poems
by
ROBERT
DARLING
____________
OLD
TIME RELIGION
The Wesleyans across the
road
were sure of hellfire and damnation.
Christ’s sufferings on the bloody cross
were always apt for remonstration.
The Methodists were always singing
about the coming of the Lord
though what it was the Lord might bring
left them indifferent or bored.
The Baptists changed their pastors yearly
to find out if the latest version
would keep his scruples to himself
or drown them during full immersion.
The street they shared was called Church Street
(Our town adored the obvious.)
and if you sought some other flavor
you clearly were not one of us.
The Catholics, true, were two streets over
although their church was underground;
the priest showed up just once a week
and did not often stick around.
It was all so American:
the boys and girls all turned out well
except a few that went to college,
to the big city, and to Hell.
THE
DISAPPEARING CHURCHES
They’re disappearing every
year
and few think that they’re really missed.
The country stripped of Methodists,
preacher gives way to auctioneer,
and the city’s hulks that could have turned
whole neighborhoods to families
no longer sound with homilies
and friendship’s open hand is spurned.
Granted: not much new thought arose
from these all-too-familiar places
filled with bleary Sunday faces
showing off their Sunday clothes.
But what’s left in their place? The crank
who waves the flag and preaches hate.
The TV face that shouts don’t wait—
send in your money, show your thanks.
But for the rest a nothingness,
an empty space of time best filled
with sleep or sex, or the self-willed
amen, or sometimes something less.
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THE
CATS’
VERSION OF
THE VISIT
The old guy missed her soon
as she had left.
And us? We think she was out of her depth
with us—she never even deigned to pet us—
we are pets after all—nor did she let us
into her bed so we could search for mice.
(Which we would do for free because we’re nice.)
Was she grumpy from something that she ate?
We weren’t allowed inspection of her plate.
O silly humans with your ways so strange!
We must adapt as they will never change.
SELECTED
EPIGRAMS
PAUL
Paul, née Saul,
heresy-hater,
blinded, falls from his horse—
another fool who’s finding God.
(Or the reverse, of course.)
CONSPIRACY
THEORIST
The theorist of conspiracy
wakes up each morning with the sense
things aren’t quite how they ought to be
and all his nouns have changed their tense.
EPITAPH (NO.
45)
He fooled the fools and
lied with every word
and now at last lies fittingly in turd.
ON
THE ARTIFICIALTY
OF VERSE
Nobody ever speaks pentameter.
LOVE STORY
Death took her out. So she
was late.
So Death arranged a second date.
GOING
BACK
Going back’s like visiting
a theft:
the forest’s gone, and only trees are left.
THE
BULLY
The bully wears a uniform
that in his existential winter
keeps his hatred warm.
A QUESTION
FOR MILTON
even the atheist claims we die for good. . . Anonymous
Are we inclined to good
despite our history
for if our good were evil, what good would evil be,
for evil must be good for something or how could
evil be evil enough that it redound to good?
HIGH
COUP OF
POWER
The masochist asked
the sadist, “Beat me now, please!”
but he answered, “No.”
HERACLITUS
Can’t step in the same
river twice? The dunce!
We cannot step in the same river once.
A MAN
OF FEW
WORDS
He was a man who had few
words to say
but he said them incessantly each day.
DENIAL
Croaking, “What crisis?,”
he sticks his head in sand
that covers what was once a fertile land.
ON
USING
A POCKET
WATCH
Time’s heavy on the wrist.
I can’t abide
time’s waste of time: I keep it on my side.
THE
PR0BLEM
WITH IMAGERY
I metaphor-wheeled cart
down by the sea.
But was it real or a fact-simile?
THE
TOURIST
RESPONDS
US tourist injured
falling into Mount Vesuvius
crater after taking selfie -- AP
It was a selfless urge that drove me
and not the hunger for some selfies:
mine was a noble quest for I
was searching for Empedocles.
My friends implored me to
turn back
but, without vision, what do they know?
My daring would have brought renown
if I had had the right volcano.
TO
MY READER
Sometimes I’m so alone I like your company
although I’d never let it cross the line to love.
Still, I’ll demand you love my poetry and me.
Remember: I know your name. And I know where you live.
THE
GREAT
WALL
The wall they built to keep
the strangers out
couldn’t withstand the avid tourists’ rout.
IN
A MILITARY
CEMETERY
In their ordered rows
the lined uniform headstones
stand at attention.
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A
FLOWER
FOR MY
GRANDFATHER
The begonia in the corner
of the room
was given in your memory. A forced bloom
made it erupt in winter, but now
it grows, is green, but will not flower any more.
Must it accede to its past, bow
to remembrance of petals scattered on the floor,
your heavy-footed ghost dragging down the corridor?
EVERETT
SIMPSON
Everett Simpson, bitter
geezer,
angry father, household Caesar,
hater of blacks, Catholics, Jews,
rager through the nightly news,
what God created you as rage,
your life a tiger in its cage?
Mother, sister, killed by
the train,
boxer brother by the gin;
bitter brother who remained
stomped off, not to be seen again.
Everett watched as anger gained
access to thought and wore his skin.
And he grew very old and
set
his face against the world he knew
and one he didn’t. Widowed twice
(His first wife’s name he would forget),
he died when the world was deep in snow,
ground frozen with a coat of ice.
Everett Simpson, forgotten
soul,
such fierce fire from such dead coal.
MY
UNCLE
BOB
“He never even turned the
TV down,”
she used to say, shake her head and frown;
she’d gone to show her brand-new baby off,
almost a trophy, or some kind of proof
that family mattered still. But all in vain.
She sighed and left, did not see him again.
Perhaps she wondered why she ever came?
Or why she had awarded me his name?
MY
AUNT MATILDA,
THE LEVELLER
My Aunt Matilda weighed
five hundred pounds
on her good days. She always kept around
a pack of yelping Yorkshire Terriers
who every night would share the bed with her.
One night she rolled on them, and that was that.
(Funny how they seemed taller now they’re flat.)
Then she began to entertain lost men
as she indulged her urge equestrienne.
Some came in fat, but all emerged quite thin—
we’d find them next day in her garbage bin.
And then to flatten West Virginia’s hills
was her next scheme: she’d roll and roll until
the place was flat and stretched to Kansas City.
But then the cops stopped by: they showed no pity
for governments decree and courts have found
only the rich can throw their weight around.
Anonymous note: It is possible the above is not a real person.
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THE
FEARED
EVENT
When what we
feared has come to pass
and all the bullfrogs cease their croaking,
the drinks drop from the thirsty hands
and prophets claim they were just joking,
and all the
orators are bemused
into a silence not their own,
and all the constant hangers-on
are much relieved to be alone,
then some will
sense the game is up
and turn to home as to a dream
they have not dreamt for many years
to find its tarnished symbols mean
quite other
things in this stilled world
where now not even dreams abide,
where emptiness stalks city streets
and seeps through stunted countryside.
ON
MY HOUSE
TURNING
200
1823-2023
These timbers,
broad-planked floors, and sturdy beams
withstood the weathers and the yearly fashions;
a tavern where the stages stopped, and dancers
frolicked to fiddles as the swirling seasons
spun out their plantings, harvests, debts, and dreams.
Then a
mortician’s, post office, and a grange
for forty years, and next a B & B.
Then drifting down the years it came to me.
Too many lives passed in and out these doors
whose names have faded, whose faces have grown strange,
for it to
feign much interest meeting mine.
So much that happened here is buried deep
within these walls that I shall never know
the dreams dreamt here, or who, then out of time,
died in this room where now I take my sleep.
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THIRTEEN
WAYS OF
LOOKING
AT A
RED WHEELBARROW
1
See beyond shadows:
Wheelbarrow of wheelbarrows!
No imperfections
of the grossly here,
the weighed-down, tied-to-the-earth,
burdened beast of work.
II
Made of steel and wood,
and not a natural form
(no happenstance here),
smoothed on lathe, and
cast,
its final cause first in mind
(as is always true).
III
A chance atomic
coincidence, soon dispersed
as we shall all be.
IV
As it is something
it is good; imperfection
is sin, absence where
presence should be, like
a hole in its bed through which
evil’s No! enters.
V
Not a thinking thing,
known only as extension;
unknowing itself,
it can’t think or feel
or doubt and thus cannot know
it is (or isn’t).
VI
A wheelbarrow’s life,
brutish and nasty at best
depends upon so
much beyond itself:
builders, contractors, farmers,
the strong bonds of state.
VII
Wheelbarrows aren’t red:
molecules are colorless.
A wheelbarrow has
texture, dimension—
secondary qualities
come through perception.
VIII
Comes through perception?
To be is to be perceived.
Since perception nods
existence itself
(wheelbarrows, philosophers)
is God’s wakefulness.
IX
A priori truths
that are synthetic lead to
the transcendental,
sustain the moral;
the Ding an sich unknown as
the bland wheelbarrow.
X
Movement and stasis:
the set-in-placeness of things,
the need for this there
joins wheel to barrow
but disconnects bonds between
labor and profit.
XI
The Ubermensch will
not bend to menial tasks
carting stones for walls
of cowering men:
men too weak to lift the stones
are best beneath them.
XII
Art for art’s sake? Oui.
The birth of America
is the death of art.
Still miners, farmers
were pleased by his performance,
their wheelbarrows paused.
XIII
Such heavy theories!
Yet he added to the load,
wheeled in Oedipus
reborn for Mother’s
Day, and—oh!—how burdensome
those barrows of id!
(Cornered by his tomes,
sometimes, he’d say, wheelbarrows
are just wheelbarrows.)
BEYOND
THE CAMPFIRE
Beyond the campfire’s
gathered light
the arbitrary looms and sees
the huddled shapes that hunker down,
too certain of contingency.
The darkness drifts down from the sky
and fills the forms of dying things
while scattered tinder seeks the spark
defiance of the darkness brings.
And all this is as always was
to the obsessive mind which thinks
it too can tame the elements
(or can at least when godhead blinks).
But all this is as nothing to
those huddled round the campfire’s glow;
who once had thought the world was theirs
now only want the night to go.
DAVID
IN BRUSSELS
Old Boney was the final
straw:
Jacques-Louis had to go.
Brussels was close, and so
David moved on. There he would draw
portraits of the nouveau
riche:
the banker, financier
all smiled into their beards.
David, as always, found his niche.
And so he flattered them
and fed
their egos and his purse,
those frauds he once had cursed
to face the mob shorn of their heads.
He got off lightly, after
all,
unlike poor Robespierre
who blubbered in his terror
to his disgrace before blade-fall.
But it was his Marat,
whose death
he made a sacrifice
for an earthly Paradise
and a baptismal of his bath,
that even his skill could
not atone.
Is genius thus misspent
its own impoverishment?
Or does it come into its own?
His line was firm and his
resolve
was steel, his hand was cold.
Such coldness never could
blunt Justice to a kind of love.
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AFTER
THE WEEKEND
What a holiday! I can’t
begin
to count the scattered bottles or
the butts in ashtrays strewn most everywhere.
(God knows what that is on the floor.)
But it was fun. And while
it lasted we
were kings and queens of crapulence
and we enjoyed ourselves, as you can see—
we’ve left behind the evidence.
So, boys, pack up, it’s
time that we were gone,
all things must end, don’t make a fuss.
We’ve made amusement our accomplishment.
Someone will clean up after us.
__________________________
THE
RAPTURE
OF THE
COWS
after a painting by Paul Bond,
“Ascending Cows aka The Great
Bovine Rapture”
Rise up, cream of the
herd, ye holy cows!
If the cows heard, few paid it any mind.
Swallow that cud! Lift up your bovine brows!
Then Bessie rose, awakened
from her browse,
and dropped a plop on a group of the left-behind.
Rise up, cream of the herd, ye holy cows!
They were surprised what
gravity allows
though Myrtle thought the sight most unrefined.
Swallow that cud! Lift up your bovine brows!
Some stayed behind, held
down like mud-bound sows,
perhaps not quite the elevating kind.
Rise up, cream of the herd, ye holy cows!
You pasture-prophets who
would daily browse,
who were to daily rituals confined,
swallow that cud! Lift up your bovine brows!
What if they’re headed to
God’s slaughterhouse?
That would be different from the daily grind.
Rise up, cream of the herd, ye holy cows!
Swallow that cud! Lift up your bovine brows!
SCOTCH
VERDICTS
I
The Kirk
A few convenient deaths
and Scotland is reborn,
its god and weather both
clenched, Presbyterian.
Knox’s ardor, Beaton’s
mozetta a deeper red,
the galleys and Geneva,
Henry, the Marys dead—
surely the Hand of God
these deaths, surely God’s Will
to move a nation toward
the Inconceivable
but two brief years before.
The sword obeys the Word.
Jacob I love, Esau
I hate. I am the LORD.
II
Hume
A melancholy chore, the
search for Truth
will shrivel skin, give pallor to the cheek;
that many-petalled rose defied the Greek
quest for certainty, withheld the proof.
My Treatise sapped the vigour of my youth
and after years fell
deadborn from the press.
Unnatural birth. Far better time is spent
in conversation where words are kindly meant
for jocund company and friendly jest,
banishing the abstract to the wilderness.
The Deist god is false as
any other:
The ball is struck. It strikes another ball.
Which moves. “Cause and effect,” we say. But all
we’ve seen are chance collisions and we infer
what always happened must always reoccur.
And what’s behind the
intricate machine?
Always the stupid mechanic who fixes what
he little understands and never wrought.
Be humble: don’t expect the world has meaning...
Let’s drink one more—Truth will not intervene.
A
FUNERAL
Most of the newly-dead have just
accomplished the great event of their
entirely forgettable lives,
leaving behind eventless days
and their unspeaking husbands or
entirely forgettable wives,
and now a slab of stone remarks
on the unremarkable years that lead
to this tiny plot of land
where the chance dates and empty words
seem less encomia of praise
and more a reprimand.
And so, another funeral.
No tolling bell that I can hear.
A prefab sermonette.
But we all loved old-what’s-his-name
and treasured most his (YOUR WORD HERE).
Amen.
Requiescat.
RETURNING TO
THE HARBOR
I
What is a country for old
men?
A place where song is
banished, lust
abstracted, joy not to
come again?
Drab, drafty rooms
furnished with dust
where only numbness
softens pain
and any act leads to
disgust?
A fog-obscured and
restless sea?
A monumental apathy?
II
No one escapes from time
in time;
no one can drop time's
heavy burden
and not be crushed. The
guilty dream
awakens, what cannot be
pardoned
repeats in some chance
face or rhyme:
a misbehavior in a garden,
a word, a love one kiss
unmade,
a truth forsworn, three
times afraid.
III
It is the self that is
undone,
unravelling
throughout its acts,
displaced by deed, the
nightmare son
who's guilt's
cartographer, whose maps
chart failure's coast, the
corpse once drowned
revisits as a living fact.
The mirror reminds: the
face must learn
the emptiness of all
return.
IV
Were there a pure province
of art,
a realm composed of
timeless joys
far from the sewer where
ladders start,
it would be airless. Time
breaks its toys
and easy rhymes betray the
heart.
But still the dream
seduces days
to the false voyage whose
lead star
but brings us back to
where we are.
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Ceilhidh,
15, Robert Darling's dearly departed librarian cat -- here photographed
while pulling out Gail White's Catechism, a cleverly concocted
collection of cat poems, passed away on Dr. Bob's birthday
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