Maatstaf. Jaargang 24

[p. 13]

Raphael Rudnik Poems

Frank 207

Mayor John V. Lindsay announced today the formation of a City anti-graffiti task force to develop tough new programs to stop the effect of the graffiti epidemic. Directing a wide group of City officials to begin a new, comprehensive task force effort Mayor Lindsay said: ‘New measures are needed on all fronts to halt this assault on our senses, to prevent and remove these marks that constantly appear, disfiguring scrawlings, ablaze on monuments and buildings, covering comfort stations, benches, handballwalls, signs, entirely changing fences and facades, abusing rocks, and even trees are targets - but especially buses even trees are targets - but especially buses and subways - all our public places marred with unsightfulness and unpleasantness, ugly, obscene blobs, names, or nicknames, and numbers, pointless, sprayed on by vandals. The whole city suffers greatly from this evil.’

The task force, directed by the Mayor's Chief of Staff Steven L. Isenburg, will include high-ranking representatives designated by the following heads of agencies and offices:

Corporation Counsel Norman Redlich

Environmental Protection Administrator Jerome Kretchner

Municipal Service Administrator Milton Musicus

Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Administrator August Heckscher

Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy

Transportation Administrator Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff

Director of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Henry Ruth

Acting Director of the Office of Neighborhood Government John Mudd

The letters of it came, the letters of
his name, he loved his name - coming out of
the hollow, hissing can onto smiling
subway tiles. It would stay bright not grow old
like a dream. Lemurlike, the boy waited.
As light dawned on the rails, the big boxes
full of people and light came in, opened.
But they all walked by, the sentinels of
themselves, hurrying out, seeing nothing.
Still gleaming, bursting red sausages

[p. 14]

 

ended up in the little slipper kicks of

 

crude serifs, and once - no, twice where his

 

hand had wavered they wore nightmare hats,

 

on the number of the street where he lived.

 

The wall had eyes now, in which there was shut

 

the emotion of a multitude. Then,

 

a moment of momentous silence.

 

As he got on the next train dreaming that

 

Coco and Phil threw someone through a plate-glass

 

window and after he went down into

 

the store inside I bet he wished he had

 

no head and when he got up staggered out and

 

wrote his name red all over the sidewalk

 

but no one could read it he wrote so bad.

 

Haw. The train came out of the underworld.

 

Hurtling in an empty silent space, he found

 

a cracked cobweb in glass around a hole

 

like a bullethole becoming a hole in

 

the sky. Placed his rigid red net there, thinking.

 

Now big city John has got a new task force

 

just for us and one of them so help me

 

his name is Mudd so I guess we must spray

 

him too up the ass we read the papers.

Mythology

A filthy, cloudy hallway. (Was that bright blue bulb a bright blue bulb, or hole into
Sky - cupola or sty?)

She sat behind two orange-crates, a door flat atop them,

Lit a thick candle on it - light hollow; black rim - face like a girl who had just seen
A gorgon or a gorgon. A glimmering white porcelain dog above each box,
Hid life like a bone. (One with wise, sad paranoic eyes, baroque plumed tail, chest great
As a lion's thigh; the other's pale, blue eyes painted so somehow they looked tilted
Back in his head, a hell-hound's.) The candle's flame green as grass, wriggling (shifting shadows
On her moonous, mirroring face changed it fast from mad to glad to sad) then went still
(A cat's eye, a little seeing leaf, whitish-yellow again). You could see her stare,

[p. 15]

 

Simply guarding the shameful secret (the exact nature of despair is to be

 

 

 

Unaware of it) her own emptiness, so full of one force or feeling - all awe

 

And brilliance at time's agonizing nostalgia - she could not be part of her

 

Own life. The mind knows only what lies near the heart.

 

Filled with the color-kissing joy

 

Of light, eyes jerked around like nervous dice, hunting the happy animal light; - now

 

It was a burning flower she followed, each change a part of her destination...

 

Things happen, and that is strange! Black insects stream out of the bulb, riding light-needles...

 

 

 

The candle dims, she's tipping it (her hands' wrinkles red as cuts somehow attractive)

 

Drips wax on finger-ends, the first two (the rest tensed, clawed) sliding together smoothly

 

In an imaginary money-sign.

 

Burns back up; grins, lit from beneath, death's-head.

 

 

 

In wondrous beauty once again, in happiness for ever more she does not live,

 

No pride of light will soon be white, nor moon reflected from the living fire - the gods

 

Are doomed and the end is death, a greater than all... receiving wax-fragments, the tears

 

Of her vast grief.

 

She's Diana, - of course! But as she would be now, escaping her

 

Mythology.

 

A madwoman on Welfare who asked me as I passed - (I grabbed walls,

 

One leg refused to move, asleep from sitting on the stairs so long scrunched up spying

 

On her round a corner, it felt as if it was full of seltzer, almost knocked her

 

Hound over) - asked, did I want to contribute to Dogs For Rockefeller? He was

 

The one who would say who did what to who and where and when.

 

 

 

Therefore Goddess, I've sung.