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from A Stubborn
Pine in a Stiff Wind
a book
of poems by Earl Coleman
(The Mellen Poetry Press,
2001)
For
ordering information click here.
Canute
He asked only for the waves
to stop.
Not much of a demand. We Captains
of our Ships of State, of Finance,
Industry, expect we’ll be obeyed.
Entire Nations, people tremble at our words.
We move vast legions at our whim, make
engines hum, command the power of the sun,
walk the rilles of the moon at will.
The wonder is – not that he asked,
but that the daring waves, in all their
numbers, thousands multiplied by
thousands of their dancing drops,
spilled saucily across his very boots
and tauntingly withdrew, but only
to regroup and tumble toward him
once again, this time to his thighs.
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Showing the
Flag
The poet Wang Wei was an
official of the Chinese
government of the 8th Century, and frequently was
sent
to travel the vast borderlands in search of enemies.
The space, unbroken on the tundral steppe, raced
forward to horizon line and north, while lone
Wang Wei went at his glacial pace. He pondered
space and spaces, questioning was not space itself
the enemy he sought? Could line and harmony
of poetry subdue and bring to heel; could graceful
glyph and changeling characters confine the raw
exuberance of this expanding universe? Nations
and their populace could vanish here without
a trace. What forces could he bring to bear
with poetry; for poetry could limn a place,
a line or two sometimes sufficed, the marshalling
of words and line and space. In gifted hands
these could establish hegemony over land, horizon,
hidden enemies, and tedium and freezing nights
and loneliness, and promised boundless peace.
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Consuming
He hauls the mustard-colored
Sabrett’s cart
along tar-melting avenues; the steam of boiling
franks and sauerkraut suffusing his dark face
with it; this Indian, exotic as a pomegranate,
forehead etched with sweating seams above
his wasted cheeks, thin lips, while hanging
from them there’s an unlit cigarette, bobbing,
as he dodges through the bodies, trucks.
Here in the belly of New York, the peep shows
padlocked, whores now dispossessed by Mickey
Mouse’s gnawing at the fabric of our streets,
this ethnic sets up shop to hawk his grub amid
the din and sun, the sticky dollars changing hands,
remembering the flowered offerings to Durga
and her dancing arms, the piping tandoors
in the boisterous bazaars, the puri, shrimp,
the pits
with roasting lamb, and friendly faces, burnt as his.
Dominus
And on the first day he made
money, fundament
of all that followed, as the dark the light.
And on the second day he made two likenesses
in his own image, in the Missionary mode.
And on the third day he made wrathful bids,
and brought from chaos, couplings of a kind.
And on the fourth day he made a run for Governor,
and roamed with lions, supped with praying lambs.
And on the fifth day he made bequests
to public institutions, private causes, praise his
name.
And on the sixth day he made known his will,
rendering to Caesar as little as was possible.
And on the seventh day he made his eyes to close,
and
will be standing on the right when Peter summons us.
Faux Pas de
Deux
The soirée had just
broken up, Marie, the target of my lust, now
showing them the door, awash as well as I in Fundador,
her awe-
some purple nails around its throat, her Schimmelfennick
glowing
at her lips, and then we were alone, and not a jot
too soon for she
was worn from hours on the stage and I was plotting
in my hot
imaginings my move. Yet I could only bring myself
to moon
and gasp, afraid to touch her dancer’s body,
take her hand, smoking
her cigar, her death grip on the bottle’s neck.
She’d fended off
a thousand clowns like me, and could foresee the turn
this tete a tete
would take and glided over to the phonograph and put
on Mozart’s
Requiem to cool me down. Resourceful ever, knowing
that this
moment called for measures more Draconian for someone
as blasé
as she, I sashayed to her bedroom where I soon disrobed
and slid
myself between her satin sheets, and she was hearing
Mozart’s
Requiem alone, for I was hearing just the thudding
of my daring
heart. She entered right, still smoking her cigar,
then squatted on
the needlepoint. Her purple-ended fingers clutched
the bottle tight,
sitting like an old roué, her wondrous legs
criss-crossed, surveying,
no, perusing me in bed, where I was looking coy, and
trying my
seductive, drunken best to be the guy Giselle would
find worth
dying for. It took five minutes, perhaps ten, she
puffing her cigar,
and from the bottle’s mouth drank Fundador, one
belt then two,
and then she knew the jig was up, and I was, too,
quite unconcealed
beneath the pliant sheet, and then she arched her
back the way she
did at mirrors doing warm-ups at the barre, and stripped
and came
to me, a swan, as though I were a Prince and not a
clod. Then in
the moment of our first embrace I felt the gash upon
my back,
her purple fingernails in play, displaying all the
fiery passion
of the dance, and moaning, tore my skin away. The
nails went deep,
and I, who’d hoped to take my ride for free,
now in dismay,
the night ahead, was trembling at the unexpected price
to pay.
Latent Image
I have been working on a picture
of the last years of my life,
attempting to repaint a portrait I have botched. No
image tucked
behind some attic door, but here in shaving view,
colors off
no palette that I knew when I was starting out on
it, and yet too
real to be abstract. There’s never been a mirror
merciless as eyes,
perhaps our own, that may be pitiless or wise. Close
up like this
I see a face gone wrong, as though in thus and thus
a time
the features coarsened and the mouth went harsh. And
was there
such a moment when the hardened world took on a thousand
bottom lines that gave me this aggressive thrust of
jaw? Or am I
laying at the door of ignorant, uncaring circumstance
my flaws
of character, inveighing at wrong hues of history
or fate when
my hand extirpated red and substituted what’s
at best a muddied
pink and pastel blue? A wholesome truth is what I’m
looking for.
I am the manual of me; I’ve read it thoroughly.
Peering at my
cheekbones and my fleshy nose, I see no docile and
robotic thing
that one can lead around with rope and ring. The world
went sour –
so? If I was ever sweet, if only for an hour or so,
I could have
stayed that way, and words about the world are metaphor
and
metaphor can’t hold a pistol to your feet and
bid you dance.
The truth is, ah, the truth about my face . . . the
cancer of corruption
always lies skin deep. Although the surface shows
just some of it,
the pentimento, through the magnifying glass, disintegrates.
A restoration is what’s called for here, not
some replacement of
vermilion on the drill, a sunny dab of gold or green.
I leave the
image for the living room. The face I wear is mine
for good or ill.
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Pulverizing
the Fundaments
When Jeremiah had first seen
the desert
creeping slowly toward the city
in his early years, he thought
why this is quite impossible,
there is the Linnit sign in lights
across the river on the Palisades,
Carl Hubbell has just pitched a no-hit
game, the Empire State remains
the tallest building in the world.
He spoke of what he’d seen to friends
and classmates, who’d always
thought he was a little strange.
Day by day, he saw the desert grow
in scope, although when others noticed it
at all they offered explanations
which he guessed were clear enough
to them, but not to him. They said:
at bottom it’s the devastation that our
fear throws off; the planets are in poor
alignment now; this is what happens
when we fail to persevere.
He thought why this is quite impossible.
Perhaps I’m going blind. Phenomena
seen only by a few can not be real.
Focusing on war brought him clear-sightedness
again, as if the screaming Mimis blew away what he
had seen, as buddies, work-mates, wife and he agreed
on fundaments again. Why this is quite impossible
he thought. I could have sworn I saw a desert
eating up our land and now, miraculous, it’s
gone.
Then almost overnight, to his dismay,
the desert reappeared, but wider now,
pervasive, vibrant, cruel, trackless, on the
move. One heard, but only in some whispers
if one listened hard enough, the mooting
of the possibilities of worse to come.
It is a paradigm some said for children
who show no respect, for incivility
on every hand, man’s inhumanity
toward man. He thought why this is quite
impossible. Once more they’re saying
nothing that relates to what I see.
Yet on the other hand he found it
heartening that anyone said anything at all
since he could see the desert impregnating
everything apace. Then in a trice, or so it
seemed, all voices ceased or only muttered
like the grumbling of a summer rain
and he, himself, was thrown once more
upon what seemed to be a path on which
he walked alone. Why this is quite impossible
he thought. Here is disaster on the way,
and no one pays it any mind, as if they are
impervious to blighted lives, their own.
A new phenomenon: his kids denied there was
a desert now, or ever had been one, except in his
delirium. His wife moved out, bored stiff with
his incessant rant. By now the desert had invaded
everything, although one couldn’t hear a word
about it on the news, which sandwiched itself in
between the crimes of violence on persons, paler
always than the crimes of governments against
them every day, and funny-men who joked about
polluted aquifers and ice caps melting at the poles.
He thought why this is quite impossible
They must have swallowed LSD or hash.
Today he has begun to doubt himself. He’s
old of course
and easily confused, still mouthing warnings that
the desert
will take over everything, not fully comprehending
that indeed
the desert now extended everywhere. The few friends
he has left,
the grandkids who will speak to him if he will call,
now scold:
Of course it’s desert they announce. What
any fool can see.
Just look how beautiful it is.
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Space Probe
A trip around the world on
Friday night
and splashdown in my tub the morning after,
weightless fingers passing you the soap,
body half-afloat, oblivious to gravity
of circumstance, still orbiting your moon.
I cry aloud in wonder at the other-worldly
void, and sink, soar, flow, embrace
the mystery, as I am captured by your field,
while you stroke idly en passant
to show who has control of whom.
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Tail Gunner
It was after gaming till the
cocks crowed three that I cashed in
my chips, and with my weekend pass still valid knocked
up Ethel
at 6:35, protesting, but a good sport as she always
was, who let me
celebrate my winnings through my conquering her small
resistance
before waffles and a lick of jam, the ack ack guns already
hard
at work destroying trespassing V-1s as we took scones
and coffee,
and returned to bed, for who knew when or if the next
would strike
us dead, then as I left, asked after wife and kids,
which I thought
touching for a makeshift mate who knew our days were
numbered
as was true enough for all -- then feeling somewhat
soiled in early
morning fog, bedraggled, profligate, unkempt, my tunic
open and
my buttons dull, I paid a visit to my favorite barber,
and for less
than seven bucks American as usual, he magically performed
a miracle of sorts with razors, scissors, creams and
lotions, towels
hot as naked sun, and scents that made me feel attractive
to my self,
until I rose up from his chair reborn, a new man fresh
as mornings,
stress of gunnery, the gambling in the Red Cross hall
that was our
gaming den, all washed away, locks shorn and lying on
the floor,
my fingers blessed by young hands manicuring mine, and
when
I left I felt enriched and ready to begin the day, to
plan for further
sorties in the German skies at four, the tonnage to
be dropped,
the flight path there and back, the property we would
destroy,
the chance of hostile fire when the mission was complete;
and if there was a Heaven, I was in it, every sense
alive,
my soul at peace, the whole world’s good available
to me.
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