R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 8

Geworfenheit

Martin Heidegger
might have said
a poem
is the hole in the Everydayness
that pushes us
towards Dread.
It does not
announce itself,
No:
it is lost in the rushing grayness
of less and less mattering,
in the shattering of brightness,
in Eternity
busted into
a confusion of temporary pain
and things to be done,
we hope,
for the last time.
It is coming when you realize
the last lovely girl
who betrayed you will end
as the last lovely girl
you betrayed,
that love
is not even temporary
but as unnatural as the poem
itself, the prick we make
in the hope of making
an eternity of light.

Shops

The snow is riding waves of wet wind
and I am fumbling with the umbrella you left behind
trying to get the spokes to spread under the cloth;
all cooperate but one, the one you warned me of.
Its tiny hinge has broken from its stretcher
making it an enemy of the whole web, and soon
it will pierce the fabric with a decisive rip,
and rips will weaken it fatally until it becomes
like those umbrellas you see dumped in bins,
abandoned in parks and ice rink lounges everywhere.
A mother with детка points at my dilemma:
(she thinks foreigners with umbrellas are comic
and is saying to the child увидеть глупого человека.
Do you see the silly man?) But she passes quickly:
I am saying to myself this can be fixed with a wire,
a thin wire ingeniously wrapped from stretcher to rib.
But I have no wire and the snow is piling higher,
in dollops of wet insult to my face and head.
"See how Christ's" (snow) "streams in the firmament"
as I reckon Jesus was not a fumbler with parasols.
I have parked the shopping bags on the walkway;
soon the baked goods will begin to die of the weather,
and I will need a stone house and fire to feel my skin again.

To Heloise

Dear pupil you must do as it behooves
A woman's soul to give and curry love.
Do not forget that our immortal souls
Are made of choices and in the groove
Between those choices what is dark and foul--
Sin--the inglorious victory of our race
Over Christ's kindness looks us in the face
And leers, et eo ipso we are lost.
So, if your search of me is as for good
Then I can say I am not god but devil
Who uses language as gluts forage food
For appetite, and all for love of evil.
Can suckling lips restore what I can fashion
From Jesus' wounds to make a higher passion?

Alison in Memory

The time you missed Mass
After giggling you wanted to hear choirboys
You blamed it on the furniture, mostly
On the harpsichord your father, the spy,
Lugged up to the fourth floor in Somerville
The day you were released from MacLean.
All great artists go there you said brightly,
Clutching some flowers a nurse had given you.
The admission standards have plummeted I said.

What a mess of pink scars you were, my young love,
A map of too much Bach and Nin and
Wine. You lured me drunk one night
To Lincoln because you said your heat
Was broken. I found you in your brother's bed
Coiled innocent as a cat
And naked and smiling for me to come too,
To the white folds that in the Massachusetts
Moonlight looked like foam, and you were floating.

I wrapped a towel around the bones
That had trembled at the touch of orderlies and Uncles:
I knew my touch would not be
Noticed, not felt and I shivered to think
I could not keep you warm
But that one January night in Boston.

Voices

Though they are not among the senses
they are the outgrowth of the soul--the wind
we are given to play mortal instruments.
sounding anger, warning, hatefulness and blind
passion--for gods, and flesh, for yesterday,
when you pierced my head, and tasted blood
and quizzed me on a Dostoevsky story--
a minor one that you had read at ten.
They are given us for lying and for love,
and for excuses made to cover sin,
And given as well for song and poetry
and absurd riddles ahead of the seduction
you demanded of me, and for compliance.
They are for loss, and memory and awful sadness.

Anxiety

Accomplished in a Midwestern way
consisting of piano recitals and a stint
on the flute, you traded Interlochen for law.
Not graceful, sexual and quiet, but learned
dirty kissing at band camp from an
Italian guy with yellow acne who smelled
like his mother’s unsoaped saucepan.
Married at twenty-one to a persistent BellTel
part-timer headed to business school,
you stayed behind and had sex with
classmates, a few professors,
others who asked and asked a few
yourself. Got to know good Stilton
from Muenster and wetter blues
and romanced memories of a voyage to Ireland
and the rich men onboard you loved too much;
a busted engagement to a steward in Doncaster,
bloody Doncaster for the bloody accent--
Till he took off his ship's whites
and showed you his gray town and dull mother
all smelling of coal oil at Christmas time.
Learning the names of wines from Alsace
and from Natal you divorced the MBA
and married your steady fuck with the soft hair.

Time went by and carried you in its rush.
It is still moving, you moving too, trying to
row against the wind that changes you
caught in the midst of growing memories
and shrinking possibilities.

Pie Pellicane!

Pie Pellicane, Jesu domine
Me immundum munda tuo sanguine
Cuius una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere

My heart falls before you
contemplating yours

Sight and taste and touch
deceive me:
Truth herself speaks truly
or there's nothing true.

I do not see, as Thomas did,
the scars
but I confess his same love
in what I sense but cannot see.

Life giving breath,
that saves from death,
let me hide in your mystery
to live only in love.

Good Pelican,
feed my soul with your blood
hidden until now.

Unveil thy face
and give me my desire,
your knowledge perfectly
and cushioning grace.

[A brief paraphrase of the poem by St Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, written in 1264)

The Inconstant Lover

Her words fell like drops of rain
at first gentle and intermittent,
so small they hardly disturbed the skin.
You know how it is, when you wonder
Is it raining or not?
Well, her words were like that,
soft, what he needed after a dry season,
and whispered so gently he couldn't be sure
they were hers or from a fatal transience
she was servant to, intermittently.
He wanted the rain. Pulsing
and unequivocal, warm and cooling
in the same disclosure of meaning.
Ah, more than rain:
surges and waves crashing
against his mind with eluctable clearness.

She said to him,

Here we are one to the other
and this is all you need to know.
The knowledge of raining is slow:
A droplet does not make a certainty.
Do not look to me for precision,
Or the lifting of the fog you're sailing through.
Time will tell water from the feeling of water
Kiss me in the meantime and wish it were so.

Woodcut of Island Life

On Barred Island the tide is early in
And you and I are talking about life:
A gull swoops seaward, a chipmunk guards his den.
You kiss me and I say, Come be my wife.
You blench at that, because you are not sure
What storyline's your destined history,
Which script will form your scenes, or what gravure
Will draw the lines that realize the mystery
That inculcates the you my fingers touch.
Later the tide thins: you can walk across the bar
Seeing the boats tilting and chugging on the Reach--
A break in islands, far beyond islands where
Your future is buried, like sharp coral, deep
Beneath my vision, where the old ships sleep.

It is the Soul That's Erotic

For Asha

It's the soul that's erotic
There is not one soulless particle of flesh.
I want to kill philosophy
For preaching any higher love than this,
Any truth but, it's the soul that is erotic.

I want to kill all teachers who taught
The Socratic lie, that bodies die.
No, they come from you and me
Because the soul is erotic
And Eros says create new flesh

Like yours that trembles
At another's touch, another's glance
Another's words pulsing in your heart
Because the soul, the soul
Is erotic.