She used to sit on that springy turf
among sprinklers behind the house
under one tall
palm
waiting
for sundown
for a breeze from the sea
for a studio call.
‘Scratch these gardens’
Bertholdt told her
‘you discover the desert.’
He loved its ugliness –
‘A city that has no heart
and so many angels.’
The day the spies were to die
in the electric chair
Mrs Rosenberg in her black hat
Mr Rosenberg with his little
moustache
she sat on a seawall
watching the sun quench itself
like a fat orange
like a dying swan.
She could neither think of them
nor shut them from her thoughts.
‘Look homeward, Angel’ –
she said it over and over
looking south and west
west and south
to what she thought
was New Zealand.
I fucked her
(the traveller said)
while the hotel next door
was burning.
We could see people
across the gap
blocked on the ninth –
down below
fire-trucks cops a crowd
long ladders
flashing lights.
Soon came the guys
in silver space suits
and the smash of glass.
Half-woken
half-asleep
she stood
on the Bay Area directories
so we could make it
at the window.
It might have been
death out there.
Nothing we could do.
In here it was us
fucking.
It was great
(the traveller said)
she was small
lovely
an angel –
never told me her name.
Waking to the desert stillness
is how it might be
if this were Paradise
its green and glowing gardens
its air containing
nothing but air
its sky
nothing but sky
a light like only
light can be
when it’s only
everywhere
itself
and coming up east
the fiery wrath-cart
eternal unforgiving
forger and spoiler
Lord of all.
It was the white stretch
took you
from the town of the Hassidim
shovelling snow in their big hats
through Princeton, Brick
and Lakewood
by the Turnpike to Staten Island.
Across water
against a grey page of sky
Manhattan was the ghostly
graph of itself.
Now
among the yellow cabs
black hustlers
pastrami-and-gherkin delis
in freezing rain
that hangs white fingers on street-signs
you look for a bookshop that knows you.
You have lived here most of your life
dream-man
best boy at the movies.
It’s New York, yes –
it’s the world.It’s called the Memory Station
and it plays
‘the greatest music of all time’
meaning ‘top of the charts
’40s through ’60s.’
My memories too –
not ‘the greatest’
but the half-life an ear had
while we were making
love
breakfast
worrying about work
the kids
the missile crisis –
Sinatra for example
who could only ever
get worse
the King who could sing
really –
and Bing.
Strange to have come
half a world to recover
the Inkspots
Mills Brothers
Platters
Simon and Garfunkel
and that cruisy-dreamy
laid-back tremolo blow-job
Dean Martin singing
‘Everybody
oves somebody
somehow …’
At night here
in my nun-narrow bed
while snow falls
all down the Jersey Shore
I give it twenty minutes
pre-set
‘the Memory Station’ –
my white noise
my time machine.
One of the Hassadim
walks ahead of me
down the centre
of a snowbound road
muttering prayers
under his big hat.
There’s no traffic
and no sky –
only a grey lid
and this tumbling
drifting
brightness of snow.
On the lake shore
waterbirds
huddle in the lee
where a stony Virgin
outstares
a marble boy.
In converted stables
where scions once
played indoor polo
students will serve me
hot soup
and good cheer.
Is it Wisdom says to me
‘Don’t whine in the cold
because the party’s
almost over.
Come in!
Have one for the road.’
Cal in Santa Monica
Gail in Lakewood, New Jersey
Helen in Boston
I e-mail you greetings from Auckland
knowing they will reach you
the day before they were sent.
This is the kind of conundrum
I used to discuss with Albert
before dementia sent him
into the Seventh Dimension.
Albert, you remember,
was the one with the Theory
that if you sent a Relative
(your Granny, for example)
deep enough into Space
she would come back
looking like Marilyn
Monroe.
We all wanted to believe him.
Happy Christmas, friends –
it’s a good one
and on its way to you
right now!