Alone and Not Alone Read online

  because I’m now not sure

  just what it means.

  A coppice is a thicket,

  no?

  Oh you’re such

  an American! out

  of touch

  with the natural world

  and English English

  and your own adolescence

  all at the same time!

  Alas, I’ve wandered

  lonely as a crowd

  of words

  blown down the street

  this way and that,

  vagabond lexicon

  dressed as a citizen.

  Maybe a wood or a grove?

  I’ve always liked

  my grandfather’s name Grover

  and one of the most beautiful girls

  of my adolescence was named

  Madeleine Grove

  and back then

  my favorite publisher was Grove.

  Shady Grove, my true love

  the song goes. Them

  I remember. Copse

  and coppice are phonemes

  from literature. I preferred

  cops and robbers.

  But it got better.

  I nabbed the robbers

  and shot a few Indians

  clean out of their saddles

  but they didn’t have saddles

  and weren’t even Indians

  and it didn’t matter:

  you had to go

  and in a few minutes

  I did too,

  due as I was

  in this verdant copse

  splashed with shadows

  that shift and wave like plaid

  in the wind from off the brae.

  Manifestation and Mustache

  I love living here

  away from a lot of things

  that annoy me

  and close to a lot

  of things I love

  like air like trees

  and emptiness.

  But the thing

  I love best

  goes where I go

  and will go with me

  when I am gone

  from where I am

  and into

  where love

  doesn’t figure,

  which I have done

  a few times

  in my life,

  if memory serves.

  Then

  the mustache

  comes in

  and says,

  “You can’t be right

  and wrong

  at the same time,”

  but I don’t believe it.

  Shipwreck in General

  Is there no end to anything ever

  I release the question mark

  From its tether and it floats

  Like a life jacket

  In search of the shipwreck

  That every question is

  But today it finds no victim

  No flotsam no captain’s cap

  For today is shipwreck-free it is

  The end of shipwreck in general

  And the curl and the dot below

  Can go their separate ways

  And be whatever they like

  French Art in the 1950s

  Ronnie is finding out about art in the 1950s. He is learning that it had a palette and brushes and colors, and the palette had a hole, in which the brushes were inserted and where they seemed debonnaire and ready to do something but also happy not to. There is an artist in the room. He wears a smock and a beret, and he has a pencil mustache. His name is Pierre, for he is French. Art comes from France. Pierre is going to bring some more of it to us. But at the moment he is thinking about what he is going to paint today. A pear? A young woman who is wearing no clothing? Or perhaps just a lot of colors flying around on the canvas, to represent his feelings?

  But wait, it is time for lunch. Later in the afternoon he will execute his picture. For now he must go to the café and greet his admirers, who, on seeing him, call out “Pierre!” and “Over here, Pierre!” and, cleverly, “There he is, the rascal!” But everyone knows that Pierre is not a rascal. He is a French artist. You can tell by the smock he has forgotten to remove. Later, when it has paint smears and spots on it, even an imbecile will be able to see that he is an artist. Ronnie already knows.

  Three Poems in Honor of Willem de Kooning

  I Felt

  For a moment

  as if I were talking to you

  and you were listening

  and taking me seriously

  the way a grandfather does

  when he’s open and kind,

  you knew what

  was troubling me

  and you knew

  that the best thing to do

  was to listen

  and say nothing,

  allowing a calm to settle

  into the grandfather

  that turns out to be me.

  The Door to the River

  You walked through it before

  you even knew it was there

  The river came up to the door

  and asked to come in

  Then the river came through the door

  and the door floated away

  I once threw away a river

  because it looked old enough

  And I bought a new one

  and a door along with it

  Except it never was a door

  It was a doorway

  Like Norway

  with windows

  Zot

  In de Kooning’s painting, the word zot.

  I thought sot?

  Then learned that zot

  is Dutch for foolish. So

  foolish and drunk swirled around

  and separated out

  into the Dutch foolish and the English drunk.

  He wasn’t such a big drinker

  when he did that painting,

  but maybe he felt like a fool sometimes

  —of course he did.

  He was zot and he knew it

  and he told you so, you

  being almost nobody,

  so almost nobody you were

  even more zot than he!

  Zot is vat I tink.

  Alone and Not Alone

  Out of the water

  came the one

  who reached back

  into the water

  and pulled out the zero.

  The time is now.

  The time is now 8:15 p.m.

  Eastern Standard Time.

  In Beijing Lan Lan

  is getting up

  tomorrow.

  I see her pretty, smiling face

  as she curls back the covers.

  Tonight I

  will get under the covers

  and think of her face

  not because I

  am in love with her

  but because I

  like her face

  though I

  do not want it

  on my head.

  Out of the water

  came my head,

  head first, whoosh!

  A person’s head

  does not belong

  underwater.

  Look at fish!

  Who wants to be one?

  I would

  for a moment

  or two. Then

  back to me.

  It would be terrible

  to alternate

  being fish

  and person

  every few seconds.

  We inhale

  then exhale

  every few seconds.

  Lan Lan’s

  two daughters

  are inhaling and exhaling,

  still asleep—

  it is Sunday

  in Beijing.

  Lan Lan’s husband

  is sitting at a table

  in the kitchen

  thinking

  about the poetry

  of Alexander Blok.

  Alexander Blokr />
  is pouring hot water

  into the teapot.

  Out of the water

  came the tea

  and out of the tea

  came the scent of jasmine.

  And then Alexander Blok

  was not there.

  He had to go away

  and die again.

  He exhaled and then

  exhaled, and then

  was like a dead fish,

  wrapped in a newspaper

  whose headline says

  BLOK DEAD.

  He reached back

  and pulled himself

  out of life

  and into those two words.

  Lan Lan’s husband

  looks up confused—

  his mind is in Russian

  but everything else

  is in Chinese

  when she comes in

  and the jasmine is deeper

  and more of you now.

  It is 8:33.

  What happened?

  You were not alone

  in thinking you were alone.

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  Alone and Not Alone was designed at Coffee House Press, in the historic Grain Belt Brewery’s Bottling House near downtown Minneapolis. The text is set in Adobe Garamond. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid- free paper.

  RON PADGETT grew up in Tulsa and has lived mostly in New York City since 1960. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the best poetry book of 2013. In addition to being a poet, he is a translator of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, and Blaise Cendrars. His own work has been translated into eighteen languages.