What the Houses Were Like Then, and: Talk, and: A Visitor Calls on Joseph Conrad, and: On an Island

What the Houses Were Like Then

You could stand outside of one in a paved streetAnd look at it and say it was your house.You could go to the door and open it with a keyAnd take two steps and close it behind you.

You'd be inside then. You could stay insideAlmost as long as you felt like. Nobody elseCame in unless you said so. Hot or coldWater came out of pipes when you wanted it

And stopped when you didn't. There were two roomsWhere you could eat when you needed to eat something.There was only one basement. If you had to seeWhat was outside, you looked through a glass window

Or pulled a curtain across and didn't thinkAbout the clouds or what fell out of them.Because of walls and ceilings, you could tellYour own house ended short of somebody else's.

Talk

It's her turn to stand thereAlone in front of the blackboard    And be an explorer, in her case,    Admiral Peary sayingHe found the North PoleIn a fur hat and beard    With a pointed stick on a map    Showing exactly whereverWhatever happened happenedBeginning to end and why,    Remembering to make    Eye contact (she does),Not shifting around or shuffling(She doesn't) but being poised,    Remaining at ease unless    She has a reason for movingAlong with a few wordsTo explain what was (or wasn't)    Discovered (she does), not spending     Valuable time explainingWhat people already know(She doesn't) and willing to answer    Questions (she is) if she knows    The answers (and she does)Then going slowly, directlyTo her seat (she does) with as much    Of a straight face behind    Her beard as her mostAttentive student can seeFrom the crowded visitor's row    While promising himself    To follow her good example.

A Visitor Calls on Joseph Conrad

He was shown the way to wait in the library    Because the master of that country house        Was writing and could not sufferInterruption now. The visitor    Lost count of the books spilling from bookshelves        Or disarranged on the floor of the dim room.They seemed to be interrupting or contradicting    Their separate languages, their premises,        And each other's most unseaworthy calculationsExcept for one corner where the visitor found,    Neatly, compactly, and securely ranked,        The atlases and star-charts, the manualsFor damage control, for fire and steam and storm,    For seamanship and for abandoning ship,        For all the rules of the road. What light there was Came through French doors. Beyond them, he could see    A small, neglected courtyard and similar doors,        Which now sprang open as a frock-coated manCame stumbling out, his ragged mustache and beard    Parting around the snags of his crooked teeth        In a snarl of despair. Two sheets of manuscriptWere fluttering down behind him. He flung himself    Face down into the weeds and began poundingHis half-clenched fists on the ground, kicking it, kicking it    With the toes of his polished shoes. The same woman        Who had shown the visitor so calmly and firmlyWhere he should wait, came out into daylight,    Stepped carefully down, bent down and lifted the man        Calmly and firmly upright, steadied him,Collected the dropped pages calmly and placed them    Firmly into his small hands, then steered him        Implacably up and back into darkness.

On an Island

Whichever way you walk,You find on the one handThe sea and on the otherA dense interiorWhere you recall clawing

    Through thickets and snags    Of vines, believing you'd lost    Yourself in an underworld    Where anything might happen,    Where you might yet discover

        What trees had understood        All along: a place where your feet        Would stay beside each other,        Where your bare hands would touch        More than their emptiness,

            But stumbling finally            Out into the open, you found            Only that same flat sea            Again...