The Debris of my Former Self
Poems by Mick Stern
Majorca and Ordinary Time
Odysseus, captain of my tribe,
you climbed these hills once,
saw this village whitewashed by light,
its walls overgrown with bougainvillea and oleander
followed the same pebbled path
past oak and olive to a cove of bluegreen water
where sirens glistening with Nivea
sprawl on beach towels
If they start singing
beat your head against a rock
until the music stops—
an old but still effective cure
But Palma de Majorca, Odysseus:
massive church doors with iron hinges,
earth machines squatting in the ribs of half-built hotels,
Germans in Fiats—
You wouldn’t recognize anything but the moon
One shuttered midnight in Palma,
my friends and I saw beneath street lights
a crone feeding fish to a herd of public cats
A rotten smell hovered around her
She halted us
with a bulging eye
At last, old sailor, something familiar
that your memory must acknowledge:
a gaze gone dimmer now but still fierce with pride
This island, this sea once were hers
till you anchored here in a storm.
When she refused you shelter
you shattered her amulets with a stone
while she cursed and wept
Or so they say. But I don’t believe it.
It was Ordinary Time,
the tempo of tides and sun
that disintegrated her spells
and left her stranded in the debris
of her former self
And you, Odysseus my navigator
Where are you
after so much sailing
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In the Meat Market
It’s easy to be strong
west of Tenth Avenue
Put on a bloody smock
and pack with the butchers
until your aching muscles
blot out all other thoughts
Weakness is a luxury
only for those who can afford
to change clothes and sheets
whenever they lose blood
Those stains never come out
You don’t need much introspection
in this business
Just drag the carcass into a truck
and tell the driver
to take it away
top
Don’t Call it Sorrento
I’m leaning on a public phone in the Piazza di Tasso
trying to leave you a message without the word Sorrento
Italy is yammering in my ear—
palm trees, accordions, prosciutto,
bells, credit cards, Chianti,
bodies strolling, sunburned, idle,
cliffs overlooking the gulf of Naples,
Vesuvius wrapped in purple haze
One head can’t hold it all
I need your help right now
Don’t let my call ring and ring
in an empty room six time zones away
The church is lit up after dark to make tourists happy
A cat slinks under café tables
maddened by the smell of calamares
A Bosnian trying to sell me roses
says something about Sorrento
but I won’t call it Sorrento
until you’re here too.
top
The Stone of Cádiz
This small white stone was found
on the last day of the year
near the fortress in the harbor of Cádiz
When I picked it up
it was warm from the sun
I tapped the sand off,
put it in my pocket
and brought it here
Look
open your hand
close your fingers over it
It says nothing, feels nothing, hears nothing
Have faith in it
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La Investigadora
Her investigations uncovered a pattern
of suspicious accidents in French literature
of flowery boots
of avalanches
of whispering servants
of lees, ashes, dregs
of stringed armadillo shells
of rain
of a drone in the clouds
of a city armed and vigilant
of the seashore’s bones
of the casual gesture
of the merciless regime
of blind sunflowers bowed in all directions
of the gap between one note
and the next
when the piper
steals a breath
top
Ancient Reading
On a moonless summer night I put aside the newspaper
and read about early imperial China
till insomniac hours
Anxious for legitimacy,
the Han emperor commanded scholars
to spend ten years learning the art of interpretation
so they could find proofs that the departed Confucius
had foreseen and welcomed
the ascendancy of the Han
Scholars ransacked the Annals for signs
of a new mandate from Heaven, found hints buried
in disjointed syntax
in equivocal nouns
in a verb meaning “to hunt”
in the order of the Five Elements,
in the mention of a unicorn
in the omission of a unicorn
Those who spoke up for the old readings
faced execution
Who is the legitimate emperor?
Many eras have passed
but we still don’t have an answer
Heaven is silent
and it’s hard to find an independent scholar.
top
In Bed with the Family
On Barcelona’s Rambla de Catalunya
the writer Enric Gomà lives in a building
constructed by his great great grandfather
Nights, he lies in a massive bed and reads
The bed is made of carved wood
darkened by ages of shifting light
For a century or so, a large crucifix hung above it
Eleven members of his family were born in this bed
and five or six died in it
His aunt’s body was laid out here at her wake
Nobody knows what whispered conversations,
loud arguments,
fevers, confessions, hangovers,
insomniac dawns, torpid afternoons
ordinary and memorable nights
have occurred between headboard and footboard
I don’t know how Enric can stand it.
When he sleeps on this ancient frame
the ghosts of his family must rush into his dreams
like a crowd entering church in a time of plague
He looks at the clock
He turns the page
top
Reading Myself Out Loud
I have read my poetry into microphones
on desultory summer evenings
and listened to others
who also called themselves poets
at the same microphones
and often wondered what we were doing
with and to each other—was it group therapy,
urban ritual, need for attention, sheer masochism?
I read in places where the bar chatter
forced me to shout love lyrics,
and my pauses were filled by the roar of TV football,
and my composure battered
by the clang of the cash register
I marvel at the faith that kept me
hour after hour in a hard-backed chair
attentive to the verbal contortions
of students, housewives, junkies,
taxi drivers, proofreaders, video store clerks,
refugees, gastroenterologists,
anyone who could lay hands on
pen, paper and subway fare.
I met their glazed faces
whenever I looked up from the page,
searching for a flicker of response,
but my lines as soon as spoken
were quickly sucked away.
top
Balkan Lullaby
Stumbling out of a tavern at night
I reach into my pocket for matches
and find fingers that do not belong to me
busily removing coins
that don’t belong to them
Brother, help yourself to my nothing
Let’s share a smoke
under these exhausted beeches
My hands tremble like a flame
in the wind from the sea
but we can still breathe deeply
as long as the leaves are green
At the urging of passionate accordions
my grandfather dances his belly to the bar
he wears his hat at a jaunty angle
he winks and flashes a golden smile
just don’t ask him about the slaughterhouse,
the police station, the bordello—
even plum brandy won’t loosen his lips
Violins will cover up his silence
as long as the leaves are green
My village! My village!
You haven’t opened an eye
since you passed out between these two mountains
In this valley nothing grows but sorrow
You can’t cross the river here
An army tore down the bridge
to prevent another army from doing it first
Soldiers watch us through binoculars,
but stay on their side of the border,
at least for the moment
That side, this side, I don’t care—
as long as the leaves are green.
top
Learning Italian
We turned right at the wrong church
and got lost in broad daylight
clutching a list of useful phrases, like
Where am I this morning? Which direction is possible?
Why do the phones and bank machines in your beautiful country
keep breaking down, but nobody ever burns a risotto?
Why do drivers force pedestrians
to improvise a tarantella
to get across the street?
Why do walls bruised by centuries of weather
become more luminous with age?
We wanted to know
how people can move so lightly among the ruins
Everybody shrugged at us
except the bronze hero in the piazza,
a famous reformer
who failed to change one single thing
When we finally found Tourist Information
they were in no mood for tourists
“Basta! The answers to your questions are now closed
Go out and have a nice dinner
You’ll still be lost in the morning.”
top
To Naomi
You said you’d be there for me
and you were
but when you were there
I was here
I need no more
what matters is not
where you were
but that you were
for me
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BIG thanks to Douglas Collura and Béatrice Coron
“Ancient Reading” is based on a journal article by Gopal Sukhu
The poem never finished was for Vivi
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