You will say it was quite unintentional,
this leaving the building without saying good-bye.
("Can't I depart, just once,
thinking only of daisies and chocolate pudding?...")

There are in this world enchanters and enchantees.
It's only the latter whose hearts are chained to heavy
    stones,
who could no more leave a room, forgetting you,
than they could, for several minutes, forget to breathe.

How lightly a goddess walks the earth,
evoking smiles in everyone,
but, still, you break our hearts--
like tigers stepping on sparrows' eggs,
like a deer, walking silently through a strand of spiders'
    silk,
taut between trees,
you break our hearts.

Your demure expression,
the unfailing grace with which you meet
the small misfortunes which we meet each day.

Your ready smile, intelligent gaze...
(the eyelashes covering your half-closed eyes).

The care you take in your dress--
nothing fancy, but always pleasing--
never letting one forget you're a woman.

That warm-red, slightly orange, sweater,
the color of poppies,
so perfect next to your yellow hair....

Let these words be a charm against
all actual physical love;
let them somehow quench the passion
which they are tokens of.

[A child of indeterminate ***--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]

"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"

[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"

"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."

"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.

"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?


"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.

"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian ******* Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]

     translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
     push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
     dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
     expand profligately sunward. . . .

"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."

[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."

. . . go out into the evening,
    leaving your room, of which you know each bit,
    your house is the last before the infinite, . . .
    (from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Eingang", MacIntyre translation)
  
The light which strikes my retina
as I look at the Great Galaxy in Andromeda
left there two million years ago.
(Hominids made tools from stone then, but had not yet    
    learned the use of fire.
Genetic material from certain of these hominids has been passed
from one being to another and now is in my own body.)
  
Millennia from now, humans who have
colonized the farthest reaches of our galaxy,
laboriously creating and maintaining Earth-like atmospheres,
will marvel that there once was a place so perfectly suited to
    human life
that such labor was unnecessary. (Just as we marvel that orchids,
whose precise temperature and humidity requirements would seem to necessitate a greenhouse, grow wild in the Amazon.)
  
I cannot believe in a personal God,
intervening in human affairs, but stand in awe
of the terrible force which set the stars and galaxies in motion
--strewing them like so much confetti--;
the life-force running through each living creature,                                              
as straight and true as a ray of light from that galaxy in Andromeda,
willing us to live, grow and be fruitful.

I                                                                ­            
I've never hit my children.
My own father spanked me perhaps ten times:
for riding my bike on a busy street,
for "acting up" in church.
I have no nostalgia for these beatings
(as in: "Sure glad Pa whupped some sense inta me as a young'n—
   don't know where I'd be if he hadn't.")
  
He would make me pull down my pants and underpants
enough to expose my buttocks,
position me between his legs so he could hold my own legs still,
bend me over his left leg with his left arm,
and hit me with his bare right hand.
What I remember as much as the pain
is his angry expression: Was he angry at me?
Or at something else?
I believe it was mostly an unpleasant duty;
usually done because my mother had asked him.
They were afraid we'd become juvenile delinquents.
  
I suppose his own father had spanked him--
and that he, in turn, had been spanked by his father--
a family tradition. . . .
  
There've been times with my own children--
God knows they're far from perfect--
where I've almost given in to anger.
Somehow I've always caught myself,
always remembered that unseemliness. . . .



            II
Our house is kind of ugly from the front, a split-level
with the whole left side facing the street being a solid brick wall.
Our picture window faces the grass and trees of the back yard.
Each morning, no matter how much of a hurry I'm in,
I open the curtains to this window--
that my children might see not just the man-made objects of our living room
but some hint of the grace and beauty of the whole, great, natural world.

Death!
seems y've won;
body's resistance,
all worn down.
  
Flirted in Oberlin ('68):
frozen in headlights;
jump left --
or right?
  
West Virginia.
Kinda teased ya:
One-brake bike on
truck-filled highway ('71).
  
Asleep at wheel
('77, Tennessee),
drove off road --
pillar or cliff . . .
woulda been dead.
  
Suicidal,
love-hope lost.
Asking for
oblivious embrace --
you scorned me
('79, Illinois).
  
Full of cancer
(hospital, now).
Ready for cold kiss,
end-pain.
You're a knockout!
Let's dance.

"23: July 24"
"24: October 5"
"25: February 19"
"26: December 14"
  
The words went right to the pit of my stomach.
All doubt was gone.
I'd graduate/be drafted in June.
By September
I'd be in Vietnam.
  
My high school gym teacher had been an Army sergeant.
He stepped on our stomachs as we did sit-ups,
"toughening us up".
I've had a problem with authority
(unsuited, temperamentally,
to obeying unconditionally).
I'd be a poor soldier in the best of wars.
  
But if a job required some independence/ingenuity --
a pilot or a spy, say --
and if the cause was right
(World War II, for instance),
I could fight as well as another guy.
  
I don't like fighting,
but I'm not so naive as to think it's never a necessity.
There's always someone who, given the chance,
will take our possessions and make us their slaves.
So who should decide
if a particular war is justified?
This seemed to be my own responsibility.
  
Vietnam? I decided it wasn't.
Weren't we protecting a democracy?
No. Thieu lacked popular support.
Wouldn't Thailand and India fall?
No. The domino theory was questionable at best.
Weren't our national interests at stake?
No, not really.
I'd decided I shouldn't fight;
They'd decided to make me fight.

The physical was set for March.
Unless I failed,
I'd go to Vietnam,
go to jail for seven years,
or go to Canada for the rest of my life.
  
In studying Army regulations,
I found a fascinating chart.
It showed for each particular height
the greatest and the smallest weight
the Army would accept.
I'd heard of people who'd gotten out
by injuring themselves intentionally.
Some exaggerated a minor back pain.
Others faked insanity.
Losing weight seemed nobler;
lying/mutilation, not required.
  
The low for me was 118;
lose twenty pounds and I'd be out.
(At 5'10", that's pretty thin.
Could I do it and not get sick?)
My parents thought for sure I'd die.
  
Help from doctors was out of the question;
on my own I studied nutrition.
Cut down on calories,
maintain needed nutrients
(protein, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals).
Once I found a working combination,
I stuck to it without exception.
Cottage cheese, wheat germ, and fish were staples.
Bored fat cells chose self-immolation.
My weight dropped to one hundred and twenty.

In cases where the weight was close
I'd heard the Army sometimes winked:
("Oh we'll fatten this guy up").
I decided to lose to one hundred and ten.
  
Contrary to my parents' fears --
though vigorous exercise made me dizzy --
I really wasn't sick at all.

The Army sent a special bus
to take us to the physical.
Once there, we stripped to underpants,
moved like cattle from each room to the next.
I weighed 110.
They classified me 1-Y
(examine again in a year;
if still unfit, reject).
Losing again would be inconvenient,
but free of worry since I knew that it worked.
  
I'd brought some food.
I drank and ate it ravenously.
  
So what did I feel on that bus heading home?
Triumph? Elation? No.
Relief, sadness, and guilt.
Relief because finally I was free of this mess.
Sadness and guilt because someone else
would be made to go and fight in my place.
It's true this person, on some level,
had chosen not to escape --
but maybe he just hadn't thought it through. . . .
  
Now for a bold statement from a slimy ex-draft-dodger --
I'm sure you'll think this hypocritical -- :
Each of us must be ready to serve.
Responsibility for protecting things we love
can not lie solely with the professional military.
(Future wars could overwhelm them.)
  
Service isn't always guns.
Service might be joining the Peace Corps
or electing leaders who effectively distinguish
false threats from real ones -- and pre-empt war.
  
Wars should be rare, ****** upon us.
No more propping up tottering dictators.
No more shoving "Democracy" down people's throats.
No more sacrificing 10,000 soldiers so we can pay a
      quarter less for gasoline.
  
Wars should be necessary and just;
everyone should serve.

The golfers leave early --
September or October --
it's just you and the hickories,
the asters, the goldenrod --
and the reservoir --
the ripples shimmering eastward.
  
Steamshovels and bulldozers labored here one summer,
digging a hole for the water,
piling up the earth.
  
You walk on the bank they made,
seeing beyond the golf course --
the houses and barns,
the swampy gray-brown fields of goldenrod,
the railroad tracks,
the pines.
  
Your thoughts plunge to the reservoir's bottom
then turn
racing to the farthest field.

It was cold.
Night.
January, I think.
I was wearing long underwear.
I went to the reservoir and played my recorder.
  
A hope I'd been hoping was done.
  
I played for the trees and the fish.
Quiet songs.
They eased my heart.

I would have given you a perfect faith,
belief, unassailable and absolute;
joy's well-spring.
  
I offer only a substitute -- these poems,
disparate, contradictory,
tempered in truest love and despair.
Use them.