Helmholtz in the Falklands
(see Huxley, Brave New World)


Helmholtz Watson, Alpha-Plus
Intellectual, is surprised to find
Betas, Gammas and the rest 
on his Island. They have their compounds –
gleaming flatblocks, all mod cons –
around Goose Bay.  So is the Island
not an island?  Or is it, rather, he 
and the other Alpha exiles who inhabit
a compound: only part of a beach, a view?

Then he shrugs; what was he thinking? Without
Betas, Gammas and the rest, without
their carefully conditioned happiness,
he'd have to shovel shit;
wouldn't like that, or do it well,
and neither would the other
exiled Alpha intellectuals –
a generally inept and febrile lot
for whom he has rediscovered the word "neurotic."

He has the storms he wanted, and a desk;
experiments, like the others,
with chastity and love
and the arguments of old books; resorts
no oftener than the others, and
as guiltily, to drugs; attempts
to write, and wonders why and for whom, and finds
he misses Solidarity Services, Fordsday –
sometimes even Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.





Susan


If she hadn't killed herself
in the Seventies, she might have wound up
in one of the nearby suburbs, Fairfax,
McLean.  A week ago
I passed three blocks of 
duplexes, with mansard roofs
for some reason, their upstairs
windows (bedrooms, probably)
a yard deep
in the roof: the effect
must either be sheltering or tunnel-like.
They were on a main drag, 
with trees by the curb and on the divider,
across from a series of malls
and a few surviving shops;
and I found myself scouting
places she would need:
a bar, a bakery,
hair salon, the market.  She would
have an old computer
she would only reluctantly upgrade – each 
email sent and retrieved
a triumph.  Would write
about the progress of
the divorce (from a second husband)
or of her latest therapy 
or course.  About her boss –
miraculously tolerable, even
nice.  Or perhaps the second husband
would be nice: a woolly, protective,
intellectual bear
with whom I could identify
and talk for half an hour
at a time.  Or one of those rangy, tongue-tied
WASP types (like 
her father, but better), devoted to 
his boat, and football, and 
the Civil War, but also
(I would assure myself,
and she would assure me – not
too solemnly and wordily) to her.   
And their kid, in law school.
Every couple of months I'd drive out
and walk with her along
the main drag; have
a drink, or coffee, and talk
about ailments, retirement,
travel, the old days.  She had 
humor, I remember:
an irony that cut too deep, with no buffer.
Perhaps that develops with time.




The Early Sixties


Mother was capable of wonder – reading
The Making of the President, 1960,
by Theodore H. White, she dwelt
on the opening image of Kennedy
before dawn in the snow of a square
in New Hampshire, at the start of the campaign.
"It's eerie," she said.  From her look,
turned sideways and downward somewhere, and 
her tone, I knew she wanted to say more
but couldn't … rapt in the young man in the snow.

I thought her pathos, and perhaps that
of women, lay
far down, beneath
the clay of chores, the stones of family,
unable to climb out;
a different thing from the volatile, 
close-to-the-surface gas
of men. 
During that period I read
those middlebrow works that people
found moving
and convinced myself I was moved;
the only one I remember is Macleish's J.B.
I thought I would enter
some unexpected order with this key.

A similar mistake was made
by a cousin, female, an object
of never-discussed abuse.
By our teens, she was officious, frantic, a stickler
for each detail of family and Passover:
Jewish, but like a Catholic.
Judgmental, nasal … Mother
kept her around out of kindness for thirty years.
After which, I told her I couldn't stand her.





May, Georgetown


The car was wedged.  I threaded it 
with admirable, conscious patience.
Some tourists passed with that lost-tourist smile.
The Dow rose.
I haven't called the doctor.
Rain spurted briefly, having loomed for days.
The cicadas are fading,
their husks still clinging to the leaves.

Three dark SUVs bunched
in two lanes at a stoplight,
drivers invisible.
I thought they would make a good painting
but since I'm not a painter, probably not.

There was in all this nothing universal.
Ordinary calculative intelligence
running its subprogram
of sensitivity,
which is to art as makeup is to bone …

I thought I could exploit it somehow.





The Baron's Son


The Baron's son has arrived
at his late father's house
in town.  He has inspected the
estate, far off in the country, with
its horses, lakes, and views
of and from hills, its orderly flights
of geese and the unkempt nests
of storks, tolerated for centuries
in the angles of chimneys, but these things
are otiose and painful to him, mostly
otiose; his fate lies,
has always lain, in towns.  
He arrives by motorcar.  Had thought
of coming by night, by train, on foot,
incognito, in rags, or by day in rags,
in full day; but he arrives
by car.  A chauffeur and a mistress
remove their goggles, unbutton their dustcoats, and
wait as he reflects (or is 
he posing?) at the foot
of the steps.  The streaming
passersby with mustaches and parasols
slow, become a crowd,
and stare at the scandalous, irreplaceable
heir, whose inanition
deflects their attention
to the girl, the chauffeur, the trunk
(completely covered
with decals of second-rate hotels)
the chauffeur lifts from the car.  Now,
briskly, the Baron's son mounts
the steps. The door is opened
by a footman, a retainer
who was old when the Baron was young.  
The vestibule with its view of the hall
(statues of Venus and Ceres, portraits), its 
coat and boots and canes, 
is unchanged.  The footman's wizened face
reveals nothing, and the heir
debates whether to show
a rude lack of care,
familiarity, insistence
on doing things differently, or 
alternatively, diffidence,
an intimation of penitence; 
is startled, then reassured,
then more deeply alarmed by the fact
of choice.  The footman
likewise reviews options:
avuncularly or
with silent disapproval to accede 
to riot; being the butt
of humor, or a deadpan confidant.
To leave or, more plausibly and effectively, 
to threaten.  The Baron's son shifts
his weight.  Has always felt
there is a realm of feeling
(which always somewhere implies
a grudge), and he would seek it
behind and above disasters when
unsure how to achieve
new ones.  Now it is dark to him,
as Duty or even Advantage is
to the servant – who
would like to speak, almost attempts to,
but it is not his place.
Fascists come, and Communists,
and businessmen, then fascists and, 
no doubt, communists again,
the house no longer there, yet still they pause.





"Ida"


My vision at sixty resembles
Albright's, who painted at twenty
himself as a woman of sixty:
decaying bureau, detritus;
the clenched, avoided mirror.