Poems from Silences for Love (1998)
“Beyond having a marvelous eye, his mastery of phrasing at times
seems to peel the skin from his subjects. The poems become trans-
cendent when they begin to dwell on his favorite subject—the
human gesture.”
—James Ruggia
Copyright ©1998 by David Cope
Acknowledgements
Poems
from Silences for Love were published
in Shambala Sun, Napalm Health
Spa, Big Scream, The Cafe Review, Big Fish,
Long Shot, and The Ann Arbor
Poetry Forum. “for allen” appeared in Sunflowers & Locomotives: Songs for
Allen.
“The Rhododendron” appeared in Hazmat
Review 4.2: The Beat Issue.
“The Rhododendron” and “Two Hearted River” appeared in Sins & Felonies (Ed.
G. F. Korreck. Barbaric Yawp, 2007). ”Not as You Were” and “Three Dreams on
the Road” appeared in The Wayne Literary Review (Fall 1995). “The Job” was
published in Big
Hammer 4. “no time to feel” was published in The
Review 15. “Sirens & Flashing
Lights Stop” appeared in Poems for the
Nation: A
Collection of Contemporary Political Poems (Eds. Ginsberg, Clausen, Katz.
Open
Media/Seven Stories, 2000) and in Working
Words: The Literature of
Work, Class & Art. (Ed. M. L. Liebler. Coffee House, 2010).
Poems included here:
Twenty Below
Not as You Were
The Cranes
Three Dreams on the Road
The Job
Two-Hearted River
no time to feel
Alba: The Sailors
Two Women Dream Together
for allen
The Rhododendron
–––
Twenty Below
frozen dead
with a yellow traffic light flashing
flashing
in the sirenless night where shadows
quake & race off or disappear
on the empty sidewalk
where rotgut bottles &
yesterday's papers, butts & cast-off condoms
freeze-float, gutter ice flotsam
in the white night where backfire
echoes bark
in the ear-snapping street & bar windows
ice over in the smoking room where
shadows sway across floors to
skin thump jazz horn wailing to guitars in flames
& drunks spill onto the street, hot for love
in warm rooms, hot for soft skin
moving in candlelight dawn,
hot for swelling sighs, holding on
for love cries in silence, fumbling
for car keys with
suddenly frigid fingers, squinting into
the keyhole as the singer
within cries once more for love,
for love, even as
their feet stumble over
the blanketed lump on the sidewalk,
frozen dead—
Not As You Were
your lips blue, face laved with
undertaker’s paste,
relatives in denial & the priest
handing us his
sunday morning pitch, but
onstage at the Reptile House
tossing pages
to the floor, burning their words,
your voice afire
with a new generation’s news, or
hopeful with a new love despite
the crashing
litany behind, & leaping into
an old poet’s
arms after months of silence—
sing on, sweet boy, in dreams.
The Cranes
silence, no stars in this black night: the sleeper’s own face
stares back at him, empty-eyed, pale & blue, thru flashlit water.
ravens wheel toward the highway where black uniforms
sweep red-stained glass across the concrete in the headlights
of tow-trucks. angry drivers howl & thump dashboards,
hissing to be on their way. high on the mountain, a woman
carries a flame thru razored granite, near the dark summit.
radio clank of boots, boots, boots—a gallery: mouths of
the century’s great politicians, their bright teeth, red gums,
tongues spitting syllables—for grasping fame, a hundred
thousand torsos split, skulls crushed, the famous last words
hissed to a brother as fire arcs down from above. clatter of
ribs played like vibes—flames sear even the highest tree—
cranes fly in line, leaving the lake, scudding west thru dawn.
Three Dreams on the Road
shining in sunlight,
lines of
cars roar into
jockeying for
the open lane in the hot high haze,
punch it—
a face in tears stares out
a back seat window as we pass.
serbian ugolino
chews on moslem necks
as diplomats scurry from
capital to capital—
crowds of ghosts hiss & whisper
in endless elevators—
infants crowd ashore
suffocating in their first breaths.
cries under your
open window—laughter
gaggles down the alley,
closet sorrows
in a thousand suit-&-tie smiles—
ancient crow eyes, the old man
collapsed on the street:
dream lights’ once-infant
eyes for love wink & fade
in a young nurse’s cradling arms.
The Job
years later, he’d disgorge monthly:
searching swamps & paddies for the dead,
eyes in treetops for snipers,
he’d reach thru muck & gassy water
in tropical heat:
skin slid from arms like sausage casings,
arms & legs pulled loose from bloated bellies—
swollen eyes popped open, white with decay.
(get the dogtags &
drop the stinking meat into a body bag—
try to forget anxious parents,
the highschool sweetheart now in college,
her perfumed letters,
his radio flyer buckskin fantasies, hip shake watusi
& all those dreams of panting love—
tally ‘em up).
he couldn’t explain
to his girlfriends how even in their
most intimate moments that death smell
would come to him—he’d
run shrieking into the light,
shaking, his tongue a babble
of dead men’s names.
even here, among
the laughter of friends, he’d need
you—to hold his shaking hands,
again & again, trapped in that dream.
Two Hearted River
eyes like ravens over road kill
fingers flashing in reeling zebcos
the fishermen can’t grasp
that some come for
the water itself, tannin-red
near shore but so clearly a black mirror
where no face appears—
or for lichen-rotted balsam firs
lying like corpses across the flow stacked
with flotsam & foam, feathers
& bones, the fallen gathered
to spin in currents siphoned
& spat down where the portagers put in
with a quiet rush
as cranes hang almost still in the turning
sky above—yet
even the heart
cannot fathom what stillness
rests in this plunge, why men
sing together like choirboys &
stop the gunnel rush &
lay the paddles down in the
whipping breeze where scarred pines bend
thru storm & sigh & rainbow’s end—
nor is it clear what draws one to
the mouth even as the last ice flows frozen
in winter’s roaring surge break free
in great chunks, leaving
the churned sand of November’s waves
again
among agates below—
even the dramas of rescue at sea,
the poignancy of a captain’s last
transmission, retold around
a kitchen
stove in
by old salts now retired
to muse thru waning years
with stormy Mondays & the names of the dead
cannot pierce thru this water
to the lost bottom
or read the runes in the lights of the waves.
no time to feel
my own death flashing past in roaring freight train blizzard winds,
to see lovers friends my kids’ eyes fast-forward life scenes passing—
all these cars ahead in ditch & overturn pile-ups cop lights spinning
up & down the lanes, new arrivals fishtailing slamming brakes—
& suddenly I’m in it, hit the brakes, slide sideways 50 mph past
two cars out of control, their drivers’ eyes wide & terrified—
I pass in unreal slow motion, turning, turning, hills & fields &
faroff lake, farmhouse & barn half-glimpsed thru raging snow—
spin the wheel & miraculously come to dead stop, facing south:
a woman stands knee-deep in snow, quaking hands wiping her eyes,
her car overturned in the ditch, cops racing toward her. rear view:
others’re bearing down on me, they too sliding out of control—
time to move—hands shaking, tapedeck shine a light blues elegy
filling my survivor’s ears—get up to speed & breathe that sigh at last.
Alba: The Sailors
moon gone down, 3 a.m. starscape where loveboys wandered
hand in hand now obscured in luminous grey light & the silence
of pre-dawn breezes swelling the curtains as one boy sleeps
& his lover leans above, watching the sailors hoisting bag after bag
into the bright light of the cabins, adjusting line & tackle,
slapping each other, prancing on docks as the horizon brightens,
still no sun yet already the dawn waves fill far out with sails headed
out & away, no destination but dreams in the fogbanks far north
or in island romances spun by singers in late night reverie.
leaning to the window, he looks down at his stirring companion,
dark eyes & lips opening to caresses in first light, & yet he is
at once far away, looking backward at the receding shore,
bright day already rising to meet dawn’s first rolling breakers.
Two Women Dream Together,
staring straight at you, the first seated on a red chaise playing
soft guitar blues, turning to sing into her young companion’s ear,
she leaning languorously, biting into a nectarine as the boy
brings them their drinks. beyond, an old man dances quietly,
hanging his head, his wrinkled teats flapping in time to the balls
of his feet as they bounce & slide across the bare floor. thru
the window, the rich yellow light of sundown shines with dust, &
far away one can hear hollow cries, summons to prayer echoing
away centuries & kingdoms. the script for the song remains
unwritten as the woman throws herself into her play, her young
& old companions now frenzied, dancing nakedly together.
here the cacti blooms flash up like evening’s white fire &
by dawn hummingbirds will suck the hanging fuchsia’s nectar.
for allen
that summer in the mansion on the hill:
you & Peter in spacious kitchen
fretting over chicken soup, seaweed, Tibetan tea,
the nightly readings—Chris Ide & I dashing thru
halls & rooms upstairs in our underwear, chasing each other
giggling rowdies rolling across beds,
wandering in basement perusing huge library,
singing old Kerouacky Catullus Kit Smart
& Shakespeare’s sonnets aloud together—
you upstairs all night answering mail yakking long
distance scribbling surprised by visitors
as I lay in the next room & watched the million stars
fill the night over the flatirons, singing myself to sleep—
or that time in your apartment twelfth street I come
to read in your
racing to work to class to plane Laguardia taxi-dash
downtown in bright springtime exhausted—Steve showing
videos you at wailing wall & old Reznikoff
our shared love introduced by George Oppen,
steely-voiced compassion my reentry
into
after everybody cleared out, you & I soft reunion,
both drained in crazed worklives, both sleeping
20 hours waking together Saturday evening going out
bite to eat at Christine’s: NY Times, cabbage soup,
chocolate cake—a Danish family recognized you,
sent their kid over for autograph, you yakking
& drawing elaborate skull & stars & flowers personal
greeting with final pen flourish for their bright eyes—
friendly,
welcoming the parents their first time in
or that summer where you’d injured thigh, lay naked
on floor your apartment
young girl massaged pain spots, relaxed nerves
& we sprawled around you,
singing Campion & Dowland,
Steve as director who
gave us parts bass baritone tenor singing
again & again crooning to find
the shared voices in the dream—
poets coming & going, staying a time,
always singing, singing deep into the Elizabethan night
as
& traffic flashed beyond—
& in later years, both too busy, yet your call sped me to
buddhist retreat Yankee Springs
only 20 minutes from my home—
two afternoons scribbling notes together in lodge
as Gelek spun the
word thru
or meeting backstage after Howl & Kaddish Ann Arbor,
too tired to speak, no need to yakk, comfortable merely
to sit an hour in each other’s silent presence as
stage hands gathered props & instruments—
your kiss disappearing into the night your hand waving
pulling away—
& now, calling each of us before the press releases go out
generous gesture even dying
passing burden & light from Walt thru Williams you & Jack
thru those who remain
to new nippled generations
struggling even now to be born.
The Rhododendron
for Suzy—“let’s be famous
lovers”
sunlight thru an open door,
crimson blooms swelling to burst:
who can say
what love is? you take a friend
in hand & roar down blind road after blind road
wandering thru private rooms
in each other’s hearts, sailing thru whole histories
of pain & rage to find a quiet morning,
dew on the laurel leaves. love is not
in the eyes, in the heart, in the entryways
& hotspots of flesh, in heavy breathing—love cannot be
contained in soft arias
whispered at dawn—it is neither two together
nor apart: the eye
is in the hand, the heart in the eye,
the song exhaled & inhaled
& suddenly your dreams fill rooms where others
pace & sing softly of what you were—
O love,
steady rain on the city of the dead,
teardrop on a granite peak, clear day,
angel ghosts circling
the flowering black oak in every long-gone summer
night full of thunder,
sunlight thru an open door,
crimson blooms swelling to burst.