Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

Surround me with delicately colored soaps and moisturizing creams.

Comfort me with posters of children with perfect smiles

And pouting teenage models clad in lingerie.

I am not made of stone.

Show me satins, linen, crêpe de chine, and silk,

Heaped like cumuli in the morning sky,

As if all caravans and argosies ended in this parking lot

To fill these stockrooms and loading docks.

Sing me the hymns of no cash down and the installment plan,

Of custom fit, remote control, and priced to move.

Whisper the blessing of Egyptian cotton, polyester, and cashmere.

Tell me in what department my desire shall be found.

Because I would buy happiness if I could find it,

Spend all that I possessed or could borrow.

But what can I bring you from these sad emporia?

Where in this splendid clutter

Shall I discover the one true thing?

Nothing to carry, I should stroll easily

Among the crowded countertops and eager cashiers,

Bypassing the sullen lines and footsore customers,

Spending only my time, discounting all I see.

Instead I look for you among the pressing crowds,

But they know nothing of you, turning away,

Carrying their brightly packaged burdens.

There is no angel among the vending stalls and signage.

Where are you, my fugitive? Without you

There is nothing but the getting and the spending

Of things that have a price.

Why else have I stalked the leased arcades

Searching the kiosks and the cash machines?

Where are you, my errant soul and innermost companion?

Are you outside amid the potted palm trees,

Bumming a cigarette or joking with the guards,

Or are you wandering the parking lot

Lost among the rows of Subarus and Audis?

Or is that you I catch a sudden glimpse of

Smiling behind the greasy window of the bus

As it disappears into the evening rush?

My love, how time makes hardness shine.

They come in every color, pure or mixed,

gray-green of basalt, blood-soaked jasper, quartz,

granite and feldspar, even bits of glass,

smoothed by the patient jeweller of the tides.

Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,

shaven by glaciers, wind-carved, heat-cracked,

stratified, speckled, bright in the wet surf—

no two alike, all torn from the dry land

tossed up in millions on this empty shore.

How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts

light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers.

It glints among the shattered oyster shells,

gutted by gulls, bleached by salt and sun—

the broken crockery of living things.

Cormorants glide across the quiet bay.

A falcon watches from the ridge, indifferent

to the burdens I have carried here.

No point in walking farther, so I sit,

hollow as driftwood, dead as any stone.

On the branch of a large dead tree

a vulture sits, stinking of carrion.

She is ripe with the perfume of her fertility.

Half a dozen males circle above her,

slowly gliding on the thermals.

One by one, the huge birds settle

stiffly beside her on the limb,

stretching their wings, inflating their chests,

holding their red scabrous heads erect.

Their nostrils dilate with desire.

The ritual goes on for hours.

These bald scavengers pay court politely—

like overdressed princes in an old romance—

circling, stretching, yearning,

waiting for her to choose.

The stink and splendor of fertility

arouses the world. The rotting log

flowers with green moss. The fallen chestnut

splits and drives its root into the soil.

The golden air pours down its pollen.

Desire brings all things back to earth,

charging them to circle, stretch, and preen—

the buzzard or the princess, the scorpion, the rose—

each damp and fecund bud yearning to burst,

to burn, to blossom, to begin.

It’s time to admit I’m irresponsible.

I lack ambition. I get nothing done.

I spend the morning walking up the fire road.

I know every tree along the ridge.

Reaching the end, I turn around. There’s no point

to my pilgrimage except the coming and the going.

Then I sit and listen to the woodpecker

tapping away. He works too hard.

Tonight I will go out to watch the moon rise.

If only I could move that slowly.

I have no plans. No one visits me.

No need to change my clothes.

What a blessing just to sit still—

a luxury only the lazy can afford.

Let the dusk settle on my desk.

No one needs to hear from me today.

Echo of the clocktower, footstep

in the alleyway, sweep

of the wind sifting the leaves.

Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur

of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning

harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer

of entrances and exits, midnight

whisper traveling the wires.

Seducer, healer, deity or thief,

I will see you soon enough—

in the shadow of the rainfall,

in the brief violet darkening a sunset—

but until then I pray watch over him

as a mountain guards its covert ore

and the harsh falcon its flightless young.

I think of you standing on the sloping deck

as the freighter pulls away from the coast of China,

the last lights of Asia disappearing in the fog,

and the engine’s drone dissolving in the old

monotony of waves slapping up against the hull.

Leaning on the rails, looking eastward to America

across the empty weeks of ocean,

how carefully you must have planned your life,

so much of it already wasted on the sea,

the vast country of your homelessness.

Macao. Vladivostok. Singapore.

Dante read by shiplamp on the bridge.

The names of fellow sailors lost in war.

These memories will die with you,

but tonight they rise up burning in your mind

interweaving like gulls crying in the wake,

like currents on a chart, like gulfweed

swirling in a star-soaked sea, and interchangeable

as all the words for night— la notte, noche, Nacht, nuit ,

each sound half-foreign, half-familiar, like America.

For now you know that mainland best from dreams.

Your dead mother turning toward you slowly,

always on the edge of words, yet always

silent as the suffering Madonna of a shrine.

Or your father pounding his fist against the wall.

There are so many ways to waste a life.

Why choose between these icons of unhappiness,

when there is the undisguised illusion of the sea,

the comfort of old books and solitude to fill

the long night watch, the endless argument of waves?

Breathe in that dark and tangible air, for in a few weeks

you will be dead, burned beyond recognition,

left as a headstone in the unfamiliar earth

with no one to ask, neither wife nor children,

why your thin ashes have been buried here

and not scattered on the shifting gray Pacific.

The ceremonies of the day have ceased,