R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 15

Lamentations

...If you came to me now
I would cry the dissolute tears
that Achilles cried for
his silent lover killed.
But I would not persuade you,
no, you of the knives and pans,
kitchen battles from God knows where,
desiring to be worshiped
and dissatisfied
with lesser things,
commanding to be loved.

I cannot love you that way.
But stay a while and catch me
in your lashes and glances
and warm expectant thrusts and moans.

Tell me I am the chief of liars
And I will say, yet again,
and tell me again,
and then lose your band and ribbon
in a bed of eiderdown
and hope to be redeemed
from the knives and pans,
the strictly speaking conurbation
that drives you downward
from the heart into a mattress,
no: Oh no, you are more,
you are life and
you are sweat and blister,
calm and satisfaction,
blood (and pain) and everything.

Love's Depth

Take the knife
from the tray
and into a thousand
pieces
splay me.
I do not feel it
not even one
bit.
And when you are
done
there is still
one thing more
you need to do:
kiss me deep
deep
until I clack your teeth
on mine
with your cold tongue
and run
away.

Things You Didn't Know

When I play piano
children sing
like magpies
so loudly
I lose my place
I think the ukulele
is a real instrument
to be treated like a violin
and not like
the kazoo you found
in your father’s
handkerchief drawer
and I was a tenor
and high F# was
my last strong note
before dissolving
into a spastic
tremulous shriek.
and as dog persons go
I am a cat person
though of course
I know dogs
have hearts
of molten gold
and cats silver brains
that tell them to walk
across the piano keys
ruining everything
to get their head
under a moving hand.
and yes,
I like both Gregorian and
Mozarbic chants
because
they are two kinds
of passion
one is like
my passion
because it flows
evenly and solemnly
but at its worst
sounds like
the endless tapping of keys
on an old typewriter
but when sung right
say by Solemnes
at first vespers
like the voice
Augustine heard
the one that said
Lift me and read me!
I am familiar, familiar
like the dull hum
of the swirling fan
you have learned
to ignore, familiar.
But you are Africa,
you are Spain and Babylon
and the Tigris running
incense burning to
slice the hot days into
vapours of dizzy grace
the taste of ginger
coffee, cardamom,
crushed eucalyptus
for my dull dull soul
a voice lost between
weeping and rejoicing,
like the tears of sacrifice,
when Abraham thought
he heard God’s voice
say Stop,
like young lambs in spring
a sound of tentative praise
when you walked into a room
and everyone
became a stranger.

The Kiss

Poor Klimt, unfortunately named,
And tied to one iconic piece
(For which he isn't to be blamed,
But truth be told, it hurts the eyes.)

A couple tangled in gold cover
In passion rarefied, complex,
Lover squarefied by lover
Covertly duveted, locked in sex.

I thought of Klimt just yestre'en early
When into my rough digs you came--
Naked, vulnerable and surly--
Quiet as a lamb, insane.

I kiss you on the neck and stroke
An ivory shoulder, while you breathe
A little faster,no word spoken.
You start to pulsate, and to writhe.

There is no duvet, no position
Like unto what Der Klimt has made.
In our more human situation.
We strive for different colours, shades.

A kiss in this shambolic room is
Nothing gold and nothing square.
We know this matters just as soon as
The cover's off and hits the floor.

You struggle to retain ideas
While kisses turn to rummaging
For hidden places, fruits delicious
Straight from the Hesperides.

Old Euclid weeps, his pattern broken
And Klimt's gilt patchwork cracks like ice.
The painted kiss is but a token
Of what the sinful soul finds nice.

On a Poem by Roethke

In Roethke's poem, Jane dies
Thrown by a horse.
The teacher, by her grave, cries
For her beauty and wonders
Who he is: not a lover,
Not a father, or a friend
Exactly. A maker of tears, a mover
Of souls in a room without end.
Jane is dead before she is twenty
And her light syllables are now,
Like verses of old poems, a memory.
But you are here with dancing eyes
Talking about tomorrow's concert,
A new restaurant, opportunities
In fabulous China and Romantic Heidelberg.
You do not see me standing by the grave
Of your expectations, mourning
Lost loves you've yet to have.
It's enough for you that your journey
Is underway and that this lover
Of your beauty and syllables
Stands with you at the train
Wishing you the indefinite
Postponement of uncertainty and pain.

The Fakir of Bishkek

We're down to drying roses
grapes out of season
a smattering of tangerines
and girls who look like you.
Down to the movies
We never saw together, two
as I recall. Maybe others.
On the way past Arabesque
the mountains loom in the dark
like gigantic snoring bears,
but like my secrets
I cannot see them. You did.
You clenched my past in a fist
and wrung it dry and said
it was not a life but a race
With an invisible dead father
who had never liked roses,
or opera, or me very much.
So, you wonder of me, What
is my favourite song, my
favourite time of day?
I don't know I say honestly.
Can't you see darling
I am running from the bears,
the drying roses,
the invisible dead father,
and there is no time
for the slowness of your kiss.

New

New

…wears off all things:

Shoes and cars,

Christmas stars,

kings and golden rings.



But love we’re told

If it is true

is always new

and never old.



I wonder if Odysseus

Half-heartedly

across the sea

divined the mess



he’d left behind:

a comely wife,

a married life,

love, of a kind.



Or did he mishap know

that temporality

is love’s infirmity

for us below?



We lack the angels’ plight,

their scope–

even a rope–

to scale their height.



And so we think

love is our portal

to the immortal

as down we sink.



No love’s not love

that alters when

the clock strikes ten

or fate plays rough.



Love’s the state whereby

we’re crazed to think

that passion’s blink

will never die.


...


I thought (the cheek!)

I’d found love true

In someone new,

and she was chic.



Her kisses fell like flakes

to ground–

She had me bound:

And Ah, the stakes!



She said, You are my only

heart’s desire–

Oh purple fire:

Make me unlonely.



And you, I said in trembling tone,

Are Chinese food

Not bad, not good,

–Was that my phone?



We sowed the field prodigiously

From summer’s call

Until the fall

religiously.



But what is new is never

Love and thus

this us

was not forever.



She packed her bag (the jerk)

and said

It’s dead

It didn’t work.


...



But Love’s not work, at least

the kind

that’s blind.

like the Cretan beast.



Love’s old at first hello,

Recognized,

not improvised

like Waldorf Jello.



Love says (the same) to each,

a simple word

barely heard,

touching without reach.



Love’s sad, right from the start

the rain

unexplained,

creation without art.



And love will find you hollow.

Thus, Jack and Jill

against their will

do leave the hill and follow.

...

The moral is beware the new

It’s shade

will fade

For her, and you.

The Binding of Ismail

The boy clung to his father's cloak like mud.
For it was the feast, and Hajar was at work
Toiling over the pots and staying out
Of Sarai's way. The embittered crone hated her
And hated too the boy, the apple
Of Abram's eye, the son she couldn't bear.
Hajar was young, and she was beautiful,
Most beautiful among the lambs, he said,
Most beautiful of those he chose to bed.


Rounding a thicket, Abram spied a ram.
'Father', said Ismail, 'Our God is great'.
'Great yes', the father said, 'but never sate--
This year he asks still more of us than rams.'
The old man touched Ismail's hair and sighed.
'For what is given, so much is required!'
.
But Ismail knew the old man's moods and that
Sometimes he heard voices sounding in his ears,
And that this madness was upon him now.

'Abba', he said. 'You hear the voice again?
It is Sarah's voice--not God's --who hates me more
Than Philistines, than Canaanites and snakes--
And curses me and shakes her knotty hand
And beats my mother when you cannot see.'

'This time, said Abram again,'God requires much more.
Lie down my child, our sacrifice is near.'

The boy leant against a rock and found it soft.
He did not see his father draw the knife
From out its sheath or circle it towards heaven
(As the laws of sacrifice require). He slipped
A rope around the filial wrists
Another round his ankles, jerked them tight
And woke the boy. 'Abba, by God, what will you do?' he cried.


Abraham danced in circles, spanned
Ismail's face with his ancient hand and sang
'Our God is great, and God demands your blood.
O my son, O Ismail. my only dearest son,'
And brought the knife plumb leftward
Against the boy's pale throat, from left
To right, one slice would do the trick:
Ismail dead (imagine) God satisfied at last,
And Sarah full of joy to get the news.

But then awakening from his deathly trance
Abram heard the voice as what it was:
Not God's command but Sarah's jealous plea
'Kill him, kill Ismail, kill Hajar too--for me'.

The Simplicity of Love (Diotima in Plato’s Symposium: 210a-212c)

Love, Socrates？
It is wanting to be reborn
not as yourself,
but as the object of your own desire--
and what you see
in the eyes of the beloved
squinting through kisses for
the truth on your lips.

It comes to you
in flashes and dreams
that leave you drenched
in sweat, even in winter:
and what you feel is the
end of feeling,
the closing of eyes
—your eyes, yes
and the eyes in which you have seen
the beauty of a new soul,
in which you have
seen a nest of birds
hatched out in April,
a wave regathering itself
to rush back into the sea,
the young man in the tomb
saying He is not here,
the parched earth
receiving rain with an open throat.
It is only seen
in the eyes of another
where it is wrapped
in memories that existed
before you sucked a breast,
ideas that resonated
though the spheres
before your ears were formed,
humanity raised
from the shadows
to beauty and music.
It is the lesser mystery of the highest good.

For William Carlos Williams

I had bought
you
black bread
but left it
open
on the counter
by mistake,

and it
turned to
crust
in just the time
between
breakfast
and lunch.

Forgive me
but
as I noshed
I thought
only of
you, my sweet.