Ed Mittleman (In Memoriam)

by Brett Rutherford

Because he was a broken song,
it was music he loved.

Back row at every concert,
ready to bolt if it was awful,
attentive, applauding,
he cradled the name
of every player.

From thrift-store finds
a horde amassed
of instruments he had.

From out his windows
came fragments of sound
from zither or flute,
or trumpet or violin,

a phrase here,
an arpeggio there,
a fanfare abbreviated,
each utterance incomplete,
too soon gone silent.

Because he was a broken bird,
the birds he loved.

A green strip
at parking lot’s edge
he peppered daily
with ample seeds.

And the birds came.
When greedy pigeons,
bad congregants,
barged in with shovel-beaks
to scoop up everything,
Ed flapped across
to drive them away.
The skirmishes
went on all day.

Bluejays and cardinals
were always welcome.
The sparrows,
if you looked,
seemed always
to be davening.

Now he is gone,
the seed and nut
no longer bountiful.

Upon his window-sill I see
a minyan of sparrows.
They tap the glass.
No answer.

Their tree was his synagogue.
Its leaves do not fall.
There, the birds sing
always, "Adonai."

That Far South

by Brett Rutherford

A friend writes
that he is moving to Chile
to get away from
you know, everything.

Chile, really? I know
of pine forests
on the Pacific coast,
the last refuge perhaps

for those who yearn
for fjords and streams,
but what of the winds
that tear through
Tierra del Fuego,

unending hurricane
so fierce that trees
grow only in one direction,
flat to the ground;

what of the Mapuche
Indians, untamed
and yearning still
to expel the gringos?

And who knows what
those Santiago
oligarchs are up to
and for whom they'll come
when they get around to you
and your invading kind.

Chile, I think not,
not while the Andes,
razor-sharp, pierce clouds
that scream in agony,
not, and worst of all,

not where, because
so far below
Equator's line
(just check a globe)

everything
is
upside
down!

Elizabethan Tavern

by Brett Rutherford

The sot in the corner
no one felt sorry for,
begged for another
full tankard of ale,

and it was given him.
Hirsute, long-beard
all clotted with grease
and suet, foul mouth

of crenelated teeth,
asmile, he reaches out
arthritic hands
to seize his bounty.

They'll roll him out
into the pissy gutter
just as the hour is cried
when all good men

must to their beds
and proper wives
return. He only
must sleep alone.

Boy actor once
on the Globe stage,
his fame good now
for nothing but

the way he quotes
the Bard in full.
Men close their eyes
to remember

how he had fooled
them all, and made
them swoon amour'd.
"Give drink!" he'd say,

and it was given.
"I, Egypt's Queen
and Juliet was.
Give drink! Give drink!"

He was what was
and shall ever be,
the daisy spring
of beauty.

In the Shadow

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, Epilogue 

 

SPIRIT OF THE OLD WORLD:

A flood? Oh, very well — floods come and go.

Just go about your business now.
You do what you have to, as water
is what it is and gravity and wind prevail.

So high and deep? You mean to break a record.

But why such gloom and ferocity?
Why whirl about with that hole
in the middle so like a crying mouth?

 

Why do you hulk about
howling in a made-up shadow,
your black winds bugle-blowing
as if to turn day to night? We know the sky
is still azure-blue above you!

Your mounting waves are impolite,
they murmur the rude songs
of some child prodigy.

This much and no more!
That’s quite enough, I tell you!

 

You do your thing out there. In here,
we stand for old laws, old obstacles,
brakes harnessing every bold thought.
We hoard our misery and nothingness,
our little dungeons where we put hopes
into slow starvation, and lock up souls
within the cells they willingly abide.
No sudden gust will overturn the way
we men keep women in their places.
No random wave can splash across
those delicacy-laden banquet boards
the dispossessed can never savor.

Waters, do you mean to rob us of all
our cherished fatal memories, our shield
of superstition none dare to doubt?

Touch nothing inside these walls!
Just go away. Our holy things, our feasts,

down to the last dumpling, are sacrosanct!

 

Now humble yourself, and flatten out,
and above all, be quiet, now!

So who am I to issue commands to the wave?

I built these enclosures, you know,
I hem in humankind; my towers
shade and humble them aways.

Still roaring, fool? And rising, still?

Chaos I smell in your frenzied impact.
Is that a Bible floating by? Are those
the graven tablets of law
     you just now toppled over?

No, not the scaffold, tumbling down —
we need that! We use it all the time.

There on that high dais, the king —
you must not — oh, he is swept away!

 

I have here a list of sacred men.
If you know what’s good for you,
you will spare their houses. Oh, dear,
they tell me the Sacred College
is inundated and only fish
are left to wear a white collar there.

Where judges sat, their robes erupt
from out the broken windows.
Their bones will host corals now.

Is nothing sacred? What sound
is battering my palace door?

My bomb-proof bunker is safe.
Or was. Up come the currents
from down below; and from on high
the torn roof lets icy torrents in.

 

Do you have any idea
    just who you are dealing with?
Kings, priests, and presidents
     take orders from me.

It cannot be — I am engulfed.
I am floating to who knows where!

 

How can the sea disobey me?
I made up the God of Nature, did I not?
Whatever I will, men make it so!

Disobedient Sea! How dare you!

The waters are reaching my chin!

 

THE FLOOD:

Old One, you mistook me.

Accustomed as you were to tides,
that come and go, and rise and fall,

nothing prepared you for the inevitable.

I am the flood that comes, and stays.

 

 

 

Out of Nowhere, A Johnny-Jump-Up

by Brett Rutherford

     For Mary Cappello

Storks pendulous
with human infants
can hardly fly, while
seldom-seen tanagers
scoop up the seeds
of Johnny-Jump-Ups
and levitate away —

and then, some days
and miles away, deposit them
in an undignified mound
outside a writer's window.

Thus passes through
beak, gullet, and bowel
the undigested seed,
replete with its own
self-fertilizer. Muse
of the acorn, laurel, yew,
give nod as well
to the purple-petaled
sun-streaked "violas" --
up, Johnny, up!

A Summons

by Brett Rutherford

Toru Dutt! Toru Dutt!
All night long,
that name resounds.
I wake, I dash to find
she died at twenty-one,
a poet, a fiery Bengali,
a genius whose pen
spanned England, France,
and the lore of Hindustan.

Her books are now before me.
I tremble. Her star
soars now, by her own will,
elected to join the others.

That poems may not die,
the poets' shades call out.
So great are some,
that a name suffices.
Toru Dutt! Toru Dutt!

Her trumpet clarion sounds.

Stained

Pyramus and Thisbe, by Andreas Nesselthaler, 1795
Public domain from Wikimedia.

by Brett Rutherford

Mulberries turned red,
because two grieving lovers,
each thinking the other dead,
committed suicide.
Had not one clumsy lion
come along, had Thisbe
not wailed at finding Pyramus
self-slain, and followed suit, the fruit
would droop as pale as moonlight
and we would gather the white berries up,
in delicate garlands, leaf and all,
to drape the edge of a lover's cup.

The Unexpected Guest

by Brett Rutherford

     Why now? And why you,
     darkening my doorway?
                                       — Apollodorus

You, that man-shaped shadow,
threshold-hovering,
what is your business?
Old comrade, come to stay?
Or new one, heaven-sent
in search of the night-joys
my house is famous for?

Who sent you? Oh, that one --
my name inscribed, I see,
on the back of his calling card.
You'd might as well come in,
as a storm is brewing.

You are of age to choose.
Why hesitate, just like
some indecisive cat?

What now, you wavering
phantom, or play of light?
In? Out? Make up your mind!

Summer Nights on Ore Mine Hill Road

by Brett Rutherford

Moths pressed
against the window,
drawn to the light --
or was the random
tapestry of wings
a message --

help us, we choke,
coke-oven smoke
and smelter, fumes
from your rolling autos,
all poison us --

each summer
there were fewer, then
fewer still, now none
as both they and the house
are mere ghosts in the woods.

What were
the nightjars
asking for, anyway?

That same persistent
whip -- whip --
whippoorwill call.

Did respite come
for Poor Will, ever?

What tread at night
as the watch-dog howled,
making a large-pawed
circle around the house?
Grandma slept through it,
but the two boys wide-
awake in terror heard it,
three times circling --

was it a bear
from the high rocks above
or something sinister
that even the Indians
hereabouts
would shudder to name?

What did it want?
What does anything want
in the wide world
but to be left alone?

Defiance

by Brett Rutherford

Ailurophobe,
Stepfather dreads
the thought of cats.
“Not safe around infants,”
he swears to God.
“They take a baby’s breath away
and smother it,
and as for you, one scratch
and you’re dead; blood
poisoning cannot be cured.”

“When I am grown and gone,”
I tell him, “My house shall have
black cats in every room.
Thirteen at least will sun
themselves on all the window-sills.

“Each chair will throne a tom-cat.
No bed will be denied them.
Each visiting child may choose
from among a hundred kittens.” —

“Don’t expect us to visit,” he warned.
I smiled. “Oh, rest assured,
you will never cross that threshold.”

Despised

by Brett Rutherford

I sit,
a solitary diner
in a Chelsea Chinese
restaurant.

The loud-
mouthed manager
kitchen-bellows
to anyone who hears:

“Two men come in together,
no service for them.
I know what they’re up to,
don’t want their kind in here.
Who wants to touch a plate
they’ve eaten from?
I have to wear gloves
just to use the subway.”

I eat no more. I pay;
I leave no tip.
If I spoke up, I’d only learn
how much kung fu they know,
or how adept they are
with those heavy-handled
cleavers. Some day
my withering contempt
will find its way to the page.

Outside, it is dusk.
The after-rain light
makes everyone I pass
especially handsome.

Passing, I smile at one.
He saw me coming.
His eyes bulge out.
The spit he’d saved
for the last three blocks
in need of a target,
flies out toward me.

No one is safe
in this plague-feared city.

The Men on Central Park West, 1969

by Brett Rutherford

Perhaps I look too wild,
too out of the woods,
too much a hippie for them,
the men who every night
fill nearly every bench
on Central Park West.

Walk if you dare, from
Seventy-Second to Eightieth,
Dakota to the Museum,
as hundreds of eyes size
you up and down, and one,

if you are lucky, will nod.
The place is an open secret.
No business strolling there
except for “friends of Dorothy.”

Doormen across
the street ignore us,
while dowagers frown
from the upper windows.

Sometimes, from the Dakota’s
luxury tower,
a grand piano rills
and thunders over us.
Horowitz? Rubinstein?
Who knows? Our strolls
encompass much city lore,
from Rosemary’s Baby’s nursery
to the museum’s dinosaurs.

Once you’ve been seen
and gain a nodding
acquaintance with regulars,
they soon enough confide
what places are safe, or not,
and whom to trust, or not.

Some, eager to please,
go home with almost anyone.
Others, behind
some imaginary monocle,
look down in scorn on all
who are not Apollos, perfect
in form and fashion.

As midnight approaches,
the police sweep by.
The loungers vanish
like bats and crickets.
Trees hum with conspiracy.
Something goes on
amid the bushes,
but I am not sure what.

One of the last,
as he takes up his umbrella,
confides to me:
“We bother no one;
they leave us alone.
You might meet anyone here,
bankers and diplomats,
actors, composers, and poets,
the upper crust on down
to the lowest of the low.
Stonewall may have happened,
but not to us.”

 

Repose at Vianden

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “June 1871”

 

Beneath the slumbrous maple tree,
     he meditates. Does some deep truth
murmur to him from the venerable woods?

Does he even notice the flowers?
Do the advancing heavens, cascade
of clouds above the leafy canopy,
make any impression upon him?

 

Deep in his thoughts he remains. Nature,
with its mysterious brow against his own
does all it can to soothe him, as it does
for all who are troubled. The vined slope,
green with grape-leaf and violet with fruit,
the orchard heavy with apples, heavy
with the coming and going of bees
and legions of buzzing flies, invite him.

Upon the stream and pond, birds cast
their little flitting shadows, wandering.

 

The mill’s blockade has spread the stream
and made the pond and all its attendant grasses.

The still, wide water there looks up
and mirrors both the landscape
     and the pendant sky;
this upside-down reality
     at moments vague in water’s agitation,
        at other’s sharp as the world itself.

It is there to affirm,
     as well as to deceive and delude him.

All that is unseen beneath the surface
     serves its purpose; he knows
that every atom has business to be about.
The grain in the furrow has its future;
each beast in its lair has a motive.
Matter weighs down, yet iron
     lifts up and obeys the magnet:
so too may things fly we know not where
in purposes as yet unseen to us.

 

He sees, in the infinite grass, a swarm of life.

There, where nothing rests and all is motion,
neither with rest nor truce all life wars on,
growth upon growth, a great rising-up,
nests bursting new birds, the egg-shells falling;
the dutiful dog at the flock’s heels nipping;
unfathomable life, even inside a star —
yet over all this moiling surface
     floats one vast repose.

Dimensions above the striving down here,
there is a sleep on high. One might say
one vast vermillion immensity rocks
the sea, to cradle the new-born halcyon,
this alternating force we call Life and Creation,
a Titan that charms us and pretends to sleep,
caressing with languor its universal work.

 

What a dazzling sight Nature offers him!

From everywhere, from meadow, valley,
and heights, from the thickening woods
and the dusk-sky incarnadine, there comes
this shadow, Peace, and one warm ray
he can only describe as spontaneous joy.

 

And now, while across the slope,
     where terraced ground alternates
          with shadowy ravines, there comes
a tiny girl with eyes of Olympian blue,
flashing bare feet Praxiteles would swoon
     to model into Parian marble,
makes of a wine-shoot a ready whip
to chase the unwilling goat before her.

She laughs, and this is what stirs
   inside the soul of the banished poet:

 

“Alas! I have not said enough,
     and I have not finished my labor,
because, back there, a pit has been dug
     beneath the silent paving stones,
because a corporal indicates a wall
     where people are leaned for the firing squad,
because fathers and mothers,
     the outlaw and the madman,
          the unoffending invalid
               are executed at random,
not judged and chosen, but grabbed
     by some random formula
for the machine guns, the fusillades,
and because the bleeding men’s bodies,
and those of still-warm children
are smothered in quicklime
    to render them unrecognizable
in alkaline decomposition.”