Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

Jacob

never climbed the ladder

burning in his dream. Sleep

pressed him like a stone

in the dust,

and when

he should have risen

like a flame to join

that choir, he was sick

of traveling,

and closed

his eyes to the Seraphim

ascending, unconscious

of the impossible distances

between their steps,

missed

them mount the brilliant

ladder, slowly disappearing

into the scattered light

between the stars,

slept

through it all, a stone

upon a stone pillow,

shivering. Gravity

always greater than desire.

Now you hear what the house has to say.

Pipes clanking, water running in the dark,

the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort,

and voices mounting in an endless drone

of small complaints like the sounds of a family

that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.

But now you must listen to the things you own,

all that you’ve worked for these past years,

the murmur of property, of things in disrepair,

the moving parts about to come undone,

and twisting in the sheets remember all

the faces you could not bring yourself to love.

How many voices have escaped you until now,

the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot,

the steady accusations of the clock

numbering the minutes no one will mark.

The terrible clarity this moment brings,

the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

The stars now rearrange themselves above you

but to no effect. Tonight,

only for tonight, their powers lapse,

and you must look toward earth. There will be

no comets now, no pointing star

to lead where you know you must go.

Look for smaller signs instead, the fine

disturbances of ordered things when suddenly

the rhythms of your expectation break

and in a moment’s pause another world

reveals itself behind the ordinary.

And one small detail out of place will be

enough to let you know: a missing ring,

a breath, a footfall or a sudden breeze,

a crack of light beneath a darkened door.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is so small

that it does not return.

Imagine

that as a child on a day like this

you held a newly minted coin and had

the choice of spending it in any way

you wished.

Today the coin comes back to you,

the date rubbed out, the ancient mottoes vague,

the portrait covered with the dull shellac

of anything used up, passed on, disposed of

with something else in view, and always worth

a little less each time.

Now it returns,

and you will think it unimportant, lose

it in your pocket change as one more thing

that’s not worth counting, not worth singling out.

That is the mistake you must avoid today.

You sent it on a journey to yourself.

Now hold it in your hand. Accept it as

the little you have earned today.

And realize

that you must choose again but over less.

Do not expect that if your book falls open

to a certain page, that any phrase

you read will make a difference today,

or that the voices you might overhear

when the wind moves through the yellow-green

and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the

dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon

your shadow walks beside you on the wall,

and the days stay long and heavy underneath

the distant rumor of the harvest. One

more summer gone,

and one way or another you survive,

dull or regretful, never learning that

nothing is hidden in the obvious

changes of the world, that even the dim

reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass

is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then

you touch, you see, you press against

the surface of impenetrable things.

Beware of things in duplicate:

a set of knives, the cufflinks in a drawer,

the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes

of someone sitting next to you.

Attend that empty minute in the evening

when looking at the clock, you see

its hands are fixed on the same hour

you noticed at your morning coffee.

These are the moments to beware

when there is nothing so familiar

or so close that it cannot betray you:

a twin, an extra key, an echo,

your own reflection in the glass.

Suppose there is no heaven and no hell,

And that the dead can never leave the earth,

That, as the body rots, the soul breaks free,

Weak and disabled in its second birth.

And then invisible, rising to the light,

Each finds a world it cannot touch or hear,

Where colors fade and, if the soul cries out,

The silence stays unbroken in the air.

How flat the ocean seems without its roar,

Without the sting of salt, the bracing gust.

The sunset blurs into a grayish haze.

The morning snowfall is a cloud of dust.

The pines that they revisit have no scent.

They cannot feel the needled forest floor.

Crossing the stream, they watch the current flow

Unbroken as they step down from the shore.

They want their voices to become the wind—

Intangible like them — to match its cry,

Howling in treetops, covering the moon,

Tumbling the storm clouds in a rain-swept sky.

But they are silent as a rising mist,

A smudge of smoke dissolving in the air.

They watch the shadows lengthen on the grass.

The pallor of the rose is their despair.

The thought pursues me through this dreary town

where the wind sweeps down from the high plateau

and where a diving chimney swift can cut

the slender thread of mountains far away.

So soon come forty years of restlessness,

of tedium, of unexpected joy,

quick as a gust of wind in March is quick

to scatter light and rain. Soon come delays,

snatched from the straining hands of those I love,

torn from my haunts, the customs of my years

suddenly crushed to make me understand.

The tree of sorrow shakes its branches…

The years rise like a swarm around my shoulders.

Nothing has been in vain. This is the work

which all complete together and alone,

the living and the dead, to penetrate

the impenetrable world, down open roads,

down mineshafts of discovery and loss,

and learned from many loves or only one,

from father down to son — till all is clear.

And having said this, I can start out now,

easy in the eternal company

of all things living, of all things dead,

to disappear in either dust or fire

if any fire endures beyond its flame.

(From the Italian of Mario Luzi)

If we could only push these walls

apart, unfold the room the way

a child might take apart a box

and lay it flat upon the floor—

so many corners cleared at last!