Selected Poems. James Tate

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СКАЧАТЬ I give you my word.

Coming Down Cleveland Avenue

      The fumes from all kinds

      of machines have dirtied

      the snow. You propose

      to polish it, the miles

      between home and wherever

      you and your lily

      of a woman might go. You

      go, pail, brush, and

      suds, scrubbing down

      Cleveland Avenue

      toward the Hartford Life

      Insurance Company. No

      one appreciates your

      effort and one important

      character calls you

      a baboon. But pretty

      soon your darling jumps

      out of an elevator

      and kisses you and you

      sing and tell her to

      walk the white plains

      proudly. At one point

      you even lay down

      your coat, and she, in

      turn, puts hers down for

      you. And you put your

      shirt down, and she, her

      blouse, and your pants,

      and her skirt, shoes—

      removes her lavender

      underwear and you slip

      into her proud, white skin.

Reapers of the Water

      The nets newly tarred

      and the family arranged

      on deck—Mass has started.

      The archbishop in

      his golden

      cope and tall miter, a resplendent

      figure against an unwonted background, the darting

      silver of water,

      green and lavender

      of the hyacinths, the slow

      movement of occasional

      boats. Incense floats

      up and about the dripping gray

      moss and the sound of the altar bell

      rings out. Automatically all who have stayed

      on their boats drop to their knees with the others

      on shore. The prelate, next taking up his sermon,

      recalls that the disciples of Christ were drawn

      from the fishermen

      of Galilee. Through

      the night, at the lake, they cast in vain.

      Then He told

      them to try once more, and lo!

      the nets came heavily loaded…. Now

      there will be days when

      you, too, will

      cast your nets without success—be not

      discouraged; His all-seeing

      eye will be

      on you. And in the storm, when

      your boat tosses like a thin

      leaf, hold firm….

      Who knows whose man will be next? Grandmère

      whose face describes how three of hers—

      her husband and those two boys—had not returned,

      now looks toward

      her last son—

      it is a matter of time.

      The prelate dips his gold aspergillum

      into the container of holy water

      and lifts it high. As the white

      and green boats

      pass, the drops fall on the scrubbed

      decks, on the nets, on the shoulders

      of the nearest ones, and they move up

      the long waterway.

      The crowds watching and waving:

      the Sea Dream, the Normandie,

      the Barbara Coast, the Little Hot

      Dog, the God

      Bless America, the Madame of Q.—

      racing past the last tendrils

      of the warm pudding

      that is Louisiana.

Epithalamion for Tyler

      I thought I knew something

      about loneliness but

      you go to the stockyards

      buy a pig’s ear and sew

      it on your couch. That, you

      said, is my best friend—we

      have spirited talks. Even

      then I thought: a man of

      such exquisite emptiness

      (and you cultivated it so)

      is ground for fine flowers.

For Mother on Father’s Day

      You СКАЧАТЬ