Poems by Marvin Bell
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To Dorothy
You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
and a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night, it brushes the wall
and sweeps away the day till we sleep.
A child said it, and it seemed true:
"Things that are lost are all equal."
But it isn't true. If I lost you,
the air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you,
I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.
White Clover
Once when the moon was out about three-quarters
and the fireflies who are the stars
of backyards
were out about three-quarters
and about three-fourths of all the lights
in the neighborhood
were on because people can be at home,
I took a not so innocent walk
out among the lawns,
navigating by the light of lights,
and there there were many hundreds of moons
on the lawns
where before there was only polite grass.
These were moons on long stems,
their long stems giving their greenness
to the center of each flower
and the light giving its whiteness to the tops
of the petals. I could say
it was light from stars
touched the tops of flowers and no doubt
something heavenly reaches what grows outdoors
and the heads of men who go hatless,
but I like to think we have a world
right here, and a life
that isn't death. So I don't say it's better
to be right here. I say this is where
many hundreds of core-green moons
gigantic to my eye
rose because men and women had sown green grass,
and flowered to my eye in man-made light,
and to some would be as fire in the body
and to others a light in the mind
over all their property.
Jane Was With Me
Jane was with me
the day the rain dropped a squirrel like that.
An upside-down embrace,
a conical explosion from the sky,
a thick flowering of sudden water--
whatever it was,
the way it happened is
that first the trees grew a little,
and then they played music
and breathed songs and applauded themselves,
and that made the squirrel
surrender to nothing but the beauty
of a wet tree
about to shake its upper body like the devil.
And of course, of course,
he went out on that tree just as far as he could
when things were not so beautiful
and that was it: hard onto the roof of our car
before he could set his toes.
The flat whack of the body.
He lay in the street breathing and bleeding
until I could get back,
and then he looked me in the eye exactly.
Pasted to the concrete by his guts,
he couldn't lift, or leave, or live.
And so I brought the car and put its right tire
across his head. If in between
the life part and the death part,
there is another part,
a time of near-death,
we have come to know its length and its look
exactly--in this life always near death.
But there's something else.
Jane was with me.
After the rain, the trees were prettier yet.
And if I were a small animal with a wide tail,
I would trust them too. Especially
if Jane were with me.
Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See
They sat by the water. The fine women
had large breasts, tightly checked.
At each point, at every moment,
they seemed happy by the water.
The women wore hats like umbrellas
or carried umbrellas shaped like hats.
The men wore no hats and the water,
which wore no hats, had that well-known
mirror finish which tempts sailors.
Although the men and women seemed at rest
they were looking toward the river
and some way out into it but not beyond.
The scene was one of hearts and flowers
though this may be unfair. Nevertheless,
it was probable that the Seine had hurt them,
that they were "taken back" by its beauty
to where a slight breeze broke the mirror
and then its promise, but never the water.
Unless It Was Courage
Again today, balloons aloft in the hazy here,
three heated, airy, basket-toting balloons,
three triangular boasts ahead against the haze
of summer and the gravity of onrushing fall--
these win me from the wavery chrr-ing of locusts
that fills these days the air between the trees,
from the three trembly outspreading cocoons hanging
on an oak so old it might have been weighed down
by the very thought of hundreds of new butterflies,
and from all other things that come in threes
or seem to be arranged. These are arranged,
they are the perfection of mathematics as idea,
they have lifted off by making the air greater--
nothing else was needed unless it was courage--
and today they do not even drag a shadow.
It was only a week ago I ran beneath one.
All month overhead had passed the jetliners,
the decorated company planes, the prop jobs
and great crows of greed and damage (I saw one
dangle a white snake from its bill as it flew),
and all month I had looked up from everywhere
to see what must seem from other galaxies
the flies of heaven. Then quickly my chance came,
and I ran foolish on the grass with my neck bent
to see straight up into the great resonant cavity
of one grandly wafting, rising, bulbous, whole
balloon, just to see nothing for myself. That
was enough, it seemed, as it ran skyward and away.
There I was, unable to say what I'd seen.
But I was happy, and my happiness made others happy.
He Said To
crawl toward the machine guns
except to freeze
for explosions and flares.
It was still ninety degrees
at night in North Carolina,
August, rain and all.
The tracer bullets wanted
our asses, which we swore to keep
down, and the highlight
of this preposterous exercise
was finding myself in mud
and water during flares. I
hurried in the darkness--
over things and under things--
to reach the next black pool
in time, and once
I lay in the cool salve that
so suited all I had become
for two light-ups of the sky.
I took one inside and one
face of two watches I ruined
doing things like that,
and made a watch that works.
From the combat
infiltration course and
common sense, I made a man
to survive the Army, which means
that I made a man to survive
being a man.
A Primer About the Flag
Or certain ones. There are Bed & Breakfast flags.
They fly over vacancies, but seldom
above full houses. Shipboard, the bridge can say
an alphabet of flags. There are State flags
and State Fair flags, there are beautiful flags
and enemy flags. Enemy flags are not supposed
to be beautiful, or long-lasting. There are flags
on the moon, flags in cemeteries, costume flags.
There are little flags that come from the barrel
of a gun and say, "Bang." If you want to have
a parade, you usually have to have a flag
for people to line up behind. Few would
line up behind a small tree, for example,
if you carried it at your waist just like a flag
but didn't first tell people what it stood for.
Ending with a Line from Lear
I will try to remember. It was light.
It was also dark, in the grave. I could feel
how dark it was, how black it would be
without my father. When he was gone.
But he was not gone, not yet. He was only
a corpse, and I could still touch him
that afternoon. Earlier the same afternoon.
This is the one thing that scares me:
losing my father. I don't want him to go.
I am a young man. I will never be older.
I am wearing a tie and a watch. The sky,
gray, hangs over everything. Today
the sky has no curve to it, and no end.
He is deep into his mission. He has business
to attend to. He wears a tie but no watch.
I will skip a lot of what happens next.
Then the moment comes. Everything, everything
has been said, and the wheels start to turn.
They roll, the straps unwind, and the coffin
begins to descend. Into the awful damp.
Into the black center of the earth. I
am being left behind. The center of my body
sinks down into the cold fire of the grave.
But still my feet stand on top of the dirt.
My father's grave. I will never again.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
The Book of the Dead Man (#1)
1. About the Dead Man
The dead man thinks he is alive when he sees blood in
his stool.
Seeing blood in his stool, the dead man thinks he is
alive.
He thinks himself alive because he has no future.
Isn't that the way it always was, the way of life?
Now, as in life, he can call to people who will not
answer.
Life looks like a white desert, a blaze of today in
which nothing distinct can be
made out, seen.
To the dead man, guilt and fear are indistinguishable.
The dead man cannot make out the spider at the center of
its web.
He cannot see the eyelets in his shoes and so wears them
unlaced.
He reads the large type and skips the fine print.
His vision surrounds a single tree, lost as he is in a
forest.
From his porcelain living quarters, he looks out at a
fiery plain.
His face is pressed against a frameless window.
Unable to look inside, unwilling to look outside, the
man who is dead is like a
useless gift in its box waiting.
It will have its yearly anniversary, but it would be
wrong to call it a holiday.
2. More About the Dead Man
The dead man can balance a glass of water on his head
without trembling.
He awaits the autopsy on the body discovered on the
beach beneath the cliff.
Whatever passes through the dead man's mouth is
expressed.
Everything that enters his mouth comes out of it.
He is willing to be diagnosed, as long as it won't
disturb his future.
Stretched out, he snaps back like elastic.
Rolled over, he is still right-side-up.
When there is no good or bad, no useful or useless, no
up, no down, no right way, no
perfection, then okay it's not necessary that there be
direction: up is down.
The dead man has the rest of his life to wait for color.
He finally has a bird's-eye view of the white hot sun.
He finally has a complete sentence, from his head to his
feet.
He is, say, America, but he will soon be, say, Europe.
It will be necessary merely to cross the ocean and pop
up in the new land, and the
dead man doesn't need to swim.
It's the next best thing to talking to people in person.
Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man's Footsteps #11
1. Today, Tibet
One day I have fifteen minutes to stop the ruination.
Today, Tibet.
Other places, other days, but today Tibet.
This thin air makes me dizzy.
I breathe not deeply but partially, and I slip on the
sleety condensation.
Bones keep at this altitude.
Mountains top the clouds and I have come with the
lowdown.
Prayer wheels and a hollow wind at this altitude.
Now fifteen minutes of the ghostly as I tour the rim of
a rice bowl.
They are clothed in shadow who breathe deeply and sit
censored in the monasteries.
What low chant, what undertone of peace, what karmic
rumor can sweep away an army?
Necessary to show them calm targets.
Necessary to suffer the hollow wind to moan, the bones
to clack and a stench
to settle in the rice.
One day I have fifteen minutes on the front page.
Other places, other days, but today Tibet.
2. Tomorrow, Tibet
Yesterday, a people.
Tomorrow, an obit, a footnote, an explanation.
Yesterday, an earthen water vessel.
Today, the chipped, the shattered, the missing, the
buried.
Those high-pointed hats to top the stars.
Those spinning tapestries of prayer, now shreds.
Tatters that thread the wind with fringe, gut,
remembrance of things past.
Coins for Hamlet to take up alms.
I don't want to hear this, chants that catch in the
throat.
I don't want to see this, like a dead fox mounted on a
barbed-wire fence.
Travel the back country, it's Tibet.
Fuss a little, make good time, see the sights, it's
Tibet.
Tibet the land that was, is, and shall remain . . .
unwritten.
The wind exiled, the clouds scattered, a people sacked.
How shall we move mountains when Tibet disappears in
thin air?
from Nightworks: Poems
1962-2000, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2000.
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