MELVILLIAN, ONWARD and other poems, Helen Wickes

 

MELVILLIAN, ONWARD

 

From San Diego east and up to Alpine
Stubbs has groused at length
about his too-tender meal, and enjoined
poor cook to preach to the sharks, I won’t
have that swearing, talk to ’em gentlemanly,

while from Alpine to Descanso, the lake
is low, but the oaks from the fire
are sprouting tufts of green, as the unscrolling
has begun of the flesh from fish—excuse me,
leviathan—the great prized ox of the seas,

then through Julian, down the grade,
those miles to Banner, the ceanothus
flowering blue, we learn the skin to blubber
relations, the brains are accounted a fine dish,
and we turn north at Scissors Crossing,

while Stubbs begins the decapitation
in painstaking detail, as we drive past Plum,
Lizard, and Grapevine canyons, and as, oh no!
Speak, thou vast and venerable head, Ahab
is now lecturing that cut-off head,

while we cross over the ridge, hearing,
O head, thou hast seen enough to split
the planets, as the great sand-blasted desert,
itself a sea, spreads out beneath us, and they spy
another ship, full of sicklies, and the dead guy’s letter

hurled from one ship—caught onboard the other—
as we round Christmas Circle toward town,
brittlebush full-flowering yellow, as faithful scribe,
Ishmael, advises—and so we ponder—do thou
live in the world, without being of it.

 

BACK TO AHAB

Yeah, we all sort of get it,
how you grow old and there’s no one left for you.
Wife and kid on shore puttering along in their lives,

best sailors deep-sixed, biggest whales stripped
of blubber, drained of fine oil, down to raw bone
for ladies’ stays and whatnots, meanwhile
the ghastly sharks savoring the leftovers,

meanwhile on shipboard your other best leftovers,
how they hate, mock, belittle you,
how easy to catch them practicing your stupid
peg leg thump up and down the deck all hours,

hear them snarling your nasty old voice, slinging
down tiny coins to bet who’s got your badness
down the best, but forget about them; he’s still

out there, he who’s grabbed a choice part
of you, chosen and taken you sacramentally
into himself, enriching his being. So we get it,
you’re in a rush to get to him,

last enemy, soul mate, demigod, Ruler of my Soul.
Oh, yes that was a really great song, though beyond
your time, so listen up, Ahab,
and go for it, you’ll be famous forever.

 

 

BLAKEIAN

Long gone is that standing up to sing,
those winter months, as the words
poured forth and what

did we know then, brandishing our hymnals
in that old and drafty country church
about And did those feet in ancient time

while everyone who stomped in late
was chuffing warm air through their hands,

as we strained to imagine his England’s
pleasant pastures green, or his mythical
Jerusalem, builded here.

There we were, age thirteen, parsing
bring me my bow of burning gold
and puzzling out those arrows of desire

when just to sing was to inhale all of winter
in a sharpened breath, wondering about

and did the countenance divine,
as the minister scowled down upon us,
shine forth upon the clouded hills

praying for enough voice to carry on,
anything to warm us, the massive task
of exhaling, as those dark satanic mills

brought us sharp, in the song even we,
silly girls, knew to be of empire,

forged in the poet’s brain for the likes of us,
we thought, hungry for words to worry
and snarl all our young and greedy lives.

 

ONE TIME, BIG LIGHTS

So yes, I was once a child star, artfully
portrayed in a small article, in faded newsprint,
which someone tore out to save for posterity,
not mine. You’ve never heard of me,

you probably won’t, but my picture in the paper
was big time. We drove the turnpikes and stormed
the great city, took rooms in the Mayflower,

that slightly genteel, upper, though barely,
westside matron of comfort. Now, she’s gone.
We jammed into adjoining rooms,
rang down for room service as if we wanted,

what, entrance to the kingdom. Next day
I went forth, joining the team, and we all
performed our quite small-time, child star thing,
international, no less, surviving,

with neither a win nor a place, but bringing
no shame to the tribe. The best was how thrilled
they were, my people (and most of them are gone),

at partaking in something grand. We arrived,
damaged goods, but intact, drove home
the same, and over the moon with happiness.

 

PROUSTIAN AGAIN, IN THE DESERT

Tonight they go yipping, their voices so high

nearly hysterical, you’d worry about them,
if you didn’t know better, but now’s the time
to fret about Marcel, as in, will he get it done,
because, oh God, we’ve grown weary

of Charlus, and annoyed with the late Albertine,
tired of poor Gilberte—though distressed
she’s gotten so fat—and sad about
the strange St. Loup, but what a brilliant cad
he was, while now, this late, with no moon,

it sounds like a dozen voicings from our coyote gang
across the desert, but likely just a few,
so you get that echoey thing of overtones
and undertones. You want Marcel to find his way,
though not too happily, because

then he’d shut up and be gone, leaving you
to all this vastness, leaching forth from rainstorms
in the canyons, the down drop
of water and rock, disfiguring, reconfiguring
the landscape, demanding new ears to hear,

new language to feel through, so Marcel,
catch your breath, disrupt our landscape,
all over again, please tell us more.

 

ROUNDING THE FAR TURN

She’s waddling forthrightly to the car,
he’s gripping her elbow, pretending
authority, the pink rose trellis they walked
beneath. Two dogs, a cat are trailing

as she sallies forth to produce my brother,
though what mattered was that first TV,
in black and white, grainy image next day
of the great gray ghost, Native Dancer,

the favorite, nipped at the wire
by long shot Dark Star—Kentucky Derby,
May 2, 1953—and then the also-rans—
Straight Face, Social Outcast, Money Broker,

Ace Destroyer. If I consider my brother,
my family, the whole frigging lot of us,
what a bunch of dark stars, gray ghosts,
and, especially, the also-rans we’ve been.

 

For additional information about Helen Wickes’ work as poet and editor, see the following links in issue N. 1 of TDM http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/prowling-memorys-rooms-poems-by-helen-wickes/

and http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/poetry-of-resistance-and-resilience-a-new-anthology-from-16-rivers-press-helen-wickes/

For her work as translator, see posts with the works of Julio Monteiro Martins and Pasqualino Bongiovanni, both issue N. 1 and 2.

Featured image: Photo by Aritra Sanyal