Mark Strand : 11 poems

Sleeping With One Eye Open

Unmoved by what the wind does,

The windows

Are not rattled, nor do the various

Areas

Of the house make their usual racket --

Creak at

The joints, trusses and studs.

Instead,

They are still. And the maples,

Able

At times to raise havoc,

Evoke

Not a sound from their branches’

Clutches.

It’s my night to be rattled,

Saddled

With spooks. Even the half-moon

(Half man,

Half dark), on the horizon,

Lies on

Its side casting a fishy light

Which alights

On my floor, lavishly lording

Its morbid

Look over me. Oh, I feel dead,

Folded

Away in my blankets for good, and

Forgotten.

My room is clammy and cold,

Moonhandled

And weird. The shivers

Wash over

Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends

Loosen,

And I lie sleeping with one eye open,

Hoping

That nothing, nothing will happen.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in  

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Breathe

When you see them

tell them I am still here,

that I stand on one leg while the other one dreams,

that this is the only way,

that the lies I tell them are different

from the lies I tell myself,

that by being both here and beyond

I am becoming a horizon,

that as the sun rises and sets I know my place,

that breath is what saves me,

that even the forced syllables of decline are breath,

that if the body is a coffin it is also a closet of breath,

that breath is a mirror clouded by words,

that breath is all that survives the cry for help

as it enters the stranger's ear

and stays long after the world is gone,

that breath is the beginning again, that from it

all resistance falls away, as meaning falls

away from life, or darkness fall from light,

that breath is what I give them when I send my love

The Mailman

It is midnight.

He comes up the walk

and knocks at the door.

I rush to greet him.

He stands there weeping,

shaking a letter at me.

He tells me it contains

terrible personal news.

He falls to his knees.

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” he pleads.

I ask him inside.

He wipes his eyes.

His dark blue suit

is like an inkstain

on my crimson couch.

Helpless, nervous, small,

he curls up like a ball

and sleeps while I compose

more letters to myself

in the same vein:

“You shall live

by inflicting pain.

You shall forgive.”

The Remains

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.

I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.

At night I turn back the clocks;

I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

The Everyday Enchantment of Music

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound,

which was polished until it became music. Then the music was

polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when

tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was

polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty

home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the

music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at

the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was

thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and

the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and

what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two

would also begin.

Man and Camel

On the eve of my fortieth birthday

I sat on the porch having a smoke

when out of the blue a man and a camel

happened by. Neither uttered a sound

at first, but as they drifted up the street

and out of town the two of them began to sing.

Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me—

the words were indistinct and the tune

too ornamental to recall. Into the desert

they went and as they went their voices

rose as one above the sifting sound

of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,

its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed

an ideal image for all uncommon couples.

Was this the night that I had waited for

so long? I wanted to believe it was,

but just as they were vanishing, the man

and camel ceased to sing, and galloped

back to town. They stood before my porch,

staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:

“You ruined it. You ruined it forever.”

Mark Strand reads Man and Camel

The Couple

The scene is a midtown station.

The time is 3 a.m.

Jane is alone on the platform,

Humming a requiem.

She leans against the tiles.

She rummages in her purse

For something to ease a headache

That just keeps getting worse.

She went to a boring party,

And left without her date,

Now she's alone on the platform,

And the train is running late.

The subway station is empty,

Seedy, sinister, gray.

Enter a well-dressed man

Slowly heading Jane's way.

The man comes up beside her:

"Excuse me, my name is John,

I hope I haven't disturbed you.

If I have, I'll be gone.

'I had a dream last night

That I would meet somebody new.

After twenty-four hours of waiting,

I'm glad she turned out to be you."

Oh where are the winds of morning?

Oh where is love at first sight?

A man comes out of nowhere.

Maybe he's Mr. Right.

How does one find the answer,

If one has waited so long?

A man comes out of nowhere,

He's probably Mr. Wrong.

Jane imagines the future,

And almost loses heart.

She sees herself as Europe

And John as Bonaparte.

They walk to the end of the platform.

They stumble down to the tracks.

They stand among the wrappers

And empty cigarette packs.

The wind blows through the tunnel.

They listen to the sound.

The way it growls and whistles

Holds them both spellbound.

Jane stares into the dark:

"It's a wonder sex can be good

When most of the time it comes down to

Whether one shouldn't or should."

John looks down at his watch:

"I couldn't agree with you more,

And often it raises the question —

‘What are you saying it for?'"

They kneel beside each other

As if they were in a trance,

Then Jane lifts up her dress

And John pulls down his pants.

Everyone knows what happens,

Or what two people do

When one is on top of the other

Making a great to-do.

The wind blows through the tunnel

Trying to find the sky.

Jane is breathing her hardest,

And John begins to sigh:

'I'm a Princeton professor

God knows what drove me to this.

I have a wife and family;

I've known marital bliss.

'But things were turning humdrum,

And I felt I was being false.

Every night in our bedroom

I wished I were someplace else."

What is the weather outside?

What is the weather within

That drives these two to excess

And into the arms of sin?

They are the children of Eros.

They move, but not too fast.

They want to extend their pleasure,

They want the moment to last.

Too bad they cannot hear us.

too bad we can't advise.

Fate that brought them together

Has yet another surprise.

Just as they reach the utmost

Peak of their endeavor,

An empty downtown local

Separates them forever.

An empty downtown local

Screams through the grimy air

A couple dies in the subway;

Couples die everywhere.

Mark Strand reads The Couple

From the Long Sad Party

Someone was saying

something about shadows covering the field, about

how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning

and the morning goes.

Someone was saying

how the wind dies down but comes back,

how shells are the coffins of wind

but the weather continues.

It was a long night

and someone said something about the moon shedding its

   white

on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead

but more of the same.

Someone mentioned

a city she had been in before the war, a room with two

   candles

against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.

We began to believe

the night would not end.

Someone was saying the music was over and no one had

   noticed.

Then someone said something about the planets, about the

   stars,

how small they were, how far away.

Anywhere Could Be Somewhere

I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low country, I

don’t recall which. I might have come from the city, but what

city in what country is beyond me. I might have come from the outskirts of a city

from which others have come or maybe a city from which only I have

come. Who’s to know? Who’s to decide if it rained or the sun was out?

Who’s to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but

which border is anyone’s guess. They mention a hotel where it doesn’t

matter if you’ve forgotten your suitcase; there’ll be another one waiting,

big enough, and just for you.

Mark Strand reads Anywhere Could Be Somewhere

Nocturne of the Poet Who Loved the Moon

I have grown tired of the moon, tired of its look of astonishment,

the blue ice of its gaze, its arrivals and departures, of the way it,

gathers lovers and loners under its invisible wings, failing to

distinguish between them. I have grown tired of so much that used

to entrance me, tired of watching cloud shadows pass over sunlit

grass, of seeing swans glide back and forth across the lake, of

peering into the dark, hoping to find an image of a self as yet

unborn. Let plainness enter the eye, plainness like the table on which

nothing is set, like a table that is not yet even a table.

Man Made Out of Words :  Mark Strand's Last Interview. By  Adam Fitzgerald.

Part One.   Boston Review ,  April 1, 2015.

Part Two.  Boston Review  , April 6, 2015.

Mark Strand, 80, Dies; Pulitzer-Winning Poet Laureate. By William Grimes . The New York Times November 29, 2014.