| Robert Klein Engler |
A Collection: Blue Windows I. The Granville Suite Ballad on the Solstice The sun this brief December day To Die in Winter A breath of smoke on the horizon violins into fog. II. A Pastoral for Diego ...however closely we may be thrown together January Two faced god, look backwards and forwards. Tell me why I want this one instead of another. What, it is too cold for words? It is too dark to read? The lake is frozen over. The ark is icebound. We watch one by one. Imagine how seeds escape the ice. They wait. They stay asleep by staying dry. The trouble with sending out my blind desire over the snow is that it always comes back with a broken wing. February I have been too long without the touch of another body, too long staring down the sleet. Is this Lent to lasts all year? I am not a saint that lives off shadows. I simply embrace the destiny of a poet; mad, useless and poor. I offer self-pity as the postmodern icing on this ironic cake. Friends call and say he is too young, or I am playing the same song over again. I remind them of the repetition of seasons up north. "But we live in the Florida of psychotherapy," they say. "Here it is warm all year." OK, I'll try to get there as soon as I can. The journey is difficult. I get lost. The road is slippery. Look where I drive now. It is a one-way street, with no parking after dark. March The windy one assumes her residence in the sky. She sweeps up all the dry and dead straw and carries it away. Beyond the horizon she assembles a nest for wanderers. The scourge of winter is over. Ice melts to fog. Diego's eyes are fires in my dreams. There is no telling time in sleep. Tongues of spearmint test the dew. The wind is wild in my hair. I also had a body once that splashed its way to wrestling in the sea. April An April moon rolls half and high through the blue afternoon sky. When he folds his arms, his leather coat stretches like the sound of a wooden ship taught in cord and sail. Later, by the factory where we mold dust, a declining sun overlays the brick walls with gold mosaics. We could have sailed all day with gilded lips, a warm wind tacking sure- all day, mutual with tinsel. May I remember what it was like as a prisoner in the jail of affection. That was long ago, and ended in disaster. Now he says to me his girlfriend tastes like lamb. I wonder, does he tastes like basil? The clock tics off more questions. All I can do is answer them with this homemade scaffold of letters. No flesh from my flesh is sent to flounder in the world, just these scratchings. I am so much ahead, how can I explain that this flower of wrinkles came also from a seed? Perhaps when we drink beer beneath the moon and watch it lay a white stripe across the water I will be able to pass on a clue. Look at the way the stars tattle in his hair. Let me be drunk and sing like Croydon to the nibbled hills. Virgil had the slave boy he loved with him till he died. Even if the stars did not predict it, legend says it was good for both of them. I have seen the young men tap their fingers against the bar to the rhythm of a music video. They have the whole world to open, which is nothing more than what we had. What a commotion I made. See how the bureaucratic ants scurry after the sugar of my threats. We have him now, my enemies gloat. Put your luck with mine Diego. You throw first. June My father brought me into the world with a jet of salt. I try to remember that history as I watch a fountain spew jets of water against a backdrop of clouds. They rise up in a stream, then tumble over and break into a galaxy of scattered drops with a dram of light at each heart. Way out there, beyond the blue sky, on the verge of the universe's imaginary edge, comets revolve in wide circles of mystery. We are told they are ice waiting to melt. I move slowly, too, in circles of desire, wanting what is not perfect, wanting what is out of time and place. Let me move away from the background hum of questions, the rumor of the crowd. A house in the mountains where I spend two weeks alone with Diego is the answer. We paint and write, and near evening I make pasta and we drink wine from the cellar. His lips are blushed with rose. The Benny Goodman record scratches its melody in the front room, as the sun settles below a ripple of hills. I remember the light licking the water of the harbor back home. Boats rise and fall, as the lake breathes like someone drifting off to sleep. I shut the screen door and go to the kitchen. There are dishes to wash and then some proofs to correct. Soon the music of crickets will fill the starlight sky. I will not press the words of belonging from the harbor of dark clouds, nor will I ask that the ice of days melt so that I may drink more than my share. The comets keep their cold distance. This world is the only world where love and words happen. July Beneath the shadow on an oak tree, beneath the azure sky of summer, I think of him. There were words between us, now only silence returns. If you want to be recognized by the world, you have to do what the world wants. Light and shade, yes and no, blood and dust, everyone guesses how the world is made. I have a test for true love. If the love is impossible, then it is true. The barbarians have come like a great wind from the mountains. My parents rest married in their grave. Desire can break a man. Tell me now the words that heal after they wound. When he lets me, I will speak them with my hands. The master of skyrockets must practice at night. August At first the page is as blank as a breath. Then comes the white fire on the black fire of the law. A man knows what he needs and says it in his own language, writing it in sunlight. The shadow of his pen makes a minaret on the paper. After reading so long, we trace the meaning, even if words are missing. A man's life also means something when we know what he misses. Think about God and his chosen people. There is a troublesome center to the world. It rattles like an insect trapped in a box. See how the end of the story is in the beginning. There is a love that works like water, wave after weary wave. There is also a love like sunlight, illuminating. Let us read more of this book, the pages that talk about fear and the taming of fear. A woman walks down to the beach, her sandals in one hand, the knot of her skirt in the other. She looks out across the lake. The water cools her feet. He has been gone now almost a year. September Walking by the coffeehouse, I thought I saw Diego seated there talking with a woman. Then I looked again and saw it was not he, but someone else. Walking on, I realize a day will come when this happens. They always leave and go with women, and it is the going with women that turns them old. From the sweat of the world comes other worlds. Dry leaves are tossed by the wind. In a dream I forget how to read. There is something to be said for simply tending our own garden, or holding something handled by our parents. Compassionate arms of mums stretch out from the shadow of flowerpots. Lord, I wish I had a plot of land more than my grave. October The grass dries to brown needles. A hint of ice comes on the wind. Children, lost in careless years, hold hands walking to school. Marigolds bend to the light. So, I bend to love. My mother knew when she spoke, "He is trouble in your heart." Where am I in his eyes? Lost in the jade empire of the sea. November Every time I leave him I wish I had done more or said otherwise. His sister who makes money from soy futures, his father who sells used cars, his mother who shook her head when he said he had an older gay friend, what saves me from their knives? My art? Speaking of illusions: he is the best thing that happened to me all year. Yet I will stumble if I speak, stumble and break everything we have been saving, the glory between us made of glass. Let fog hide our wounds, let rain disguise the map to where our ages recoil, let the cold and damp draw us home to our own fires. Books will do, and tea, and music-long hours of silence broken by a violin. I wait for the world to come just as any man waits. Once into middle age, the hunger is for justice instead of sex. Have another drink. Wrap the gifts, tie them with bows of gold. Nothing you give will equal what you feel. Aristotle says friends should live together. Diego, as always, someone else reaches for your hand. I let go of the butterfly. See how my fingertips are brushed with dust from powdered wings. December Old man, young man, snow compacted with snow. Lights strung in the darkness. Days of darkness, days of snow. See how I stand beside Diego in the old photo and point. He smiles and lets me touch his hair. What is there to know? We are back where we started. Either reading is an act of faith or it is an act of war Add up the coins. The taste of a cigarette returns. I am one with the criminals now, the murderers and masterminds. Let me hush the words from his mouth with my mouth. We talked for so long. I gave myself to an honesty that ended in a lie. But didn't I ask to know, didn't I want to have a vision? This is how visions come. The mouth of a man gaps open like a well. There is a black that is not black; there is a white that is not white. Here is the vacancy that holds my gift. When we kiss, we kiss the darkness, too. III. Uncertain Songs Rabbi Akiba Sees the Apollo of the Belvedere After the early morning rain, a silence Listen "Help! Somebody help!" Dance of the Questions It is summer.
What My Father Showed Me Hands that do the dirty work are my father's hands. |