Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

Finally, a voice spoke. His voice. It said,

‘The person that you’re looking for is gone.

Tom isn’t here. Tom isn’t anywhere.’

I begged and wept. He wouldn’t let me in.

A neighbor came out in his underwear

And stared at me. I felt ashamed and left.”

Back in the bar, as Eden told me this,

She started crying, sobbing quietly.

I reached to touch her hand. She pulled away.

Then she looked up at me. Her eyes were blackened,

Smeared from her streaked eyeliner, but they shined

With the intensity of the insane.

“Charlie,” she said. “You’ve got to talk to him.

Tom always said you were his closest friend.”

V.

The “sordid” tenement turned out to be

An ordinary place, down on its luck.

Despite the filthy brick façade, it wasn’t

Much worse than the apartment where I lived.

His hallway, though, really did stink of grease,

And half the bulbs were burnt out in the stairwell.

I knocked three times, then shouted out my name.

After a pause, I heard the deadbolt turn.

Then a familiar voice responded softly,

“Come in, old friend. I hoped that you would visit.”

I walked into a dark and empty room.

Only a folding table and a chair—

The sort of junk you see left on the street.

Piles of old newspapers littered the floor.

Some slats of light leaked through the window blinds.

I did not recognize the man who sat there,

His coarse, flat features or his bloated face.

His hair was gone. One eye was swollen shut.

He was dressed only in a dirty robe.

His body was a leopard skin of bruises.

“Welcome,” he said, “to the Kingdom of the Dead.

I wish that I could offer you a chair,

But don’t expect good manners from the damned.

I should apologize about the smell,

But once apologies begin, where would I stop?”

“I’m here,” I told him, “because Eden asked me.”

“I hope you’ve seen enough to understand

I can’t go back. The man I was is dead.

I’m just the fellow waiting for the hearse.

Mentioning Eden only makes it worse.

Even a monster has his vanity.

I left the other man his life intact.

I didn’t steal a thing, not even her.

Don’t think I wasn’t tempted, but why pack

All of the beautiful things you can’t take with you?

My new style, as you see, is minimal.”

“How can you talk that way about your wife?

This is no time for striking clever poses.”

“You seem surprised to find me eloquent.

Being well-spoken is all I have left.

I want to make this conversation matter.

We’ll never have a chance to speak again.”

“Not if you end up staying here!” I cried.

“I’m glad, “he said, “to hear you speak of endings.

My downfall makes a very shabby story.

Reality has made a botch of it.

First up, then down — no nuance, no panache,

In short, no style. After playing the prince,

I find it difficult to be recast

As Caliban for my farewell performance.

I could endure this suffering or worse

If I could end as something other than

An object of intolerable pity.

The ending is what gives a story meaning.

So let me start my new and last career—

The editor who will revise this story.

If I’m compelled to play the monster’s role,

Then let the monster have his grand finale.

Give me a death scene and a juicy speech,

Not a morphine drip in a hospice bed,

Nor a last whimper to a paid attendant.

Report whatever details you see fit.

It might be easier for everyone

To term this denouement an accident.

For me, it is enough that you bear witness.

You always understood my sense of style.”

He took a book of matches from his pocket.

Struck one. It flamed. He dropped it on the floor.

The fuel-soaked papers at his feet took fire.

“You’d better go,” he said. I backed away.

The inferno had been carefully devised.

The blaze reached out in lines across the room.

As the fire spread, the flames were beautiful.

VI.

“No one knows how the accident occurred.

It happened after I left,” I told Eden.

We sat on an immaculate divan

Beneath a David Hockney Swimming Pool.

The windows gave a view of Central Park.

“Tom and I talked about his situation.

He said that he was sorry you had suffered.

He had almost decided to come home.

As I walked out, he stopped me for a moment.

He made me promise I would visit you.”

She makes her way through the dark trees

Down to the lake to be alone.

Following their voices on the breeze,

She makes her way. Through the dark trees

The distant stars are all she sees.

They cannot light the way she’s gone.

She makes her way through the dark trees

Down to the lake to be alone.

The night reflected on the lake,

The fire of stars changed into water.

She cannot see the winds that break

The night reflected on the lake

But knows they motion for her sake.

These are the choices they have brought her:

The night reflected on the lake,

The fire of stars changed into water.

The hanged man laughs by the garden wall,

And the hands of the clock have stopped at the hour.

The cathedral angels are starting to fall,

And the bells ring themselves in the gothic tower.

Lock up your money and go bolt the door,

And don’t dare look yourself in the eye.

Pray on your knees or cry on the floor

Or stare at the stars as they fall from the sky.

You may say that you’re sorry for all that you’ve done,

You may swear on your honor and protest with tears,

But the moon is burning under the sun,

And nothing you do will stop what appears.

O do not disturb the Archbishop,

Asleep in his ivory chair.

You must send all the workers away,

Though the church is in need of repair.

His Reverence is tired from preaching

To the halt, and the lame, and the blind.

Their spiritual needs are unsubtle,

Their notions of God unrefined.

The Lord washed the feet of His servants.

“The first shall be last,” He advised.

The Archbishop’s edition of Matthew

Has that troublesome passage revised.

The Archbishop declines to wear glasses,

So his sense of the world grows dim.

He thinks that the crowds at Masses

Have gathered in honor of him.

In the crypt of the limestone cathedral

A friar recopies St. Mark,

A nun serves stew to a novice,

A choirboy sobs in the dark.

While high in the chancery office

His Reverence studies the glass,

Wondering which of his vestments

Would look best at Palm Sunday Mass.

The saints in their weather-stained niches

Weep as the Vespers are read,

And the beggars sleep on the church steps,

And the orphans retire unfed.

On Easter the Lord is arisen

While the Archbishop breakfasts in bed,

And the humble shall find resurrection,

And the dead shall lie down with the dead.

I am the image that darkens your glass,

The shadow that falls wherever you pass.

I am the dream you cannot forget,

The face you remember without having met.