I
Old Poet, Poetry’s final subject glimmers months ahead
Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered
Vast
Sky over City Hall tower, Eastside Park’s grass terraces & tennis courts beside Passaic River
Parts of ourselves gone, sister Rose’s apartments, brown corridor’d high schools—
Too tired to go out for a walk, too tired to end the War
Too tired to save body
too tired to be heroic
The real close at hand as the stomach
liver pancreas rib
Coughing up gastric saliva
Marriages vanished in a cough
Hard to get up from the easy chair
Hands white feet speckled a blue toe stomach big breasts hanging thin
hair white on the chest
too tired to take off shoes and black sox
Paterson, January 12, 1976
II
He’ll see no more Times Square
honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight
Nor the orange sun ball
rising thru treetops east toward New York’s skyline
His velvet armchair facing the window will be empty
He won’t see the moon over house roofs
or sky over Paterson’s streets.
New York, February 26, 1976
III
Wasted arms, feeble knees
80 years old, hair thin and white
cheek bonier than I’d remembered—
head bowed on his neck, eyes opened
now and then, he listened—
I read my father Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality
“. . . trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home . . .”
“That’s beautiful,” he said, “but it’s not true.”
“When I was a boy, we had a house
on Boyd Street, Newark—the backyard
was a big empty lot full of bushes and tall grass,
I always wondered what was behind those trees.
When I grew older, I walked around the block,
and found out what was back there—
it was a glue factory.”
May 18, 1976
IV
Will that happen to me?
Of course, it’ll happen to thee.
Will my arms wither away?
Yes yr arm hair will turn gray.
Will my knees grow weak & collapse?
Your knees will need crutches perhaps.
Will my chest get thin?
Your breasts will be hanging skin.
Where will go—my teeth?
You’ll keep the ones beneath.
What’ll happen to my bones?
They’ll get mixed up with stones.
June 1976
V
FATHER DEATH BLUES
Hey Father Death, I’m flying home
Hey poor man, you’re all alone
Hey old daddy, I know where I’m going
Father Death, Don’t cry any more
Mama’s there, underneath the floor
Brother Death, please mind the store
Old Aunty Death Don’t hide your bones
Old Uncle Death I hear your groans
O Sister Death how sweet your moans
O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths
Sobbing breasts’ll ease your Deaths
Pain is gone, tears take the rest
Genius Death your art is done
Lover Death your body’s gone
Father Death I’m coming home
Guru Death your words are true
Teacher Death I do thank you
For inspiring me to sing this Blues
Buddha Death, I wake with you
Dharma Death, your mind is new
Sangha Death, we’ll work it through
Suffering is what was born
Ignorance made me forlorn
Tearful truths I cannot scorn
Father Breath once more farewell
Birth you gave was no thing ill
My heart is still, as time will tell.
July 8, 1976 (Over Lake Michigan)
VI
Near the Scrap Yard my Father’ll be Buried
Near Newark Airport my father’ll be
Under a Winston Cigarette sign buried
On Exit 14 Turnpike NJ South
Through the tollgate Service Road 1 my father buried
Past Merchants Refrigerating concrete on the cattailed marshes
past the Budweiser Anheuser-Busch brick brewery
in B’Nai Israel Cemetery behind a green painted iron fence
where there used to be a paint factory and farms
where Pennick makes chemicals now
under the Penn Central power Station
transformers & wires, at the borderline
between Elizabeth and Newark, next to Aunt Rose
Gaidemack, near Uncle Harry Meltzer
one grave over from Abe’s wife Anna my father’ll be buried.
July 9, 1976
VII
What’s to be done about Death?
Nothing, nothing
Stop going to school No. 6 Paterson, N.J., in 1937?
Freeze time tonight, with a headache, at quarter to 2 A.M.?
Not go to Father’s funeral tomorrow morn?
Not go back to Naropa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?
Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airport some day?
Paterson, July 11, 1976