Five Little Books 

Renderings from Propertius 

as spoken to Gaston Côté



I am not a Propertian scholar. Simplest put, I have read a number of translations of the Roman poet over the years, and a notion of the man and his verse lodged in my head and took root, like an accidental shrub. The latest translation with which I have had a go, some one hundred and seventy pages set in rhyming couplets, finally succeeded in driving me mad. I have nothing against rhyme. In my 20s a few lines of Ezra Pound's Propertian homage meant a great deal to me, but perhaps it has taken me a lifetime to understand why.

Otherwise I came across an article, this morning, on this our 'lost decade', and I have to say I agree with the premise; but that it has been lost for so many reasons other than that of the shift to right-of-centre, and egregious foreign policy, and a kind of crude class warfare by which money, like a lemming horde, headed for cliff-side condominums and leaped into the abyss of offshore accounts. Liberals imploded from their inherent contradictions.

Sometimes I wake in the morning and wonder if I am a communist.

Defend the high places and show no mercy.

Norm Sibum 


Book 1


 

So long as my synapses fire, so long as you have an ear

For cause and effect and their love-child - farce, 

Let it not pass unaddressed

How she hazed me there in the library,

Her walk a slow and meditative walk,

                        Such a thoughtful essay

           On time and space and motion.

Her unconcern was cruel,— her sweet eyes were made

Sweeter by the lenses through which they saw

The world. No chin was more imperious, her flashing nails sirens

Calling out to love-sick sailors in the stacks,

                  Propertius just a name on a shelf,

                          Nixon not yet gone to China.

And the ring on her finger said weddedness

And for all I know it was fine by her

Who suffered no complications of guilt or remorse,

                                                              9 to 5 an ordeal

                                                Punctuated by caresses.

Can't say who she most liked to read, if she read at all.

Why discuss Proust when her kisses took

           Their prisoners, her clinch absolute

   There against some wall by a fire alarm?

But all that was then and is maybe overblown

In my memory-bank, small balance that has since

                              Accumulated interest, ballooned

Into a fair-sized chunk of change, so much so I hear now

Her voice in my thoughts, the words of which

                         Traverse unimaginable distance:

'What are you on about, boy, those days gone,

You a pleasant way to solve my boredom,

Those moments mine, not your tall tales.'

Love? I don't think so. I was, in any case, too humble

                       For the grandeur in which her husband,

                                                          No doubt, kept her.

                                   Can you hear this woman halloo

                                 Across the decades, hear her hoot?

'Like I said, be you a poet or not, those days are gone

When you might have thrown a challenge at me

Or in me, in my body, heart and soul, and we honour

                                                               Poverty with love.

              We were daft enough then. Are you daft now?'

Yes, Gaston, it's pathetic, as the cars of an evening slick

Over the rain-slicked street, as the leaves fall and life's a siren,—

As passersby, bending to the wind and rain, are the stuff

Of their routines, desire writ cold and large out there,—

As we sit here in a café that would be Greek and lets us

Hang about,—to know that what were shadows then are                           

   shadows now

Even if she was a loon and I a clown, still.

                              _____ 

Though, Gaston, you sit across from me, Comptroller 

   of the Wine Purse,—


Though it's Quebec and winter's due, sanity and light at premium,

                                        Consider what follows a bulletin

                                                            Catching you up to speed

                                                      From the moon's nether side.

How, just for you, I've tried to keep pace

With what passes for thought in the arenas of thought,—

How one needs life support, dogging the heels of the learned

Who dog academe's halls (health-plans a paean to polite virtues).

How, when it comes to the daily orders and getting it right

While clubbing one's opponents senseless with the magic

                         Of one's ties to lobbies and position papers,

                             One hears mutterings of plots and coups,—

One hears keening to do with rising oceans and other menaces,

Not to mention the fact that libraries go broke, and one suspects

                                                 Public intelligence is a ghost of itself.

How we are each of us so many clown spots

On the body-politic of a clown, hanging out starkers, twisting in a wind

                     At the behest of some ringmaster's whip hand.

As for bliss, it was always a mad hound, and we knew that, Gaston,

                                                     And it was knowledge gained at cost,

              Just that now, subject to other cruelties, bliss is all curled lip

And bark. Enough. Poor form to harangue, and worse,

You'll only drink now so as to drown

The shrill tenor of my voice.

                             _____

 

Gaston, my man, the look on your face

               Says you're upset. What gives?

        Has some darling flummoxed you?

I know women for whom all their men

Are one endless man without reprieve,

But for us, and here's why women

Scorn us, there's always Eve Tremblay.

And then, while I defend the gods in whom I've not

                                                       A single iota of belief,

                      And there are no gods when there is no love,

Into the café walks a stunner, and there you are:

                     Some old cartoon zowwowing wolf,

                                 Ga-ga eyes departing sockets.

Well, here's how it was, if you care to recall:

                         Say you've been out drinking,

Say you've come home, and your darling's asleep,

And she's beautiful there in her dreamy dreamland,

                        All cares disappeared from her visage,

And yet, though you would like to take license,

Even go so far as to steal a heart-felt smooch,

You can't, for five will get you ten she'll take

Umbrage, as she wakes and would smell on you

Some other, all the while you sniff her dreams

              For your replacements or her hissy fits.

                                                         Ring any bells?

                                 Is this what you sorely miss,

As you sit there divorced, monastic, scarred to the extent

                                You'll never take the leap of love again,

                You a number that some demographic specialist

                                                                                    Crunches?

Gaston, drinking buddy, possessed of mind, steeped

In the ways of the world, eminently capable

Of charm and flair, so now you'll tell me

It was never thus for you, that charming picture

Of lust. And were you drunk or were you sober,

                As guiltless as some new-born creature

When you'd let yourself in the house, the door familiar,

She was indifferent to this miracle of the faithful spouse,

And she simply rolled over, showing you her

Skeptical nature.

                             _____

 

Gaston, surely you recall the tensions, let alone who'd do the dishes

                                                        After the catastrophic dinner party?

                                                   Right, you'd just as soon forget all that

                                             As the price to pay for the breakthroughs

In relations. How did it go again? 'Enough,' said the women

Who'd no longer play the games they used to play

                                  So as to advance their interests,—

In refusing the games they'd call our bluff and force us

To trust them, as it was the way nature intended it,—

Which is what the Caesars said, nature indifferent.

And because no one trusts anyone, new checks and balances

Took centre-stage. And by now, the drama's been workshopped

And standardized. And whether new or old spite, new-formed or ancient

    pettiness,

It's still spite and still pettiness on all sides, tart it up and trick it out

As much as you wish with theory, with the flavours of the hour.

And yet men are the problem and always have been, and I am

The least careful of men, trusting this or that darling

To do his or her best, to do his or her worst,— or to average it out -

As is usually the case. For all things being equal, and all things are

When voices pitch justice at high decibels,

The pain that cuts deepest in or out of bed, 

The battleground most contested

Was that which fists itself in us:

Our cheating hearts.

                             _____

 

Roiling cloud, leaves whipped about,

That passing sky of crow and gull and our ephemeral

Clout, our little accomplishments so many vanities - I feel

                                                        The years, Gaston. Do you?

Or else, specialists that we are, wunderkind,

We had too much of love's body at the expense

                Of its spirit, and we wallowed in cults.

For the most part, but not always, it began with the body,

Though I loved women by chance for nothing so much

As a look in the eye, a smile within, one as often as not

                                                            Overlooked as noted:

Some flower clinging to her stone desert,

Me clinging to mine, no words exchanged.

But will you guffaw and dismiss this outbreak

                                                           Of religiosity

      That is nothing, really, but a commonplace

                                  Of metro or bus or elevator?

So you will then, you protesting

It's not like me, poet of carnal love.

Come on, Gaston, über-materialist,

When men like ourselves, and you're a senior,

Put philosophy to pleasure, it's religious endeavour.

And I seem to recall how certain smiles and dares

Such as brightened our plumages or darkened them -

Fools that we were and still are and shall remain -

Got us to get down to cases,

Waking up those dozy gods.

 

                                                 § 

                             Book 2

 

If effect, Gaston, will follow cause

Ninety-nine point ninety-nine times

Out of a hundred, the shortfall angel dust,

Then ask yourself why the rules of the house

Dishearten so, as if life itself and not politics

Validates hysterics and idiots, all of whom ride

The slipstream of vested interests, school wasted

On the young. And you will have noted how it is that wine

                                       Leads to crushing certainties, the café

                                                        A kind of technical institute.

Perhaps it's the waning light, winter's long reach

Eating into the oracle of day, or that which is hand in glove

With the corruptions - landgrab here, arms deal there,

Scams without number, debt-mongering, endless wars.

Or say that a man would know another man's desire

For the love of that man's life,—say he'd covet a garden and get a desert

On the satin sheets of betrayal, and someone somewhere laughs,

Isn't it predictable, that laughter, as much so as the thieving,

Comedy and tragedy neck and neck at the wire

Unless melodrama triumphs at dark horse odds?

It's to say that pondered schemes set in motion

Observe each their logic, are sheer madness when lumped together

As a people's commerce,—logic the joker that gets us a mess.

                                                             But you say I'm off the mark.

Well then, I suppose that, in your books, if there be a god, He's logical,

And if there is no god then nature is logic, the how and why

Of all that transpires: from the seed comes the plant,

From the egg the animal, humankind, too, whose bent,

Whose manifest destiny is to survive, with or without

Hankypanky, influence peddling, furtive favours.

And how many darlings of our acquaintance know

            The extent to which their humdrum labours

                          Are inseparable from sharp practice?

And all the Eve Tremblays will have their bliss, as will the Gastons -

            Cheats who, nonetheless, and endearingly so, have scruples.

But as I, defying logic, have loved and hated for a thousand years

And more, seen much, done worse, why should I begrudge you

Your cherished priorities, your attempts to seal a porous pot

                                                        Through which reason flows,

 

                                  You sweet on the sweetest of temptations -

                                                                             An iron-clad case.

                             _____

 

Sure, Gaston, if you say so. Glad to hear it.

You love verse, love it to bits, love it as much as you love

Steaks and wine, comely women enticingly but safely

Just beyond your reach,—and well, forgive me, but as they say,

               I smell a rat. Not even poets love the thing so ardently,

No, not as much as you claim you do,

You humanist with business credentials, secured

                And divorced. I suspect a liberal's sense

Of obligation in your zeal, something like panic, too:

What if this crazed poet with whom you drink

                                      And mark most evenings

With objections to his outlook,—what if he knows a thing or two,

                                                Is right about what he says is coming?

                                    Relax. I've no pressing need to carry the day.

                                              Let me speak a while on Eve Tremblay

                        Whom I see just now, silver Christmas bells affixed

To her form-flattering sweater.

                                                       Well then, she signals and so,

In the poetry stacks we meet

Secure from prying eyes, and she picks my brain for ruses

                                                           As she's at her wit's end,

Husband wishing to whisk her to some vile place

For the holidays, and here we'd planned an afternoon's

Tryst,—and she'll not brook a change of plan.

I shrug. 'Lie,' I say. 'Plead allergies. Suffer him.' Oh, not to be borne -

Winter golfing in Florida. Right then and there we get down to cases

There in the broom closet, and it's as if she and I, in our kisses,

Each leave our mark on the body of love, the one hallooing to the other

Throughout the course of time. Weren't we silly?

   But then, Gaston, isn't this

What you wish to hear, that body ineffably more real

Than any hegemonic spirit of science, religion, voting bloc?

Otherwise, what's to say? Nothing much makes any sense,

Especially when one gets it from the mouths of think-tank artists,

                                              And in light of all that tweedledumdee

                                          Winter golfing couldn't have been so bad.

                             _____

 

That Gaston is a classic, logic-bound chin-wag:

For every dilemma an answer, for every answer a new round

Of complicating data. That's him, the one leaned forward

At his streetside table, his glass raised. Shrewd eyes appraise the avenue,

Laughter at the ready. (I'll just enter the café and get myself

                                                             Greeted, refuted, twitted.

                                           Now I parry his 'Good evening, sir'

                                                With 'Cut to the chase and pour.'

                                                                   'To temperance, then.'

                                                                 'It's rumoured to exist.')

And like so many pigeons in a fuss

Exploding and resettling with thundery wings,

Various flockings of his brain flutter on about

                         Various scenarios, are engaging

Oil and gold in their new and amorous embrace, and why,

Here's Madame Dachshund-Walker (name unknown)

             Picking through the trash again, the poor dear,

                               Wiener of a dog wearily supportive.

And we debate, he and I, and betray our ignorance,—

And we drink, he and I, and reveal our character,

Or that which film directors always enlist

And then slaughter in the trenches of art

                           And other considerations,—

And then, when I've had enough, I say:

'Look, Gaston, about Eve Tremblay, why,

You don't think we actually did it, rutting in

The poetry stacks, there with Propertius and Wallace Stevens,

Rewriting the gist of Dante, bringing blushes to the cheeks

       Of Beatnik scribes? I can't believe you've believed me.'

'Oh no. Quite the contrary. I always allow, as business

   taught me to allow,

For certain dissimulations, bendings, if you will, of fact,

Hidden agendas, unsavoury purposes, and in your case, well,

                    Poets lie, if only because who takes them seriously?

                   But I respect endeavour: even poets rate a hearing.

And as you're in the business of immortalizing me, I pay the tab,

The least I can do, so as to maintain a steady flow of wine.

And if, in your ears, you seek out the echoes

Of the kisses of all the Eves, so much the better for my cause,

                                                             As it keeps you interested.

But if you think that the hatreds and the circuses, the greed and stupidity

                                                                      That are doing in America

Will grab my attention, think again. What did you expect?

                                 Nothing's forever. Everything changes.

                                                  Chances are, it'll change back

                                                                 To the old story line

    Of your grade school history books.                                                         

And just to show you I'm a sport, don't need to carry

                     Every argument, it's yours, the last word.'

'Hell's bells, Gaston, how nice you are to me. The wine's mellowed you, 

                                                Or else you've had your fibrillator tuned.'

                             _____

                       

Yes but, we kissed and they paraded -

   Shameless Propertian concoctions,

              Barely remembered deities 

Of summer sun and winter hearth-fire,

Of unappeasable wants, so much so,

                              They vouchsafed

                           Continual research.                   

Or say it was autumn, the trees red, the pavements plastered

With leaves, the air almost tangy on account

Of the sweet-rot smell of fallen foliage,

And we, returned to ourselves, would go out,

Grappa and ice cream on the horizon,—

And Gibbon kicked in, or I F Stone

And what was playing at the odeon.

And it's only now, and I can't say why,

That I look to carve a valentine

On what time had been.

                             _____

 

It wasn't the dead so much who gave me pause,

Friends who bought it in the war,

But those, come back, who fell away,

And they may as well have been entombed.

Sure, they could tell you straight to your face -

Those young-old boys not liking manhood - 

What they'd seen and what they'd done,

And speak of the enemy as a force of nature.

And yet, sometimes, a shift in tone said more

About what'd been service and what was reward,

And a terrible rage reduced to whispers was witness

To a kind of whipped dog bewilderment in the eye,

And you heard: it wasn't supposed to be this way.

As for me, you'd think that forty some years

Should've sufficed for the making of these lines of verse

That, as they stand, are far from adequate treatment

Of a debacle. For truth to tell, I often dismissed

     The 'Pssst, hey bud, I've got a story for you,

                    But damn it all if I know what it is.'

And so, the Billys and Whitakers and other wretches

                      Who larked between my ears to no avail,

                                       But who may now have gotten

                                                      Home-field advantage:

                                                 Civilian death and burial. 

                             _____

 

You're a sly one, Gaston, to ply me with wine, to bide your time

With your guile, to wait until my bean goes foliate,

                                                 Is a full-blown corsage

Of opinion and learning, and then to trip the hammer,

                        Asking me in what I believe, if anything.

And I'm sly, too, stalling for time (I don't, at least, hem and haw),

And I weigh your treachery and I measure you for

          What good faith your mocking gaze contains,

    And I take an answer out for a test drive, saying,

                                  'Not in God, not in humankind

            But in love, perhaps, which some will argue

                          Is part God's and part humankind's.

                      As to the rest of the animals I can't say,

                                   Nest-love something else again.

I endeavour, as should you, to keep this and other questions

Open: so much out there would draw the curtains

On sentience. And now, to clear up another matter:

                   Was she so very gorgeous, a time-stopper?

Of course, she was. Would a poet lie about such a thing?

But all that, to be sure, was years ago, memory such

A teller of tales, staring us in the face, the absolute.' 

 

                                                 §

                                       

                             Book 3

 

You ask, 'From where does the poetry come?

Is there in your mind some kind of machine

That churns out creation?' I answer, 'No,

But listen, if she laughs, laughter's my muse.

She wears blue jeans, then my verse is denim.

Or say she shows up in a dress and heels,

And now she'll gladhand a toney crowd,

Well then, a poem that's known too many polite piss-ups

And pretends it hails from the provinces,

                Agog with the turn of her ankle,

            She rating ardor on a sliding scale,

Just might honour how she's nature's jewel.

How else would it be, my brain - raw sore -

No mind of Zeus spewing forth perfections.

The genius is not me - it's there, out there,

In the colour of the trees, be it fall. 

Autumnish, yes, and I know I'm mortal.

What's more, there are lovers who never learn.

What's more, there are souls who have to make do

With a single instance of some embrace,

Love made again and again, always.'

                             _____

 

Gaston,

I was intimate with the jealousies,

                                                         So now you needn't sit there smug

Now you know that I, too, gagged on the fumes

                 And conspired against myself like this:

                An hour with her and I knew that after

                  I'd burn in some arsonist's handiwork.

And there'd follow days of agonies until she thought me prime

For the next conflagration, the next round of a groaning prick,

And if she got bored, well then, I'd renew her interest

Which wasn't so difficult. 

                                              It was said that to look on a god

Invited a contract on one's existence.

Can't tell you how many times I beheld

Cupid's insipid, jeering mug

As I saw myself in her arms,

Hallucinating.

                          All the more galling for his being a punk

Who'd gall you even more, pouring gas on the fire, blowing his ta-ta's

At your wretched state.

                                           Worse than dashed hopes

As when new blood fails in office, the country in vertigo

                                         From the spiralling down to ruin,

                      And barring the ache for the loss of one dear,

Is to watch what was yours now claimed by another.

And then, and here you smack your silly head

(Is that sentience now creeping along your neck?), you inquire,

'Alright then, what did one have that was only a mirage

Of craven bliss, and we've yet to speak of love?'

So there it is. Clink my glass. Gloat, if you must.

But the longer you will continue to insist

All's well, and if not, it'll turn around,

Why then, I'll just have to genuflect

At your MBA, won't I, Gaston,

That ne plus ultra of the mind.

                             _____

 

I put one foot ahead of the other,

And in love with life, ambulated, the autumn air delicious

                                 On my old face. Leaves fell to the street.

If a moral nature derives conscience

From indifferent nature, squirrels plumed, were cheeky buggers

                                           On the young bark of the young maples

                                                       Shedding their red-gold attitudes.

Then pigeon-birds, filthy, obsessed, but friendly-like,

Like so many dolphins on the pavement, escorted my progress

                Past the little park, that one shaped like an arrowhead,

                                                    And I looked and saw no slackers

                        Tethered to young boughs by their own intestines,

                                                                  And it seemed good news.

And a woman with high cheekbones made

                                       Bawdy eyes my way,

           And in love with life, I was tempted.

No doubt, she thought me mature, broken in,

This Phaedra intolerant of moody, if prettier youth.

Let me say it again: either pitch your verse at the highest

Pitch, or, chaste as a child playing at jacks,

       Get down and dirty, all else the burbs.

                              In any case, I breezed along.

To keep it brief, Gaston, and though Zeus philandered

                                                             And Apollo chased

Daphne to the ends of the earth, and Hippomenes outsmarted Atalanta

                                                                  And got this athlete of a girl,

                                                    And all these were tales with versions,

                                                                             Poetry in its infancy,

                                          The Romans who salinized Carthiginian earth

                                                         Were as modern as Agent Orange.

Now have you heard the latest, how it is the generals

                                         Have put their heads together,

                                                          Campaigning to put

                             One of their own in the White House

                                         And there could be hell to pay?

   No? Well, the wind blew. The leaves tumbled down.

                         My eyes clouded with slate-black cloud.

                                 A dog yipped and worried the fact

                                Darling master might fail to emerge

                        From her tryst-time in the Four Aces Bar.

                             _____

 

Alright, I hear you:

                                    Gaston wants that his wine be drink,

            Not swill watered down with social commentary.

My muse is addled, he says: war, love, lust, Caesar,

                       The shenanigans of the financial sector -

            Why, they're all over the place - these verses,

As if I were some shorebird, long-legged bundle of nerves

                                                                             And aversions

Who finds the shore unstable, the tide treacherous, too many

                                                                  Gawking tourists about

                            Looking for spirituality in the flaming sunset

                                    And I can't settle anywhere on the beach.

                                                                            Gaston has a point.

                                             So why don't I snap my fingers and

                                                                       Dancing girls appear,

                                                                  And failing that, Sinatra,

                                                                 And I keep Gaston happy

                                                                           In his rotarian lusts?

But credit me this:            

                                   At least I don't game the system

With the obscenities of special appeals. I say a thing and it's said,

                                                  Seven Types of Ambiguity be damned.

                                  No net made of language ever captured much,

                                                              Or else poets would be Stalins.

My love affairs? They were disasters, mostly, and for this, I blame

              Myself, and though the ladies soldier on with perfect egos,

                                 It does seem in accordance with nature's design.

My pessimism?
                             Now here's a product of experience.

My faith?

                  It's Homer the bard,

He who had his supper to sing for, his warlords to flatter, and oh,

He may've been full of himself, teller of tales about the gods

Who never existed, and yet, in regards to what mattered,

No sentimentalist, no spewer of platitudes, eschewing

                                                 Sanctimonius truth-telling,

                                                                        He did not lie.

                    And in this there's a distinction to be made

                                                        Between then and now,

For if we assume that, on account of our greater knowledge, we've given

                                   The old tragedies the slip, then what fools we are.

And now I've said my bit, you may proceed.

Yes, Gaston, pour, yes, if only for comedy's sake,

        That divorcee three tables over making eyes.

                                               Shall I make inquiries?

                             _____

 

So what is it, Gaston, you come in out of sorts

On a Sunday afternoon? Too much football? Too much golf?

Too many silver-tongued sportscasters, their throats sounding brass?

Yes, what spectacle most maintains the illusion

           That all is ordered, peaceful, prosperous,

    And justice, for the most part, carries the day

Than the perfect addressing of a dimpled white sphere,

No matter that, as it soars, it hooks wildly right

                   And then burrows into some hazard,

                  And dignity requires that a contender

                                                        Grin and bear it?

Or I hear tell, Gaston, of a senior citizen

Who's rediscovered ardor,—how he in his living room

Bumps and grinds to pop (his life-long passion has been Beethoven),

                                                      The two ladies with whom he frolics

                                                         No beach bunnies on spring break.

                                          Is this what you miss, being crotch to crotch

                                           Irrespective of the stress on your sacroiliac?

I was sitting here minding my own business,

And you enter the café in a bearish temper,

And you plunk down the wine as if this action

                               Were a call to battle. You say,

      'Maybe, just maybe, you're right', and then

              Your voice tails off. Unusual, seeing as

                                  You always win your point.

Damn it all, what's got you by the short hairs?

Ah, you've read the latest poll. Now Gaston knows

                                Americans have no great regard

                                                   For their government.

Well, knock me over with a feather, why don't you:

                  There's revolution just around the corner.

         So then, time for first things first - to cut a rug

                                 With a grey-haired lovely or two,

                  Limbs creaky and arthritic. Seems ghastly.

Even so, what's stopping you? It's not for me to come between

                                                                           A man and his bliss,—

Not for me to tut-tut the ladies when in their eyes

                                                    They get those imps.

It's symmetry of sorts, this Johnny Angel come-back as when

                Girl loves boy but he's so thick he doesn't notice her

                              All the while those depressive Soviets brooded

                                      And here and there Nazis were on the run.

What? You let me get away with philosophy?

The voice of wisdom says, 'What wisdom?' The well-ordered mind,

In dubious times, wears poncy clothes and strides manfully

      From green to green with a bag of lightning-conductors,

                                     Sizes up his lie and selects his weapon.

                                            If the cities must burn, they'll burn.

                                                                          But I, for one, lack

                                                                 This harmonious blend

Of thought, purpose, execution, which is why I sit here

                                                                            And imbibe

                                                      And review the histories

                         And hear out a professional like yourself.

                                                For when you blink I figure

                                                                        It's significant.

                             _____

 

Incoming - silks and spices. Outgoing - torrents of silver.

And that's how it was for cottagers

Whose villas were so many altars to Aphrodite

             In the sun-splashed years of the empire. 

But, Gaston, as you might wish to know,

What has the trade-imbalance of Rome

           To do with Robert Zimmerman's

                     It's All Over Now, Baby Blue?

                           The cost-ratios of desire?

                                                    Mazel tov?

                          The death of sentience in

        Those who might've valued it most?

Two months shy of the winter solstice and the shortest day,

One's serotonin reserves at peril (if one is conscientiously

                                   upwardly mobile, not a working stiff),  

It may be observed, nonetheless, that winter's struck

And this or that darling shall be drifting south

To splay toes in the tide-darkening sand,—

To count the suns and count one,—

To count the moons and count dream-love

Though one will have understood

That where there's love there's cost,—

To count the stars and endearingly assume

They are numberless, so many alternate scenarios up there

                               To the drama queen mind of humankind.

Naked and silhouetted by light,     

Stepped out of the shower, her towel a headdress,    

She did not stop my heart - she rendered it superfluous,

                    And I was spirit in the presence of a goddess,

                                                    Unaccountably inarticulate,      

                     Love of man for woman and woman for man -    

                                                                         Love in general   

                                                            Pegged to wherewithal.

                                I trust, Gaston, that you are acquainted

                                                       With the mysteries of love

                                         As are pegged to ways and means,

                                              You no stranger to boardrooms,

                                                          No stranger to bedrooms

                                                  And all the points in between?

                                           That I amuse you tells me you are,

Even if, in the sounder regions of your mind, you sound off:

                    'These poets - they will fly in the face of the evidence,

                                       But then I guess that's why they're poets.

                                                          There's no other explanation.'

 

                                                 §

 

                             Book 4

  

If I sing a darling through

All the hazards of eternity,

As no one else cares to perform that task,

I stop short, Gaston, of claiming

My death shall spike booksales - darling's mental make up normal,

                                                              My feckless verses all left field.

                                                                      Moreover, if I puzzle you,

Confound, irk, dismay, perplex you,

It's only because - loyal to my low profile

And my designs on posterity - I am that which you can't slot. 

                                                          Think of me as a sunken city

Between which columns the nibbling fishes

Pass, that the odd diver comes across,

His reports bringing knowing laughter

To some village's white-haired old-timers.

And who's to say that in a pale sea

A few graves aren't home to rhymesters?

                      She and other darlings I recall

       When I look in the mirror and see a fool.

But that your grin is evil now, is the lowest of low blows, Gaston.

You can't tell me you weren't blindsided,

Flying kamikaze into a darling's eyes,

So mad as to think you had things under control,

So vain as to boast of your tender touch, Streisand flattering it

With songs? There was no getting out from under,

And it's late in the day. Being wise after the fact

Being the emptiest of illusions, just pour.

                             _____

 

That nipping wind from northern parts,

That pack of girls on the run in darkness,

Fleeing school, the job, or the horrors of home,

Announce the end of sweet summer light.

And you remove your coat, and shuddering,

You slide out a chair, are tactical,

And the wine will go down like gall

               In this mausoleum of a café.

Well, best you take a deep breath, my man,

As worse than this is in the pipe:

My muse, lacking stellar options,

Even now mixes and matches, and farce

Speaks for doom and doom for the comedies

Of seduction, and a tease shall do the summing up -

If we get that far. What rough and uncouth terrain

For any nag named Pegasus, feet shod in tank treads.

                                                           But where were we?

So here you are dispirited, spooning broth.

Here you are to say you could care less

That the senate lacks moral courage:

And would that a poet put a sock on it.

But I must say it fascinates - how you, used to the fray

That was business, politics, marriage and divorce,

Deal with the fact you no longer count

In a world more corrupt than when you set out

To achieve, tomorrow's thin winter sun

Your pencilled in applause.

                             _____

 

The male of our species is the problem, Gaston,

And the least savoury among us were handed a gift

                        When women declared trust annulled -

                           Why then should a jerk learn to care?

And yet, break a man's spirit, and broken, he'll warp

A woman's joy in life, lies, pretensions, and shadows the roost.

I've known darlings who wished their husbands dead,

                    And men the same in respect to their wives.

                                              Gaston, did she sleep around?

Otherwise, as an ancient poet had it,

Caesar bringing glory to the empire,

There's only hanging out on the boulevard,

Fresh from the exertions of the bed,

While wheeler-dealers, while soldiers are catching

                                               Honour for their efforts

To render the world safe for yet more bonanzas.

In this way is lust the ironist, and in the sport

Men and women are one another's equals,

                                        And equally cynics.

Yes, here's a conundrum no one seems able to solve:

What makes for free spirits, one day, enslaves the next.

I've stood on the Sacred Way, tipping my flat cap

At the ghosts of men, women and exotic animals,

Listening to touts carving business from business,

Hearing out the senators, their glory second-hand,

This or that sun at its zenith,

This or that moon a caution,

Ruin in the corner of my eye,

And then it's in your face.

                             _____

 

She took her lover of the hour to bed

And I brought mine to mine, and yet,

Come morning, we may as well have been

Marooned together on a desert island,

No one else about in that kitchen

Though the table was set for four.

Now if that, Gaston, overstates the case,

There was idle curiosity, at the least:

'Did he measure up to your ideal?

'Did she deliver you your thrill?'

Questions such as these, none grand,

Shot between our eyes like rumours of war.

And when we finally got around, she and I,

To the meaning of life, to its great purpose,

We were much too wary for any answer,

Peace our only desire, forget the mind.

And yes, and though I can't speak for her,

When peace, after all, seemed an empty ruse,

Her moans, her whimperings, her ferocious silences -

The music of pleasure was all I could ever trust.

                             _____

 

You've had the good sense, Gaston, to revere the wine god,

His jests half as good, at least, as those that love cracks,

Though they'll say the weak man takes a coward's refuge

In the stuff, as when love injures and the grape molests,

And one knows, without question, that one is a fool.

Moderation is good, to be sure, but I despise the thing,

Seeing how, once again, the conformities crush,

Excusing untruth,—how the righteous, secular or God-crazy,

Are hand in glove with the hypocrisies of the market,

And there's no room in this world for a skeptic

Of mild demeanor. So then, a toast while we can,

Before our brains rot, our amity viewed as treason. 

                           

                                                 §

                            

                                           Book 5

 

 

American rustic leaves me indifferent.

What simpler, nobler, more virtuous life?

What use have I for prairie sod? They are pretty pictures in my

  schoolboy's

Mind - New England groves splendid and haunted

                              With Puritan sex and dead Indians.

For every good cowboy were there not

            Ten pistol-packing psychopaths?

No, city-slicker, alleged poet to boot,

I'm chary of nature and human nature. The sacramental drink,

The harvest toast, the self-congratulatory nod

Was blood. So then, Gaston, pour the wine. Don't stint

                                         As I'm only just getting started.

For who knows who squeezed the last Etruscan tear,

                    Rome making good on her take-over bid?

                                                         They are still crying

                                             In the Seven Cities of Gold.

                         Humankind will wander and trespass,

                                 And in this way generate conflict,

            And each beseiged tribe will have its prophet,

                                  And among prophets contention,

                   Arguments as to the best course of action

                                                        In a slew of troubles:

                    A return to the old ways? Making it new?

In these parts

                          Decimation is still an answer of sorts,

                               Fortress America an open air crypt

                                           Of crumbling infrastructure

                                  And advanced weapons systems.

                      'No comment,' you say. I don't see why,

           The relations of your forebears to the Iroquois

                                                                      Complicated,

                                                      Raid and counter-raid,

                              And the beaver almost disappeared.

                              Still, who needs obligatory outrage?

            Who wants to be reminded of ancient history?

                             Just that I have superstitious respect

                               For ghosts and cycles of retribution.

                             _____

 

 

They were smug and corrupt, he said

And so, he'd tossed his hat in the ring,

And he'd boot the bums from their cozy offices,

And if I meant him no ill will, truth to tell, I was skeptical.

                                                                               He answered:

                               'Yes, and that's what they figure you for:

                                You've had your brush with experience.

                                           You'll stay at home on voting day

                                     And they'll live to dance the beguine.'

                                                              Gaston, he shamed me.

And his sombre sidekick (her eyes sweet and alive, what with the way

She held her clipboard and seemed attentive)

Had the look of a woman for whom

Civilization had reached its eleventh hour,

And I was proof, if nothing else,

Of how bankrupt it had all become,—

And either she'd buzz a thousand more doors

Before the night was done, or she'd let down her hair

                            And cave to long-denied indulgences.

I'd never know, the man with conviction in his jaw,

Sensing perhaps that her unspoken questions

Spoke more to me than his reforms,

Broke off relations, and they moved on.

I returned to the ballgame on TV, old rite of passage,

To the pretense of America at its best, everything in a nutshell -

                                                                       Truth, honour, justice -

Swings and misses, absolutely smoked, the intricate physics

                                               Of what was a boy's paradise,

                                                  Big money boondoggle now.

Gaston, I shrugged as I lay on the couch, observed athletes,

   heard out  shills,

And I was a body within a body that, with aplomb,

Could still throw and catch and keep at bay

Lies, collusion, loveless nights,

Collective madness,

Marauding death.

                             _____

 

Stick me on some flood plain of the world

And set loose the waters of the record,—

And then, to further addle a metaphor,

Grant me the expertise of a connoisseur

Who, by taste alone, can trace a grape

To its locale,—and I might observe as I sample

                               This wave or that inundation:

                              'Clovis' or 'pre-Clovis' people,

            This or that variation on a genetic theme,

    But don't expect a grand summation of what

       It all means. Shall we, Gaston, drink to that?

The thing is, I'm at an impasse - I just can't see a way

To end this writing on a decent note

Save for squawk, bleat or howl of protest

                 Deliverable, as ever, to the geist,

                       That one whose holistic spas

Sanction torture, excuse mediocrity, and in everything -

                  From making a buck to making art and love -

                         Reduce endeavour to paint-by-numbers,

              And what happened to those Mayans, anyway?

So I'll step outside, if you don't mind - I'll light a cigarette

And sniff the wind for an ill wind,—and contemplate

                                          Your suspect career and mine,

         As well as those of the duped darlings of the day.

The clouds above - there's snow in them, and this time around I 

   resent


That skinflint sky stingy with light, and yet,

Were I to hop a southbound plane and find myself

                                                            In Quintana Roo,

                            Clambering over vine-clad temples,

                        I'd feel a fraud, one too clever by half,

              Looking to apply the old mismanagements

                         To the narcissisms of shopping malls.

Besides, there's more honour getting drunk with you here

                                                       Yes, in this faux Greek café

                                     Than there is in flashing a credit card

                                                                        In a real Cozumel.

              But enough of the interlude, my self-involved spell.

                  Gaston, I'm back at you, and I see you've poured,

                                                     You cupbearing straight man,

                                                                     You tutoring Silenus.

And, guess what? Inspiration having hit me out there,

                                  A wanton muse to an ancient poet

                         Gets the last word and gets me the note

                                I've been looking to strike, how she,

On dream-feet, flew from her grave to the poet's couch,

Let him know what a faithless s.o.b he always was,

Though she's thankful for the tenure he gives her

In his verses. Now would he see to it that her beloved slaves,

Companions, witnesses to her love-crimes, are cared for

In their retirement,—and then, and it's either a touching

Or a grisly coda, she reminds her old foe in the wars

That when he joins her in death, bone against bone,

They'll embrace, once again, and forever