David McAleavey
No valediction
Snow beginning.
After pea soup and a chunk of bread,
because lingering’s not allowed,
nothing to do but join the people
seconded in storefronts,
flakes resting a few moments
on eyebrows, noses,
mirror noses, mirror brows,
past a Schnell-Imbiß,
past signs for Gastzimmer and Bierstube – easel
signs with stenciled borders, twining flowers and leaves –
my big suitcase printing wheel-tracks
down the sidewalk.
Compression
melts, can make things vanish; for evidence,
absence: the tracks
thin zones of no snow.
Hard as I try to keep up
in this wintry country, the throng
flows around me and my suitcase headed toward the Bahnhof.
It’s not like I want to be a boulder in the stream.
Because this all happened long ago
and I had to get home
so you wouldn’t miss me.
And now look, here we are,
a little fog in front of your face as you speak –
a little fog in the mirroring glass –
the converging tracks of that suitcase
having slowly filled with snow,
the snow trampled, salted, sanded, shoveled,
long melted and fresh-fallen again
over the years bringing us together.
Nine Greek postcards
1. Trained (Peloponnesos)
Birds in a dozen cages
under a bower of jasmine and trained roses.
Odd lengths of twig-like dowel
bounce, then tremble when they hop on or off.
An overcast sun drops
indistinct shadows from young pines
onto the yard’s withered grass –
or – can’t tell from here, in this dim daylight –
are those shaded areas
rough ovals of not-so-withered grass?
When they serve us lunch at Nafplion,
we nod, speak, smile,
and jiggle the graceful chairs
first sitting, then rising to leave.
2. Carnival: Sifnos taverna scene
Early in the evening a dozen men
watch the TV adaptation of a Kazantzakis story
where a goatherd plays his
pipes till he’s in a frenzy,
rips his shirt off, when
out of a canebrake leaps a woman
matching his ardor, throwing her
sweater off the set, and the men
shout to each other, “Hey Vasily,
you like that?” and “Look at that
Costas, don’t you want some?”
Later the tables fill with couples
who waltz after they eat,
not waltz exactly but with
attempted obedience to
childhood lessons. Masqueraders
arrive but dance the same,
men glumly leading, women doubling
and tripling their footwork,
afraid they’ll be lurched upon,
privacies intact – only in fantasy
graceful with passion.
3. View with monastery
Unpredictable winds blow the sea north, out past
the chopped-off lizard-tail of land
where they built Chryssopigi,
but south, in the bay nearer us, where,
right next to shore, another motion
circles wavelets north again. What the
horizon water’s doing’s too dis-
jointed to say: the whole inebriated
sea-surface – rhetoric won’t get it:
we’d like harmonious, thoughtful speech.
This busy seething is us instead.
4. Dark sunrise, Crete
Sawtooth coastline at Paleohora,
mountains dropping seaward
one and another toward a vanishing
point hidden in dawn clouds
a spring noon sun might burn away,
might not, a landscapist’s drama
separate from our half-circling each other
on the rocky plateau above town,
strangers out for sunrise
become part of each other’s
view, Eden-seeking innocents
grabbing any slight advantage:
you turn your back and hop on out
to the farthest possible rock,
opting to remove me from your sight;
in my own way fierce, I sit and watch,
crumbling you gradually into mere
phenomenon – like a flower, a goat –
of no more consequence than an
asteroid – planning to have things
impartial, the same way sun does,
though now more dark clouds come in.
5. Cyclamen technology
No truck bigger than a compact pick-up
could enter the lion gate
at Mycenae,
where crimson-pink wildflowers
use what dust and crevices
they can find
to snub sculpted rocks,
this architecture
so admired.
6. What’s the good of the ancient world?
Stone sits close to earth at Delos,
even the hard-worn, lean-carved lions
and the giant stub-shafted phalloi.
Some come prepared – guidebooks, maps, whole lifetimes
faced back against ancientness – even so,
some will relax at the café,
taking in the view,
others start to climb the mountain: of those,
some stop at the first ruined mosaic
in a swoon of picture-taking, an awe
of annotation. No one’s really ready.
7. Mysteries of love
One October afternoon we tour
the remains of the Mysteries.
Our guidebook says what little’s left’s
confusing, so no surprise
the site’s obscure, hidden between
the dusty main square of Eleusis
and a gravel quarry eating
the town’s only hill. Locked out
by labor strife we still can see
fragmentary foundations of temples,
column segments, marble paving
leading to two ominous elevated caves
which overlook the bay and must
have always seemed precious:
that’s it, we say, glimpsing
the powers of this place,
cause to clothe caves with
roofs and turn that shelter into shrine.
Of course we’re barbarians; who else
would look at an inaccessible, weather-worn,
man-torn hill and jump to see love,
the nether love of Hades for Persephone.
8. Coastal wetlands (Crete)
After the great jolt, the weight
of things falling, and of dirt,
after the weird tilting of earth
come long pauses. At Zakros
the former Minoan king’s bedroom
a foot below sea level
swarms with water plants and tadpoles
denser than dark splatters
in a paint-spraying room –
things a process.
9. Envoy (Sifnos)
Summer, and a new throng of tourists
comes to Apokofto cove
where all winter we’ve been
guests ourselves, but with a house
to tend, curtains to sew, a ditch
to dig across the valley floor
to bury the new pump’s electric line,
to hide it for beauty’s sake, and for
safety: we need the well water but
don’t want any locals hurt plowing
or any tourist to do damage, messing
around, playing with a knife.
Digging’s simple except in two ways:
keeping the ditch straight enough
metal pipe can go down;
and maintaining uniform depth –
at least avoiding shallows – have
we dug deep enough? – even the most
plausible destination takes more than
just naming a goal and going, takes
hacking foot by foot: we flex, we must.
Leafy greens in hot oil
If I’m not careful I’ll sizzle these greens frazzled – lucky to have three pots to watch,
each with its own demands. On the porch, her fuchsia has leafed out after a dry winter
indoors. Mother would be pleased, not surprised. Her death changes me. Plump sausages
sizzle. We eat, again. I will try not to numb myself to the world.
David McAleavey has had work in many journals over many years, ranging from Ron Silliman’s mimeo mag Tottel’s through Ploughshares, Poetry and The Georgia Review; since early 2010 he's been in Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, diode poetry journal, and dozens of others. More work is forthcoming, including at Stand (U.K.). The online Pirene’s Fountain recently awarded him their Editors’ Prize for the best poem in their publication in 2011. His fifth and most recent book is HUGE HAIKU (317 pp., Chax Press, Tucson, 2005). He teaches literature and creative writing at George Washington University in D.C.
Return to January 2013 Edition
Snow beginning.
After pea soup and a chunk of bread,
because lingering’s not allowed,
nothing to do but join the people
seconded in storefronts,
flakes resting a few moments
on eyebrows, noses,
mirror noses, mirror brows,
past a Schnell-Imbiß,
past signs for Gastzimmer and Bierstube – easel
signs with stenciled borders, twining flowers and leaves –
my big suitcase printing wheel-tracks
down the sidewalk.
Compression
melts, can make things vanish; for evidence,
absence: the tracks
thin zones of no snow.
Hard as I try to keep up
in this wintry country, the throng
flows around me and my suitcase headed toward the Bahnhof.
It’s not like I want to be a boulder in the stream.
Because this all happened long ago
and I had to get home
so you wouldn’t miss me.
And now look, here we are,
a little fog in front of your face as you speak –
a little fog in the mirroring glass –
the converging tracks of that suitcase
having slowly filled with snow,
the snow trampled, salted, sanded, shoveled,
long melted and fresh-fallen again
over the years bringing us together.
Nine Greek postcards
1. Trained (Peloponnesos)
Birds in a dozen cages
under a bower of jasmine and trained roses.
Odd lengths of twig-like dowel
bounce, then tremble when they hop on or off.
An overcast sun drops
indistinct shadows from young pines
onto the yard’s withered grass –
or – can’t tell from here, in this dim daylight –
are those shaded areas
rough ovals of not-so-withered grass?
When they serve us lunch at Nafplion,
we nod, speak, smile,
and jiggle the graceful chairs
first sitting, then rising to leave.
2. Carnival: Sifnos taverna scene
Early in the evening a dozen men
watch the TV adaptation of a Kazantzakis story
where a goatherd plays his
pipes till he’s in a frenzy,
rips his shirt off, when
out of a canebrake leaps a woman
matching his ardor, throwing her
sweater off the set, and the men
shout to each other, “Hey Vasily,
you like that?” and “Look at that
Costas, don’t you want some?”
Later the tables fill with couples
who waltz after they eat,
not waltz exactly but with
attempted obedience to
childhood lessons. Masqueraders
arrive but dance the same,
men glumly leading, women doubling
and tripling their footwork,
afraid they’ll be lurched upon,
privacies intact – only in fantasy
graceful with passion.
3. View with monastery
Unpredictable winds blow the sea north, out past
the chopped-off lizard-tail of land
where they built Chryssopigi,
but south, in the bay nearer us, where,
right next to shore, another motion
circles wavelets north again. What the
horizon water’s doing’s too dis-
jointed to say: the whole inebriated
sea-surface – rhetoric won’t get it:
we’d like harmonious, thoughtful speech.
This busy seething is us instead.
4. Dark sunrise, Crete
Sawtooth coastline at Paleohora,
mountains dropping seaward
one and another toward a vanishing
point hidden in dawn clouds
a spring noon sun might burn away,
might not, a landscapist’s drama
separate from our half-circling each other
on the rocky plateau above town,
strangers out for sunrise
become part of each other’s
view, Eden-seeking innocents
grabbing any slight advantage:
you turn your back and hop on out
to the farthest possible rock,
opting to remove me from your sight;
in my own way fierce, I sit and watch,
crumbling you gradually into mere
phenomenon – like a flower, a goat –
of no more consequence than an
asteroid – planning to have things
impartial, the same way sun does,
though now more dark clouds come in.
5. Cyclamen technology
No truck bigger than a compact pick-up
could enter the lion gate
at Mycenae,
where crimson-pink wildflowers
use what dust and crevices
they can find
to snub sculpted rocks,
this architecture
so admired.
6. What’s the good of the ancient world?
Stone sits close to earth at Delos,
even the hard-worn, lean-carved lions
and the giant stub-shafted phalloi.
Some come prepared – guidebooks, maps, whole lifetimes
faced back against ancientness – even so,
some will relax at the café,
taking in the view,
others start to climb the mountain: of those,
some stop at the first ruined mosaic
in a swoon of picture-taking, an awe
of annotation. No one’s really ready.
7. Mysteries of love
One October afternoon we tour
the remains of the Mysteries.
Our guidebook says what little’s left’s
confusing, so no surprise
the site’s obscure, hidden between
the dusty main square of Eleusis
and a gravel quarry eating
the town’s only hill. Locked out
by labor strife we still can see
fragmentary foundations of temples,
column segments, marble paving
leading to two ominous elevated caves
which overlook the bay and must
have always seemed precious:
that’s it, we say, glimpsing
the powers of this place,
cause to clothe caves with
roofs and turn that shelter into shrine.
Of course we’re barbarians; who else
would look at an inaccessible, weather-worn,
man-torn hill and jump to see love,
the nether love of Hades for Persephone.
8. Coastal wetlands (Crete)
After the great jolt, the weight
of things falling, and of dirt,
after the weird tilting of earth
come long pauses. At Zakros
the former Minoan king’s bedroom
a foot below sea level
swarms with water plants and tadpoles
denser than dark splatters
in a paint-spraying room –
things a process.
9. Envoy (Sifnos)
Summer, and a new throng of tourists
comes to Apokofto cove
where all winter we’ve been
guests ourselves, but with a house
to tend, curtains to sew, a ditch
to dig across the valley floor
to bury the new pump’s electric line,
to hide it for beauty’s sake, and for
safety: we need the well water but
don’t want any locals hurt plowing
or any tourist to do damage, messing
around, playing with a knife.
Digging’s simple except in two ways:
keeping the ditch straight enough
metal pipe can go down;
and maintaining uniform depth –
at least avoiding shallows – have
we dug deep enough? – even the most
plausible destination takes more than
just naming a goal and going, takes
hacking foot by foot: we flex, we must.
Leafy greens in hot oil
If I’m not careful I’ll sizzle these greens frazzled – lucky to have three pots to watch,
each with its own demands. On the porch, her fuchsia has leafed out after a dry winter
indoors. Mother would be pleased, not surprised. Her death changes me. Plump sausages
sizzle. We eat, again. I will try not to numb myself to the world.
David McAleavey has had work in many journals over many years, ranging from Ron Silliman’s mimeo mag Tottel’s through Ploughshares, Poetry and The Georgia Review; since early 2010 he's been in Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, diode poetry journal, and dozens of others. More work is forthcoming, including at Stand (U.K.). The online Pirene’s Fountain recently awarded him their Editors’ Prize for the best poem in their publication in 2011. His fifth and most recent book is HUGE HAIKU (317 pp., Chax Press, Tucson, 2005). He teaches literature and creative writing at George Washington University in D.C.
Return to January 2013 Edition