Maatstaf. Jaargang 26

[p. 21]

Stephen Dobyns Poems

Footstep

Each evening the man whose wife has gone
reads the paper with his back to the window.
She died in winter: cancer or a car sliding
wildly out of control - the cause doesn't matter.
At the hour when she often came home,
he begins hearing the footsteps of his neighbors
passing in front of the house. Sometimes
one pauses, and briefly on the page before him
he sees her face as she looked on returning
from work or the store: cheerful and expectant.
The room trembles with possibility. Then the fact
of her death strikes him and once more she dies.
The paper goes back to detailing the forsaken
events of the day; the flowers on the wallpaper
return to their endless pattern; and the room's
air that had barely quickened seems dustier
as if it had been breathed too long, or
for too long had been unmoving and unchanged.

[p. 22]

Song of the Wrong Response

The poem is barechested, black and
shadowboxing beneath a streetlight.
In the rest of the city it is dark.
You're out walking your dog. Nervously,
you circle the poem. It turns toward you
and speaks of a disease of the heart,
perhaps anger. You can't make out the words.
Never have you seen a face so ugly. Then
it steps toward you and swings. You jump.
Still, it strikes you once above the heart.
On the side walk your dog is asleep. The poem
returns to shadowboxing. You are that exciting.
Once home, you phone the right authorities;
then I arrive and you describe the attack.
All next day you look at mugshots before finding
the right picture: a young man with some flowers.
This, I say, is a poem about love and
the difficulties of friendship. It is about
reaching out in dark places. The poem
touched you above the heart and you fled.
What happened in fact, you have forgotten.
What happened in memory will repeat itself and
each time you will act falsely and be afraid.

[p. 23]

Letter Beginning with the First Line of Your Letter

Here the weather remains the same. Constant
summer sun. When was the sky anything but blue?
In the harbor park, boys on bikes plague lovers
and the pink-eyed dogs of the elderly.
Across the water, freighters take on cargo.
From another shore, I envy each destination.
Since you are not here, I think of you
everywhere; wherever they are going
they must be going to you. We were like
fat people in old cartoons who could
barely kiss for all their mortal baggage;
like holiday travelers who have missed their trains,
are stranded in a European station surrounded by
wicker baskets, belted trunks. We had such baggage.
It increased and became such a mountain that we
lost each other behind it, until our voices
grew distant and we returned to writing letters.
Whose baggage, whose mistakes, who cares now?
Listen, I am thirty-six, I have lived in
many cities and within me it is raining.
The deliberate ocean repeats and repeats.
Empty life-guard stands, paper cups and
plastic spoons, the folded green cabanas -
all mark the deserted beaches of the heart.
Water drips from colored pennants, glistens
on the black taxies on the esplanade.
In the empty ballroom of a beach hotel, someone
is practising the piano. In sitting room and parlors,
guests turn the pages of their magazines, look at
rain on window panes, look at watches, look at
the closed door of a dining room from which they hear
the rattle of dishes and silver, of tables being set.
Listen, from such a place I am writing you a letter.
Again and again, I try to put down a few words.
As day and sky dissolve in sheets of gray,
the sea repeats your name to the pock-marked sand.

[p. 24]

Song of Basic Necessities

For E.F.

The day hates you and the wind has stolen
the coat from your back. Take this poem.
Unfolding it from the page, it becomes a cloak.
Now as you walk through the streets of winter,
you listen idly to the talk of the unfaithful:
how you must have flattered the sun
for it to give you a ray to wrap around you.

You are hungry and haven't eaten for days:
the food of the world becomes ash in your mouth.
Take this poem. Now it is a banquet: wine, fish,
freshly baked bread. You invite your friends
to a clearing by the river. Just as you fear there
won't be enough, more food appears and the glasses
refill themselves like the feast in another story.

You are lost and without shelter. People
avoid you, storms seek you out. Take this poem.
It is a tent to put around you. Warm within it,
you prepare for sleep, while in the rushing
of the wind you now hear the voices
of your friends. They speak of their love for you.
They hope tomorrow you will come home.