A hundred mornings greet the same closed sky,
one of nature’s shows, one mantle wrapping
the dust of London with the dust of Europe—
in the interiors it is always night.
The clouds are welcome to us as insulation,
a silencer to the ultimate blue sky,
naked heaven’s monologue with man.
In my country, the wettest Englishman
sparkles with approbation, magnifying
curious small things I could never see—
under closed sky, trifles are luminous,
gossip makes New York and London one,
one mouth … we use identical instruments
for putting up a house and pulling down.
The Latin Quarter abuts on Belgravia,
three floors low as one, blocks built of blocks,
insular eighteenth century laying down
the functional with a razor in its hand,
construction too practical for conservation.
An alien should count his change here, bring a friend.
Usually on weekend nights I eat alone;
you’ve taken the train for Milgate with the children.
At Offado’s, the staff is half the guests,
the guitar and singers wait on table,
the artist sings things unconsolable:
“Girls of Majorca. Where is my Sombrero?
Leave me alone and let me talk and love me—
a cod in garlic, a carafe of cruel rosé.”
In a day we pass from the northern lights
to doomsday dawns. Crowds crush to work at eight,
and walk with less cohesion than the mist;
the sky, without malice, is acid, Christmas lights
are needed to reveal the Thames. God sees—
wash me as white as the sole I ate last night,
acre of whiteness, back of Folkestone sand,
cooked and skinned and white—the heart appeased.
Soles live in depth, see not, spend not … eat;
their souls are camouflaged to die in dishes,
flat on their backs, the posture of forgiveness—
squinch-eyes, bubbles of bloodshot worldliness,
unable ever to turn the other cheek—
at sea, they bite like fleas whatever we toss.
They splashed red on the Jews about to be killed,
then ploughed them back and forth in captured tanks;
the wood was stacked, the chainsaw went on buzzing.
In the best of worlds, the jailors follow the jailed.
In some final bog, the mastodon,
curled tusks raised like trumpets to the sky,
sunk to their hips and armpits in red mud,
splashed red for irreversible liquidation—
the heavens were very short of hearing then.
The price of freedom is displacing facts:
gnashed tusk, bulk-bruised bulk and a red splash.
Good narrative is cutting down description;
nature sacrifices heightening
for the inevitable closing line.
Is it honorable for a Jew to die as a Jew?
Even the German officials encouraged Freud
to go to Paris where at least he was known;
but what does it matter to have a following,
if no one, not even the concierge, says good day?
He took a house in London’s amused humdrum
to prove that Moses must have been Egyptian—
“What is more monstrous than outliving your body?”
What do we care for the great man of culture—
Freud’s relations were liquidated at Belsen,
Moses Cohn who had nothing to offer culture
was liquidated at Belsen. Must we die,
living in places we have learned to live in,
completing the only work we’re trained to do?
On this blank page no worse, not yet defiled
by my inspiration running black in type,
I see your sepia donkey laugh at me,
Harriet’s doodle, me in effigy,
my passport photo to America
that enflames the soul and irritates the eye—
M. de Maupassant va s’animaliser.
Gloomier exiles brought their causes here,
and children crying up and down the stairs;
Freud found his statue, older Jewish prophets
bit in until their teeth had turned to chalk,
found names in London and their last persona,
a body cast up lifeless on this shore.…
Family, my family, why are we so far?