Sitting in History

Sitting in History

Richard Moore

© 2002 by Richard Moore


Cover art: Ancient Ruins with a Great Arch and a Column
by Giuseppe Zais


Published by The New Formalist Press


XHTML & CSS design by Leo Yankevich

Preface

Since my high-school years, I have believed that poets can deepen their art by trying to understand the age in which they live and the role that poetry can play in it; and meeting the need for that understanding head-on in the consideration of actual current events has been a prominent feature of my poems from the beginning. The subject enters each of my books and dominates two of them, so it seemed an appropriate theme for this chapbook, which begins with a poem published in Harper’s in 1967 and ends with one in Chronicles last month.

Hymn to An Automatic Washer

    O wise God of our fathers,
we love You, yet...one question bothers:
    has no one ever quashed
reports that Jesus seldom washed?
    And who can think a greasy
and soiled St. Francis of Assisi
    could cleanly love The Lord?
Shall we imagine he ignored
    those lice between his toes
when he blessed each creature that grows—
    each creature, born or hatched?
Shall we suppose he never scratched—
    though vexed with itching poxes?
Who can resolve such paradoxes?

    You can, God of our daughters!—
swirler of heated soapy waters,
    immaculate machine,
where DUZ does everything so clean.
    Cleanse us, if we have sinned,
spin-dry us, lest we flap in wind,
    exposed to harmful germs.
As every snowy shirt affirms
    with underdrawers in chorus,
a new white Idol stands before us,
    rolling its sudsy eye.
America, thy sons reply,
    Down with the old gods! Beat
them into scrap, they’re obsolete.

    Warranted washer, prim
in thy enamel and chrome trim,
    we celebrate thy birth.
Whirl on! Protect us from the earth!
    Lead forth this Land’s creations
and sterilize the unwashed nations;
    O thou, our helm and shield,
launder those lilies of the field!

Elegy

It’s time that I deciphered the last traces
of our engagement out in windy spaces
the time my country fought in North Korea.
Marriage was my idea—
because I needed roots
in a prim Texas town
that outlawed prostitutes.
I wanted life more normal,
and so, like war declared, when you came down
I made our marriage formal.
Fanatic nations pursue objects, blind.
I had an image of you, hanging in my mind,
out of your body.
 
Too gentle, frightened almost, for a nurse,
you could still work. Things might have been much worse.
A homosexual chaplain I’d befriended
married us. You pretended
to like him, and he did the same for you.
Allergic to cats too—
it may have been the kittens in your trunk
more than our cheap champagne that got him drunk.
Who made you more afraid,
he, or the dying man with his face flayed
in your hospital? Keeping those two cute
newborn kittens, you quit without dispute.
There was enough between us—was there not?—
since both of us knew well what pleasure could be got
out of your body.
 
Kittens consumed our honeymoon. We fed
them with doll bottles; rubbing them, we’d vex
their little bowels to move into Kleenex;
and on each hotel bed
we’d watch their loving romps—
till this all ended in the Georgia swamps.
There, where a captain’s crazy English wife
screamed and attacked her children every night,
their eyes opened, they learned to fight for life.
Yours was the female. White
and sickly, she looked cowed.
Maddening how she constantly miaowed.
And yet you wept for her,
when through her tufts of fur
you saw spreading my trowelfuls of dirt,
as if she had been taken, stiffened and inert,
out of your body.
 
The war went on, our whole economy boomed,
and every day I zoomed
over the Negroes down
sweating in shanty town
up to the clouds in million-dollar machines—
I, in the elite corps
Who’d fight the Next Great War
mostly by automation,
exterminator hired by the Nation
to keep this over-crowding world in check.
While army and marines,
holding it by the neck,
killed Communist Chinese,
I picked our kitten’s fleas
and pictured things much better left ignored.
That yellow male survived,
seemingly million-lived
as that unwashed Asian horde
resisting Freedom’s probe
from halfway round the globe—
they died with such abandon, backs to their own border.
All I could find was monstrousness, insane disorder,
out of your body.
 
Then even you grew pregnant—and that cat,
swallowing spiders, wilder—and he spat
back at me, dared to enter
my room at night, tormenting his tormentor—
maybe in quest of rubbing, warmth, or food,
and unaware as loud, unturned-off radios,
booming the news, I needed solitude.
What can one do? One throws
whatever comes to hand, out of one’s wits,
and the cat spits.
You feared he might disturb me. Yes, he might.
Sometimes it seemed he cried
as you cried, cried each night
for the tough life inside
you, growing. . . . But one dawn
you woke; the cat was gone.
Who forced him out, then, tempting him, or goading?
Your eyes filled with foreboding—
and General Eisenhower
proclaimed the earnestness of the hour
and said that creeping socialism must be stopped.
We drove to Jacksonville and had the baby chopped
out of your body.

from Word from the Hills

           

A Sonnet Sequence

                        44

Oswald, you did what I would never dare
and killed a President: the one with style
we cheered and left unmurdered for a while,
charming old countries, young and debonaire,
whom Congress could ignore, with his strange flair
for quoting poets and his boyish smile.
Dallas seemed suited for a deed that vile,
that stoned another statesman speaking there,

but it was you, with hatreds like my own,
only not schooled, like mine, to mockery.
For days your innocence so clearly shone
in your blurred face, dying on our TV,
in such confusion, how could I have known
that you’d have murdered him, that you were me?

Poem about Vietnam that Didn’t
Suit Anybody at the Time

    The very skies grow soiled and clammy.
Autumn has come to 1967.
Thunderous Yellowbirds climb south to Miami,
    the shrill vacuum cleaners of Heaven.

    The ducks rise up in careless ranks
and disappear into the Great Beyond;
I stand where shrinking water bares its banks  
    and skip flat stones across the pond.

    Lyndon is in his great white mansion;
peace-loving students storm the Pentagon.
I stay right here, coiled up inside my scansion,
    while all these dreadful things go on.  
               
    Lyndon, no matter how adept,
no matter how proficient the machine,
the floor of Heaven still remains unswept,
    there are some things we cannot clean.

    There is a destiny that fails.
Asia has felt the heal of our empire,
clung to the heel, sucked out the shiny nails
    (such is the virtue of a mire),

    and now the boot is falling off;
I think the white and naked toes grow fungal;
I do not think our minds will ever doff
    what they put on in Asia’s jungle.

    I hear a mother’s anxious tears
who supplicates her decorated hero
to throw away that nasty bag of ears
    that she found, cleaning out his bureau.

    The dandelions that rule my lawn
are difficult to search out and destroy;
their buried roots remain, and when I’m gone
    new seedlings secretly deploy.

    Good weed killer, dumped on en masse,
Lyndon, I hope will work with greater ease--
distinguishing intruders from true grass--         
    on dandelions than Vietnamese.

    Though rioters shall feel the rod
and half the banks in Texas feed you profit,
though you have Sunday-breakfasted with God
    and Billy Graham, His hired prophet,

    Lyndon, things haven’t gone so well
for you, for me, and for this hectic Nation.
You’ve worked too hard.  Why not go home now, sell
    the ranch, the banks, the TV station,

and join me here beside the pond,
pitching these skipping stones?  Catastrophe
will come, need not be wrested, begged, nor conned.
    It needs no help from you or me.

    Forget the poor and how they house;
forget the protocol, the Paris gowns;
watch how the clever stone skips, skips, then plows
    so gracefully before it drowns.

Jungle War

        Weak sun-rays out of winter cloud;
the dusty windowpane crossed once by a dark bird.
    In a far room the baby cries aloud;
            between us two, no word.

        But heightened by the lonely cry,
tropical silence in us sets its traps and harkens.
    Old grudges deepen and intensify,
            and outside the sky darkens.

        Under the books, the knickknack shelves,
the shreds of cobweb that still hold our lives together,
    we penetrate the jungles of ourselves.
            Bombs burst, touched by a feather.

        Can no one stop this dull, mad war?
Each still avoids the other’s unimpassioned kiss.
    O, we no longer know what we longed for.
            Maybe it was this.

Our Refuge in the Strife

Trashcans in grumpy rows where twilight comes
    down canyons of the slums—
devils are dancing there that won’t stay hid,
    and terror flips its lid.

God of our fathers, art Thou still our Guide?
    Then show us where to hide,
untroubled by dashiki, beard or turban;
    teach us to be suburban.

Give us, O Lord, whose hearts are underfed,
    this day our fluffy bread. . .
I take our shining glory from its niche,
    load it, and press the switch:

two slices on an automated coaster
    sink down into the toaster
with their white faces and seductive smell
    like devils into Hell.

Waiters   

Hushed waiters pour champagne, as mobsters
dine on caviar and lobsters.
And God waits too, silent, discreet.
He’s used to serving the elite.

The Creation

When God first stuff
shaped into form
and made earth warm—
just warm enough

to unfreeze ice
and not to boil,
but soak, make soil—
wasn’t that nice!

All went so well,
all worked, all ran—
but then all fell

into a gloom,
and God made man—
and man went BOOM.

In Memory of One of the Better Ones

    He launched his presidential bid
        on a strange whim:
to see if the whole Country’d get as sick of him
        as Georgia did.

    He won, and down the Country slid
        with Godly Jim,
his judgments catastrophic, his perceptions dim.
        God, to be rid . . .

    but friends, it wasn’t right to shed
        our leader thus—
    there on our boil of state, our head,

    our crown of pus,
that yellow corn pone eater, that voice, toneless, dead—
    him?  No, friends, us.

Suburb Song

                   Come live with me!
                   We’ll spread the brie,
                 guzzle the wine, smoke dope,
                   and give up hope
                   for modern man’s
                      estate
                   that fetters, bans
                      what’s great
                   from his life of ease,
                 and fosters grubs and fleas.

                   We’ll cultivate
                   curious herbs
                 and, resting from our labors
                   in posh suburbs,
                   we’ll contemplate
                      our vile
                   upwardly mobile
                      neighbors.
                   Their life of ease
                 suits them, those grubs and fleas.

                   The one firm rule
                   in suburbs posh is:
                 when snow is falling, you’ll
                   pull on galoshes,
                   and thus, all faring
                      in rubber
                   like great whales, bearing
                      their blubber
                   through seas of ease. . .
                 Listen, you grubs and fleas:

                   The heroic past
                   has passed at last
                 into a moral slum,
                   and life’s become
                   a stuttery
                      boast
                   over buttery
                      toast.
                   A life of ease. . .
                 eat it, you grubs and fleas!

In Future Time

    Winter is near.
Under the gun-blue moonlight shining here,
the ground with cold formality receives
    the broken leaves;

    and now beyond
the coarse, metallic surface of the pond,
the lights that shine there like piano keys
    bite through the trees,

    but there’s no tune
that reaches here beneath the cloudy moon.
Only the dry-leaf rattle of the wind,
    undisciplined

    and unrecorded,
whistles to summer’s acorns, darkly hoarded.
Huddle all creatures into winter’s empire now:
    spring brings the plough.

The New Order

Winter; and now the empty field
    is armored with ice.
Rebellious weeds lie crushed, concealed
    where, neat and precise,

the clean sheet glosses the lost ground.
    See, nothing’s in flower!
A leaf sticks, caught there, stiff and browned.
    A sovereign power

brings peace on earth.  Subdued now, sealed,
    and safely inert,
no one need touch the living field,
    nor root in the dirt.

Thus comforts cold: nothing is strange
    when nothing is felt.
Stifle the years!—in whose dread change
    imperiums melt.

Motoring

My groin! Hold me! I’m kicked!
We’ll all—soon, I predict—
return to tooth and claw.
Convulsions of chainsaw
shatter good morning. Grunts,
roars, whines, hiccups at once
mixing together—O ter-
rific! It has a motor.
It’s motors make earth turn,
stars rise, and stomachs churn.

It’s motoring that saves
the world from chains, from slaves.
Over clouds, desert, ocean
it keeps salesmen in motion.
Salesmen, boys, fold your sails!
We’ll motorize the whales.
With their great flukes and fins
flicking away our sins,
they shall transform the scene.
They’ll run on gasoline.

But saws are worked by men.
Listen: it starts again.
You hear that it’s wood, dude,
dead wood there, getting screwed:
a stuffed, sawdusty sound—
old trees cut to the ground,
not to be resurrected.
Landscapes must be corrected
to A+—thus define us—
that used to be C-.

We Puritans reborn,
saucy with pot and corn
and corn in pots, and frisky
with vintage-pure corn whiskey,
mustaches nicely curled,
have come to teach the world.
Thus we assign it grades.
Never mind about AIDS.
The problem is systemic.
We are the epidemic.

O, has the damn thing stopped?
Are all the branches lopped,
the leaves grieved, and the bole
brutalized in its hole?
Is it gone, O my country?
What if it was the one tree...?
Damn, damn these dreadful omens!
Leave, leave it to the Romans!
Dress nicely, don your toga;
finish your morning yoga.

America’s Love Affair

    We’ve bargained with The Fates;
    we’ve trafficked with the stars,
ten million excitable primates
    behind the wheels of cars.

The Wild Ones

                        1

"The newspapers adversely, sir, incline.
Over a hundred think you should resign."
Bill Clinton smiled and answered with a wink,
"Ah never knew a newspaper could think."

                        2

Another errant White House resident
    bobs upon scandal’s tides.
    Wash him away! Besides,
he’s just too pretty to be President.

                        3

Devilish clever dimestore Jove-in-
Office, his hoof has to be cloven.

                        4

We’re glad he doesn’t use it just to pee.
Just think: What would you do if you were he?

                        5

Clever investigators, aren’t you great!
You’ve won. You have reduced our Head of State
to an obscene joke, proved—you and that jerk—
government by the people might not work.

                        6

Over the centuries grown vast
    in gadgets, wars, amenities,
has our great state boiled down at last
    to these absurd obscenities?

                        7

The most powerful man in this mad world,
the one least free, with nutty urges squirreled
away inside, unspeakable: that limbo
he wanders through...what helps? Give him a bimbo!

                        8

You thought you could (yourselves so frantic)
disgust us with a harmless antic,
blundering pundits, so pedantic!

                        9

Catullus joked, his made a toga tent.
What Clinton’s did became a world event.
Magnificent! What grandeur, O, what prowess!
He dislikes sex. He just did it to wow us.

                        10

Poor Bill, tawdry your longer reign
than Jack’s, whose sad memory mars.
Jack moved upon a higher plane;
Jack stuck his into movie stars.

                        11

It’s tough, Bill, yes; but dear, O
dear, soon you’ll be the hero
of a new Camelot.
You want that now? Get shot.

Three Little Money Songs

                        1

For a Naive Candidate

You’ll stand for principles? O honey, use your brain.
You’ll sell your principles to pay for your campaign.

                        2

The Presidency: for George

You bought it, paid good money for’t,
        but what a mess!
You had to buy the Supreme Court
        in the process.

                        3

For the Inauguration of President Bush, the Second

Purchasing power, grab her, grasp,
and celebrate money’s last gasp.
Soon power naked—she’s a teaser—
will woo us. All Rome loved you, Caesar.

Oswald Spengler

He said that mathematics was an art
    and won my heart;
that cultures die; the sign of death, a Caesar—
    O, what a teaser!—

and once they’re dead, stay dead. No one’s at home
    in Ancient Rome,
that took grand Greece with it. And how divine a
    pattern for China?

Nothing in China for TWO THOUSAND years,
    decadent dears...
O yes, Tang art, then Buddhism...but then
    Tao becomes Zen,

and nothing really changes, nothing’s new....
    Nothing is true
everywhere all the time; everything grows,
    rooted, for those

who see deeper than logic, learn to hate your
    dead laws of nature.
Hey, was it Spengler speaking there, or me?
    Easy to see...

I had to have thought-countries rich and strange
    where I could range,
as once, among wild thoughts of our black maid,
    I skipped and played,

and hoped someday to live down the disgrace
    of my dead race,
as if I’d grasped the strangeness of my portion,
    I, failed abortion.

Mother felt guilty. Drugs she took, the dear,
    had made me queer.
But no, they gave me Spengler, made me blest
    in our dead West.

About the Author

Richard Moore is the author of ten volumes of poetry, one of which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent poetry book is The Naked Scarecrow, published in spring 2000 by Truman State University Press/New Odyssey Series. Other recent poetry collections include Pygmies and Pyramids (Orchises Press, 1998) and The Mouse Whole: An Epic (Negative Capability Press, 1996), the latter with a foreword by Howard Nemerov. His earlier books include two other poetry collections from Orchises Press, No More Bottom (1991) and Bottom Is Back (1994). His latest collection, The Naked Scarecrow, was published in spring 2000 by Truman State University Press/New Odyssey Editions. He has also published a novel, The Investigator (Story Line Press, 1991); a collection of essays, The Rule That Liberates (U. of South Dakota Press, 1994); and translations including Euripedes' Hippolytus (in the U. of Pa. Press Greek Drama Series). Moore's poetry has appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, The Hudson Review, Poetry, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Formalist, Sparrow, Sewanee Review, The Lyric, Light Quarterly, Edge City Review, et al. He has taught at Boston University, Brandeis University, the New England Conservatory, and Clark University.


To visit Richard Moore’ website, click here: http://richardmoorepoet.home.att.net/