SADNESS AND HAPPINESS

I

That they have no earthly measure

is well known—the surprise is

how often it becomes impossible

to tell one from the other in memory:

the sadness of past failures, the strangely

happy—doubtless corrupt—

fondling of them. Crude, empty

though the terms are, they do

organize life: sad American house-

hunting couples with kids

and small savings visit Model Homes each

Sunday for years; humble,

they need closet space, closet

space to organize life … in older countries

people seem to be happy with less closet

space. Empty space,

I suppose, also explains post

coitum triste, a phenomenon

which on reflection I am happy

to find rare in my memory—not,

II

God knows, that sex isn’t crucial, a

desire to get more or better

must underlie the “pain” and “bliss”

of sonnets—or is it a need to do better:

A girl touched my sleeve, once,

held it, deep-eyed; life too at times

has come up, looked into my face,

My Lord, how like you this? And I?

Always distracted by some secret

movie camera or absurd audience

eager for clichés, Ivanhoe, de blues,

Young Man with a Horn, the star

tripping over his lance, quill, phallic

symbol or saxophone—miserable,

these absurd memories of failure

to see anything but oneself,

my pride, my consciousness, my shame, my

sickly haze of Romance—sick too

the root of joy? “Bale” and “bliss” merge

in a Petrarchist grin, that sleeve’s burden

III

or chivalric trophy to bear as

emblem or mark of the holy

idiot: know ye, this natural stood

posing amiss while the best prizes

of life bounced off his vague

pate or streamed between his legs—

did Korsh, Old Russia’s bedlam-sage,

enjoy having princesses visit his cell?

Would they dote on me as I shake out

a match, my fountain pen in the same

hand, freckling my dim brow with ink?

Into his muttered babble they read tips

on the market, court, marriage—I too

mutter: Fool, fool! or Death!

or Joy! Well, somewhere in the mind’s mess

feelings are genuine, someone’s

mad voice undistracted, clarity

maybe of motive and precise need

like an enameled sky, cool

blue of Indian Summer, happiness

IV

like the sex-drowsy saxophones

rolling flatted thirds of the blues

over and over, rocking the dulcet

rhythms of regret, Black music

which tumbles loss over in the mouth

like a moist bone full of marrow;

the converse is a good mood grown

too rich, like dark water steeping

willow roots in the shade, spotted

with sun and slight odor of dirt

or death, insane quibbles of self-

regard … better to mutter fool

or feel solaces of unmerited

Grace, like a road of inexplicable

dells, rises and lakes, found

in a flat place of no lakes—or feel

the senses: cheese, bread, tart

apples and wine, broiling acres

of sunflowers in Spain, mansards

in Vermont, painted shay and pard,

V

or the things I see, driving

with you: houses and cars, trees,

grasses and birds; people, incidents

of the senses—like women and men, dusk

on a golf course, waving clubs

dreamily in slow practice-gestures

profiled against a sky layered

purplish turquoise and gray, having

sport in the evening; or white

selvage of a mockingbird’s gray

blur as he dabbles wings and tail

in a gutter—all in a way fraught,

full of emotion, and yet empty—

how can I say it?—all empty

of sadness and happiness, deep

blank passions, waiting like houses

and cars of a strange place,

a profound emptiness that came once

in the car, your cheekbone, lashes,

hair at my vision’s edge, driving

VI

back from Vermont and then

into the iron dusk of Cambridge,

Central Square suddenly become

the most strange of places

as a Salvation Army band marches

down the middle, shouldering aside

the farting, evil-tempered traffic,

brass pitting its triplets and sixteenths

into the sundown fray of cops, gesturing

derelicts, young girls begging quarters,

shoppers and released secretaries, scruffy

workers and students, dropouts, children

whistling, gathering as the band

steps in place tootling and rumbling

in the square now, under an apocalypse

of green-and-pink sky, with paper

and filth spinning in the wind, crazy,

everyone—band, audience, city, lady

trumpeter fiddling spit-valve, John

Philip Sousa, me, Christianity, crazy

VII

and all empty except for you,

who look sometimes like a stranger;

as a favorite room, lake, picture

might look seen after years away,

your face at a new angle grows

unfamiliar and blank, love’s face

perhaps, where I chose once to dream

again, but better, those past failures—

“Some lovely, glorious Nothing,” Susan,

Patricia, Celia, forgive me—God,

a girl in my street was called Half-

A-Buck, not right in her head …

how happy I would be, or else

decently sad, with no past: you

only and no foolish ghosts

urging me to become some redeeming

Jewish-American Shakespeare

(or God knows what they expect,

Longfellow) and so excuse my thorny

egotism, my hard-ons of self-concern,

VIII

melodramas and speeches

of myself, crazy in love with

my status as a sad young man: dreams

of myself old, a vomit-stained

ex-jazz-Immortal, collapsed

in a phlegmy Bowery doorway

on Old Mr. Boston lemon-flavored

gin or on cheap wine—that romantic

fantasy of my future bumhood

excused all manner of lies, fumbles,

destructions, even this minute, “Mea

culpa!” I want to scream, stealing

the podium to address the band,

the kids, the old ladies awaiting

buses, the glazed winos (who accomplished

my dream while I got you, and art,

and daughters); “Oh you city of

undone deathcrotches! Terrible

the film of green brainpus! Fog

of corruption at the great shitfry! No

IX

grease-trickling sink

of disorder in your depressed

avenues is more terrible

than these, and not your whole

aggregate of pollution

is more heavy than the measure

of unplumbed muttering

remorse, shame, inchoate pride

and nostalgia in any one

sulphur-choked, grit-breathing

citizen of the place…” Sad,

the way one in part enjoys

air pollution, relishes

millennial doom, headlines,

even the troubles of friends—

or, OK, enjoys hearing

and talking about them, anyway—

to be whole-hearted is rare;

changing as the heart does, is it

the heart, or the sun emerging from

X

or going behind a cloud,

or a change somewhere in my eyes?

Terrible, to think that mere pretty

scenery—or less, the heraldic shape

of an oak leaf drifting down

curbside waters in the sun, pink

bittersweet among the few last

gray sad leaves of the fall—can bring

joy, or fail to. Shouldn’t I vow

to seek only within myself

my only hire? Or not? All my senses,

like beacon’s flame, counsel gratitude

for the two bright-faced girls

crossing the Square, beauty a light

or intelligence, no quarters for them,

long legs flashing bravely above

the grime—it is as if men were to

go forth plumed in white

uniforms and swords; how could we

ever aspire to such smartness,

XI

such happy grace? Pretty enough

plumage and all, a man in the bullshit

eloquence of his sad praises stumbles,

fumbles: fool. It is true, wonder

does indeed hinder love and hate,

and one can behold well with eyes

only what lies beneath him—

so that it takes more than eyes

to see well anything that is worth

loving; that is the sad part, the senses

are not visionary, they can tug

downward, even in pure joy—

trivial joy, the deep solid crack

of the bat. A sandlot home run

has led me to clown circling

the diamond as though cheered

by a make-believe audience

of thousands (you, dead poets, friends,

old coaches and teachers, everyone

I ever knew) cheering louder as I tip

XII

my imaginary, ironic hat and blow

false kisses crossing home, happiness

impure and oddly memorable as the sad

agony of recalled errors lived over

before sleep, poor throws awry

or the ball streaming through,

between my poor foolish legs, crouching

amazëd like a sot. Sport—woodmanship,

ball games, court games—has its cruel

finitude of skill, good-and-bad, as does

the bizarre art of words: confirmation

of a good word, polvo, dust, reddish gray

powder of the ballfield, el polvo

rising in pale puffs to glaze lightly

the brown ankles and brown bare feet in

Cervantes’ poem of the girl dancing, all

dust now, poet, girl. It is intolerable

to think of my daughters, too, dust—

el polvo—you whose invented game,

Sadness and Happiness, soothes them

XIII

to sleep: can you tell me one sad

thing that happened today, Can you think

of one happy thing to tell me that

happened to you today, organizing

life—not you too dust like the poets,

dancers, athletes, their dear skills

and the alleged glittering gaiety of

Art which, in my crabwise scribbling hand,

no less than Earth the change of all

changes breedeth, art and life

both inconstant mothers, in whose

fixed cold bosoms we lie fixed,

desperate to devise anything, any

sadness or happiness, only

to escape the clasped coffinworm

truth of eternal art or marmoreal

infinite nature, twin stiff

destined measures both manifested

by my shoes, coated with dust or dew which no

earthly measure will survive.