Poems from Masks of Six Decades (2010)
Copyright © 2010 by David Cope
Acknowledgements
Poems
from Masks of Six Decades appeared in
Long Shot: Beat Bush, Big
Scream, Napalm Health Spa, The Woodstock
Journal “October Surprise” Issue,
Chiron Review, Presa, Fresh Grass, and The Litribune. “Last of my Singing
Fathers”
appeared in Rattapallax 12.
“March” appeared in Wildflowers: a
Poetry & Sculpture: Poetry based on the works of Jaume Plensa.
Poems included here:
Masks of Six Decades
Haditha
Last of My Singing Fathers
As My Mother Lay Waiting
Death, you come
fallen
Last Look
Flight to Phoenix
In My Father’s House
A Dream of Jerusalem
March
Andrey Voznesensky
–––
Masks of Six Decades
shining day boy, sullen gangster, mad child, naked dreamer—
I chronicled blue-collar rages, sorrows, quiet lives, meditated
in boiler rooms & dreamed I’d tamed the dark shapes within—
now I eye them, sleeping, turning, formless, always present:
I no longer trust my own sanity. my children have risen
to their dreams; I wake to my beating heart & sigh. wanderer,
I lose myself in sunlight bending thru a vertical shaft of cloud,
rise on what thermals remain to the mountain cave where silence
beckons & the singer folds his arms to rest. strutting corpse,
will I end singing my blindness, visions borne beyond lines close
to the nose, go out dancing naked in Blakean light or rage against
against the night? my father, now quiet at family fest, eyes me,
sighing softly that he must cling to my arm climbing the stair,
patting my hand, curious still that wheel spins within wheel—
& my mother, ghost in a wheelchair trapped in memory loss mid-
sentence, listening uncomprehending as voices wash around her,
asleep in syllables chanted for her, sky changing thru her window—
what nightmares each of them let go down the meandering river
in the long turns of their days, what sighs & rages, ecstasies, lost
hopes to get to this quiet hour, grave dreams still held at bay?
the world will not be moved by words, tho poets would have it so:
we sing our lives out in darkness surrounded by friends if lucky,
as any good man or woman dreams & is no more. the fault is not
in words, & despair yields no vision upon which to hang bugle,
drums or lyre: I’d have many loves shaking hips to a wild beat,
solitude within dream, herons gliding upriver thru dawn mists
beyond these eyes & still-beating heart.
Haditha
mother & child
shot as they knelt
in prayer—powder burns
where the slugs
entered & tore flesh,
blood erupting into dry air—
even as marines
moved on to machine gun
a man, his wife, his daughters,
the blind old man,
father reading his Koran,
the grandmother, mother,
brothers
& uncles. one survived,
playing dead beneath
the body of her
brother, his blood
covering, giving her life.
Last of My Singing Fathers
In memoriam Carl Rakosi:
passed
dead (you might say, not one
to mince words) at last,
the century gone to bed
with you
Carl, quietly
proud
to be Charles, Churl, free
man beholden to none—
standing
with laborers
on the street, no
poet sitting on his exquisite ass—
at eighty,
reciting your epic elegy on the decline
& last days of your word brother
George Oppen,
you demanded only
silence from your audience,
reciting lines into the darkness
that we all breathe
together more deeply
into the unmeasured silence that
the voice itself
find its own inner rhythm, dissolve—
a heartbeat—
aged sailor afloat among endless
stars & winds, no regrets, bemused,
surprised, aware—
you were amused, too,
when Allen Ginsberg gave us
oatmeal & seaweed breakfast
then took a call & castigated his caller
(who would've cut his balls off,
blaming his religion)—
bright morning across
the kitchen table, bowl of fruit, open door
& breeze among potentillas beyond—
so Carl I salute you
old friend who signed me ally
when we read together,
who later recommended the sephardic poets
of
the Jewish Eagle in thought—
last of my singing fathers—
small wrists, fine eyes, gentle
touch, yet
firm & kind.
As my mother lay waiting for surgery
in hospital gown covered with heated blankets,
twilit morn gave way to dawn, rush hour traffic racing
beyond August's ragged leaves still in this pearl hour.
she looked as one already dead, laid out still,
chin tilted upward, brows & cheeks sculpted alabaster,
the babe asleep within—I dreamed of all those passing
the night awaiting day to come, imagin'd processional
in silent light, & wept in the profound beauty of death,
unseen companion always by my side, patient lover
who brings the skull's eyes into the babe's heart,
whose song is an endless float where does & fawns drink
& lift their eyes to recognize you, whose dewy footfalls
break the strong man & give him his tears, who fills
the silent woman's tongue with words: even now
my mother opens her eyes, wondering if I too am still
by her side, I dreaming of my own children, of the day
when they'll wait patiently by my side & know this song.
Death, you come
to speak to me thru your mask,
you touch me thru my mother
who now is dying, & think
to make me shudder. I see
her as a child with all those
dreams a child bears like fresh
flowers in baskets to an aged
mother, all those songs dancing,
dancing in Memory’s too-large
ears. I see the ingenue
standing at the church door,
triumphant with new husband,
their faces full of light,
& the agony of divorce,
the lost dream, the struggle
to provide for innocents
floundering in pain,
aging woman emerging
alone, gripping that rage
like a wand, a chalice
with bitter dregs for all
who cross her. Death,
tho you have long sung
parting songs in my ear, I
long ago trimmed
the twisted root that would’ve
strangled me, & see now
only an old woman’s
tears, & I a sorrow child
left to bury a broken
dream, to sit quietly
by the grave of sorrows
& clean out the store-
house that others may
dream anew & let go
as they too flounder
& find their way
on the stream where desire
could break all to pieces.
fallen
scarecrow sitting up, bony fingers clutching her wetted hospital gown,
rounded shoulders, trembling legs, she seems the death mask of a former
self, round moons of her eyelids alabaster like the eyes of tomb statuary—
she trembles & shakes, startled by my presence, eyes now wide—alert.
her mouth opens, she struggles to form syllables which fade even as she
mumbles in tongues, hisses, sighs: “what did you take from my plate?”
there is no plate, only a teacup with teabag, perched above chickenflesh
legs. her eyes grow large, she now sees me, sees that I am David, not
Charlie, closes her eyes when she talks or looks away, hands grasping
the urine-stained gown. she will not look me in the eye. there is little to say,
though she is quick to ask for her walker—I think, perhaps, so she might rise
to use the bathroom. she takes my hand & looks away, but can’t get up.
the fall has made her weak, feeble, forgetful, & the nurse comes & stops
her escape. she looks at me again & is startled, closes her eyes quickly.
her breath now labors; the nurse reassures me it’s only Cheyne-Stokes.
I watch her breathing & think of her evasions: so much pain between
us, I the eldest, “beloved,” whom she once “would have smothered”
while she could, as she brought me from the hospital. how does one
reach through a veil, through a death mask, through the blind eyes
of a lifetime & somehow find the ghosts, the love that must have lived
once? at last, leaving, alone, I drive to my next station, dreaming
how we usher out those we love whose love has always had conditions.
I am the sorrow child again, lost in a wide sky where tears cannot show
what the heart cannot fathom, where the heart must indeed be.
Last Look
the room is silent, empty but
for the bier. she lies, sheet
draped over her body—
she is so small in death—
the head tilted back, eyelids,
aquiline nose, cupid’s bow lips, skin
translucent, alabaster
yet still lovely—we are
in tears. my lips touch her
forehead goodbye—cold,
heat & struggle all
gone in the waiting day.
Flight to Phoenix
in seat staring out window at clouds,
I look into my empty hands—
think of his face, my own a mirror
thru which I can see him
& in his, the pattern of my being.
I followed his canoe, early evening, he
looking back as I swam my first long half-mile
as he later followed me up Bright Angel.
how much
sorrow we both contained, how many tears,
madness we passed
& left, to keep the heart secure.
he was a deliberate hiker thru sage & castled butte,
his camera imaging the mirror of our days:
a fly on yellow cactus flower near walls of vishnu schist,
the son in full stride on switchback below,
the thousand-year handprint in sinagua doorway.
In My Father’s House
we walk thru his rooms, sit where he sat, tell stories—
the wild ride back from Hana, his teenage self scaling
Long’s Peak on the front face where none now climb,
hiking beneath Tahquamenon, vision thru falling water,
the eagles trailing the boat a mile from shore—
the silences are deep, hollow, empty.
sometimes we slip & speak of him in the present.
out his windows the line of browned peaks
rises against the clear sky.
the saguaros are in bloom,
acacia throw out bright petals.
the mirror casts backward thru ancestors
toiling land & turning lathes, scripture ever in their hands—
Quaker faces lit with simple gifts,
always the shadow in the corner of the eye,
the evening dance turning, passing time & light,
beloved who bears one from the dark
wrapped in blankets beneath the still moon.
I am
rapt, shaken, & he
is with me, looking out thru my eyes, his hand
my hand in the garden, cutting, giving life. yet he
is not here,
a breeze in the acacia, then silence.
how swaddle myself
with blankets long vanished & recall a father’s eye
overlooking my child-sleep?
A
Dream of Jerusalem
for Jaume Plensa
if in time the city has been, will be desolate, the scattered bones chirping in dry day,
the woman calls her lover to come away, searches without finding, sings silently
that none may turn to Love until it descends in morning dew and in calling doves.
as bone fragments & ashes swirl in shining waves, sink into dark murk & are gone
one turns in dreams to the child’s eye, the dark circles of bone where the mother’s
vision once stirred—where her cheek met the small hand reaching thru space:
we are creatures made of words rounded by incantation & the great lyric dream,
the fullness of young lovers sharing wine in the moonlit night in the garden, swearing
they’ll not turn to Love until it descends in morning dew and in calling doves.
here, in mountain air & silence before dawn, in the spirit borne of blind sight,
cross-legged, the shofur nearby untouched—in this heart shaped by words there is
a presence that could in a soundless tomb shiver the dark with hammers, sound
the call in waves shimmering in all the wheels turning across the universe & make
seraphs weep. yet there is the stillness of the word, the child’s mind that turns to
her mother & touches her skin made of words: words that measure breath to be
shared as tender touch in passing time: brothers cry out at the prison door, women sigh
in their last dank beds, boys turned men shoulder rifles behind dusty tanks & blood
is the cry thru a thousand cities. here there is silence; here light & form where words
bring the lovers together, here the dream of soft bodies moving together, the dream
at once the child’s cry & the mother’s last gasp exhaled in fierce sunset as if
none may turn to Love until it descends in morning dew and in calling doves—
here the desolate city, deserted temple, the lost tribe: here the dream wrapped in words
that round the breath in silent air: here the ashes that once were man, the bright dream
& endless night, here sun disc’s eternal round in silence, unheard music of spheres:
let the woman call thru the city & on the mountain for her lover, and if she searches
without finding, she may hear the scattered bones chirping in the dry day & sing silently
that none may turn to Love until it descends in morning dew and in calling doves.
March
white dawnlight thru my windows, thru fronds of cycad & spathphylum—
fierce light after months of storm & sigh, turning from death to death—
now foreclosures—gruff men once hipsters or marines hair trimmed back
after thirty years, pushing mowers snowblowers shooting hoops with kids
thin women with long hair & hard wise eyes, tough women at the mailbox,
all gone after long decades, houses gone dark, curtainless windows, empty
driveway—fat cats disappear with millions after shanking the economy,
thousands tramping streets, fruitless, families coming apart nowhere to go.
after painting ceiling where roof leak burst thru last summer, I sit alone
silently & listen, tender moments passing, ephemeral yet precious after
so much death & sorrow. In my dream, we scatter roses on the river in July
where last year we spread our mother's ashes, just upstream from her old
bedroom, near moraine bank where I once risked all to save a drowning dog,
clambering across ice & falling in myself, later feted on evening news—
the procession of the dead, everyday dia de muertos, mother father mentor
brother father of a friend now racing thru my brains, their fragile memory
all that remains—easily scattered, lost, erased to all in deadline & routine:
thus this fierce light thru fronds raising my eye to this day, this touch.
Andrey Voznesensky
who could begin
as Goya
eyes ripped out bomb craters
bodies hanging like cracked bells
in a burned landscape
voiceless in the stunned silence—
who could continue thru such
shattered architecture
where even corpses dance
as vapor, in a cry
present yet silent
among a generation without grandfathers—
the burned ends
of fingers grip the pen in agony yet
echo
a darkmotherscream
begging you
to bring lilies of the valley to your
mother
while time allows—
Andrey, calm voyage now
among the silent stars. your song
echoes still
in the sunlit evening where we
murmur
peace for those who remain.