Wild Gratitude Read Online Free PDF Page B

wash away the morning
    That is just about to rise behind the smokestacks
    On the other side of the river, other side
    Of nightfall. I wish I could forget the slab
    Of darkness that always fails, the memories
    That flood through the window in a murky light.
    But now it is too late. Already the day
    Is a bowl of thick smoke filling up the sky
    And swallowing the river, covering the buildings
    With a sickly, yellow film of sperm and milk.
    Soon the streets will be awash with little bright
    Patches of oblivion on their way to school,
    Dark briefcases of oblivion on their way to work.
    Soon my small apartment will be white and solemn
    Like a blank page held up to a blank wall,
    A message whispered into a vacant closet. But
    This is a message which no one else remembers
    Because it is stark and German, like the silence,
    Like the white fire of daybreak that is burning
    Inside my throat. If only I could stamp it out!
    But think of smoke and ashes. An ominous string
    Of railway cars scrawled with a dull pencil
    Across the horizon at dawn. A girl in pigtails
    Saying, “Soon you are going to be erased.”
    Imagine thrusting your head into a well
    And crying for help in the wrong language,
    Or a deaf mute shouting into an empty field.
    So don’t talk to me about flowers, those blind
    Faces of the dead thrust up out of the ground
    In bright purples and blues, oranges and reds.
    And don’t talk to me about the gold leaves
    Which the trees are shedding like an extra skin:
    They are handkerchiefs pressed over the mouths
    Of the dead to keep them quiet. It’s true:
    Once I believed in a house asleep, a childhood
    Asleep. Once I believed in a mother dreaming
    About a pair of giant iron wings growing
    Painfully out of the shoulders of the roof
    And lifting us into away-from-here-and-beyond.
    Once I even believed in a father calling out
    In the dark, restless and untransfigured.
    But what did we know then about the smoke
    That was already beginning to pulse from trains,
    To char our foreheads, to transform their bodies
    Into two ghosts billowing from a huge oven?
    What did we know about a single gray strand
    Of barbed wire knotted slowly and tightly
    Around their necks? We didn’t know anything then.
    And now here is a grave and mysterious sentence
    Finally written down, carried out long ago:
    At last I have discovered that the darkness
    Is a solitary night train carrying my parents
    Across a field of dead stumps and wildflowers
    Before disappearing on the far horizon,
    Leaving nothing much in its earthly wake
    But a stranger standing at the window
    Suddenly trying to forget his childhood,
    To forget a black trail of smoke
    Slowly unraveling in the distance
    Like the victory-flag of death, to forget
    The slate clarity of another day
    Forever breaking behind the smokestacks.
In a Polish Home for the Aged (Chicago, 1983)
    It’s sweet to lie awake in the early morning
    Remembering the sound of five huge bells
    Ringing in the village at dawn, the iron
    Notes turning to music in the pink clouds.
    It’s nice to remember the flavor of groats
    Mixed with horse’s blood, the sour tang
    Of unripe peppers, the smell of garlic
    Growing in Aunt Stefania’s garden.
    I can remember my grandmother’s odd claim
    That her younger brother was a mule
    Pulling an ox cart across a lapsed meadow
    In the first thin light of a summer morning;
    Her cousin, Irka, was a poorly planted tree
    Wrapping itself in a dress of white blossoms.
    I could imagine an ox cart covered with flowers,
    The sound of laughter coming from damp branches.
    Some nights I dream that I’m a child again
    Flying through the barnyard at six a.m.:
    My mother milks the cows in the warm barn
    And thinks about her father, who died long ago,
    And daydreams about my future in a large city.
    I want to throw my arms around her neck
    And touch the sweating blue pails of milk
    And talk about my childish nightmares.
    God, you’ve got to see us to know how happy
    We were then, two dark caresses of