How to Mourn, and: Philosophy Above High C, and: Bowl and Glove, and: Happy

30 MINNESOTA REVIEW ALBERT GOLDBARTH HOW TO MOURN A black armband. Or you need one for the mind; and so you close your eyes. Wake, step in water to your chest. Wait; what else to do? And soon the water quiets, is flat, there's only you, what you're sick with, and this reflection, this tattered flag flying straight out from your heartbeat. And now wait again; see how far evaporation lowers that flag. PHILOSOPHY ABOVE HIGH C If a tree falls, and nobody hears it, are there ears? Are ears mortars binary pestles of air must grind in continually? If there's a woman, are we in love? One school says not necessarily, this is their proof in summary: if I fall, it's not absolute she will hear me. And ifher heart stops does time? And if we postulate forests toppling on a world without ears? If they hear with, say, their hearts? And their dogs' hearts prick in the range where leaves drop? GOLDBARTH 31 BOWL AND GLOVE 1 So now I've goldfish, bullion-heavy, circling my thoughts all day: a gold ring, a manacle. And the phone calls -you're moonshining sleeping pill mash; you're running red lights like winner's ribbons; and my voice, all that keeps you from cutting your own buzzing line- always end in reminder for me to care for them for you. And I must feed them, or they're goners, and not overfeed them, or they're goners, they don't know when to stop: they've sucked in, and spat out, every cold aquarium stone in their hunger. I give you a still-life: the bowl and a rumpled leather glove on the mantle. That day at the station, your wild eyes catching light inside their pullman window like . . . this is why I mention them, and their care, and feeding. And we're not closing that locomotive distance, not if your voice in tonight's receiver kneels, though you know 111 answer to keep you alive. And your words, that onslaught, until / feel dead, though still protective -the rabbit lining the glove. But in the painting exists a tension, this glass container asking its waters be quickened, and these five almost-fingefs always almost able to stir. And they greet me. And this is their special talent: kissing, relentlessly, every speck in -the dust of our wreckage, their own shit; and some nights —now I give you a portrait— I whimper at my task; at their small trying, trying, trying to die. 32 MINNESOTA REVIEW HAPPY There are moments -the conductor's baton stencils cardiograms ofjoy on the aether. Moments, the sun like a stained bagbottom falls out of itself, into cloud, as in a movie ending. And we grow sweet, and wistful, and write, have to write, of those alchemical minutes of our Uves when matter so base as our bodies turned pure comprehension. From cinema, you know how it will be: the invisible pyramids of trumpet-blares in the heavens, the birds. From literature, you recognize its features: a glow as of enzyme transmutation, and from pulp fiction the same, although in this guise called coming inside her. It sings. You say you want its demonstration. Here it is. You say this is not a very interesting stanza: Ellen, Michael, Tony, Sylvia, Linda, Alan, Wayne, Liz, Phil. But all of my friends are in this poem and have come to a happy ending. ...