I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown one copse Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops; The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart On that disused and forgotten road That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout And hush and cluck and flutter about: I hear him begin far enough away Full many a time to say his say Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star. I know not who these mute folk are Who share the unlit place with me— Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad— Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,— With none among them that ever sings, And yet, in view of how many things, As sweet companions as might be had.
My house, I say. But hark to the sunny doves That make my roof the arena of their loves, That gyre about the gable all day long And fill the chimneys with their murmurous song: Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs; And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath If any alien foot profane the path. So, too, the buck that trimmed my terraces, Our whilom gardener, called the garden his; Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode And his late kingdom, only from the road.
Let me tell you about suffering because I was a boy cold without love in a large house, so dark it stifled laughs. I would run to my mother with stones only to drop them under a grim gaze so harsh I felt tossed in a freezing bath. Her words, like a cicada’s shrill chirp, pierced the long summer afternoons of my hopes. I can still remember my brother’s folded hands in the coffin, how kissing them burnt me. I cried uncontrollably, torched inside with processional fires held by shadowed monks cowled in their black walk through narrow streets of my town, terrifying my heart forever.
One day someone will fold our blankets and send them to the cleaners to scrub the last grain of salt from them, will open our letters and sort them out by date instead of by how often they’ve been read.
One day someone will rearrange the room’s furniture like chessmen at the start of a new game, will open the old shoebox where we hoard pyjama-buttons, not-quite-dead batteries and hunger.
One day the ache will return to our backs from the weight of hotel room keys and the receptionist’s suspicion as he hands over the TV remote control.
Others’ pity will set out after us like the moon after some wandering child.
Skinny dirt road In the middle of the ocean. That led to the house of art. I took it. The engine nearly Drowned. I lied that it was fun That I’d do it again. When I got to That shore The house was gone and when I looked back, so was the path. Now I’m old. Drown in my bed A thousand miles inland. For years I thought I could Art my way back. Cats sing Of rose dawns. This country’s a Mirror image Of the one I left, except I’ve bad dreams. And You’re the only Person who’s not here. Is it the same For you.
This old house lodges no ghosts! Those swaggering specters who found their way Across the Atlantic Were left behind With their old European grudges In the farmhouses of New England And Pennsylvania Like so much jettisoned baggage Too heavy To lug over the Piedmont.
The flatlands are inhospitable To phantoms. Here Shadows are sharp and arbitrary Not mazy, obscure, Cowering in corners Behind scary old boots in a cupboard Or muffled in empty coats, deserted By long-dead cousins (Who appear now and then But only in photographs Already rusting at the edges)—
Setting out in the creaking wagon Tight-lipped, alert to move on, The old settlers had no room For illusions. Their dangers were real. Now in the spare square house Their great-grandchildren Tidy away the past Until the polished surfaces Reflect not apparitions, pinched, Parched, craving, unsatisfied, But only their own faces.
In the window of the drawing-room
there is a rush of white as you pass
in which the figure of your husband is,
for a moment, framed. He is watching you.
His father will come, of course,
and, although you had not planned it,
his beard will offset your lace dress,
and always it will seem that you were friends.
All morning, you had prepared the house
and now you have stepped out
to make sure that everything
is in its proper place: the railings whitened,
fresh gravel on the avenue, the glasshouse
crystal when you stand in the courtyard
expecting the carriage to arrive at any moment.
You are pleased with the day, all month it has been warm.
They say it will be one of the hottest summers
the world has ever known.
Today, your son is one year old.
Later, you will try to recall
how he felt in your arms—
the weight of him, the way he turned to you from sleep,
the exact moment when you knew he would cry
and the photograph be lost.
But it is not lost.
You stand, a well-appointed group
with an air of being pleasantly surprised.
You will come to love this photograph
and will remember how, when he had finished,
you invited the photographer inside
and how, in celebration of the day,
you drank a toast to him, and summer-time.
I was working in a bookstore and as an antidote to the twin torment of exhaustion and boredom, one day I went with a friend on a walking tour. We made it as far as Berlin and there I met the man I would move with to a boarding house, then to furnished rooms in the flat of a civil servant, and from there one morning in January to the Registry to be married. Afterward we moved to a studio apartment and two years later to the school where boys returning from the war would remove their collars and sew them back on with red thread to demonstrate the end of their allegiance to the cruel and fastidious past. Everyone wanted to be launched into a place from which you could look back and ask whether the red was also meant to enact spilled blood. You could say so, but only if you want to insist that history’s minutia is best read as allegory. The fact is, history didn’t exist then. Each day was a twenty-four hour stand-still on a bridge from which we discretely looked into the distance, hoping to catch sight of the future. It’s near where you’re standing now. One day we were lying in the sun dressed in nothing but our skin when a camera came by and devoured us.
Not a study or a den, but El Florida
as my mother called it, a pretty name
for the room with the prettiest view
of the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up
against the windows, the tepid breeze
laden with the brown-sugar scent
of loquats drifting in from the yard.
Not a sunroom, but where the sun
both rose and set, all day the shadows
of banana trees fan-dancing across
the floor, and if it rained, it rained
the loudest, like marbles plunking
across the roof under constant threat
of coconuts ready to fall from the sky.
Not a sitting room, but El Florida where
I sat alone for hours with butterflies
frozen on the polyester curtains
and faces of Lladró figurines: sad angels,
clowns, and princesses with eyes glazed
blue and gray, gazing from behind
the glass doors of the wall cabinet.
Not a TV room, but where I watched Creature Feature as a boy, clinging
to my brother, safe from vampires
in the same sofa where I fell in love
with Clint Eastwood and my Abuelo
watching westerns, or pitying women
crying in telenovelas with my Abuela.
Not a family room, but the room where
my father twirled his hair while listening
to 8-tracks of Elvis, and read Nietzsche
and Kant a few months before he died,
where my mother learned to dance alone
as she swept, and I learned Salsa pressed
against my Tía Julia’s enormous breasts.
At the edge of the city, in the company
of crickets, beside the empty clothesline,
telephone wires and the moon, tonight
my life is an old friend sitting with me
not in the living room, but in the light
of El Florida, as quiet and necessary
as any star shining above it.
Girls visited and marveled at my room to breathe.
When it was sunny, they let down their hair, drank fresh orange juice.
We drank all morning, didn’t go to class.
I knew which words to carry in the arsenal, which memory to disarm the most resilient bully.
Nobody bothered us or asked why we were missing.
I never doubted this was me. I knew how to pull up short, how to light my name under their skin.
There was no need for mirrors. No need to get free.
When I received the call I was in a store in Missoula, Montana.
A store stocked with sparkling ephemera: glass fauna, tiny belfry bulbs,
winter white birch and stump-lamps brandishing light cones,
little shelves and branches hung with drops of ice and round silver baubles.
I loved the store: it was cavernous, dark with wood and burlap,
a ruddy brick loft with lithographs and monographs on birds or bracelets.
The store-owner, Fran, was away that day otherwise
I would have stayed in there a little longer.
She was a comforting friend—
she had impeccable taste, manifested in her put-together garments,
she also had a warming patient smile.
I didn’t stay long, I didn’t linger;
though linger is absolutely the wrong word,
more like I didn’t stumble around there for hours.
(I would stumble around in that store for a full year.)
If she had been behind the counter I would have turned to her in bewilderment.
~
You see I had picked up my ringing cell phone while browsing
(I usually keep it off in stores),
and my father said, there’s something I have to tell you.
I don’t want you to find out any other way. I am leaving my job.
They want me to resign.
Fran had met my father the week before—
he wanted to see downtown, the campus, get to know Montana—
he had done research on the education opportunities.
He was interested in outreach.
People all over met him and found him to be a kindhearted man.
I had set up meetings, he was here to meet educators, mathematicians—
more spirited people—I told him—than Bostonians.
I told him the West was a magical place. He agreed.
Later he would tell me that this was his last best day, a strange pun on the Last Best Place.
Little did we know we would have to fight a very public battle.
And apparently from the rumors and from the strange
treatment he received prior to his termination,
there was a plot in place.
We, as a family, felt the public ridicule.
And as an Asian family, we felt the acute Asian shame. It was a dark,
disastrous cloud hanging, hanging, hanging.
My father would be would be publicly shamed
and we were shocked at the racist narratives—
allegations—a greedy brown man—
mismanaging, mismanaging, mismanaging
One public interest story to release venom—
to tease out real feelings from strangers.
Blog comments were aggressive: the Indian was a con,
a snake-oil man.
You just have to give them a scenario
in which they can invest—in which to place those hard-to-place feelings.
White people bury their resentments beneath their liberalism.
We knew he hadn’t done anything wrong—we knew this was bogus.
Like I said, I was getting ready for the holidays,
I played hooky that Tuesday excited to wrap gifts;
I wanted to decorate the house.
This was my first house.
My husband was out looking at Christmas trees.
Albeit I am a Hindu, trees are an awful lot of fun.
And this planning was quickly thwarted with the difficult—
my family was falling apart—
the droop in my life felt permanent.
I was more than 2,000 miles from my father, but the way he spoke
at the moment of the call becalmed me—
I felt anchored to his side—
I will stay there for as long as it takes.
Before this moment I was in a terrific mood.
I wanted to don the table
with the kind of candles that beckoned, pulling you into an aesthetic presence
fully-fabricated and lit, and yet looked like it came from snow.
I had been in Missoula for many months,
I had come from Brooklyn, where I had lived for twelve years.
Now I was ready to escape.
Having been born and raised outside of Boston,
without the opportunities say someone like Robert Lowell had.
I knew I was not of that ilk nor was my father—we now realize.
Boston was indeed for the rich—with its stodgy colonial identity,
with its ridiculous Brahmans—
its oddly cultureless stance
even with Harvard as its mirror.
(Even with Cal as front & center literati.)
Even so, I was pleased, I was unhurried in my new life, I was, I was.
I could feel how I stood, I could feel the rising happiness—of the belly, not the gut.
I was consumed with the bliss of poetry,
so much poetry around me, everything with poetry.
I said and understood, the workshop will be my ideology,
my intentional community, front and center—with bells.
My family was overjoyed with the way our lives
were working together—
my father was comfortable, my mother pleased,
a professorship and presidential position
at a college, he was the first South-Asian president.
He had come to America with very little and now had something.
As you can see, there is an immigrant narrative here.
When he first arrived, he made very little money as a visiting professor so he worked
security at night at the Museum of Fine Arts. He kept thinking his colleague, Bruce,
was calling him bastard, when he was calling him buster.
It took him months to realize this. He first had to confront Bruce.
The sequence of his first major purchases and acquisitions, which took several months:
a suitcase and a rug, then he found a dentist’s chair for the living room.
He bought the Bob Dylan album that had “Blowing in the Wind,” because it really
sounded Hindu—it sounded like it came from the Rig Veda.
For many years I would say he was a model minority—he aspired to being
rewarded for his good work by white people.
We agreed, all was well— I had made my way to where I had wanted to be,
living a poet’s life and it felt extraordinary—
all of the birch-stump lamps lighting up inside, this was a kind of bliss.
I had arrived where I loved in absolute terms.
Where I could love the poetics of if, then & thou. The luminous…
And yet poetry haunts with its suggestion that terrible things are true and stick, as Rilke says:
I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough/to be to you just object
and thing/dark and smart.
~
The sun was hidden behind the darkest cloud.
I said what is happening to my father?
In response, my husband’s back gave out,
he could not walk without whimpering, there was whimpering in the night
and I wasn’t sure which one of us it was.
What was happening to my ableness?
We had failure, heaps of failure in our hands.
The world had recast itself in such a way that I had to address the power behind it.
I kept saying strange things to people like no one is exempt from suffering.
I felt like a tiny bird with sinking feet.
There are assertions about difference
That I had not wanted to make in the past, but now did.
Where was I? Who was I?
My father was told he had to watch his back
and then they took everything away from him.
To take away his dignity with so many untruths. Do I have to watch my back too?
What did I think I could have? I wasn’t even sure if I had it here.
People hadn’t seen me as me, I started to feel it. Those glass birds
and the birch lamps were a kind of privilege
only others could have—not “others” in the sense in which I was other.
I started to see how money worked the room: when we had it, when we didn’t.
Imagine, we were so close
to the soaring sky, and imagine how we fell.
How we knew falling wouldn’t end us,
fall right here, fall right there, cry out, oh blustering self,
it can’t be as bad as you think.
I said let’s remember how to do it so it won’t hurt
this time or the next.
But I had to say the branches extended their arms,
there was a house attached to them—
we found ourselves languishing, then needing
to rebuild.
It was the turning of the year and then another one.
And the showy, extravagant people capped themselves
on the tops of mountain ash—
Horses were turned loose in the child’s sorrow. Black and roan, cantering through snow.
The way light fills the hand with light, November with graves, infancy with white. White. Given lilacs, lilacs disappear. Then low voices rising in walls.
The way they withdrew from the child’s body and spoke as if it were not there.
What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?
— With its no one without its I –
A dwarf ghost? A closet of empty clothes?
Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.
Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.
At the end of the hall, it sleepwalks into a mirror wearing mother’s robe.
A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face. Come here.
The bookcase knows, and also the darkness of books. Long passages into,
Endless histories toward, sleeping pages about. Why else toss gloves into a grave?
A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it came.
Words holding the scent of an asylum fifty years. It is fifty years, then.
The child hears from within: Come here and know, below
And unbeknownst to us, what these fields had been.
A house just like his mother’s,
But made of words.
Everything he could remember
Inside it:
Parrots and a bowl
Of peaches, and the bright rug
His grandmother wove.
Shadows also—mysteries
And secrets.
Corridors
Only ghosts patrol.
And did I mention
Strawberry jam and toast?
Did I mention
That everyone he loved
Lives there now,
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.
These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
Once a Day Poetry 