Maatstaf. Jaargang 26

[p. 18]

Lewis Turco Poems

The Shipyard

(East coast, 20th c.)

She lies on the bay like a great tower
toppled upon the water,
her masts and mounts singled against the night.
The windows of the captain's bridge
reflect a single light out over the yard:
the gantries and scaffolding.

Night rattles on the cobbles.
An engine springs its sound
out of shadow into the saffron flare
of a street lamp.

Somewhere a nightstick taps a grating.
A foghorn looms; a gull shifts on a sponson.
Upon some deck heels tattoo,
then begin to ring up a ladder.

The tide rises -
its pressure against the hill
forces things beyond their depth:
the smell of beer, of impending rain, of cigarettes
and the musk of cocoa beans
smothering the warehouses along the piers.

[p. 19]

The Homestead

(Southwest, 20th c.)

In the morning there is the east wind
carrying dust the color
of a darker sun
past the silo and the cribs.

At dead noon there is a pause.
The land bakes into its ruts and rows.

Then again the wind blows,
now from the west, taking soil back
over the cupola with its rusting cock,
past the screen porch, its door swinging.
The horned toads clamber into rock.

In the evening the house settles
down into the red dark.
The plains and fields crool
beneath the windows' oblongs of light.

Whne even the echoes of echoes cease,
beneath sensation
there is a strange sound
like wet things sliding:
the ghost of a comber, a slimming off,
then again a comber.

From far back and down deep
there is the scent of salt
and a falling off from the silent edge.

[p. 20]

The Stockyard

(Midwest, 20th c.)

The lake that looks like a sea
fades into the descending sky:
there is no horizon.
It is just dawn.
The city smokes into the clouds.

In the snags of the pens' rails
tufts of hair bristle at morning.
The earth is pitted, partly ice, partly dung.
It is difficult to discern shapes
except for breath like fog
rising out of the darkness.

The reals make oblongs and oblongs.
Somewhere a bell wakens
among the sheds and alleys, along the streets.
Upon the ramps there is a memory
of slow passage; there are mallets
that stand, heads down, on floors
the color of rust.

[p. 21]

The Subway

Stale air circles about a draft
pushing down the stairs
out of the streetlamp
and under the stile.

Yellow light falls
onto white tile, seeps
down scrawls and posters,
across concrete and pools of gum,
spills toward darkness
over the sudden edge

into a dim canal
that echoes there.
The rails begin to fill
the earth with a hollow sound:
a cataract and an eye
in the tube of silence.