great ones pass
they pass without touching
they pass without looking
each in his joy
each in his fire
Of one another
they have no need
they have the deepest need
The great ones pass
Recorded in some multiple sky
inlaid in some endless laughter
they pass
like stars of different seasons
like meteors of different centuries
Fire undiminished
by passing fire
laughter uncorroded
by comfort
they pass one another
without touching without looking
needing only to know
the great ones pass
HITLER
Now let him go to sleep with history,
the real skeleton stinking of gasoline,
the Mutt-and-Jeff henchmen beside him:
let them sleep among our precious poppies.
Cadres of SS waken in our minds
where they began before we ransomed them
to that actual empty realm we people
with the shadows that disturb our inward peace.
For a while we resist the silver-black cars
rolling in slow parade through the brain.
We stuff the microphones with old chaotic flowers
from a bed which rapidly exhausts itself.
Never mind. They turn up as poppies
beside the tombs and libraries of the real world.
The leader’s vast design, the tilt of his chin
seem excessively familiar to minds at peace.
THE FAILURE OF A SECULAR LIFE
The pain-monger came home
from a hard day’s torture.
He came home with his tongs.
He put down his black bag.
His wife hit him with an open nerve
and a cry the trade never heard.
He watched her real-life Dachau,
knew his career was ruined.
Was there anything else to do?
He sold his bag and tongs,
went to pieces. A man’s got to be able
to bring his wife something.
WHEELS, FIRECLOUDS
I shot my eyes through the drawers of your empty coffins,
I was loyal,
I was one who lifted up his face.
THE MUSIC CREPT BY US
I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance