TURKEYS

What is this thing if it’s

not language? But to one

great dead poet it was

“a nuance of sound

delicately operating

upon a cataract of sense.”

A few lines later good Doc

Williams calls his own remark

stupid and states flat-out

a nuance can’t operate

on anything. It’s “all in

the sound,” he writes. Or maybe

it’s not, maybe it’s nowhere. Just

then a knock on my door:

my Brooklyn neighbor,

Jean-Claude, requires

instruction in our prosaic tongue

and the ways of his oven—

new, electronic, and baffling.

He’s roasting a turkey

with bacon and thyme—

the French way, the way

his mother did back

in ’56, when he got

home from “Indochine.”

That word plops

down between us, deprived

of both music and charm,

though back in ’39

I thrilled to hear my boy-

hood suddenly dubbed

an “historic era” as the Bakelite

little Admiral incanted

the sudden magic of “Stuka,”

“blitzkrieg,” “panzer,”

“Me 109,” “Maginot,”

“collaborator.” The next year

spring came late if

at all. In early May I

heard water rushing

in the alleys and knew some-

one or something would

send us summer. Later summer

came, hot and sullen,

one defeat at a time, joylessly

over the rooftops of

heaven. But for now Jean-

Claude and I pore over

the impenetrable argot

of the maker’s manual searching

for a nuance of sense

so the brand-new oven

avec temporisateur

can operate on the sixteen-

pound puckered tom,

stuffed and trussed for

the event, though no more

trussed and stuffed than we,

should evening ever come.