Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

In My Childhood

The Separate Dead The leaves on the tree in front ofmy house—they liveand dietogether, with subtle shades of green at birth and subtle shades of brown and yellow at their deaths. Everybodystands around to admire them and then each goes about his business in separate houses, beds, tables and chairs, with separate knives and forks and living rooms with separate lovers, husbands and wives, and each dies alone, to be buried separately. The leaves grow thin and wasted-looking, curl up and fall off the branch by the hundreds, like paratroopers from their planes, silently prepared for the next move. Those leaves that fall upon the graves will lie mouldering and in the rain-soaked earth turn to moss and add their portion to the ground in which the dead are lying, the separate dead. In My Childhood In my childhood I awoke to my mother's voice in the kitchen and knew I was someone cherished, I belonged. I could look out the window bravely and admire the silent, drifting clouds and look down upon the silent street and lend my presence to give its character of trees and sky.Everything existed in itself in my childhood, as though between the walls of asynagogue where I could sit identified as the child who had yet to learn and was willing. And when I stepped into the street among the people walking swiftly past me to business or to their private affairs, I shrank from the separateness it made of me. Now as I lie in the breaking dawn, 148 I Poems of the 1980s frightened of the silence around me, I am fightingpanic that everything does exist in itself alone. Wait I am a man and do not know why I was born. I can tell you the facts: my mother conceived me when my father lay with her, but that is not what I'm asking about. Why did they think it was necessary for me to be born? I can understand love and the desire to have something to show for it, but should I live on that promise, my parents buried? For whom now should I live when I am dying, as did my parents who left nothing of themselves but me who am about to die? If there is anyone with an answer, let him or her step forward. I am patient and can wait. I Write I write to capture the meaningless as it were an animal in the thickets to hold in my arms; my identity in this animal which, since it exists for me, gives me my reality too. Whitman, I am happy to say, turned inside out, having found the answer to his answer, and away I go, cutting through woods and across fields and rivers back to cities with a shout of absolute terror. Why? Becausehere the meaningless exists too, ready to kill me with a knife or a bullet or a crazy drug. So I shall be killed, and I will weep in my grave, missing the meaningless. Trough I'll watch that mailbox as if it were an ikon of some religious order about to bring me a blessing from another world. After lunch, I'll sit back on the sofa which faces the window and look out from time to time, lifting my eyes from the daily press and, when the mailman appears and spends the first few moments in sorting out my mail from the others, my heart will quiver. And when I do open the letters, I'll 749 ...