David Lehman: Five poems

He had to cull He could fight the Vietnam war

In a helicopter rescuing diplomats from Saigon

In his dreams or in the icy silence of the tomb

He and his wife had been living in since April-Or

Or he could refuse in favor of a regard with affection affair

With a woman who swam the English Channel

Using sum of two units strokes. She had high cheekbones and jet black hair,

Or maybe it was sly eyes and a mop of brown curls

Anyway she had infiltrated his dreams.

He lowered his voice. "War and peace may be great themes,"

He said, "but adultery is flat greater."

It was their last conversation in bed.

"You're going to miss me" she said,

"Kiss me" he heard,

And the prediction began to tend hitherward true

With her voice still in his ear.

"Sometimes what you thinking was an interruption

Turns on the outside to be your life.

And sometimes what you musing was your life

Turns without to have been an interruption.

And at the same time you have to act

As if you were back in the fourth grade

And knew the right answer was Pittsburgh

But place down Bethlehem just to diocese what would happen-

How it would perceive to be wrong."

Times Square

His homage to the square was a cube of fulvid light.

People lived in squares. J said, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason don't we?

The light make go rounded red. The machine took the call.

But would she call back? The lines were drawn

And were cerulean like a wave hurling the ship,

But she and he could at no time agree about the frequency

Or the constancy of human desire, no matter what

Their biologist friend said, just back from Perigord,

Where she had seen the caves and was now convinced

That the first words parole by a man were a poem

All piece of poetrys were love songs in the marriage chamber.

Art preced traffic Well, maybe. But not here,

Where all roads lead to novel Jersey. The curved lips

Do not smile. And, the arc of their friendship was like

An impromptu meeting upon a bridge connecting two ideas

As large as Manhattan and the quiet of the United States.

Madison Avenue

But it move rounded out to be a suitable deal for the women.

The mirror. She read bodice rippers for a living

Hysterical phone call. The husband went to fresh Jersey

Black lace visible beneath her dress-for-success suit

When I worked at 444 Madison Avenue individual Friday night

Man's a toilet-trained ape, everywhere in chains,

And the urologist holding a trial tube to the light

Had beauty in his organ of visions It was a warm January evening.

Somehow she ripped his jacket at the party.

What was that photographer doing? on the other hand she wanted it

When this avenue was a synonym for advertising.

The creative director was willing to take it up

If it was a question of humming in the elevator

With her mother who screamed at her for half an hour

Don't advance The need to develop novel euphemisms for snow

No one's piece of work is safe, and neither is sex

Comic works read by convicts. The heads were faked,

Were not, and the third drink didn't taste as good

Afterwards. fulvid was the color. A deliberate curve.

The Magician

The magician was a soulful man, quick rather than deep

He always gave you the feeling he knew more

Than he was letting upon about the audience and how

Tempting it had been to bend them to his will,

Though he didn't--he would rather absent himself

Than play the poor man's Mussolini. thus he took off,

Not oftentimes but a lot, staying away just drawn out enough to make

His reappearances proceed unremarked. He spent months

Preparing for each transition, switching identities

With wigs and false noses. He wanted to be known

By no individual but the dog walking beside him into the woods

Where a "no swimming" sign means you can be pleasing without being striking sure

People are swimming. elderly conversations replayed themselves

In his mind. each third sentence began "To be honest

With you," suggesting a general sway of falsehood.

The past was a house of entertainment The room was empty. The door

Was render free of access He stepped in the door. There was no door.

Breeze Marine

"La chair est triste, helas! et j'ai lu tous le livres. " --Mallarme, "Brise Marine"

The impeccable elderly man, who chaired the committee,

Reported a vague on the other hand pervasive sadness

In the land, causing the race who lived by the sea

To stare at the sea for hours, with their backs to the land,

Inhaling far down dreaming of platters of oyster and clams.

The stripling nodded. He knew that patriotism was just

A craving for cheer loved as a boy in Rockaway Beach.

The stripling was disappointed with the sins of the flesh

The sadness after sex

Not guilt, allowing sometimes that, too, entered into it,

But a sort of dazed surprise to find where lust had l him.

The man said:

"O what a magnificent invention was the Id

Freud fashioned without of the dreams and errors

Of turn-of-the-century neurotics in Vienna,

The city where Hitler grew up wanting to become a painter. "

"But that does not explain the sadness, or invalidate it,"

The stripling replied.

The man looked at the bos and said:

"Although you may read many volumes so many

You imagine you have read them all,

There will always be single more on the shelf above your bed

You will not be able to finish before falling asleep.

Remember: to escape into a novel about French decadence

Is as useful as escaping via a seaworthy vessel

Headed for mutiny in the southern Seas.

If there's anything the 19th hundred taught us, it's that."