16 poems by David Lehman

   Arranged chronologically, 1976 to 2017

Sonnet

No roof so poor it does not shelter

The memory of the death of at least one man

In at least one septic room,

No wind so light it dare not dislodge

From their neglected home beneath the house

The bones of a discarded belief.

 

Yet the buyer cannot bear to look, keeps

A lock on the cellar door, and prays

For the well-behaved past to stay in place

As if, like the date on the blackboard,

It existed only to be ignored and erased

But threatens nevertheless to endure

Beyond the hour of its chalk, suspected

If not seen, like the smudge of a star.

 

The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke

Can’t swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat

intolerable feelings of inadequacy;

Won’t admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind

numerous marital infidelities;

Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence,

breaks mother’s plates in fights;

Buys when the market is too high, and panics during

the inevitable descent;

Still, Pop can always tell the subtle difference

between Pepsi and Coke,

Still, Pop can always tell the subtle difference

between Pepsi and Coke,

Has defined the darkness of red at dawn, memorized

the splash of poppies along


Deserted railway tracks, and opposed the war in Vietnam

months before the students,

Years before the politicians and press; give him

a minute with a road map

And he will solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes;

transport him to mountaintop


And watch him calculate the heaviness and height

of the local heavens;

Needs no prompting to give money to his kids; speaks

French fluently, and tourist German;

Sings Schubert in the shower; plays pinball in Paris;

knows the new maid steals, and forgives her.

 

Fear

The boy hid under the house

With his dog, his red lunch box, and his fear

Thinking God is near

Thinking it’s time to leave the things that mean

Just one thing, though you can’t tell what that is,

Like God or death. The boy held his breath,

Closed his eyes and disappeared,

Thinking No one will find me here—

 

But only when his parents were watching.

When they weren’t, he slipped away

And hid under the house

And stayed there all night, and through the next day,

Until Father (who had died that December)

Agreed to come home, and Mother was twenty

Years younger again, and pregnant with her

Darling son. Hiding under the house,

He could see it all, past and future,

The deep blue past, the black and white future,

Until he closed his eyes and made it disappear,

 

And everyone was glad when he returned

To the dinner table, a grown man

With wire-rim glasses and neatly combed hair.

Fear was the name of his dog, a German shepherd.

 

Operation Memory

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when

Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed

Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred

With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle

Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs

And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

 

We’d been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded.

The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when

I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs

As professional liars, and most had partners who were good in bed.

What did I have? Just this feeling of always being in the middle

Of things, and the luck of looking younger than fifty.

 

At dawn I returned to draft headquarters. I was eighteen

And counting backwards. The interviewer asked one loaded

Question after another, such as why I often read the middle

Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends. When

Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? “In bed

With a broad,” I answered, with locker-room bravado. The truth was, jobs

 

Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job

At all. Unamused, the judge looked at his watch. It was 1970

By the time he spoke. Recommending clemency, he ordered me to go

to bed.

At noon and practice my disappearing act. Someone must have loaded

The harmless gun on the wall in Act I when

I was asleep. And there I was, without an alibi, in the middle

 

Of a journey down nameless, snow-covered streets, in the middle

Of a mystery—or a muddle. These were the jobs

That saved men’s souls, or so I was told, but when

The orphans assembled for their annual reunion, ten

Years later, on the playing fields of Eton, each unloaded

A kit bag full of troubles, and smiled bravely, and went to bed.

 

Thanks to Operation Memory, each of us woke up in a different bed

Or coffin, with a different partner beside him, in the middle

Of a war that had never been declared. No one had time to load

His weapon or see to any of the dozen essential jobs

Preceding combat duty. And there I was, dodging bullets, merely one

In a million whose lucky number had come up. When

 

It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up,

It was over: I was thirty-eight, on the brink of middle age,

A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap.

 

Rejection Slip

“Oh, how glad I am that she

Whom I wanted so badly to want me

Has rejected me! How pleased I am, too,

That my Fulbright to India fell through!

 

The job with the big salary and the perks

Went to a toad of my acquaintance, a loathsome jerk

Instead of me! I deserved it! Yet rather than resent

My fate, I praise it: heaven-sent

 

It is! For it has given me pain, prophetic pain,

Creative pain that giveth and that taketh away again!

Pain the premonition of death, mother of beauty,

Refinement of all pleasure, relief from duty!

 

Pain you swallow and nurture until it grows

Hard like a diamond or blooms like a rose!

Pain that redoubles desire! Pain that sharpens the sense!

Of thee I sing, to thee affirm my allegiance!”

 

The audience watched in grim anticipation

Which turned into evil fascination

And then a standing ovation, which mesmerized the nation,

As he flew like a moth into the flames of his elation.

 

Dutch Interior

He liked the late afternoon light as it dimmed

In the living room, and wouldn’t switch on

The electric lights until past eight o’clock.

His wife complained, called him cheerless, but

It wasn’t a case of melancholy; he just liked

The way things looked in air growing darker

So gradually and imperceptibly that it seemed

The very element in which we live. Every man

And woman deserves one true moment of greatness

And this was his, this Dutch interior, entered

And possessed, so tranquil and yet so busy

With details: the couple’s shed clothes scattered

On the backs of armchairs, the dog chasing a shoe,

The wide open window, the late afternoon light.

 

Who She Was

She loved jumping on the trampoline.

Her nickname was Monkey.

She slipped her tongue in his mouth when they kissed.

 

She had a job in publishing. It was what

she most wanted after she got out of Vassar. The first

manuscript she acquired was The Heidegger Cookbook,

so you can imagine how her career took off from there.

 

She started liking sex soon after her husband left her.

He came back weekends and complied

with her bedtime wishes. A lawyer.

What did you expect? A Peace Corps

volunteer who went on to become

the editor of Envy: The Magazine for You?

 

Where did her anger come from? He wasn’t sure

but it was how he knew she loved him.

 

It was heartbreaking to learn that they

had both married other people. “What is the most

heartbreaking thing you can think of?”

he asked. Her list included the dawn,

Vassar graduation, and the city

of Paris, which she described in vivid prose

before she set foot in France. It was

the one infallible rule she used

to write her acclaimed series of travel guidebooks.

 

He realized why he married her:

so he wouldn’t have to think about her,

or about sex, or about other women: the hours

they consumed like crossword puzzles

and chocolate-covered cherries.

 

She said the most obvious things

but she said them well.

She tried to impress people but kept blundering

as when she attributed the phrase “Make It New”

to William Carlos Williams.

 

She had the soul of a stranger.

There were things that she loved besides herself—

flowers, poems.

 

She was obsessed with the difficulty

of finding good nectarines in New York City.

They cost an arm and a leg and were mealy.

 

She said something critical

He flew off the handle

She asked, “Are you saying it's over?”

He said Fuck you.

She said Fuck you and told him to leave.

All right, he said, I’m leaving

if that’s the way you want it

and if you want to know

where I am, I’m in Palm Springs

fucking Lana Turner

as Frank Sinatra put it to Ava Gardner

who was in her bathtub at the time

it was 1952

 

She got so depressed she stayed in her room

all day. At least that way she would stay

out of trouble. Her job kept her sedentary.

The only exercise she got was fixing a sandwich

and writing dialogue for a man and a woman

while one is packing a suitcase: “What are you

doing?” “What does it look like I'm doing?”

 

It rained all day, converting a September morning

into a November afternoon. The speed

of thinking was faster than the speed of light.

“How’s your ex-wife?”

“She's divorced, too,” he replied.

“That's what we have in common.”

 

He had the odd habit of smiling when he was tense.

This made him a lousy poker player but won her sympathy.

She liked his bohemian life. Or didn't really

but said she did. The joy went out of his eyes

but the smile stayed on his face

having nowhere else to go. God’s image

was shaving in the mirror, feeling like hell,

missing her, wondering who she was.

 

Tax Day (April 15)

What a sweet guy I am

when one of my enemies dies

I don’t Xerox the obit and mail it

to the others saying “Let

this be a lesson to you,” no

I’m more likely to recall

the person’s virtues to which I

was blind until the news of mortality

opened my mind as you would

open a vial of Tylenol noticing

it spells lonely backwards with

only the initial T added, signifying

taxes no doubt, and now my headache

has gone the way of leaves in fall

am I happy I certainly am

as you would be, my friend, if

the Queen of Sheba returned your calls

as she does mine.

 

Radio

I left it

on when I

left the house

for the pleasure

of coming back

ten hours later

to the greatness

of Teddy Wilson

“After You’ve Gone”

on the piano

in the corner

of the bedroom

as I enter

in the dark

 

Dante Lucked Out

T.S. Eliot held that Dante was lucky

to live in the Middle Ages

because life then was more logically organized

and society more coherent. The rest of us however

can’t be as sure that if we’d had the fortune

to walk along the Arno and look at the pretty girls

walking with their mothers in the fourteenth century,

then we, too, would have composed La Vita Nuova

and the Divine Comedy. It is on the contrary

far more likely that we, transported

to medieval Florence, would have died miserably

in a skirmish between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines

without the benefit of anesthesia

or would have been beaten, taunted,

cheated, and cursed as usurers

two centuries before the charging of interest

became an accepted part of Calvinist creed

and other reasons needed to be produced

to justify the persecution of the Jews.

 

Anna K.

1.

Anna believed.

Couldn’t delay.

Every Friday

grew heroic

infidelity just

knowing love

might never

otherwise present

queenly resplendent

satisfaction trapped

under Vronsky’s

wild X-rated

young zap.

2.

Afraid. Betrayed.

Can’t divorce.

Envy follows

grim heroine,

inks judgment,

kills lust.

Mercy nowhere.

Opulent pink

quintessence radiates

suicide trip—

unique vacation—

worst Xmas,

yesterday’s zero.

 

After Auschwitz

In the yeshiva playground they were marching

chanting marching around in circles bearing pickets

bearing scrolls saying “No poems after Auschwitz! No poems

 

about Auschwitz!” while in the back row

the poet sat dreamily and stared out the window, hungry.

Could there be lunch after Auschwitz?

 

His mother did everything she could have done

but there wasn’t money enough for the necessary bribes

and her parents were deported to Riga and shot.

 

A woman he met at a writer’s conference

told him she was working on The Holocaust and Memory

at Yale. The question she had was this:

 

Are American Jews making a fetish out of the Holocaust?

Has the Holocaust become the whole of Jewish experience?

“You go to shul on Yom Kippur or Passover

 

and everything is the Holocaust.” I shut my eyes and hear

the old prayers made new: “Shame is real,” said Ida Noise.

Hear, O Israel. The Lord is One. I, an American, naturally preferred

 

a temple carved out of water and stone: the rage of a waterfall,

the melody of a brook. But back-to-nature as a strategy failed

when the phones started ringing in the woods,

 

and only a child would think of collecting dead leaves

and trying to paste them back on the trees. So I returned

to the city, married, settled down, had a child of my own,

 

pretended that I was just like anybody else.

Yet I feel as if my real life is somewhere else, I left it

back in 1938, it happened already and yet it’s still going on,

 

only it’s going on without me, I’m merely an observer

in a trench coat, and if there were some way I could enter

the newsreel of rain that is Europe, some way I could return

 

to the year where I left my life behind,

it would be dear enough to me, danger and all. To him,

an emissary of a foreign war, London was unreal. He wondered

 

which of his fellow passengers would make the attempt.

He knew now that they would try to kill him,

tomorrow if not today. How could he have been such a fool?

 

Herr Endlich said: “We have our ways of making a man talk.”

In the last forty-eight hours he had learned two things:

That you couldn’t escape the danger, it was all around you,

 

and that the person who betrays you is the one you trusted most.

The strategists in Washington couldn’t figure it out. Why in hell

were the Germans wasting fuel on trains to camps in Poland?

 

Ever the Stranger

Man has the will

to grieve

a week and no longer.

 

Ever the stranger

he will kill

with righteous anger.

 

What does he believe?

In his right to trade

a season of greed

 

for an hour

of love in an unlit corner.

Such is love’s power,

 

though it last no longer.

And such is his need

than which nothing is stronger.

 

Mother Died Today

Mother died today. That's how it began. Or maybe yesterday, I can’t be sure. I gave the book to my mother in the hospital. She read the first sentence. Mother died today. She laughed and said you sure know how to cheer me up. The telegram came. It said, Mother dead Stop Funeral tomorrow Stop. Mother read it in the hospital and laughed at her college boy son. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t remember. Mama died yesterday. The telegram arrived a day too late. I had already left. Europe is going down, the euro is finished, and what does it matter? My mother served plum cake and I read the page aloud. Mother died today or yesterday and I can’t be sure and it doesn’t matter. Germany can lose two world wars and still rule all of Europe, and does it matter whether you die at thirty or seventy? Mother died today. It was Mother’s Day, the day she died, the year she died. In 1940 it was the day the Germans marched into Belgium and France and Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister. The telegram came from the asylum, the home, the hospital, the “assisted living” facility, the hospice, the clinic. Your mother passed away. Heartfelt condolences. The price of rice is going up, and what does it matter? I’ll tell you what I told the nurse and anyone that asks. Mother died today.

 

It Could Happen To You

It’s June 15, 2017, a Thursday,

fortieth anniversary of the infamous day

the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati

and they’re still losing

 

I mean we are

 

7 to 1 to the Washington Nationals

a team that didn’t exist in 1977

the summer of a little tour in France

with Henry James

in a yellow Renault douze

 

the light a lovely gray

the rain a violin

concerto (Prokofiev’s no. 2 in D major)

and I had books to read

Huxley Woolf Forster and their enemy F. R. Leavis
Empson a little dull for my taste

also Freud on errors, Norman Mailer on orgasms,

James Baldwin in Paris

Dostoyevski’s Notes from Underground part 1

 

and John Ashbery tells me he is reading The Possessed

translated as The Demons in the newfangled translation

while Ron and I stay faithful to Constance Garnett

 

I went upstairs stood on the terrace ate some cherries

admired the outline of trees in the dark

 

and Rosemary Clooney

sang “It Could Happen to You”

 

and I was a healthy human being, not a sick man

for the first summer in three years.

 

A Toast

“When the doctor breaks the news,
will you cry or sing the blues?”
“No way. I’ll raise my glass,
take a sip, get off my ass,

and bounce my red rubber ball

against the rubble of the ghetto wall,

and catch it, feeling good,

catching it as a centerfielder would,

while a skirt walks by hoping I’ll notice,
and five decades pass as swiftly as a kiss.”

 

---

“Sonnet” and “The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke” are from An Alternative to Speech (Princeton University Press, 1986). “Fear,” “Rejection Slip,” and “Operation Memory” are from Operation Memory (Princeton University Press, 1990). “Who She Was” and “Dutch Interior” are from Valentine Place (Scribner, 1996). “Tax Day” is from The Daily Mirror (Scribner, 2000). “Radio,” “Dante Lucked Out,” and “Anna K” are from When a Woman Loves a Man (Scribner, 2005). “After Auschwitz” is from Yeshiva Boys (Scribner, 2009). “Mother’s Day” and “Ever the Stranger” are from New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2013). “It Could Happen to You” and “A Toast” are from The Morning Line (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021).