The Mercy Seat

by Dubie, Norman

• ISBN13: 9781556591556
• ISBN10: 1556591551
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Norman Dubie has one of the most radical imaginations in American letters.

Table of Contents

The Friary at Blossom, Prologue & Instructions	3	(4)
PART ONE Poems 1967-1990
Popham of the New Song	7	(10)
In the Dead of the Night	17	(1)
For Randall Jarrell, 1914--1965	18	(1)
Indian Summer	19	(8)
The Hour	27	(1)
A Village Priest	28	(2)
Descent into the Hours of the Peregrine	30	(1)
The Pennacesse Leper Colony for Women, Cape Cod: 1922	31	(2)
Pastoral	33	(1)
The Obscure	34	(2)
About Infinity	36	(1)
Anima Poeta: A Christmas Entry for the Suicide, Mayakovsky	37	(2)
Monologue of Two Moons, Nudes with Crests: 1938	39	(2)
Elegy Asking That It Be the Last	41	(1)
Nineteen Forty	42	(1)
February: The Boy Brueghel	43	(2)
The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals	45	(3)
These Untitled Little Verses in Which, at Dawn, Two Obscure Dutch Peasants Struggled with an Auburn Horse	48	(2)
Her Monologue of Dark Crepe with Edges of Light:	50	(3)
The Wedding Party	53	(2)
The Immoralist	55	(1)
Sun and Moon Flowers: Paul Klee, 1879--1940	56	(2)
Ibis	58	(4)
The Trees of Madame Blavatsky	62	(1)
The Moths	63	(6)
Elegies for the Ocher Deer on the Walls at Lascaux	69	(12)
Ghost	81	(2)
The City of the Olesha Fruit	83	(4)
The Seagull	87	(3)
A Widow Speaks to the Auroras of a December Night	90	(2)
The Hours	92	(2)
After Three Photographs of Brassai	94	(2)
The Dun Cow and the Hag	96	(2)
Elegy to the Sioux	98	(3)
A Grandfather's Last Letter	101	(3)
The Ganges	104	(1)
Elegy to the Pulley of Superior Oblique	105	(2)
Thomas Hardy	107	(1)
Grand Illusion	108	(5)
You	113	(1)
Elizabeth's War with the Christmas Bear	114	(2)
Aubade of the Singer and Saboteur, Marie Triste	116	(4)
The Fox Who Watched for the Midnight Sun	120	(2)
Comes Winter, the Sea Hunting	122	(4)
Double Sphere, Cloven Sphere	126	(2)
The Composer's Winter Dream	128	(4)
The Night Before Thanksgiving	132	(1)
Ode to the Spectral Thief, Alpha	133	(3)
The Parallax Monograph for Rodin	136	(3)
The World Isn't a Wedding of the Artists of Yesterday	139	(2)
The Scrivener's Roses	141	(5)
The Circus Ringmaster's Apology to God	146	(2)
Coleridge Crossing the Plain of Jars	148	(2)
Principia Mathematica: Einstein's Exile in an Old Dutch Winter	150	(3)
Lord Myth	153	(2)
Not the Cuckold's Dream	155	(2)
After Spring Snow, What They Saw	157	(2)
The Everlastings	159	(3)
An Old Woman's Vision	162	(2)
Several Measures for the Little Lost	164	(2)
Grandmother	166	(1)
Pictures at an Exhibition	167	(3)
To a Young Woman Dying at Weir	170	(1)
Penelope	171	(1)
Chemin de Fer	172	(1)
Hummingbirds	173	(1)
Elsinore in the Late Ancient Autumn	174	(3)
The Open Happens in the Midst of Beings	177	(2)
At Midsummer	179	(1)
Parish	180	(2)
Revelations	182	(2)
Elegy for Wright & Hugo	184	(2)
New England, Springtime	186	(2)
The Elegy for Integral Domains	188	(2)
Arkhangel'sk	190	(1)
Nine Black Poppies for Chac	191	(2)
The Widow of the Beast of Ingolstadt	193	(1)
Meister Eckhart	194	(3)
Dream	197	(1)
The Diamond Persona	198	(2)
La Pampa	200	(1)
The Funeral	201	(1)
Sanctuary	202	(2)
The Duchesse's Red Shoes	204	(4)
Danse Macabre	208	(1)
New England, Autumn	209	(1)
Through a Glass Darkly	210	(2)
The Trolley from Xochimilco	212	(3)
The Huts at Esquimaux	215	(2)
Oration: Half-Moon in Vermont	217	(2)
An Annual of the Dark Physics	219	(1)
The Lion Grotto	220	(2)
The Train	222	(2)
Lamentations	224	(2)
Old Night and Sleep	226	(1)
Ars Poetica	227	(2)
Baptismal	229	(1)
Poem	230	(1)
Trakl	231	(2)
Jeremiad	233	(2)
Groom Falconer	235	(2)
Accident	237	(1)
Fever	238	(1)
Of Politics, & Art	239	(2)
The Apocrypha of Jacques Derrida	241	(2)
The Death of the Race Car Driver	243	(1)
The Fish	244	(1)
Buffalo Clouds over the Maestro Hoon	245	(2)
An American Scene	247	(2)
Northwind Escarpment	249	(1)
New Age at Airport Mesa	250	(2)
Shipwreck	252	(2)
Safe Conduct	254	(1)
The Saints of Negativity	255	(2)
The Desert Deportation of 1915	257	(1)
Near the Bridge of Saint-Cloud	258	(2)
Amen	260	(1)
Radio Sky	261	(2)
Coyote Creek	263	(2)
Thomas Merton and the Winter Marsh	265	(1)
Anagram Born of Madness at Czernowitz, 23 November 1920	266	(2)
Tomb Pond	268	(1)
A True Story of God	269	(1)
Revelation 20:II--15	270	(1)
A Depth of Field	271	(1)
Looking up from Two Renaissance Paintings to the Massacre at Tiananmen Square	272	(1)
Confession	273	(1)
The Diatribe of the Kite	274	(2)
The Evening of the Pyramids	276	(2)
A Dream of Three Sisters	278	(2)
Homage to Philip K. Dick	280	(2)
Inside the City Walls	282	(1)
The Bus Stopped in Fields of Misdemeanor	283	(1)
Two Women on the Potomac Parkway	284	(2)
Psalm XXIII	286	(2)
A Renunciation of the Desert Primrose	288	(1)
A Blue Hog	289	(1)
Margaret's Speech	290	(2)
Bellevue Exchange	292	(1)
Simple Philo of Alexandria	293	(2)
November 23, 1989	295	(1)
In the Time of False Messiahs	296	(1)
A Physical Moon Beyond Paterson	297	(4)
PART TWO Poems 1991--2001
The Mercy Seat	301	(2)
Elegy for My Brother	303	(2)
At the Death of a Mongolian Peasant	305	(2)
A Skeleton for Mr. Paul in Paradise	307	(2)
A Fifteenth-Century Zen Master	309	(1)
The Caste Wife Speaks to the Enigmatic Parabolas	310	(2)
Ghosts on the Northern Land of Ur	312	(4)
After Sky X	316	(1)
The Photographer's Annual	317	(13)
``Gently Bent to Ease Us''	330	(2)
Poem for My Friend, Clare. Or, With White Stupas We Remember Buddha	332	(2)
Bells in the Endtime of Gyurmey Tsultrim	334	(3)
The Clouds of Magellan (Aphorisms of Mr. Canon Aspirin)	337	(37)
A Genesis Text for Larry Levis, Who Died Alone	374	(2)
The Amulet	376	(1)
``Somebody'll Hav' to Shoot Ya Down''	377	(2)
For Milarepa, in Ruse, on Rice Paper	379	(2)
On the Chinese Abduction of Tibet's Child Panchen Lama	381	(2)
The Shadows at Boxford	383	(2)
The Reader of the Sentences:	385	(13)
Last Poem, Snow Tree	398	(3)
About the Author	401	(2)
Index of Titles	403	(3)
Index of First Lines	406

Excerpts

Chapter One

    Popham of the New Song

for Pamela Stewart

I.

Neither all nor any angels arrive in the mind where

The spruce and fir shake at the sun in the morning

Spilling some yellow over the water. Some yellow

And the motion of next to no motion

Across the rocks, a salt-air, the old oceans

Return us, slowly tug us, along the familiar fiction

Of childhood. We were children. No longer.

This is the beginning of something

Not given, hopefully, too often: the present

Moment. No little engine in a little boat. But the

Bucket with a hole in it. From the well to the house.

The loss of water like a problem; the referendum that

Doesn't make an ocean. It has lost all confidence

In us. A last essay in a bowl.

We are sorry but the salvages were wages.

It's the way the little clams

In their black beds peep and then stare

At the crocuses, now, up and alarmed, everywhere.

There were two books not yet dusted with a feather.

Not yet books as books in rooms.

The liars are all out on the smallest branch

That cracks the window. Around the cellar windows

There is a black sticky paper. The green of the pine

This time is saying to the winter: Give it up, give it up.

A man sits back and relinquishes his childhood, his child's

Childhood, his child. No longer carrying clear water

In a small cup. One foot before the other. He wonders

If the bright color of a bird breaking from the thicket

Will be enough. This is not the beginning or the end

Of just one or the other season. This is a man

Who believes that a child has grown and grown but

Never in the mind. In the mind under the boughs

She has just weakened.

And, now, bring the towels and basins. The fresh linen

And ribbons.

It's evening. And neither all nor any of the angels arrive here

In the rooms where a child is being clothed in jewels and dresses.

The wooden boats knocking around

Outside like two old women calling for a cat who's died

                  Out in the first mud and forsythia. Far outside.

II.

And so a man I love says fifteen years is all he has;

And so I say to the man I love: A great wheel

Made of wood and iron

Will make but one revolution in fifteen years, crossing

Fields outside Odessa, ropes and songs and mules

Making it an infinite nostalgia of a white animal.

Do men in bright blouses surround a senseless element.

The way a horn is tipped

Spilling squash, winter melons, and huge black

Leaves that are smoked in lodges near a stream.

The coronary like naked children standing in a pond.

Of forms, I tell him, the body is profound.

It is of bread and water that people die.

The will-to-change

Lugs a piano on its back.

And retires, humid

At midnight with a glass of milk. It hits the sack.

This mover of objects down the stairs says there is

Only one piano in its life and it is black.

We dressed the child and said, perhaps, that two friends

Died. There is no wife.

The measure of her waist is equal to the radius

Of the wheel above or the wrist of the ambiguous child.

Who was put in a boat. Who waved good-bye.

The will-to-change is a likable vertebrate. Surprised?

Is that what we mean when we say they die.

Or is it that we're all alike. The watercolors

Of then and now. Your father in Russia. The clover, or

The shock-tactics of lucid flowers all wired

Into bundles and found

On the chests of dead Sicilian children. A clover only

Of the mind. I mind! Who tripped

Us on the stairs.

A picture of little hope in a prospect of flowers.

A marvelous fall on the stairs and all the little hammers

And teeth of the will-to-change broken, scattered

Across the floor. I will not go!

To Peoria this time friend. Or Odessa or Romania.

Nothing will? Romania? Margaret and Rita

Are children on the stairs, and all afternoon they comb

                 Each other's hair. They don't believe in me or you.

III. OPPOSITION

Four farmers seen through an open window falling asleep

While playing cards

In the very early morning at a small railway station

In Belgium. And so poetry wins a few hearts.

This is a small boy's way of insisting on adventure,

But with the violence of a great-grandmother who spits.

We are defeated by the commonplace splendor of a battle

Between night and late evening.

The figure for the struggle could be a virgin

On a porch shaking out a tablecloth while calling

To the birds. Come and eat! Come and eat!

Vigorously shaking her tablecloth; all the birds

Fleeing to the nearest tree. Can nothing be done

Right in my story.

The rare black Auk is resting on her eggs.

There is a beautiful tall blonde in a flapping dress

Stepping from a train in Belgium. There is an open

Window through which she sees four farmers playing

Cards while looking out an open window at her knees.

Somewhere between them there's a sheet

Of hotel stationery carried by a breeze. Somewhere between what?

She and the farmers? Or her knees? In the congress of degrees of

             slow speech

There is the great black Auk about to say something.

"All across Europe I hear women dying in childbirth."

Or, "Up in the tree the owl and the nightingale

Speak to each other and tremble but don't sleep."

Poetry can win a few hearts. A woman stands in a tub:

You think one breast is smaller than the other.

But then you're not sure. You've fallen

In love. There is one idea

That is easily

Released with just a finger and a thumb.

Behind the virgin the screen door slams just once

And all the birds are coming down out of the trees

And not very secretly. The great black Auk

Is screaming for joy. Her lovely young! Things are getting

Better for my story. We're back where it had begun. One of

The farmers leans and says to the youngest, "Did you see

                 That letter fly between her knees." They are drunk.

IV. LES PAPILLONS NOIRS

A black sedan draws along the woods stopping

For occasional white daffodils; there are still

Some patches of snow. The two women looking

To both sides of the road. One says, "Emma Bovary

Had a beehive below her window and the bees

Circling in the sunlight would sometimes strike

Against the window as fast yellow balls."

The other says, "Once after some winter rains everything

Froze and to take water from the well I would

First with slack rope and a flatiron in the bucket

Drop the bucket to open the water. Seldom have

I felt physical."

"And then the shadows of evening are falling." Dreamlike.

"The triumphs are, of course, never physical."

The two women still cruising along the woods.

The younger remembers the Viscount's arm red

And twitching in mud and straw by the wagon. The first

Clear desire to touch a muscle. Once

In the war her mother wrestled a large leg away

From a starving horse. It was

Winter and she saw for the first time those black butterflies,

Those light ashes floating at the edge of everything

When your eyes are sore and tired. She also

Remembered her brother who drilled with the militia

On Sundays. Boys just up in the trees

Cheering and insulting; all of their legs dangling but

Not belonging to the scene or to the promise of

Anything simple like white daffodils in new dirt at evening.

(Catching minnows with a colander.) This is the younger's

Story and going only from one thought to another.

What provokes the birds in the morning is her man.

At the sink he vomits, the small waist moving regularly,

Poisoned with mayonnaise he had made with his father

On Saturday. The men make the mayonnaise on Saturday.

All the eggs and peppers. The bowls of ice and green cigars

From Vaubyessard. The smoke

Like April now steaming in the woods at evening. Black

Butterflies. White daffodils. A red muscle. Like monks

Sitting down to copy. Two women bent over flowers

                 On a newspaper. They say, "What to keep.

                                        What to throw away."

V.

for R.P. Blackmur

There are the countless, returning New England widows and

Spinsters. They are returning from the shed with wood

Or kerosene. They follow in their own footsteps

A course, soft but exact, like reapers with knives

Bare to the waist crossing a yellow field.

They know their lives, early and late, and talk peacefully

To the elderly hen who lives in straw, why not in the attic.

"I buried our garden last week." A blue face

With a buttercup under each eye.

The painted face of a woman laid out

In a stone house; trying to raise herself

Just with her elbows: her elbows looking more

Like the back legs of a cricket or a fly.

Emily Dickinson's job was to lay out knives

In the seminary dining hall in the morning

And to wash and dry them at night, counting them twice,

While returning them to the purple drawers. Running to her

Room under the curfew bells. She said

Her father never snored. He thought

She would hide some of her letters

In the big bushes by the vegetables and marigolds.

There was an interview with a pigeon.

Twice I dreamed I was a Jew in China

Eating blue leaves off branches with roots.

So these women were young and knew young men

From Amherst and Salem. Young men watched

From windows walking in circles under elms and oaks.

The wheeling princes of rank and order

Come to visit first with the father and then

The daughters. "The mysterious beauty of someone red

And, yes, the energy even of his stutter."

Well, I said they are all, now, stepping high

And precisely through snow and back from

The shed. Maybe, there's even a ghost or two.

In summer represented by lightning striking

The iron rooster on the roof of the barn.

They know their lives, early and late, and set out

Knives in seminaries and, nevertheless,

Die a natural death. And, nevertheless, value coal

                 With alabaster. And suffer affliction like an insect.

VI. THE JOYOUS, THE LAKE

How two women can be the same, for instance, in Poland

On a wharf at a lake where naked women are

Being instructed by soldiers to walk quickly along

To the end of the wharf, at last, every two of them

Are passed a blanket to share as they step down

Into the steady boats. It's a wet October day.

Some cry. Some sing. Naked you are beside

Yourself.These pairs of women on the hard benches

In the boats are like that, and especially at the width

Of each boat: two large middle-aged women working

The oars, their blankets fallen to the floor

Of the boat. Pulling it across, not sisters,

Occasionally looking over a shoulder. In the middle

Of the lake it rains on everyone briefly; all the songs

Now are to help the women rowing.

The sleeves of the soldiers are of red wool and they are

Also miserable. They are

Like a corpse in soil included in the scene.

Pastor Cruikshank looks out over the lake. I offer

Him dry matches. I say that order is for the birds

If it appears as the survival of restraints

After the feelings it meant to contain are no longer felt

By anyone on the face of the earth. He says, Well, and for

That matter all the birds are in Marseille. The Nazis in Warsaw.

And we, my boy, are on the shore of a cold lake. Perhaps, all

Feelings are the birth of the shape they take. Now, I thought

Of that, but made it his speech. Please, reach me down

That book, that jar, or the feeling that runs

The nude in the morning away from the water up the sloping

Lawn to the cottage with a yellow gate. An air or melody.

The Pastor says that Puritans gathered on a beach

In their capes and looked back across the ocean

Remembering the crazy bobbin on a nail of bone,

The green milk in the shade,

And the green manure in the barns outside a village.

What color was the pond? That too was a mistake.

And then he left drawing a thumb across his leg. That means

Nothing to us, early or late. The women in the boat

Were the last delay of a dream aria with water. A bird

                 Drops down from a tree in the sun in Marseille.

VII. SONG

A bird drops down from a tree in the sun in Marseille.

This is a bitter poem. This is a poem that meant

To be an admission of love to a woman

Whom it admits it loves. This is a bitter poem.

This is a poem of love for a woman and a bird both

Dropping out of a tree in the sun; yes, in Marseille.

And actually I'm now just writing this poem. You

On the other hand are just now reading this poem.

From here on it is already written for you; not yet written

For me. Why do I continue with it?

Because you are inseparable from the woman this poem

Has a love for, and the bird, also; almost down from the tree.

This poem loves a rotting boat in a green cove, some

Daffodils, and a young Nazi lacing a boot by a dead truck

By the lake in a cold rain. He is looking at a copy

Of Heine. If this bothers you. (The poem's affection

For the soldier.) Then the rest of the poem is not written

For you. It is a poem that couldn't love

The woman I love. It is a poem I couldn't love but

It is a poem of love, I think, despite either of us.

The young Nazi finishes lacing

His boot by making a careful bow. Now is that

Altogether surprising. It is a surprise to the woman

This is written for who is sometimes, also, the only

Person reading this poem. Yes, she could be you.

This is the achievement of this poem. That it is

Now finally speaking just to you . This is

No longer a bitter poem; no longer a poem

         that could continue!

Copyright © 2001 Norman Dubie. All rights reserved.