Ballistics Read Online Free Page B

to Mrs. Parker,
    who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
    and her students—a few with their hands up,
    others slouching with their caps on backwards—
    to figure out what it is I am trying to say
    about this place where I find myself
    and to do it before the noon bell rings
    and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

The Lamps Unlit
    It is difficult to write an aubade,
    a song about noon, or a few crepuscular lines
    without stopping to realize
    just where you are on the dial of a certain day,
    which is at least a beginning
    and better than the usual blind rush
    into the future, believed to reside
    over the next in an infinite series of hills.
    I’m all for noticing that the light
    in the tops of the trees
    is different now with the grass moist
    and cold, the heads of flowers yet unfolded,
    all for occupying a chair by a window
    or a wayside bench for an hour—
    time enough to look here and there
    as the caravan of time crosses the sand,
    time to think of the dead and lost friends,
    their faces hidden in the foliage,
    and to consider the ruination of love,
    a wisp of smoke rising from a chimney.
    And who cares if it takes me all day
    to write a poem about the dawn
    and I finish in the dark with the night—
    some love it best—draped across my shoulders.

China
    I am an ant inside a blue bowl
    on the table of a cruel prince.
    Battle plans are being discussed.
    Much rice wine is poured.
    But even when he angers
    and drives a long knife into the table,
    I continue to circle the bowl,
    hand-painted with oranges and green vines.

Looking Forward
    Whenever I stare into the future,
    the low, blue hills of the future,
    shading my eyes with one hand,
    I no longer see a city of opals
    with a sunny river running through it
    or a dark city of coal and gutters.
    Nor do I see children
    donning their apocalyptic goggles
    and hiding in doorways.
    All I see is me attending your burial
    or you attending mine,
    depending on who gets to go first.
    There is a light rain.
    A figure under an umbrella
    is reading from a thick book with a black cover.
    And a passing cemetery worker
    has cut the engine to his backhoe
    and is taking a drink from a bottle of water.

(detail)
    It was getting late in the year,
    the sky had been low and overcast for days,
    and I was drinking tea in a glassy room
    with a woman without children,
    a gate through which no one had entered the world.
    She was turning the pages of a large book
    on a coffee table, even though we were drinking tea,
    a book of colorful paintings—
    a landscape, a portrait, a still life,
    a field, a face, a pear and a knife, all turning on the table.
    Men had entered the gate, but no boy or girl
    had ever come out, I was thinking oddly
    as she stopped at a page of clouds
    aloft in a pale sky, tinged with red and gold.
    This one is my favorite, she said,
    even though it was only a detail, a corner
    of a larger painting which she had never seen.
    Nor did she want to see the countryside below
    or the portrayal of some myth
    in order for the billowing clouds to seem complete.
    This was enough, this fraction of the whole,
    just as the leafy scene in the windows was enough
    now that the light was growing dim,
    as was she enough, perfectly by herself
    somewhere in the enormous mural of the world.

Le Chien
    I remember late one night in Paris
    speaking at length to a dog in English
    about the future of American culture.
    No wonder she kept cocking her head
    as I went on about “summer movies”
    and the intolerable poetry of my compatriots.
    I was standing and she was sitting
    on a dim street in front of a butcher shop,
    and come to think of it, she could have been waiting
    for the early morning return of the lambs
    and the bleeding sides of beef
    to their hooks in the window.
    For my part, I had mixed my drinks,
    trading in the tulip of wine
    for the sharp nettles of whiskey.
    Why else would I be wasting my time
    and hers trying to explain “corn dog,”
    “white walls,” and