I. |
|
|
|
I hesitated |
|
before untying the bow |
|
that bound this book together. |
|
|
|
A black book: |
|
ALBUMS |
5 |
CA. AGRIPPA |
|
Order Extra
Leaves |
|
By
Letter and Name |
|
|
|
A Kodak album of time-burned |
|
black construction paper |
10 |
|
|
The string he tied |
|
Has been unravelled by years |
|
and the dry weather of trunks |
|
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World
War |
|
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen |
15 |
Until they resemble cigarette-ash |
|
|
|
Inside the cover he inscribed something in
soft graphite |
|
Now lost |
|
Then his name |
|
W.F. Gibson Jr. |
20 |
and something, comma, |
|
1924 |
|
|
|
Then he glued his Kodak prints
down |
|
And wrote under them |
|
In chalk-like white pencil: |
25 |
"Papa's saw mill, Aug. 1919." |
|
|
|
A flat-roofed shack |
|
Against a mountain ridge |
|
In the foreground are tumbled boards and offcuts
|
|
He must have smelled the pitch, In August |
30 |
The sweet hot reek |
|
Of the electric saw |
|
Biting into decades |
|
|
|
Next the spaniel Moko |
|
"Moko 1919" |
35 |
Poses on small bench or table |
|
Before a backyard tree |
|
His coat is lustrous |
|
The grass needs cutting |
|
Beyond the tree, |
40 |
In eerie Kodak clarity, |
|
Are the summer backstairs of Wheeling, |
|
West Virginia
|
|
Someone's left a wooden stepladder out |
|
|
|
"Aunt Fran and [obscured]" |
45 |
Although he isn't, this gent |
|
He has a "G" belt-buckle |
|
A lapel-device of Masonic origin |
|
A patent propelling-pencil |
|
A fountain-pen |
50 |
And the flowers they pose behind so solidly
|
|
Are rooted in an upright length of whitewashed
|
|
concrete sewer-pipe.
|
|
|
|
Daddy had a horse named Dixie |
|
"Ford on Dixie 1917" |
55 |
A saddle-blanket marked with a single star
|
|
Corduroy jodpurs |
|
A western saddle |
|
And a cloth cap |
|
Proud and happy |
60 |
As any boy could be |
|
|
|
"Arthur and Ford fishing 1919" |
|
Shot by an adult |
|
(Witness the steady hand |
|
that captures the wildflowers |
65 |
the shadows on their broad straw hats |
|
reflections of a split-rail fence) |
|
standing opposite them, |
|
on the far side of the pond, |
|
amid the snake-doctors and the mud, |
70 |
Kodak in hand, |
|
Ford Sr.? |
|
|
|
And "Moma July, 1919" |
|
strolls beside the pond, |
|
in white big city shoes, |
75 |
Purse tucked behind her, |
|
While either Ford or Arthur, still straw-hatted,
|
|
approaches a canvas-topped touring car. |
|
|
|
"Moma and Mrs. Graham at fish hatchery 1919"
|
|
Moma and Mrs. G. sit atop a graceful concrete |
80 |
arch. |
|
|
|
"Arthur on Dixie", likewise 1919, |
|
rather ill at ease.
|
|
On the roof behind the barn, behind him, |
|
can be made out this cryptic mark: |
85 |
H.V.J.M.[?] |
|
|
|
"Papa's Mill 1919", my grandfather most regal
amid a wrack of |
|
cut lumber, |
|
might as easily be the record |
|
of some later demolition, and |
90 |
His cotton sleeves are rolled |
|
to but not past the elbow, |
|
striped, with a white neckband |
|
for the attachment of a collar. |
|
Behind him stands a cone of sawdust some thirty
feet in height. |
95 |
(How that feels to tumble down, |
|
or smells when it is wet) |
|
|
|
II. |
|
|
|
The mechanism: stamped black tin, |
|
Leatherette over cardboard, bits of boxwood,
|
|
A lens |
100 |
The shutter falls |
|
Forever |
|
Dividing that from this. |
|
|
|
Now in high-ceiling bedrooms, |
|
unoccupied, unvisited, |
105 |
in the bottom drawers of veneered bureaus
|
|
in cool chemical darkness curl commemorative
|
|
montages of the country's World War dead,
|
|
|
|
just as I myself discovered |
|
one other summer in an attic trunk, |
110 |
and beneath that every boy's best treasure
|
|
of tarnished actual ammunition |
|
real little bits of war |
|
but also |
|
the mechanism |
115 |
itself. |
|
|
|
The blued finish of firearms
|
|
is a process, controlled, derived from common
|
|
rust, but there |
|
under so rare and uncommon a patina |
120 |
that many years untouched |
|
until I took it up |
|
and turning, entranced, down the unpainted
|
|
stair, |
|
to the hallway where I swear |
125 |
I never heard the first shot. |
|
|
|
The copper-jacketed slug recovered |
|
from the bathroom's cardboard cylinder of
|
|
Morton's Salt |
|
was undeformed |
130 |
save for the faint bright marks of lands |
|
and grooves |
|
so hot, stilled energy, |
|
it blistered my hand. |
|
|
|
The gun lay on the dusty carpet. |
135 |
Returning in utter awe I took it so carefully
up |
|
That the second shot, equally unintended,
|
|
notched the hardwood
bannister and brought |
|
a strange bright smell
of ancient sap to life |
|
in a beam of dusty
sunlight. |
140 |
Absolutely alone |
|
in awareness of the
mechanism. |
|
|
|
Like the first time you put your mouth |
|
on a woman. |
|
|
|
III.
|
|
|
|
"Ice Gorge at Wheeling |
145 |
1917" |
|
|
|
Iron bridge in the distance, |
|
Beyond it a city. |
|
Hotels where pimps went about their business
|
|
on the sidewalks of a lost world. |
150 |
But the foreground is in focus, |
|
this corner of carpenter's Gothic, |
|
these backyards running down to the freeze.
|
|
|
|
"Steamboat on Ohio River", |
|
its smoke foul and dark, |
155 |
its year unknown, |
|
beyond it the far bank |
|
overgrown with factories. |
|
|
|
"Our Wytheville |
|
House Sept. 1921" |
160 |
|
|
They have moved down from Wheeling and my
father wears his |
|
city clothes. Main Street is unpaved and an
electric streetlamp is |
|
slung high in the frame, centered above the
tracked dust on a |
|
slack wire, suggesting the way it might pitch
in a strong wind, |
|
the shadows that might throw. |
165 |
|
|
The house is heavy, unattractive,
sheathed in stucco, not native |
|
to the region. My grandfather, who sold supplies
to contractors, |
|
was prone to modern materials, which he used
with |
|
wholesaler's enthusiasm. In 1921 he replaced
the section of brick |
|
sidewalk in front of his house with the broad
smooth slab of poured |
170 |
concrete, signing this improvement with a
flourish, "W.F. |
|
Gibson 1921". He believed in concrete and
plywood |
|
particularly. Seventy years later his signature
remains, the slab |
|
floating perfectly level and charmless between
mossy stretches of |
|
sweet uneven brick that knew the iron shoes
of Yankee horses. |
175 |
|
|
"Mama Jan. 1922" has come out to sweep the
concrete with a |
|
broom. Her boots are fastened with buttons
requiring a special instrument. |
|
|
|
Ice gorge again, the Ohio,
1917. The mechanism closes. A |
|
torn clipping offers a 1957 DeSOTO FIREDOME,
4-door Sedan, |
|
torqueflite radio, heater and power steering
and brakes, new |
180 |
w.s.w. premium tires. One owner. $1,595. |
|
|
|
IV. |
|
|
|
He made it to the age of
torqueflite radio |
|
but not much past that, and never in that
town. |
|
That was mine to know, Main Street lined |
|
with Rocket Eighty-eights, |
185 |
the dimestore floored with wooden planks |
|
pies under plastic in the Soda Shop, |
|
and the mystery untold, the other thing, |
|
sensed in the creaking of a sign after midnight
|
|
when nobody else was there. |
190 |
|
|
In the talc-fine dust beneath the platform
of the |
|
Norfolk & Western
|
|
lay indian-head pennies undisturbed |
|
since the dawn of
man. |
|
|
|
In the banks and courthouse, a fossil time |
195 |
prevailed, limestone centuries.
|
|
|
|
When I went up to Toronto |
|
in the draft, |
|
my Local Board was there on Main Street, |
|
above a store that bought and sold pistols. |
200 |
I'd once traded that man a derringer for a
|
|
Walther P-38. |
|
The pistols were in the window |
|
behind an amber roller-blind |
|
like sunglasses. |
205 |
I was seventeen or so but
basically I guess |
|
you just had to be a white boy. |
|
I'd hike out to a shale pit and run |
|
ten dollars worth of 9mm |
|
through it, so worn you hardly |
210 |
had to pull the trigger. |
|
Bored, tried shooting |
|
down into a distant stream but |
|
one of them came back at me |
|
off a round of river rock |
215 |
clipping walnut twigs from a branch |
|
two feet above my head. |
|
So that I remembered the mechanism. |
|
|
|
V.
|
|
|
|
In the all night bus station
|
|
they sold scrambled eggs to state troopers |
220 |
the long skinny clasp-knives called fruit
knives |
|
which were pearl handled watermelon-slicers
|
|
and hillbilly novelties in brown varnished
wood |
|
which were made in Japan. |
|
|
|
First I'd be sent there at night only |
225 |
if Mom's carton of Camels ran out |
|
but gradually I came to value |
|
the submarine light, the alien reek |
|
of the long human haul, the strangers |
|
straight down from Port Authority |
230 |
headed for Nashville, Memphis, Miami. |
|
Sometimes the Sheriff watched them get off
|
|
making sure they got back on. |
|
|
|
When the colored restroom |
|
was no longer required |
235 |
they knocked open the cinderblock |
|
and extended the magazine rack |
|
to new dimensions, |
|
a cool fluorescent cave of dreams |
|
smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant, |
240 |
perhaps as well of the travelled fears |
|
of those dark uncounted others who, |
|
moving as though contours of hot iron, |
|
were made thus to dance |
|
or not to dance |
245 |
as the law saw fit. |
|
|
|
There it was that I was
marked out as a writer, |
|
having discovered in that alcove |
|
copies of certain magazines |
|
esoteric and precious, and, yes, |
250 |
I knew then, knew utterly, |
|
the deal done in my heart forever, |
|
though how I knew not, |
|
nor ever have. |
|
|
|
Walking home |
255 |
through all the streets unmoving |
|
so quiet I could hear the timers of the traffic
lights a block away: |
|
the mechanism. |
|
Nobody else, just the silence |
|
spreading out |
260 |
to where the long trucks groaned |
|
on the highway |
|
their vast brute souls in want. |
|
|
|
VI.
|
|
|
|
There must have been a true
last time |
|
I saw the station but I don't remember |
265 |
I remember the stiff black horsehide coat
|
|
gift in Tucson of a kid named Natkin |
|
I remember the cold |
|
I remember the Army duffle |
|
that was lost and the black man in Buffalo |
270 |
trying to sell me a fine diamond ring, |
|
and in the coffee shop in Washington |
|
I'd eavesdropped on a man wearing a black
tie |
|
embroidered with red roses |
|
that I have looked for ever since. |
275 |
|
|
They must have asked me something |
|
at the border |
|
I was admitted |
|
somehow |
|
and behind me swung the stamped tin shutter |
280 |
across the very sky |
|
and I went free |
|
to find myself |
|
mazed in Victorian brick |
|
amid sweet tea with milk |
285 |
and smoke from a cigarette called a Black
Cat |
|
and every unknown brand of chocolate |
|
and girls with blunt-cut bangs |
|
not even Americans |
|
looking down from high narrow windows |
290 |
on the melting snow |
|
of the city undreamed |
|
and on the revealed grace |
|
of the mechanism, |
|
no round trip. |
295 |
|
|
They tore down the bus station
|
|
there's chainlink there |
|
no buses stop at all |
|
and I'm walking through Chiyoda-ku |
|
in a typhoon |
300 |
the fine rain horizontal |
|
umbrella everted in the storm's Pacific breath
|
|
tonight red lanterns are battered, |
|
|
|
laughing, |
|
in the mechanism. |
305 |
|
|
. |
|