Subtitle
We present for you this evening
A movie of death: observe
These scenes chipped celluloid
Reveals unsponsored and tax-free .
We request these things only:
All gum must be placed beneath the
seats
Or swallowed quickly, all popcorn sacks
Must be
left in the foyer. The doors
Will remain closed throughout
The performance. Kindly consult
Your
programs: observe that
There are no exits. This is
A
necessary precaution.
Look
for no dialogue, or for the
Sound of any human voice: we have seen fit
To synchronize this play with
Squealings of pigs, slow sound of guns,
The sharp dead click
Of empty chocolatebar machines.
We say again: there are
No exits here, no guards to
bribe,
No washroom windows.
No finis to the film unless
The ending is your own.
Turn off the lights, remind
The operator of his union card:
Sit forward, let the screen reveal
Your heritage, the logic of your
destiny.
For my Daughter
Looking into my
daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence
of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings
of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds
have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled
these miniatures of hands;
The night’s slow
poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her
blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers
appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain
war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate,
she relishes the sting
Of others’ agony;
perhaps the cruel
Bride of a
syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations
sour in the sun.
I have no daughter.
I desire none.
Early Winter
Memory of summer is
winter's consciousness.
Sitting or walking
or merely standing still,
Earning a living or
watching the snow fall,
I am remembering
the sun on sidewalks in a warmer place,
A small hotel and a
dead girl's face;
I think of these in
this higher altitude, staring West.
But the room is
cold, the words in the books are cold;
And the question of
whether we get what we ask for
Is absurd,
unanswered by the sound of an unlatched door
Rattling in wind,
or the sound of snow on roofs, or glare
Of the winter sun.
What we have learned is not what we were told.
I watch the snow,
feel for the heartbeat that is not there.
The Smiles of the
Bathers
The smiles of the
bathers fade as they leave the water,
And the lover feels
sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love.
The scholar,
closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollow
and old:
The pilot's relief
on landing is no release.
These perfect and
private things, walling us in, have imperfect and
public endings--
Water and wind and
flight, remembered words and the act of love
Are but
interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient and quick,
Waits only for
those who are dead. No death for you. You are involved.
Robinson
The dog stops
barking after Robinson has gone.
His act is over.
The world is a gray world,
Not without
violence, and he kicks under the grand piano,
The nightmare chase
well under way.
The mirror from
Mexico, stuck to the wall,
Reflects nothing at
all. The glass is black.
Robinson alone
provides the image Robinsonian.
Which is all of the
room—walls, curtains,
Shelves, bed, the
tinted photograph of Robinson’s first wife,
Rugs, vases,
panatellas in a humidor.
They would fill the
room if Robinson came in.
The pages in the
books are blank,
The books that
Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair,
Or where the chair
would be if Robinson were here.
All day the phone
rings. It could be Robinson
Calling. It never
rings when he is here.
Outside, white
buildings yellow in the sun.
Outside, the birds
circle continuously
Where trees are
actual and take no holiday.
Turtle (To William Baziotes)
Watching, beside
the road,
A turtle crawl (
with smells
Of autumn closing
in,
Night traffic
roaring by),
I felt a husk that
moved
Inside me, torpid,
dry
As air from a
long-closed room
That drifts through
an open door
When the wind in
the hall is right-
Moved as a turtle
moves
Into the covering
grass,
Far in the woods,
at night.
Robinson at
Home
Curtains
drawn back, the door ajar.
All winter
long, it seemed, a darkening
Began. But
now the moonlight and the odors of the street
Conspire
and combine toward one community.
These are
the rooms of Robinson.
Bleached,
wan, and colorless this light, as though
All the
blurred daybreaks of the spring
Found an
asylum here, perhaps for Robinson alone,
Who sleeps.
Were there more music sifted through the floors
And
moonlight of a different kind,
He might
awake to hear the news at ten,
Which will
be shocking, moderately.
This sleep
is from exhaustion, but his old desire
To die like
this has known a lessening.
Now there
is only this coldness that he has to wear.
But not in
sleep.—Observant scholar, traveller,
Or uncouth
bearded figure squatting in a cave,
A keen-eyed
sniper on the barricades,
A heretic
in catacombs, a famed roué,
A beggar on
the streets, the confidant of Popes—
All these
are Robinson in sleep, who mumbles as he turns,
“There is
something in this madhouse that I symbolize—
This
city—nightmare—black—”
He wakes in sweat
To the
terrible moonlight and what might be
Silence. It
drones like wires far beyond the roofs,
And the
long curtains blow into the room.
Covering Two Years
This
nothingness that feeds upon itself:
Pencils
that turn to water in the hand,
Parts of a
sentence, hanging in the air,
Thoughts
breaking in the mind like glass,
Blank
sheets of paper that reflect the world
Whitened
the world that I was silenced by.
There were
two years of that. Slowly,
Whatever
splits, dissevers, cuts, cracks, ravels, or divides
To bring me
to that diet of corrosion, burned
And
flickered to its terminal.--Now in an older hand
I write my
name. Now with a voice grown unfamiliar,
I speak to
silences of altered rooms,
Shaken by
knowledge of recurrence and return.
Small
Prayer
Change,
move, dead clock, that this fresh day
May break
with dazzling light to these sick eyes.
Burn,
glare, old sun, so long unseen,
That time
may find its sound again, and cleanse
What ever
it is that a wound remembers
After the
healing ends.
More poems
by Weldon Kees here :
On his life and work :
The Disappearing Poet : What ever
happened to Weldon Kees?
By Anthony Lane. The New Yorker, July 4 , 2005.
The Cult of Weldon Kees. By Dana Gioia. Dana Gioia , 1997.
Weldon Kees: mysterious verses.
By Emily Hill. Dazed Digital , June 28, 2014.
Where’s Weldon?: The Tone of Unease in Weldon Kees’s “SUBTITLE”
By Taylor Collier. Taylor Collier, March 13, 2016.
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