Three Poems

by Robert Miller

photos by Hal Lum

A MEMORY OF THE EL

John Sloan's New York; it was
Here a lean light of winter crept down
Third Avenue, and all that dusk could spare
Glimmered dully on leftover snow.
Frayed lamplight in windows of
The brownstones drifted down
A smoky yellow. Beneath the El
Men curled in newspapers against the cold.
It's easy to remake memory
A postcard picturesque: New York
In '39—I recall
A Yorkville boys' gang: cubs in brown belts
Scampered down alleys when a newsstand
Blazed, and the old Jew yelled
Get them! Get them Nazi boys!
And fell down. Uneasy shoppers paused,
One helped him up.
He brushed his coat and mumbled
Against a carol soft on the air.
That dusk it snowed again
as I ran to catch the downtown train
to hear the opera Lohengrin—how I sped
two jumps ahead of the wind, my thoughts fierce,
turning to music I'd not yet heard.
Running alone and spiritual
with snow soft on my face I passed the dull
globes in shop windows on and off for Christmas.
I caught the plaster saints and tannenbaums
of happy fat families in their Bavarian parlors,
and huge, somber Germans in taverns,
their solid laughs
dropping like omens in the cigar air.
The windows splashed orange
hallucinations on the snow. The bars—
loud with the boozy caroling of tenors—
glared neon red, I remember.
With the taste of automat beans and my cheek
seared with mustard, I ran
past knickered newsboys under the El.
One's face was plastered white,
his high wise voice pitched and shouted
down the narrow dusk of Third avenue
of war in Europe. I made the steps
three at a time to the platform and into the train.
Among wet overcoats and bundles,
with a listless patience a woman
her face half-buried in furs and perfume,
gave me her one deep, casual eye,
caught mine in a sneak second and I reeled
in terrible virgin pain; then she got off.
The train creaked, sighed, started,
the sliding doors slammed shut,
and snow fell lightly; the city glowed.
I felt wet-warm. As the train rocked,
the neon twilight flickered on and off,
twilight flickered on full faces;
and I stared out over the east city,
John Sloan's New York; it was.

Days of fire, fiery sea.
I swarm in sunlight, with others or alone:
Then drinks and conversation, I laughed a lot,
And was hardly ever sober.
Life warmed me through the cool
Talk of clever men, and the charms
Of women lovelier by sun,
And there was sun to spare.
Matters of importance we just let float.
Our children behaved, as a rule.
But evenings I invoked my city soul,
Theater wit and gossip mixed with gin
That summer of little if any stress.
Though the ocean may have warned us
In villas on the shore,
Of the break-up of marriages, of deaths.
In the wet sand, darkly the sun
Glowed, and slid off, and I could feel alone
Listening to tides at continent's edge,
And wondering how long I'd be with it.
Nights I watched a vast wheel of stars.
Orion grew in my eyes, and I imagined
Deaths and births of planets out there,
In the waters gathering us
I have good memories
I guard that I may serve
To keep warm a susceptibility
To a different time on islands not the same.
Mine I keep in snapshots
Of a good-looking couple romping on a beach,
And a fence the wind snagged
In a place the sea confused and reclaimed.

Detain the century by a minute's bliss
You who have learned a shadow's depth
And immeasurable, the length of a tear.
Beyond the affair the woman,
And going into now the loss;
Bereavement is too large for poetry.
Romanticism the solace for inexperience
Belongs with the young. They who recline on gravestones,
Counting conquests, an easy brag
In their voices talking to the cold,
And a thousand fingers dazzling the cold,
A pure graffiti on the air.
Old enough not to live,
You have failed at this,
Have you nothing to say to us
Of the terrible power that has gone?
Old as an old love
Or young as one who reappears
Now when you notice less:
The white curve of a shoulder, or the nuance in an eye…