The Milwaukee Intervention (A Verse Play)

A verse play in one scene by Brett Rutherford

Copyright © by Brett Rutherford

All Rights Reserved

Scene: Office of a shipping company. Wooden desk, old army green file cabinets, nautical maps. A window looking out over docks with a partial view of several freighters or container ships. A door backstage with glass windows, smudged..

Mrs. Caruso, early 70s, white hair in disarray, over-decorated with gaudy jewelry, wearing no nonsense work boots and a belt with a heavy key chain hanging from it. She has an old fashioned rotary phone, and a short-wave radio set with a microphone and headphones. A computer setup with an old monochrome green screen, wires and cables dangling from it.

MRS. CARUSO (puts on headset, dials in):

Arrigo, you there?  (Pause) Don’t "over" me, just talk.

I need to know when you get to that place,
you know, the Milwaukee location. Yeah,
just call me back when you’re near. I gave you,
you know, the address and all that. Bye now.

Her daughter Irene, in a red coat, passes by the window and reaches the door. She puts her face to the glass to look inside.

IRENE

Mom, is that you in there?

Mrs Caruso takes off the headset and turns toward the door.

MRS CARUSO

                                                   Who else but me?
Come on in, it’s never locked, anyway.
(Who would be crazy enough to rob us?)

They hug, then Mrs. Caruso pushes her back to inspect her daughter’s face.

MRS. CARUSO

You’re looking better. You went to that place
I told you about? (Irene nods). Good makeup helps
cover up those bruises, and all the right
vitamins will keep you in fighting form.
What’s that below your eye?

IRENE

Nothing, mom. He —

MRS. CARUSO

                                 Did it again, didn’t he?
Don’t tell me he hit you after all that,
I mean with him in those crutches and all?

IRENE

I promised not to get you involved, mom.
I thought it was his last attempt.

MRS. CARUSO

                                                            Just why
would a man who got himself beaten so
he was within an inch of his life, and
had to have you feed him like a baby —
who would he go and do that?

IRENE

                                                          Kielbasa.

CARUSO

What the hell is kielbasa?

IRENE

                                               It’s sausage,
mom, that disgusting red Polish sausage.
It’s full of gristle and fat and God knows
what else, and it is so tough you just know
you’re eating something the dog would refuse.
He always wants it on Friday. I gag
when I see it. I just can’t cook the stuff.
So I said, No, not this week, not ever.

MRS. CARUSO

And so he punched you in the eye again?

IRENE

It was worse. He took the whole crutch
and swung it wide. I ducked, but it got me.
That rubber thing on the end, it  just swiped
by my face and all but knocked me over.
I didn’t see the black eye till later.
That was three days ago. It’s almost healed.

MRS CARUSO

I thought as much. I had my eye on him
from the morning he left the hospital.
I thought you’d be here Sunday. I worried
when you didn’t call yesterday. I knew
you’d need a little more – intervention.
I don’t know why you married that Pollock
bastard anyway.

IRENE

                                    You liked him at first.

MRS. CARUSO

He was going to treat my daughter well,
like a princess, he said, and him being
all big and blond like that, so who was I
to doubt he would take care of you? The fool!

IRENE

It was all good until he lost his job.

MRS. CARUSO

That’s what they all say. The evil they do
at the office, they do to someone else.
But watch out when they bring the troubles home!

(Looks at the short-wave radio).

Hold on, that’s Arrigo. (into mike) Caruso here.
What’s your position, Arrigo? (to Irene). Our barge,
the Star of the Sea, she’s off past San Juan. (Listens).
Call me when you get on the satellite.
Over and out.

IRENE

                           I don’t know how you manage
to keep Dad’s business going.

MRS. CARUSO

                                                       You mean
me being a woman and all? How dare
this Italo-American widow,
the one woman who everyone expects
to spend the rest of her life in black skirts,
how dare I march in and take it over,
the Caruso Barge and Freight Line, just me,
the woman who knows nothing? On day one,
a captain came in and lifted my skirt.
He left with two fingers broken, and hell
to pay at home to explain his bruises.

IRENE

You’re tough, mom. No doubt about it.

MRS. CARUSO

So then your man took off without a word?

IRENE (surprised)

How did you know that?

MRS. CARUSO

                                                 That’s why you’re here.

IRENE

Well, he’s gone, and someone has stolen
his Harley, right from the garage. I mean,
he wasn’t riding off on those crutches.
We’ve such a bad run with burglaries, mom,
I didn’t know what to think.

MRS CARUSO

                                                 Burglaries?
Oh, you mean the gun collection? That was
a year ago, wasn’t it? After he
threatened you with that AR-15?

IRENE

                                                 Yes,
right after you intervened –and sent that priest.

MRS. CARUSO

Not a priest.

IRENE

              Well, he looked like a priest,
or a seminary student, all dressed
in black, and as he spoke so quietly
I couldn’t make out what he said to Tad,
but I know he wound up kneeling, and made
a promise I would never be unsafe.
It was the next day we went to South Beach,
and came back and found the whole collection
was gone, cleaned out to the last bullet.

MRS. CARUSO

                                                                       Ha!
Just like magic. I think he sold them all,
and he was just too ashamed to tell you.

IRENE

I don’t know, mom. He didn’t say a word.
He never called police since half the guns
were illegal anyway.

MRS. CARUSO

                                        Good riddance.
A lot of wives would like to have such luck,
to see their husband’s greedy hobbies burgled.

(Phone rings)

Hold on. (Into phone.) Enrico, that you? What gives?
The damn Liberians won’t accept it?
What’s wrong with a load of fly ash and all
that damn construction waste? What do they know
about the asbestos? A dump is a dump.
(to Irene). Sorry dear, just a little business.

(into phone). Look, no one over here will take the stuff.
The Africans are too good for us, eh?
Guess you’ll just have to bring it all back home.
Or, there’s always the nearest trench. Look on
the charts, and mind you don’t spill anything.
(Pauses). I didn’t say that. You didn’t hear that.

(Hangs up. Sighs). Irene, my dear, you are so innocent.
You have no idea what I do here
to keep our family and boats afloat.

So anyway, your darling Tad is gone.

IRENE

Where would he go? He can’t walk?

MRS. CARUSO

                                                              Odds are good
he’s in some dive, getting his kielbasa up
with some blond-haired lady, the kind, you know,
who do and say anything by the hour.

IRENE

Mom, no, don’t be so cruel. I just want him
found. I want to know he’s safe.

MRS. CARUSO

                                                            You want what?
Already, he had three chances. The first,
was when he hit you. I made him promise,
and he swore on his own mother’s bones, swore
he would never raise his hand against you.
And then the second time, gun in your face,
the threat against you “and all your kind,”
“and all your kind,” let’s not forget that one.

And then he hit you yet again, too drunk,
he said, to remember clearly. That’s right
before he had his Harley turn over
and people he didn’t see broke his legs.
You don’t get a fourth chance with Carusos.

IRENE

But he is missing, mom! I’ve been calling —

MRS. CARUSO

Calling whom? It’s not even three days yet —

IRENE

Emergency rooms! I just keep asking
if a man on crutches came in confused
and maybe had amnesia, you know?
I tried the police. They wouldn’t listen.

MRS. CARUSO

Irene, you know how we and the police —

IRENE

I know, mom, I know. But I worry so.

MRS CARUSO
Poor dear. Give mom a hug. You have it bad.

(They embrace. Irene cries.)

I have reason … to believe … that your Tad
has left you once and for all.

IRENE (pulling away)

                                             That can’t be.

MRS. CARUSO

I’ve had him watched. I look out for my own.
He left Sunday … for Milwaukee.

IRENE

                                                          Milwaukee?
Who knows anyone in — where? — Milwaukee?

MRS CARUSO

Lots of Polish folk there. He can find work.
He’ll get a fake ID so no one can find him.

IRENE

But Tad is my husband. We are married.

MRS CARUSO

Admit it, Irene. You came to me for help.
Just the way you would have turned to your Dad.
You know we always … solve …. problems. That’s what
family is for. You ask, and action —

IRENE (stepping away)
You knew he was gone … you didn’t tell me?

MRS. CARUSO

Irene, It’s for the best to let him go.

(Radio call comes in.)

Hold on, Irene. … Caruso here, ten four. (Pause)

You’re in position, good? Let’s just confirm:
that’s nineteen – forty two – forty nine North,
sixty-seven ---eighteen --- thirty nine West.

(Pauses. Irene starts to walk back to the door.)

(to Irene) Don’t you dare leave! Don’t turn your back on me,
young lady. You asked for help!

IRENE

                                                                  I did not ask!

MRS CARUSO

You didn’t have to ask in words. I saw
your face the day after he threatened you.
I saw your father’s pride in those cheekbones.

(Talking into microphone). 

That’s it, Arrigo. Call down and tell them
to drop their cargo. Tie them together.
Any other ships in sight?  Nothing – that’s good.
See you guys back in Miami. Love ya’!

(Sighs, then turns to face Irene. It is an emotional stand-off. 

Each waits for the other to speak first. Irene finally bows her head, walks over and takes a seat).

IRENE

What am I supposed to do, mom?

MRS. CARUSO

                                                               Just let
the bastard go, Irene. He was rotten.

IRENE

I just can’t. I could have done it, my way,
my time, my breaking point. But not this way,
him backing off to make me unhappy,
with nothing ever resolved.

MRS CARUSO
                                                   You got no kids.
So what kind of man was that, anyway?

IRENE (standing)

I’ll go to Milwaukee. I will find Tad.

MRS CARUSO

You just don’t see it, do you? It’s all fixed.
I solved your problem. Your husband is gone.
Get on with your life. Go have some babies.
Hook up with a nice … young … Italian man.

IRENE

You will tell me where he is. Milwaukee,
where in Milwaukee?

MRS CARUSO (throwing up her hands)

I am your mother. I fix it for you,
and you are ungrateful. So listen now
and learn how we do things in this real world,
this world of ships that chug the world’s garbage.

Tad is in “The Milwaukee Depth.” Just now
he was tied to his damn motorcycle
and dumped into the Puerto Rico Trench —

IRENE (cries out) Mom, no!

MRS CARUSO

                                               Twenty-seven thousand feet deep.
Squashed like a bug at the bottom, you hear?
Squashed like a bug and never to come back
and never to hurt my little Irene!

IRENE
All along it’s been you behind it all,
You sent the priest who was no priest; you sent
the burglars who took his guns, and the thugs
who drove him off the road and broke his legs.
What are you? What am I? What have we done?

(Irene backs toward the door, looking at her mother in horror. She reaches the door, opens it from behind her without looking, and exits. She is seen running past the windows.

MRS. CARUSO (alone)

(Sighs, throws up her hands). What we do for family. No one knows.

The phone rings. 

Caruso here. Calm seas and prosperous voyage.

The sound of a freighter whistle.

FINIS

The Pumpkined Heart (An Experiment)

In my first year in New York, I longed for that small Pennsylvania college town with its mysterious lake and pioneer graveyard ...

Somewhere, the moon is red and cornstalks lean with the wind in plucked fields. Not in New York, city of bleached stone and desperate trees, is my long walk of haystacks, fog in ascent, not where traffic sings its sexless honking can anyone mark the dim-out of frogs, the dying-off of dragonfly wing-beats.

I am pulled up — I levitate, October-tugged, away from the rat-doomed isle of Hudson, clearing the water tanks and steeple-tops, held fast on course by Orion’s glimmer, the angry scorpion tail fast behind me. With leaves and dust I fly to my lake shore, to the pumpkined heart, the base and the root, the earth I touch as pole and battery.

I love this village, though it loves not me; remember it, though it erases me. I mark in my life, how I bear and remember  Octobers, and I know that a year is judged by how it dies in these treetops: if it is burned to cloud the eyes of men, or if it lies, burst red in its full regale, waiting for snow, and the worms and the spring, yes, to feed a new sun!

Earth, I am an ochre sheet of your leaves, leaves more frequent than men in my lines, leaves more fertile than mothers can be, leaves, red, yellow, ambitious, how you have crept! Leaves who have chilled my undraped lovers at night, leaves sharing graveyard solemn caress with my lips,  leaves recurring everywhere to say their red gossip, leaves for all I know returning again to this Fall,     to this place, still blushing to recount how lovers were spent in their bed, leaves forever spelling the name of lost love!

You names that rise to my lips on October nights, you sleep-thieving echoes of aspirant heart, rise from the sealed tomb of years, drag shroud, where no leaves chatter nor branches impede, dead, in the track of stalking remembrance — you  who wake me alone in my grave, grave bed to recall each passionate urge from green twig.  

Each, each and all have grown red, defiant in the drugged fall, denying parentage in terrible wind, nonetheless breaking free, falling to my fever in your high flame; red, then wet, moist in your somber dissent, then dry, then dead, then in my hand the brown dust that a seed should come to, a leaf forever spelling the name of lost love!

Autumn Elegy (An Experiment)

Written at Edinboro PA in middle of the Vietnam War ...

The snow has come. The swirling flakes self-immolate on hot maple grove, white-fringe the aging auburn oaks, a coin drop from winter into the glacial lake. (Cold comes so early here — September frost invades the harvesting and gives the roses heart attacks.) The boreal wind has taken up residence,  has seized the calendar in icy clench.

The hat I haven’t seen since spring comes down —I undertake a day-long search for hibernating gloves and boots. My scarf has stolen off — I know not where. The mouse, the gray one my cat keeps catching and letting go, darts to and fro on the kitchen floor — does he know the hard light’s reckoning? Does bone-deep chill at dawn embolden him this once for daylight foraging? (We have an arrangement on the winter’s supplies:  he comes out at night and he and I know full well that whatever is not locked is not wanted, fair game for a gray mouse.) He nudges a cast-off crust,  noses for crumbs, his whiskers italicizing the advent of hunger, his tail a question mark interrogating me about the wayward sun.

Alone in frost, I take my place at the lake, my solitude complete, my steps the first to break the pathway to the pebbled shore. I stand alone, until the rabbit peers out from the graveyard grass — twice now he’s been there among the mummied lilies, his eye, as mine, upon the never-placid waves.

The summer boats are gone. White ducks that waded here are huddled now beneath the bridge, far downstream. The other birds have packed their bags — they have left us their broken shells, their desolated nests, their songs a carbon copy of a twice-repeated tale.  

Lord Lepus, what do you know of impending ice? Do you suspect the cirrus-borne snow’s arrival? Will you find greens enough beneath the snow bank?

We turn our mutual ways — you to your warren amid the husks and roots and toppled gravestones — I must go to book and breakfast. I leave the trees, fond frame of my eye’s delight, putting behind me the cup of lake that always welcomes each sunrise. Soon now its eye will be blinded, a cataract reflecting sheet-white nothingness.

I walk through town, across the college grounds where last night’s wind’s caprice made here a pristine bed of snow — yet over there an untouched riot of maple on still-green lawn. The carillon tolls the beginning of the day; the students hurry, dumbfounded at virgin snow.

I am the only one to linger here. I stand  upon a carpet of red, soft, ancient leaves: some, some are green yet, they are still proud, they are fallen on the wings of their youth and they are going to pick up anytime now and fly back —

I am mourning for them, for them, for you, for my brothers who have fallen.    

To the Arc of the Sublime (Anniversarius 27)

In nights beneath the stars,
    sometimes alone — sometimes
    with one I loved
         (in futile or secret urgency) —
I have outwaited
    the rise and fall of Scorpio,
         arc of its tail
              stinging the treetops.
I have traced the inconstant moon,
    the indecisive Venus;
    feel more assured
by the long, slow haul of Jupiter,
the patient tread of Pluto
    (whom they pursue
         in their frigid outer orbits
I cannot guess)

Such solitude,
    millennia between
         the fly-bys of comets,
perhaps is why
    they need so many moons,
why rings of ice
    encircle them like loyal cats.
It is lonely in space,
    far out
where the sun is merely
    a star among stars.

It is lonely in autumn.
    I sit in midnight woods.
A trio of raccoons, foraging,
    come up to me,
black mask eyes of the young ones
interrogating the first cold night,
    the unaccustomed noisiness
         of bone-rattle maple leaf
              beneath their paws.

How can I tell them
    these trees will soon be skeletons,
    the pond as hard as glass,
    the nut and berry harvest over?
These two are young —
    they would not believe me.
Their mother rears up protectively,
    smells me,    scents out
    the panic among the saplings,
    the smell of rust and tannin.

We share a long stillness,
    a moment when consciousness 
    is not a passive agency.
Our sight invades the countryside,
    embracing everything —
    sleepers in beds in a concrete tower-
    earthworms entwining in humus rot —
goes up and out through the limpid sky,
    streaming past moon —
         — moon’s lava’d seas —
out, out, to the arc of the sublime,
    tracing the edge of great Antares,
leaping to other galaxies unafraid.


(Let space expand as though the worlds
    still feared their neighbors!
Let miser stars implode,
    their dwarf hearts shriveling
         to cores of iron!)
We are the scourge of entropy.
    We sing the one great note
         through which new being
              comes out of nothingness.

Does it have meaning,
    this seed-shagged planet
        alive with eyes?
Is earth the crucible,
    sandbox of angry gods,
or is it the eye of all eyes,
    ear of all ears,
the nerve through which the universe
    acquires self-knowledge?

But these are weighty thoughts 
    for man and mammal!
We are but blood and minerals,
    upright for an instant,
    conscious for but a moment,
    a grainfall of cosmic hourglass.
Yet I am not ephemeral:
    I freeze time,
         relive moments
              chronicle the centuries
    re-speak Shakespeare,
         beat out the staves of Mozart,
              read the same books
              my forebears knew
         make of old words
              my wordy pyramid.


I am the one
    snapping the pictures of solar systems,
    sending myself
         an outside-in self-portrait.
I send my name and signature
    on bottles spinning past Uranus.
I am the one who asks, Is it worth it?
I who hear the X-ray wind reply, It is!
I am the one who would not stay in caves,
    I was discontent in the treetops.
I wanted to be bird and whale and rocket.

Ever, o ever more mortal now —
     — friends falling away like withered leaves —
still I find joy in this subliminal shrine of autumn.
My hand is full of fossil shells
    picked up from the lake shore rubble,
scallops enduring with the same rock faith
    (implicit minimum vocabulary):
I live, and the increase of my consciousness
    is the span of my life.


 — February 19, 1991, Providence, RI

The Outsider (Anniversarius 22)

Some say that spring
is made for lovers,
summer for marrying.
I do not know
those seasons:
I hastened on
when others mingled,
passed by alone
amid begetting.
I walked the city
for years not touching,
untouched and unafraid.

I am October.
I am conjured
of its red and yellow fever.
I am outlaw to life,
a thief of eyeballs,
citizen of a larger anarchy,
singer of dangerous
truths, peril to normalcy.

Little the world
loves pleases me.
Autumn-mad trees
mean more than palaces,
an austere tomb
more true than a cottage.

I love the earth —
love more
that vast black space
in which it rolls,
a lost marble.

I am the leaf that burns,
the candle that lights
  its own extinction,
sunset regarding itself,
sunlight spun round
the arc of infinity
until its end
sees its beginning.

I come out of the sea,
  walk sideways,
  write words
between the tide and shore.
I am the shape
  behind the randomness
  of stars,
the dream that fills
  the inkpot of Autumn,
the hooded Outsider
  who frightens you
  and laughs
then makes you laugh
at the absurdity of fear.

Will you stay indoors,
hoarding the apple harvest,
warming yourself
by a dead-tree fire?

Or will you join me,
fellow conspirator,
dance me between
the staves of symphonies,
roll in this new moon
blanket with me,

leaf-haired and cold
and laughing
giving up everything
to inherit all?
I am October.
  I wait at cusp,
  at equinox,
  at crossroads,

the far-off chant
unfettered wind
nowhere contained
    by walls,

the fire-fletched arrows
of burning Orionids,

the shape upon
  the leaf-strewn hill
that calls you
  and extends its hand,
the eyes in shadow
that will not let you sleep.


 — October 31, 1987, Providence-New York

The Harvest Moon, in Camden (Anniversarius 45)

And I came, on the night of the harvest moon,

this thirteenth tropical night of the cool ninth month,

and, as I had been beckoned by bell and raven,

I found myself before a familiar tomb,

and its door was ajar and full moon showed me

the undulating form of a great serpent

(black she was and beautiful, sleek of skin

as the Queen of Sheba) and she rose up

and welcomed me. “Enter!” she said, “You

have I called, as well as many others,
and only you have tread the dream-realm,
crossed seven thresholds to stand before me.

Are you not afraid?”

“Afraid at his tomb,

he at whose knees I learned to sing and write?
Much as I fear Death, I do not fear him!”

And a voice inside the sepulchre uttered:

“Come, be not at all fearful. Here there is peace,

though my soul is fitful and weeping.

“I am Walt Whitman, a man, a citizen of Camden.

Reach out and touch the stone of my father,

the stone behind which my mother sleeps.

Touch this rough stone behind which my bones,
my hair, my ever-sinewed limbs, cannot slumber;

least of all my two eyes, my third eye celestial,

my mouth that cannot cease its uttering.

“For it has come to me that the land is troubled.

I ask, Has it yet come to pass that a woman sits

in the chair of Jefferson and Lincoln? I fear not,

and it has come to me that the occupant who sits

in the White House in Washington is not a good

or a fair man; that his hands are full of gold

and not forgiveness; that a man who reads no books

attempts to make science; that corruption spreads

like black tar from a broken well across the land;

“That under poisoned air and water the earth quakes

fractured with the greedy extraction of gas,

that shale, which slept before the dreamings

of sauropods and tyrannosaurs, is rent

by force of water, o incompressible!

that the workmen no longer know

when their labor begins or ends, that the slaves

are not so called yet put on chains again, that men

of one color flee down the streets in terror of arms

and men of no color at all in rage pursue them;

that it is no shame among you that some are roofless

and many must bear the stain of beggary to eat;

that the sick, when they are healed, are told to pay

until their bank accounts are drained, their houses lost;

that worse than in debtors’ jails the poor abide

in tents on the sidewalk, poor-towns behind

the stench-rows of oil tanks and refineries;

that the limousine-rich sell death and addiction

while mothers plead for an unpoisoned tap

from which to feed and bathe their infants,

while the Cappuccino-fueled Civil Servant says,

“Well, everyone has to die of something”;

that refugee children are caged like rabbits;

that a man with a turban or a kippa, a woman

whose faith requires a head-scarf, shall endure

the clenched fist of an ignorant mob.

“If the occupant of the White House is not

a good and fair man, or a good and fair woman,

what hope is there for the shining star

that cannot emerge from the night-cloud?

“To these states I say, as I have always said,

but even more to the people, one by one:
Resist much, and obey little.

And failing this, must the dead emerge

from their tombs to admonish you?

Have you no poets or statesmen?”

With a great sigh, the voice went dead.

I heard only a distant siren, a gunshot,

what might have been a woman’s scream,

then silence. The great black snake,

which had stood erect through all the speaking,

sank to the granite floor of the tomb

and slid into the darkness. I stood,

my own shadow in solitary moonbeam

extended to the Good Gray Poet’s stone

at the back of his self-made mausoleum.

Let Winter Come (Anniversarius VII)

I have been here a quarter century —
now let me rest! let my contrary self
be silent this once — this year
no fancy from my leafy quill.
The lake will still eat leaves without my lines;
the unacknowledged cold drops to the bone
from dawn of equinox whether or not
some gloomy choral anthem welcomes it.

Hear me, friend: I will not send you dead trees,
the frost no longer colors me orange.

I dodge the four winds’ summonings, evade
the draft of winter’s war, refuse this time
to slurry down autumn with napalm frost.

Although I turn the page, my pen is dry.
Whole forms no spring can disinter
scream past me into shallow graves —
leaf-flake will go to vein and then to dust,
love that once sprung from vernal lust dies off
to tumble-leaf gravid forgetfulness.
With summer gone, the past is verdigris;
broken-off promises to peeling rust;
to the boneyard with your false embraces,
to kettle-pot sky, your terrified flight —

Leave me then; I shall be silent as frost,
sliding down autumnless to sudden snow,
ghostless too on whisper-still All Souls’ Eve,
droop-walking sans pumpkins and tilted corn,
thanks-hymnless on harvest feast day, chiding
the moon to tick in slug-down count to twelfth-
month solstice and a muffled caroling.

Let winter come, if it must. I grow old
in these leaves, like an old mattress this ground
has humored me. The muffled maple-leaf
carpet accepts my tread without addressing me.

The Muse of the acorn is baffled by silence.
Ye Maple Giants, what is there to sing?
I walk by their houses; those whom I love
fold into the shadows with their lovers.
I window-watch until the blinkout freezes me.

Why do the hanging bats look down at me
that way? Why do the squirrels pause just
long enough when I see them, eye-contact
asking me why I have nothing to say?

Why, leaves, do you windlessly follow me,
clinging to my shoes and to trouser cuffs,
skittering across the bridge before me,
laughing at my failed romance, shivering
me into this my single bed and book?

Poor leaf in my pale hand, do you wonder
why in this gloom I will not write of you?
I press you to my cheek, cool, damp, and red.
You know me too well, my only friend now,
you know at the end I will not scorn to love you
though I protest my loneliness tonight.
The tree that bore you knows I will seek it,
that I will come to lean against its trunk,
waiting for dawn in the lake-edge snowing.

Bereft of leafage and loved ones, we’ll watch
as lying Venus casts her pall on ice.
Why write a song that none will ever sing,
or poems that make their object
    run for the horizon?

Leave me, autumn! Silence, ye wanton winds!
Abandon, birds, these wrinkled, wretched trees!
Here are the pen, the ink, and the paper,
   the empty virgin expanse, pale yellow —
   the ruled lines pulling me down like magnets —
No! no! I have nothing at all to say —
and I will not, will not write this poem.


 — 1972, New York; revised 1983,1995, 2019