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Overview
Beginning with "My Friends Don't Get Buried," the lament of a delinquent mourner as his friends have begun to die, and ending with the plaintive note to self "don't write elegies/anymore," Edward Hirsch takes us backward through the decades in these memory poems of startling immediacy. He recalls the black dress a lover wore when he couldn't yet know the tragedy of her burning spirit; the radiance of an autumn day in Detroit when his students smoked outside, passionately discussing Shelley; the day he got off late from a railyard shift and missed an antiwar demonstration. There are direct and indirect elegies to lost contemporaries like Mark Strand, William Meredith, and, most especially, his longtime compatriot Philip Levine, whom he honors in several poems about daily work in the late midcentury Midwest. As the poet ages and begins to lose his peripheral vision, the world is "stranger by night," but these elegant, heart-stirring poems shed light on a lifetime that inevitably contains both sorrow and joy.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780525657781 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 02/11/2020 |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
My Friends Don’t Get Buried
My friends don’t get buried
in cemeteries anymore, their wives
can’t stand the sadness
of funerals, the spectacle
of wreaths and prayers, tear-soaked
speeches delivered from the altar,
all those lies and encomiums,
the suffocating smell of flowers
filling everything.
No more undertakers in black suits
clutching handkerchiefs,
old buddies weeping in corners,
telling off-color stories, nipping shots,
no more covered mirrors,
black dresses, skullcaps, and crucifixes.
Sometimes it takes me a year or two
to get out to the backyard in Sheffield
or Fresno, those tall ashes scattered
under a tree somewhere in a park
somewhere in New Jersey.
I am a delinquent mourner
stepping on pinecones, forgetting to pray.
But the mourning goes on anyway
because my friends keep dying
without a schedule,
without even a funeral,
while the silence
drums us from the other side,
the suffocating smell of flowers
fills everything, always,
the darkness grows warmer, then colder,
I just have to lie down on the grass
and press my mouth to the earth
to call them
so they would answer.
The Black Dress
I don’t know why I opened her book
almost randomly, on a whim,
it signaled me from the shelf
after all these years, like a burning
black dress tangled in the branches,
her dress, she was the one
who was burning,
and that’s when the letter fell out,
a love letter, sort of, after we’d given up
on each other, or did we?,
our impossibility,
and suddenly it came back to me
in a rush, that night in Boston,
a restaurant on the harbor, a storm
simmering outside, that slinky
black dress she was wearing,
I didn’t know she was burning
inside of it, I thought
it was the coming storm,
summer lightning,
I didn’t know I was turning
the pages of her book, her body,
which I would read so closely,
I wanted it so desperately,
she was the fire, I didn’t know
she was already mourning
for her childhood in the orchard,
her lost self, forgive me,
I didn’t know she was burning
when she took off that black dress.
The Unveiling
Instead of a pebble to mark our grief
or a coin to ease his passage
you placed a speaker
at the top of his head
and suddenly a drumbeat
came blasting out of the grass,
startling the mourners on the far side
of the cemetery, clanging the trees,
scattering the swifts
that had gathered around the stone
like souls of the dead,
souls that were now parting
to make way for a noisy spirit
rising out of the dirt.
The Keening
All morning I heard a thrumming
in the distance, a wail, a wild cry—
atonal, primitive—
so faint and far away
that I tried to blot it out
and follow the news breaking
like a fog over the day,
though I kept hearing it
rising
and coming closer,
a chant,
a plea from the dead
suddenly burning inside me,
one of the grief-stricken ones,
wearing a button-down with a tie
and walking the hall with a notebook
as if I belonged here, as if
I had something else to report.
After the Stroke
(In memory of William Meredith)
Imagine him
standing at the bottom
of an empty well,
raising a broken arm
in darkness
and calling out
to someone, anyone
who may be passing by
but cannot hear
a voice in the ground,
the desperate plea
of a singer whose faith
has not deserted him,
though he is silenced now
like a cello locked
in a black case,
a church bell buried
somewhere in the earth.
The Secret
(In memory of Richard Rifkind)
We were watching flamenco dancers
stomping on the stage
and swirling around us,
and I noticed the way he looked at them
with a mixture of curiosity
and contentment, a happiness
free of desire, a state
foreign to me,
and when I asked about it later
he smiled
with such a great sweetness
that it seemed like a light
he had discovered
within himself, a secret
he shared with me once
for a little while,
and I’ve carried that secret with me
ever since
as a token,
a stone for good luck,
a memory for good fortune.
In Memory of Mark Strand
(Krumville Cemetery, Olivebridge, New York)
I’m not sure why I glanced back
at the bus driver grinding a cigarette butt
with her heel into the gravel driveway.
She was a figure from a myth, from
one of his poems, a stranger, a guardian
marking the passage to the other world.
Maybe she was just another way
of distracting myself from the burial,
from waiting in stunned silence
with the other mourners, all the forlorn
gathered at the graveside without a rabbi
or a priest to lead us in prayer.
It could be said that we were godless,
haunted, lost, as we stood
in the vanishing light and light rain.
Perhaps we had given up too much—
the fundamental beliefs, the consoling rituals—
that would have made the day more bearable.
But as we huddled together in the afternoon,
quivering a little in the chill mist, muffling our sobs,
looking up every now and then at the tall pines,
we felt something lonely moving amongst us,
a current almost, a small gust of wind,
not a ghost exactly, nothing like that,
but the ghost of a feeling, a shiver,
which we might have missed altogether,
except he had changed us, we were changed.
Let’s Go Down to the Bayou
Let’s go down to the bayou
and cast our sins
into the brown water
on little strips of paper
slowly floating uphill
the way we did that fall
when we moved to Houston
and lived with a small
anonymity
in a large complex
set up for the families
of patients treated
for months
in a nearby hospital
because maybe this time
our neighbor’s daughter
with the shaved head
will be healed
and the bayou will accept
our murky sins
the way God never did
and cleanse us.
When You Write the Story
When you write the story
of being a father
don’t leave out the joy
of romping up and down
the stairs together
or curving a wiffle ball
across the hallway
or sneaking
past the poor dog
who has fallen asleep
under the grand piano
in the living room
of the house on Sul Ross,
don’t forget the giddiness
of eating together
in a secret winter fortress
hidden somewhere—
I’m not saying where—
in someone’s backyard,
and what was that song
you invented
to lull him to sleep?
and wasn’t it yesterday
that you carried him
down the stairs
to the car humming
in the driveway at five a.m.?
The Radiance
(Detroit, 1984)
Late September
in the shade
outside of State Hall,
that concrete brutality,
where my students are smoking
off a hangover
and gossiping in Ukrainian
while Dan Hughes leans on his walker
and talks to me about Shelley’s
bright destructions.
I did not know it was indelible—
the sun spangling the campus trees,
the traffic thickening the smog
outside the museum on Woodward,
our voices rising.
When you tell the story
of those years
going up in flames,
don’t forget the radiance
of that day in autumn
burning out of time.
Riding Nowhere
(In memory of Philip Levine)
After all these years
I still can’t forget
collecting you
in the snowy darkness
and driving in silence
along Jefferson Avenue
to a local gym
where we stretched
side by side
on stationary bicycles
riding nowhere
at a steady pace
in front of a window
framing the Detroit River
that glided on and on
at its own sweet will
under the skyscrapers
churches and factories
glittering together
in the early-morning light.
Let’s Get Off the Bus
Let’s get off the bus
in 1979
in front of the empty fairgrounds
on Eight Mile and Woodward
and stop for a few rounds
at the Last Chance Bar.
The moon is tilted
at a rakish angle
and we can toast the unruly
poets of Detroit
and praise our students
who work three jobs
and still show up for class.
Don’t get lost
in the sad stories
of the regulars
and make sure to step over
the junkies on the corner
and dodge the cars barreling
past the stoplights
for the suburbs.
Let’s surprise my wife
who is napping off her grief
and crank up the stereo
for Stevie Wonder’s road trip
through The Secret Life of Plants.
Someone has started a garden
on the far side of Palmer Park—
or is it Woodlawn Cemetery?—
where we can throw a party
for our friends
who are still alive.
In the Valley
What was teaching
in that first Pennsylvania winter
but listening to directions
and learning how to drive
on icy two-lane roads
from Easton to Bethlehem?
You were tested
by a deer standing starkly
on the yellow line
and a dead opossum
freezing in the gravel
and the radio playing spirituals
about going home
on a lonesome highway.
The sun skidded to a halt
in the smokestacks
over the river
and I can still see you
climbing the snowy hills
and coasting
past the empty factories
and abandoned warehouses
to a Catholic school
on the edge of town.
You were a skeptic
in the Valley of the Lord
who carried “Pied Beauty”
in your jacket pocket
and drank scalding coffee
in the teacher’s lounge
with two old priests
and a lanky young nun
who played pickup basketball
and noticed all things
counter, original, spare, strange.
What was teaching
but quieting a classroom
and learning how to stand
at a blackboard
with an open book
and praise
the unfathomable
mystery of being
to children writing poems
or prayers
in the failing blue light
of a weekday afternoon?
What Is Happiness?
What is happiness anyway?
someone wondered aloud
at the lingering party on the lawn,
and all at once
I was catapulted back
into a raucous second-grade classroom
in northern Pennsylvania,
everyone clamoring with memories
of wading naked
into the Susquehanna River,
running wildly over sandstone
and shales, jumping over
concrete dividers, steel railings,
the whole family pointing together
at the peak of North Knob…
I stood at the blackboard
calling out names
and noting it all down,
marveling
at so much jubilance,
fully absorbed in our creation.
Windber Field
I don’t know why
I thought it was a good idea
to bring Wilfred Owen’s poem
on the colliery disaster of 1918
to that tiny high school class
in western Pennsylvania,
but soon they were writing
about smokeless coal
and black seams
in the ground, the terror
of firedamp, the Rolling Mill
Mine Disaster in Johnstown,
the closing of Windber Field,
the memory of standing
in a wide ring
around a mine shaft
to watch a man emerge
from the earth
like a god, a father
in an open cage
sailing across the sky.
Night Class in Daisytown
I was failing
my night class
for the eleven parents
of my students
in the Conemaugh Valley
when I mentioned
as if by accident—
or was it desperation?—
the Pitman Poet of Percy Main,
who worked the mines
in Northumberland
and wrote songs and
carols for the coalfields,
and before long
I was standing there
with a piece of fresh chalk
collecting memories
about coal in Cambria County,
the pickaxe and the lantern
hanging by the front door,
the father-in-law
who woke up in the dark
and worked all day in the dark
and slept with a night light,
the mother who whispered
about blackdamp, the brother
who got lost for twenty-four hours
in the underworld
and then found a steel cable
glinting in a mine shaft
and pulled himself
into the light.
The Stony Creek
I drove along the Stony Creek
past the coal piles
and the abandoned mine land
to a little company town
without a company,
a community
where I parked the car
in front of a church
in foreclosure
and crossed the street
to the first school
that would let me teach
all day
until it was time
to drive home again
past the pockmarked land
and the dark caves, the moon
glinting through the gloam
like a headlamp,
heat lightning
in the distance, a storm
sweeping slowly
across the thunderous sky
over the mountains.
In the Endless Mountains
Early morning.
I still remember
the wild cherry tree
behind an empty train station
in the Endless Mountains
of Pennsylvania.
I was traveling to teach
Japanese poetry,
stray flashes of beauty,
to a high school classroom,
but for a moment
I sat down on a wooden bench
flooded with sunlight.
Nothing moved,
time stopped like a question
on the dusty clock in the corner,
and blue swallows
hovered over
the fire cherry.
I could hear an endless hush
in the mountains.
Days of 1975
It started with the tattered blue secret
of Bashō, that windswept spirit,
riding my back pocket for luck.
It started with a walk
through the woods at dawn,
mud on my new shoes,
high humming in the trees.
I was not prepared for the scent
of freshly turned soil
to pervade the empty classroom
or the morning to commence
with a bell that did not stop
ringing in my head.
So many expectations filed
noisily into the room—
I was ready to begin.
From the tall windows
I could see a storefront church
opening on the other side
of the polluted river.
I remember walking past the rows
and rows of bent heads,
scarred desks,
and gazing up
at the Endless Mountains.
In those hopeful days of 1975
I drove the country roads
in honor of radiance.
O spirit of poetry,
souls of those I have loved,
come back to teach me again.
Are You a Narc?
I don’t know what possessed you
to step into that small joint
near Penn Station
at rush hour on a Thursday night
in late summer,
but at twenty-four
you should have known
enough to leave
when the room quieted
and everyone swiveled around
to look at you
before turning back to their drinks.
You were too embarrassed
or clueless to turn back
in those days
and so you sat down
at the bar next to a woman
in a postal uniform
who advised you
to make the smart play
and leave forty bucks
on the counter
and head for the door
while you could still walk.
The Iron Gate
Don’t look for the Warsaw Ghetto
on a Polish map
in 1974,
it’s not there,
don’t show up at the Iron Gate
and try to enter
the Second Polish Republic,
there’s no guidebook to the trauma
of the Muranów neighborhood,
there’s no sign to guide you
through the bloody streets
of the Uprising,
the War
that destroyed the city
where you’ve come
to see what’s been lost,
what’s been rebuilt,
though you walk for days
on end without understanding
where you are, where
you’ve been, the desperation
growing inside of you
when you lie down at night
in a youth hostel
and feel the darkness
pressing through the treetops,
the sound
of something wild
brushing against the window,
a winter fever, a terror
in the wind, the ghosts
of your ancestors
pushing apart the fence
outside the building.
Table of Contents
My Friends Don't Get Buried 3
The Black Dress 4
The Unveiling 5
The Keening 6
After the Stroke 7
The Secret 8
In Memory of Mark Strand 9
Let's Go Down to the Bayou 10
When You Write the Story 11
The Radiance 12
Riding Nowhere 13
Let's Get Off the Bus 14
In the Valley 15
What Is Happiness? 17
Windber Field 18
Night Class in Daisytown 19
The Stony Creek 20
In the Endless Mountains 21
Days of 1975 22
Are You a Narc? 23
The Iron Gate 24
The Fencer 25
An Unexpected Mirror 26
Don't Hitchhike 28
Waste Management 30
On the Engine 32
The Brakeman 33
That's the Job 34
I Rang the Bell 35
I Missed the Demonstration 36
In the Freezer 38
To My Seventeen-Year-Old Self 39
Chemistry Lesson 41
Someone Is Always Shouting 42
Snapshot of My Natural Father 43
The Elevated Train 44
A Small Tribe 45
The Guild 47
The Task 49
A House of Good Stone 50
Every Poem Was a Secret 52
I Was an Illiterate Herdsman 53
The Window Washer 54
Stranger by Night 55
Sometimes I Stumble 56
A Baker Swept By 57
I Walked Out of the Cemetery 58
Don't Write Elegies 59
Acknowledgments 61