R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum

There were knives between us,
bottles and inconvenience: pinches and
bruises, flung coffee and gin
and eyes struck out and wincing retreats.

By Seneca's god it was too hot for words,
and all suspicion,
and all designed
to murder love.

Well, she is gone. Here I remain.
She has her flat and roundfaced lover of books,
mainly I think of Russian.
I have my books,
but no one so incomparably to my taste,
to my taste, my most grievous taste,

Lo, we are bodies looking for souls,
digging for souls. But souls are not within.
We pause and dig again.

But in autumn, out of a fallow summer
when scholars stir, pages begin again to turn
and books turn to being read, there will be her:
A feint image of taxi rides and restaurants,
markets and beds and arguments--
hands raised and kisses spent
and blood spilled in innocence
and accusation. It will be her.

“Lost
in the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.” (Shelley)


I knew enough at t seventeen
to laugh at the Beats,
quote Pound, prefer Wallace Stevens
but be in love with Auden
who loved his kind.

Oh send the coal-bearers
unwashed and washed
between sheets and torn promises,
real passion--wait for her pleasure,
and her stretched
foom washing to washing
(she whispered)
'Each month has its own colour'
butt I came to know
each month was Chivas Regal
and sweat-stained pillows.

Give way then to the braininess sage:
I nodded when Weinberg said,
"You see where this goes Wong?"
Striking my stanza with a sharp pencil--
‘"Her tendrils in Roethke’s poem
are wet from riding’’he hissed.
‘What does riding mean?
And she is a skitterypigeon
and he loved her
But he could not have her. '
(That was true, it was wonderful)

I could not choose any more,
write anymore
imagine any more.
Their sound was in me,--
the absurd Beats und die Intellektuellen
the peasants and dirty girls
and lisping swimmers
and hitchhikers: Hiding in me.

Hid in the wood he first of words
protected from the sun
No, lost on me their shadows.
Sometimes I knew:
a tree died leaving a space,
but more often
a sprig poked its green head
from under he leaves,
And muddy forest floor
stirred by sun and air--
virginity to virgin moither--
And I would close my eyes
and Remember Weinberg's
groping pencil ,
poised to kill a metaphor,
crushing its life under his Jewish boot

Except now
I could bark like a choir
and say No:
It does not go wrong,
does not crush their secret
or trail of f from comprhenisble speech
to a box full if broken images.

No, here is another Jane
Wwo does not die far from men and towns,
tendrils damp from blood frozen in death:

In her cold presence
we do not speak
or choose masters and practitioners--
Except of course the trees.

. . .she is sleeping now
a cat with a claim to truth
after yawning and kneading and finding
the perfect crease,
a slant of morning light
arranged wantonly only for her privacy.
I am uncertain of her,
She does not see me or hear the rain.
She is coiled torsade-like flapped over herself
Pit-deep, deep as a nun’s conscience.
She roams through my thin thoughts
and takes gifts like peppermint and saffron.
Sometimes her quivering look
of happiness to see me is like a hummingbird
suspended between rose hips
threaded on an island tree.
She is best at concealment and momentary passions--
free of theories, contemptuous of obligation
to return a look, a snarl, an encircling feeling:
the death of freedom is the alarm of anticipation.

I am in this world only to lose you
Carried out on Neruda’s frettish sea.
I felt the loss from the beginning
And then in every gesture, each
Missed chance and gulped hankering
Don’t go. Stay and know me--I am
Not so bad, funny at times and crazily
interesting in the way smart boys have.

Today, leaving, you turned back;
You asked if I wanted coffee (No)
No I wanted you to trip over a reason
Not to leave me netted in hope
That does not change and smiling pleasantness
That does not sate my wish for you.

In my play there are just
Two scenes
In the first a girl loses her sock
(Maybe she is skipping rope
Or on skates)
And squats with underwear showing
To a gaggle of twelve-year-olds--
Squats to pull it back into position.
One whose name is Vlad
Dreams about her underwear
And the watcher-women of the village say
she is a prostitute.

At eighteen she is married and pregnant
And Vlad smokes his fingers brown
And She will not let him touch her—
the children, you know—and the lopping gut…

In my second scene the wife waits for a trolley
With her brown stockings loose around her
Stagnant legs, for brown Vlad is dead.
And in front of the track in figures eight
She sees a girl, buzzed by boys on bikes
Waiting for her to dismount, cheering when
Her skirt mounts to her thighs.
The boys laugh and say
Did you see her flowers did you see
The petals? And the women
Waiting, watching, say hissing
Whore.

The Priest of Zoroaster wrote in his book:

You see the fire was there
at the beginning
And shows that the light-divisible, is eternal.
The Christians know this;
for they were followers
From the beginning,
their path was ours.

They stole the fire from Antioch
and said it was their savior--
And now their bishops betray our priests,
even make Our priests bishops
in their temples where the fire
Still burns,
burns at their altars,
The fire that was there
At the beginning
Showing the light is the light
Of truth from the beginning,
devouring the darkness.

Our truth was their truth
in the beginning
In Syria, in Ephesus
where we anointed John
(Who was not the light)
And he anointed Jesu
who bore the light and died
A priest of the light,
Killed by Jews
who hate the light.
So many have died to kill the light.

Why do so many suffer for the truth?
For what hey cannot understand
from their many books:
the fire destroys the books
and becomes stronger
with every swallow.
But John's book says
what our Prophet has said:
The light shone in the darkness,
and the darkness
Comprehended it not.
The word made flesh,
that dwelt among us
and dwells among us still.

She knows what she knows.
She knows where her nose is
And when the wind bows
she covers her roses.

She covers her roses
When the wind blows,
And knows where her nose is,
(She knows what she knows)

The night you came in shreds
and said I am afraid--no there were two
nights, months apart, scattered
in my head by you being there
and your soul in a different place;
sobs and fear for a lost child
from the mother wanting freedom,
wanting both the child and the freedom.

These northern nights are thick with grief
and the ghosts speak French and over
the broken granite walls there are whoops of
Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki--
a perpetual trickle from the mixed blood
of the French farmers and the Penobscot girls
who were told as babes Day and Night are enemies.

There are spooks everywhere, even in your bed:
they leave cobwebs behind
and flash in corners like clacked flint.
They have driven away your guardian angels
and surround your cot, touching your cheek
and watching you breathe your breath.
And they know how to throw your heart
intio the emptiness of abysmal uncertainty.

You would rather sleep in the car but I cannot let you--
only a woman marked for tragedy finds comfort outside.
Four days you are here, sleepless asleep,
wondering who I am, the man you thought you knew:

I show you the grave of Captain Hardy down the road
and the tiny stones of his dead children all dead in a week,
dead of smallpox in 1804,
but you feel their stale breath
beside the bedside where once
their mother covered them with quilts
she made herself, made with love,
as you love your distant chid.

Take me to the sheriff you say,
sixty miles awauy: Take me to the inn
(the inn is locked and shuttered)
It is now a tale by the Grimm brothers:
there is no way out of the house but the forest
and there is no wy out of the forest.
Two small lights dangle in the bare barn,
upstairs books and demons dance
dance in a round and say
"Come Inside and we will sing you to mortal sleep."

Had I known your dreams were thin as the crisp ice
That forms on ponds on January morns
And glistens falsely, brighter in the melting sun of day--
I would have said, Wait my love for warmer water
Kindlier friends, and through the clatter
Of hypocrisy and wasted days we will sail away,
As Europa on Zeus’ steady back, lunging forward
Towards visions that will not melt, but stay.

And I would teach you to sail a line
Straight from this ruin on to the farmer shore
Whilst slanderers struggle in a slough of words
To see you greeted by a thousand swords--
To see you rise beside the golden door.

Where we are travelling
we must go hand in hand--
like in a movie, on a cliff
above a treacherous sea.
We can’t lose our grip
for if I let go or you let go
there are just the rocks and the water.
That is what it feels like:
We do not need to talk about it,
we are riveted on the height,
We are too afraid of letting go,
or worse, only one letting go
--one turning back, who may fall anyway.
But the silence is poison. I can feel
your heart across the gloom
and the chill when you glance at me:
Does she know she is my death?
or will she retain this mask after the climb--
after we round the last track
to the Promised Land, with damp grass underfoot--
And the sea a calm harbor of lapping waves
and the seagulls while question marks in the sky--
where mountains spread into flatland
and there are cottages and beds with pillows--
For that, we hold hands and keep moving.