Poems from Quiet Lives (Humana, 1983)
“hid in
—Allen Ginsberg
Copyright
©1983 by David Cope
Acknowledgements
Poems
from Quiet Lives appeared in Big Scream, City Lights Journal #4, Blind Alley, In the Light, Windows in the
Stone, Delirium, The World, Roof,
Poems included
here:
Abandoned Hotel
American Dream
Paint Work
Peace
Lunch Hour
A Quiet Life
The Welfare Office
Crash
The Landlady
Half Moon
Rexroth Gone
Chinese Calligraphy
Sweeping
Labor Day
●●●
Abandoned Hotel
urine,
fresh in the doorway,
puddles on
the sidewalk.
we key the lock of the
abandoned
looking for
free furniture:
windows
broken out, smashed chairs & dressers,
yellowed
mattresses laid on the floors,
a Bible, a picture of
"Smiling Rose,”
“pussy” sprayed on the wall six times,
& eleven pigeons parading in the hall.
the paint peels from every
wall.
outside, a
crone wheels a battered pram, empty;
the police have an old man
against a wall.
American Dream
the house was all in
flames,
orange
billows bursting up into the sunlight.
FBI
agents & police were laid up
behind
walls, sheds & other buildings
armed with M-16s & rocket
launchers.
the firemen were kept back.
the battle had gone on for
some time
when the fire exploded thruout the house.
one of the bodies could be
seen inside the house,
loaded with
ammunition bullets,
the bullets exploding from
the heat.
Paint Work
his workmen stopped to
listen;
the neighbors opened the
window.
he waved his arms
& pointed to the new roof. his
expenses:
she hadn’t paid in two
months.
he hadn’t agreed to her
painting the place.
where was the contract? show it.
he looked indoors. the chisels began
again.
Peace
now
I know the secret of peace
wandering
here among hills where no one lives.
white
pines,
clumps
of sumac, hillsides covered with white oaks,
poplars
& birches:
I
never stand still for long,
but
listen & move on.
the
light floods the woods & valley.
even
the shadows are luminous & clear,
&
I, just another face among so many.
sitting
around a table waiting for the day to end
these
men relive the war:
sore
shoulders & jaws firing rifles at boot camp,
the
advantages of the M-16,
how
a grenade works,
blasting
tiny shrapnel in every direction.
Roger
relives watching perimeters at night,
calling
artillery strikes on anything that moved:
so
jumpy
any
monkey or snake in the brush might set him off,
he
talks of loneliness, staring into the alien night
when
everything he loved was far away.
Jerry—fond
of guns & tactics—
proudly
remembers taking an M-16 off a dead GI;
he’d
been issued an M-14
&
wanted a better gun. this was how to get one.
Benny
talks of piles of bodies,
corpses
with arms, heads, legs ripped off,
the
twisted faces of the dead,
the
stink that filled his nostrils,
a
smell he can’t forget.
he
speaks without passion,
regretting
the wasted effort, the needless deaths,
yet
he accepts his part in it,
still
amazed people could live like this for years,
from
attack to counter-attack
hiding
in fields & ditches,
finding
uncles & sons blasted to pieces
more
often than children are born.
after
the politicians’ lies, the funerals of friends,
the
nightly deaths in the evening news,
our
rage swelled into riot.
surging
around a lone police car
we
smashed the windows out, punching the driver’s face in.
others
ran thru the main streets;
store
fronts & bank windows shattered on the pavement.
as
the dark night settled in
we
blocked traffic, heading farther & farther downtown.
suddenly
police filled the streets before us—
gas
masks, nightsticks, dogs straining at leashes.
a
charge!
shouts! screams! nightsticks cracking
skulls!
tear
gas all over main street! panic!
some
ran blindly, in any direction,
officers
in gas masks on their heels;
others
sat down in the street, folding their arms,
waiting
to be beaten & carried off.
up
the dark alley! thru
sidestreets, home again,
&
once home
I
looked at my face in the mirror,
filled
with rage & horror, alone & cut off.
years
later, on a picnic,
we
watch light play thru willow branches.
listening
to this soft breeze
I
wonder how I put the violence behind me.
so
many friends dead
&
those come back still dazed & broken,
yet
the night passes, somehow.
Lunch Hour
waiting
for a bus
some
laid-off workers shoot craps.
this
one’s won, he’s dancing around
slapping
at the losers.
A Quiet Life
Minh
will turn down citizenship:
he wants to go home.
the Texans treated him badly,
when all he wanted was work, a quiet life.
his eyes turn away. he sighs deeply.
could we get Sang’s
children out
in a month or two?
no, said Tham. a time of
storms.
on my boat, Lien said, my children go 3
days
no food, & water only to wet the
lips.
four people die,
& this in good weather.
The Welfare Office
a fat black woman bellows
at the face behind the desk,
her coat billowing about her boy
who clutches her knees.
rows of haggard faces wait
in a stupor.
the bureaucrats take them one by one.
forms & signatures, in a cubicle—
muffled conversations,
mechanical clacking:
“drove buses Saigon to
small appliance repair?
he’s lucky, should be no problem
once he learns English.”
outside, bodies crowd the lightpoles;
the police lift a derelict
from a boarded doorway.
Crash
the cars lie, one on its
side,
a rear wheel still
spinning,
& the other upside down.
the bodies are scattered
across the cornfield,
bent & broken on the
frozen ground.
two ambulances pull
up.
the attendants arrange
& cover the dead.
cars pull over to the side
of the road—
everyone
shuffles,
eager to help, hands in
pockets.
The Landlady
a thousand dead roaches
in the sink
& on the floor, a thousand more, crawling.
she wanted “to do business
fairly,”
but didn’t know whom to
trust.
the tenants had tried to
set the house afire,
then left, six months back
on the rent.
she wonders how to fix the
battered wall,
the smashed ceiling, the
live wire;
how she’ll keep her
finances straight,
whether her
children are growing up right.
Half Moon
blood
in the toilet
&
cramps like labor, tissue
settling
to the bottom of the water:
outside,
the moon’s cut in half,
frigid
in the mist. man
& wife,
they
cry softly together,
&
look into each other’s eyes.
Rexroth Gone
tenderly now,
let me blow this faint
gentle breath out
to another of my
fathers.
two days since I heard this
news,
&
all day today heaving & sighing,
his mountain
meadows, the Spanish dead,
Sacco
& Vanzetti, Dylan Thomas,
&
all the tiny plum blossoms he floated us:
if I sit tonight
in shadows,
the moon’ll
be full, the crickets sing
sweet lament. tenderly now,
this faint gentle
breath to you,
Kenneth.
Chinese Calligraphy
T’ang
Yin,
Freer Gallery
Dreaming
of Immortality in a Thatched Cottage—
a man
surrounded by
the immensity of trees, mountains & sky,
dreaming,
&
in the sky his other self has left it all behind.
coming in
here:
car horns, a small boy
tried to strangle a pigeon,
throngs sat
in the shade, wiping their brows,
taxis slammed on their
brakes.
&
I, I would leave this place?
Sweeping
two mechanics sit in broken
glass,
one cigarette between them
passed back
& forth,
taking turns
reefing on a stubborn wheel nut.
the poet appears, broom
& dustpan in hand.
Labor Day
all our jams are up,
our watermelons, tomatoes, cukes & peaches.
cruising past
these fields of corn,
their tassels shining in the
sundown,
already I’m
dreaming of Thanksgiving.
in fall I can’t help but
think of death,
its dear color:
already here
& there the maples turn;
here is a funeral cortege,
holding up traffic,
the women covering their
faces,
heads bent, the men solemn,
staring straight ahead.
a whole life passes
before me,
someone I
never knew;
the sun shines over the
hearse, thru the windows
onto their laps where their
hands are folded.
home, sitting on the porch
with you,
these sweet short moments
talking
& looking over our marigolds
never come often enough.
yet together our lives’re kind: we
get by,
savoring this
time
as the gardener puts his
yard in order.
everywhere I
look, people are whistling, busy:
now’s the time to read
Whitman again.