Expect Delays Read online

  EXPECT DELAYS

  ALSO BY BILL BERKSON

  POETRY

  Saturday Night: Poems 1960–61

  Shining Leaves

  Recent Visitors

  100 Women

  Blue Is the Hero: Poems 1960–1975

  Red Devil

  Start Over

  Lush Life

  A Copy of the Catalogue

  Serenade: Poetry & Prose 1975–1989

  Fugue State

  Same Here

  Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently

  Goods and Services

  Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems

  Costanza

  Lady Air

  Snippets

  JOURNALS

  The Far-Flowered Shore

  COLLABORATIONS

  Two Serious Poems & One Other, with Larry Fagin

  Ants, with Greg Irons

  The World of Leon, with Michael Brownstein, Larry Fagin, Ron Padgett, et alia

  Enigma Variations, with Philip Guston

  Young Manhattan, with Anne Waldman

  Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, with Frank O’Hara

  What’s Your Idea of a Good Time?, with Bernadette Mayer

  Gloria, with Alex Katz

  Bill, with Colter Jacobsen

  Not an Exit, with Léonie Guyer

  Repeat After Me, with John Zurier

  CRITICISM

  Ronald Bladen: Early and Late

  The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings 1985–2003

  Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981–2006

  For the Ordinary Artist

  EDITOR

  In Memory of My Feelings, by Frank O’Hara

  Best & Company

  Alex Katz, with Irving Sandler

  Homage to Frank O’Hara, with Joe LeSueur

  The World Record, with Bob Rosenthal

  What’s with Modern Art?, by Frank O’Hara

  Copyright © 2014 Bill Berkson

  Cover and book design by Linda Koutsky

  Author photo © 2014 Nathaniel Dorsky

  Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, cbsd.com or (800) 283-3572. For personal orders, catalogs, or other information, write to: [email protected].

  Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.

  Visit us at coffeehousepress.org.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CIP INFORMATION

  Berkson, Bill.

  [Poems. Selections]

  Expect delays / Bill Berkson.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-56689-385-5 (ebook)

  I. Title.

  PS3552.E7248A6 2014

  811’.54—DC23

  2014008089

  FOR CONNIE

  LADY AIR

  The One God

  Exogeny

  Those Who Say “Like” Lack Analogy

  Poetry and Sleep

  Lady Air

  Decal

  Reverie

  Paolo and Francesca

  Costanza

  If Only I Had Known When I Made My Debut

  Signature Song

  CT Song

  When Omar Little Died

  In Königsberg, However

  Dress Trope

  Last Lines with George

  Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea

  Earth’s Debit

  Sea Breeze

  The Gift of the Poem

  Two Russian Poems

  With Impunity

  The Cloud of Knowing

  Anhedonia

  Premises of the Solstice

  Birthday Greetings

  16 ACROSTICS IN LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

  For Jim & Nina

  One and All, but Who’s Counting

  Triptych for Paule Anglim

  For Paul Kos

  For Kate, at 26

  For Moses, on His Thirtieth Year

  Six for Connie

  Double Valentine

  SONGS FOR BANDS

  Not an Exit

  Songs for Bands

  Snippets (Further Songs for Bands)

  SISTER CADENCE

  Accounts Payable

  After the Ball

  For Jane & Anselm, the News

  Bleep

  Strangers When We Meet

  First Thing

  Margin Rights

  Monogram

  Neither Here nor There

  Sister Cadence

  No Argument

  Reprise

  Brick

  Surface Codex

  Room Tone

  Notes on Some of the Poems

  Acknowledgments

  LADY AIR

  The One God

  Once heaven was just a boy and a girl

  And a path to the beach.

  That was before the rooms were gutted and you learned

  How to exhibit bereavement

  Would earn your weight in brimming

  Moon lagers.

  Literally, “the bee’s knees.”

  The shoulders of Roland de Smoke

  Cuddle two abreast on a tray.

  While air lasts, cities also die, old gasbags

  With quilted manners, prepuce because the English

  Taste in pictures slackened.

  Then again, despite the poison crumbs,

  The two just walk on tiptoes out of doors,

  Pressing along the keen incline.

  What will happen, what to say

  If and when the first door opens, the wings

  Flutter in turn as nights subside?

  Exogeny

  is when the swimming pool casts its poetry

  from the side of your mouth

  blue yacht rhythms pop at the flickering

  bauble on the wrist of personable

  divinity you guessed the flavor

  made the rounds

  now actively, now not at all

  whoever lies down by that edge has the fever

  Those Who Say “Like” Lack Analogy

  The Big Store

  The population has grown, increased:

  the world has more people

  —more rich people

  and many, many more poor people

  because that’s the way it is,

  and so we know

  how many more people

  there must be.

  Anything between Us Becomes Money and Manners

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  And if there was a problem?

  Pas de quoi.

  Je vous en prie!

  Prego.

  Bitte.

  You’re welcome.

  My pleasure!

  Poetry and Sleep

  All this

  None of that

  It matters here

  Dear illusory remains

  We remember not what’s

  Allowed but simply given

  Antiseptic disputes over

  Pure clove of youth

  Lady Air

  The meaning of guitar practice

  Slips between pine needles

  A bird that thin

  To the tune of “Start Me Up”

  Rubrics of screen porch and firefly

  Embolden the effort

  All words are prophetic

  Bare the thread, swallow the cloud

  Reflected glory drives off

  Leaving the original in demand

  Repeat a
fter me

  Decal

  Coffee to go in either hand

  Shady exit down the spa steps

  Indentured tulip morning engine zenith

  A butterfly speeds off

  Weary of these flats

  Where palm trees pose and the children push

  Macabre distinctions all told

  Tragic as a near miss for indifference sake

  The moonlit frigate sequestered on a reef

  She’ll have the silver taken at one of her lengths

  Turn the air to proper then

  Make mine magnolia

  Reverie

  for Bruce McGaw

  Close up on an ancient blue convertible rolling down Beach Road, orange cabana filled to bursting with complementary colors and one daring fluorescent orange that isn’t.

  The trunk is open and empty;

  the thief asleep in the passenger seat,

  caught in the crosshairs

  pink like the peony.

  Paolo and Francesca

  (Canto 5, second circle Inferno, “La Bufera”)

  Smitten, I began: “Poet, I would speak

  with those two there who go together

  seemingly so light on the wind.”

  And he said: “You will see,

  when they are a little closer to us, ask them

  by the love that draws them onward, and they will come.”

  So, when the wind swept them near us,

  I raised my voice: “O breathless spirits! come

  and talk with us, unless that is denied!”

  And as doves called by desire, with wings

  poised and upright, arrive at their sweet nest,

  borne by their will through the air,

  They left the company where Dido is

  and came toward us through the frightful air,

  such was the power of my affectionate cry.

  “O kind and gracious being

  who comes to visit us in this murk,

  we who stained the world with blood,

  If we could pray to the universal king, we would,

  to give you peace, since you have pitied us

  in our sad perversity.

  Whatever you please to speak of or to hear

  we will hear and speak of with you both

  while the wind, as here it is, is still.

  The place where I was born sits

  along the banks where the Po runs peacefully

  with other streams that follow it.

  Love that wakens quickly in the mildest heart

  laid hold of that one through this beautiful form

  which then was taken from me—and manner still offends me.

  Love, which excuses no one loved from loving,

  fixed this man’s charms so firmly on me

  that, as you see, they haven’t left me yet.

  Love brought us together to this death:

  Caina waits for the man who snuffed out our life.”

  These words carried from them to us.

  And when I understood how their doom was sealed,

  I hung my head and stayed so long like that

  until finally the Poet asked me my thoughts,

  And when I could answer, I began: “Alas,

  how many sweet thoughts, what great desire

  brought them to this sorry place!”

  Then I turned back to them and said:

  “Francesca, your suffering brings tears to my eyes,

  and I pity you terribly—

  But tell me, in the days of those sweet sighs

  how did love concede to let you know

  your dubious desires?”

  And she said: “Nothing is worse

  than recalling the happiest of times

  in total misery; your teacher knows how this is.

  But if you really want to know

  our love’s first root, I will tell

  although my misery in telling will be plain.

  One day for pleasure we were reading

  how Lancelot was struck by love.

  We were alone and somewhat careless.

  But as we read our eyebeams often met

  and the color in our faces changed.

  One line alone was enough to undo us.

  When we read how that lady’s lovely smile

  was kissed by such a lover,

  he, who is forever inseparable from me,

  All atremble kissed me on the mouth.

  That book and whoever wrote it was our Galeotto.

  That day we read no further.”

  As the one spirit spoke,

  the other wept, so that, pitying them,

  I fainted as if I were dying,

  and I fell as a dead body falls.

  after Dante Alighieri

  Costanza

  A woman has fallen the museum guard

  Tells us in a light blue turban plus dark suit

  And tie required of all the Getty guards

  Everyone halted and Moses and me barred at the door

  From entering the dimly lit circular room with Bernini’s sculpture Costanza

  Bonarelli, circa 1638, supposedly displayed, the work that was

  The centerpiece of the show of portrait busts by him and those around him

  Who learned Bernini’s ways although not one discovered how to

  Make a “speaking likeness” so direct

  Of which Costanza’s marble countenance is famously the prime example

  As per instructions we backtrack a little for another closer look

  At the Barberini Borghese d’Este Ubaldini popes and princes

  Powerhouse nephews cousins and great aunts

  Gregorio Urban Duchess Isabella Innocent the Tenth

  Then back again after a while to the doorway where now more people wait

  Others more official looking move like shadow puppets here and there inside

  We can see the room has drawings on the walls

  A self-portrait on the left maybe all of them are or is there one of her

  A women has fallen the new guard tells us a strong whiff of Slavic

  Accent six-one at least disconsolate after-hours bodyguard or KGB

  You can’t come in but go around he waves one big arm

  Like a log or two-by-four soon you get in

  The far-end gallery shows French and English

  Charles the First Thomas Baker Richelieu

  On each a finely chiseled pointed tufted chin

  “Every facial feature sings, every fall of the cloth a luscious little aria”

  Read this later in Holland Cotter’s bright review

  Clean-shaven as a pope I try some paternal

  Historical background shading pontificated

  To Moses some oddment about melancholy Charles’s beheading

  Royal treatment unheard of until his day, intimidating

  And next insouciant Richelieu, Dick Cheney of his time

  Under Louis the Thirteenth of France a nasty schemer

  Though of a more interesting administrative temperament

  Than merely slimy grabby “Vice”

  Remember The Three Musketeers . . .

  Oh thank you! a woman more or less my age in passing stops

  I had almost forgotten about him Richelieu and The Three Musketeers

  The Gene Kelly–Lana Turner MGM version perfect ageless

  Smirk of Vincent Price as the asp-ish cardinal

  Lastly at the nearby second door we ask peering past but

  A woman has fallen the short guard in apologetic Latino shrugs

  And if and when the paramedics this and later for that

  How long don’t know maybe half an hour or more or less

  What a circus a woman has fallen fainted toppled turned

  Next thing you know into a laurel tree it happens now no one

  (What else? warm air outside we had lunch) can see

  Astonishing Costanza whom Gianlorenzo Bernini lovedr />
  In his late thirties maybe before definitely during probably after

  1636 or is it ’38 the date of the bust from life

  “A youthful beauty in a ruffled blouse” writes Sarah McPhee

  Costanza was about 24

  In Rome with her talented husband

  Matteo from Lucca so he could work

  With Gianlorenzo in Saint Peter’s on Mathilda’s tomb

  “A fierce and sensual woman in the grip of passion”

  Wittkower’s idea of what it meant seems more than a little

  Overly presumptuous looking now at the photograph

  Striking instead as if astonishment unself-consciously

  Glancing at redoubling itself is what one sees

  Or else Bernini had just said look over there or quick look at me and hold it

  “Un poco busto” clothed in a chemise with ribbon open at the front

  Her large eyes focused on a distant point lips parted face

  In a tousled crown coiled braid at the back

  “Stern by nature, steady in his work, passionate in his wrath”

  Gianlorenzo kept the image for himself a year or more after pausing

  At dawn on his way out of town he saw Costanza

  In her doorway with his younger brother Luigi whom he chased down broke

  His leg or a couple of ribs and rampaging back home ordered a servant

  Under the pretext of bringing two flasks of wine as gifts to go with a razor

  And slash Costanza’s face which isn’t shown and not much else about that

  morning is recorded

  If Only I Had Known When I Made My Debut

  for Tinker Greene

  Small pleasures of life infiltrate, exercising charm in all the wrong places.

  Goat bells surround the skull as house lights flicker.

  The Wealth of Nations is not of this world.

  Miss Perfect enters beyond recognition, shadows of past lives in both hands.

  Shaggy-dog tales of Late Capitalism teeter madly on the waters of predictability.

  The sticking point sticks in the strike zone.

  Is language mostly synonymous with restriction?

  Never say “swivel”—speak “laminate.”

  Tulips and slavery, two inner limits of Empire.

  And a broom that is mostly stubble.

  Without further ado—but increased existence—

  a tub or busload of refreshing memories is on the rise,

  accompanying the song that won’t be mangled by either club or choir.

  Breathe now or leave the instant behind.