December 2017
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Two poems this month, both about nothing.
Author's Note: I wrote “Blue Subterranean Aubade” in the 60s, during my first semester of graduate school when I was living in a dark and damp basement room in Ann Arbor. It records both my environment and my feelings on waking up in it, perhaps on a November morning. The faded Polaroid photo dates from somewhere more or less around that time.
Blue Subterranean Aubade
Awaking to nothing
I shuddered and shook:
A lamp and a table
And an unopened book.
Below the dull window
Where grey sunlight streamed
The basement was thick
With stale smoke. I dreamed
Of languorous soirées
And auburn-haired girls;
Deep, deep’s sleep’s dominion
When one dives for pearls.
Awaking to nothing
I shuddered and shook:
A lamp and a table
And an unopened book.
Nada
1.
He sits himself down at his desk like an
atheist awaiting the descent of grace,
prepared to propitiate, to bargain, sacrifice,
whatever it takes for a vacuum to
suck up this vacuum he abhors.
On a white beach, students
turn on their towels and sigh;
the teacher at the blackboard
explained how but never why.
In lounges, ladies clink ice cubes
and nod; in the park, kids get high
on pot or worse; before cathode tubes,
the old breathe still, ostracized air.
And as for him, he feels stuffed with nothing.
Nothing on a chair.
2.
There’s nothing inside the nothing inside
but nothing, and this nothing swells like a
diapason, puts on weight like a careless
jockey, proclaims itself both end and means,
is neither fair flower nor foul wind but sheer
blankness, white whale’s flank, space left by last year’s
celosia, the crushing hush after the final
waltz. Nothing smugly smirks then yawns,
a maw that can swallow selfish prayers, baffled
lust, crude curses, crabbed philosophies--
it’s vast enough to gobble more than these,
to gulp down all that Polyphemus sees.
3.
Children and lovers, scholars in full spate,
an oboist squinting hard at her score,
a sturdy slugger pounding on the plate—
I swear, there are plenty more
to reknit the world, ravel up the rents
through which vacancy peeks—perhaps even you
will drop senselessness and start making sense,
clamber from your oubliette toward bright blue.
Awaking to nothing
I shuddered and shook:
A lamp and a table
And an unopened book.
Below the dull window
Where grey sunlight streamed
The basement was thick
With stale smoke. I dreamed
Of languorous soirées
And auburn-haired girls;
Deep, deep’s sleep’s dominion
When one dives for pearls.
Awaking to nothing
I shuddered and shook:
A lamp and a table
And an unopened book.
Nada
1.
He sits himself down at his desk like an
atheist awaiting the descent of grace,
prepared to propitiate, to bargain, sacrifice,
whatever it takes for a vacuum to
suck up this vacuum he abhors.
On a white beach, students
turn on their towels and sigh;
the teacher at the blackboard
explained how but never why.
In lounges, ladies clink ice cubes
and nod; in the park, kids get high
on pot or worse; before cathode tubes,
the old breathe still, ostracized air.
And as for him, he feels stuffed with nothing.
Nothing on a chair.
2.
There’s nothing inside the nothing inside
but nothing, and this nothing swells like a
diapason, puts on weight like a careless
jockey, proclaims itself both end and means,
is neither fair flower nor foul wind but sheer
blankness, white whale’s flank, space left by last year’s
celosia, the crushing hush after the final
waltz. Nothing smugly smirks then yawns,
a maw that can swallow selfish prayers, baffled
lust, crude curses, crabbed philosophies--
it’s vast enough to gobble more than these,
to gulp down all that Polyphemus sees.
3.
Children and lovers, scholars in full spate,
an oboist squinting hard at her score,
a sturdy slugger pounding on the plate—
I swear, there are plenty more
to reknit the world, ravel up the rents
through which vacancy peeks—perhaps even you
will drop senselessness and start making sense,
clamber from your oubliette toward bright blue.
“Blue Subterranean Aubade” first appeared in Poetic Realm
“Nada” first appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review
© 2017 Robert Wexelblatt
“Nada” first appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review
© 2017 Robert Wexelblatt
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