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FIRST PERSON SINGULAR
"No," says Maître Minuit, thumbing
the glossy pages of the Millennial Issue
of the literary mag, its full-color cover
cradled by his gritty palm. "No. You will
not find it here in these well-endowed
cloisters. Gleaming lawns, spanking-new
white porticos, corporate parking spaces
defined by lines of gold. No. 'Twere best
to stay on your damp knees with your arm
down the drain. By all means read Hardy,
Conrad, Stevens, Yeats. They belong now
to another century. But pin their portraits
above your desk. They held a pen, they wrote
in ink. They knew what blotting-paper was.
To them full color meant the full range
of black and white." Boys coming in
from football after sunset. They are all
mud. Below each helmet, a face, a white
smear. Pourriture! The master tells me
to reach into the clogged culvert, scoop
a fistful of matted leaves, slippery and
silvery with rot. "Hold it to your face
and breathe deep. Squeeze out the water.
Drink it. It has the flavor of poetry."
Routinely, poets in the glossy pages
tell us—and get rewarded for it—
about our lives. Never hesitating
to speak for others, they presume to use
the words we, us, ours. Of these others
I know nothing. "We" are not the four
grandparents whose lives are now
the fiction of reminiscence, illustrated
with a half dozen photographs. "We"
are not two parents in the Old Country
who lean on each other and shuffle towards
the corner of a field where saplings
will feed on their ashes. "We" are not
the two wives who left for other partners
or the two daughters living in distant cities
with husbands and children who will never
know me. "We" are none of these. May I
at least write in the first person plural
for two sons, the backs of whose heads
I can still see in the crowd? Can I see
for a moment through three pairs of eyes?
We have come on the bus. We are going
to the Museum, to the Cabinet of Curiosities
that in dreams has given me definition.
Here follow our notes. The War Room, where
a stately old gent is talking to the walls.
Whoever drifts through the room, glancing
at scraps of brown cloth and appalling bits
of metal, hears the clipped voice speak
of the Thirtieth or the Hundred-and-First,
his finger counting off the ranks and columns
of names in the white pages of the dead. Then,
the Om Room. Where children murmur
the alphabet or count to a thousand, their heads
down on their desks, one skinny girl says,
"Yes, two boys were here, their names
are written in the register." I had not noticed
when they moved ahead of me. Next,
the Room of Our Nudity. Whose nudity?
Our nudity. "Tell me about it," the reader says.
A tourist trap— attrape-nigaud classique .
Just pull the strings. The dusty costumes
fall open like books, like cupboard doors,
revealing bodies made of moldy bread.
My boys are gone. Now I can speak of "us."
These smeared features are the Earl of Gloster.
These bruised breasts are Lear's daughters. This
is Lear. This silvery slime they are, I am, we are.
   
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