Map (26 page)

to feel the cold drops on their necks and backs,

they look at the bridge and the people on it

as if they saw themselves there,

running the same never-to-be-finished race

through the same endless, ever-to-be-covered distance,

and they have the nerve to believe

that this is really so.

 

 

 

 

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

 

1993

 

 

I should have begun with this: the sky.

A window minus sill, frame, and panes.

An aperture, nothing more,

but wide open.

 

I don't have to wait for a starry night,

I don't have to crane my neck

to get a look at it.

I've got the sky behind my back, at hand, and on my eyelids.

The sky binds me tight

and sweeps me off my feet.

 

Even the highest mountains

are no closer to the sky

than the deepest valleys.

There's no more of it in one place

than another.

A mole is no less in seventh heaven

than the owl spreading her wings.

The object that falls in an abyss

falls from sky to sky.

 

Grainy, gritty, liquid,

inflamed, or volatile

patches of sky, specks of sky,

gusts and heaps of sky.

The sky is everywhere,

even in the dark beneath your skin.

I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.

I'm a trap within a trap,

an inhabited inhabitant,

an embrace embraced,

a question answering a question.

 

Division into sky and earth—

it's not the proper way

to contemplate this wholeness.

It simply lets me go on living

at a more exact address

where I can be reached promptly

if I'm sought.

My identifying features

are rapture and despair.

 

 

It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree

beside a river

on a sunny morning.

It's an insignificant event

and won't go down in history.

It's not battles and pacts,

where motives are scrutinized,

or noteworthy tyrannicides.

 

And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.

And since I'm here

I must have come from somewhere,

and before that

I must have turned up in many other places,

exactly like the conquerors of nations

before setting sail.

 

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,

its Friday before Saturday,

its May before June.

Its horizons are no less real

than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.

 

This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.

The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.

The path leading through the bushes

wasn't beaten last week.

The wind had to blow the clouds here

before it could blow them away.

 

And though nothing much is going on nearby,

the world is no poorer in details for that.

It's just as grounded, just as definite

as when migrating races held it captive.

 

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.

Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.

Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,

but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

 

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.

Ants stitching in the grass.

The grass sewn into the ground.

The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

 

So it happens that I am and look.

Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air

on wings that are its alone,

and a shadow skims through my hands

that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.

 

When I see such things, I'm no longer sure

that what's important

is more important than what's not.

 

 

Some people—

that means not everyone.

Not even most of them, only a few.

Not counting school, where you have to,

and poets themselves,

you might end up with something like two per thousand.

 

Like—

but then, you can like chicken noodle soup,

or compliments, or the color blue,

your old scarf,

your own way,

petting the dog.

 

Poetry—

but what is poetry anyway?

More than one rickety answer

has tumbled since that question first was raised.

But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that

like a redemptive handrail.

 

 

After every war

someone has to tidy up.

Things won't pick

themselves up, after all.

 

Someone has to shove

the rubble to the roadsides

so the carts loaded with corpses

can get by.

 

Someone has to trudge

through sludge and ashes,

through the sofa springs,

the shards of glass,

the bloody rags.

 

Someone has to lug the post

to prop the wall,

someone has to glaze the window,

set the door in its frame.

 

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,

and it takes years.

All the cameras have gone

to other wars.

 

The bridges need to be rebuilt,

the railroad stations, too.

Shirtsleeves will be rolled

to shreds.

 

Someone, broom in hand,

still remembers how it was.

Someone else listens, nodding

his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby

who'll find all that

a little boring.

 

From time to time someone still must

dig up a rusted argument

from underneath a bush

and haul it off to the dump.

 

Those who knew

what this was all about

must make way for those

who know little.

And less than that.

And at last nothing less than nothing.

 

Someone has to lie there

in the grass that covers up

the causes and effects

with a cornstalk in his teeth,

gawking at clouds.

 

 

See how efficient it still is,

how it keeps itself in shape—

our century's hatred.

How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

 

It's not like other feelings.

At once both older and younger.

It gives birth itself to the reasons

that give it life.

When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.

And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.

 

One religion or another—

whatever gets it ready, in position.

One fatherland or another—

whatever helps it get a running start.

Justice also works well at the outset

until hate gets its own momentum going.

Hatred. Hatred.

Its face twisted in a grimace

of erotic ecstasy.

 

Oh these other feelings,

listless weaklings.

Since when does brotherhood

draw crowds?

Has compassion

ever finished first?

Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?

Only hatred has just what it takes.

 

Gifted, diligent, hardworking.

Need we mention all the songs it has composed?

All the pages it has added to our history books?

All the human carpets it has spread

over countless city squares and football fields?

 

Let's face it:

it knows how to make beauty.

The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.

Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.

You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins

and a certain bawdy humor to be found

in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

 

Hatred is a master of contrast—

between explosions and dead quiet,

red blood and white snow.

Above all, it never tires

of its leitmotif—the impeccable executioner

towering over its soiled victim.

 

It's always ready for new challenges.

If it has to wait awhile, it will.

They say it's blind. Blind?

It has a sniper's keen sight

and gazes unflinchingly at the future

as only it can.

 

 

Reality demands