With four more new poems.

With readings

By JOHN MATTHIAS.

.

A Balsa Wood Plane

A balsa wood plane would be one way
To get in the zone. These came in kits that
We’d find in the dime store for a dollar.
You’d assemble them quickly by fitting
The wing into a slot on the fuselage, the
Tail assembly likewise on the stern, and
Then you’d pinch a malleable weight
Onto the nose. It was ready, with small
Adjustments, to fly. We’d sail them off
The high bridge over Glen Echo Drive.
Sometimes in a good wind they’d sail
Far down the narrow road and turn
The corner as if actually maneuvered
By an imaginary pilot. Sometimes we
Never found the plane at all after we
Ran down the hill and around the bend.
It had left the glen for the zone, or found,
Where we couldn’t yet see, just where
The ravine opened into the zone. It was
A while before we learned how to follow.

.

Acoustics Zones Shadows
(“Pages of Illustration,” Wallace Stevens)

A zone full of acoustic shadows, or
A shadow full of zones. Such things,
Magister., are never one. They are not
Even two. Nor is place a zone, or zone
A place, nor do shadows offer shade.
Ages of nillustration, say, will take a
Child down the glen and leave him in
Dismay. He does not find the tables
From Connecticut where Englishmen
Had dined without their tea in Burma,
But sounds that have leapt at him from
Zones and zones from sounds
…………………………………have lept
like acrobatic dowsers, sounding space
with penises beyond their measure, paging
through the zigzags where all pages
dress Elizebethan, playing games. Gains
For peace at the pace of shadow, only
Echoing delay, deny perception of the war
between a child and a man. The child
is feather to the man, and only tickles him
when he should write. Night comes on.
Who’s the buccaneer of chaos? Not the
Pensive man, not the natty connoisseur.

.

What’s Left on Iuka Drive

Mainly a few stones, but enough to remember
What there was. Even the arch over an artesian
Well, and part of the wall around it have not wholly
Collapsed. We would sit on the wall, legs dangling
Down where we could see water at an uncertain
Depth, the big stone house behind us all full of
Old relations and even older “help,” Fannie and
Annie, and an ancient retainer called Mr. Mann.
The house fell down a long time ago, but just
Discernable stairs still reach up from beside
The well to empty space at the top of the hill.
“What to play at Grandma’s house?” we’d ask
each other. The wittiest cousin said: “How about
we all play dead?” We might have played
September 19, 1862, but we didn’t. The reason
Was that just like Generals Grant and Ord
We couldn’t hear that a battle had already begun,
Suppressed as it was by an acoustic shadow.
All the dying happened in the old stone house,
But not one of us heard a single sound of
Lamentation and remorse.

.

Another Fall

Once again he had fallen down. He was
Getting good at it. He had fallen off a ferry pier
Into the Adriatic near Dubrovnik. He had
Fallen over the wall around Central Park
Through the limbs of a large tree. Had it not
Been for the sea in one case, and the limbs
Of the tree in the other, he would have suffered
Grievous wounds. Does one say “grievous wounds”
Any more? That would give it too much dignity,
Make it sound like something honorable – say, for
Example, the injury his great-grandfather suffered
When a Rebel musket ball shattered his elbow
In the Civil War, leading to an amputation.

As for our man, our mensch – O poor bonhomme –
He merely slipped and fell on the icy steps of
His own house. There was no warm sea
Or kind branch to cushion his dive. It was
Chaplainesque, Monsieur Poirot in a pratfall.
Did his head burst like a Halloween pumpkin?
People passing in a car laughed at first; it looked
So much like an acrobatic act that they had no clue
He’d suffered a grievous wound. Come and help him
Someone. This is not a joke. This is not Halloween.

.

From a Place in Tübingen

Pears and wild roses and a good land
Hanging over the lake when
Swans dipped their heads as sacrament
Into the crystal summer water.

But, alas, not now. Where can I find
The rose or pear or sunshine in this
Winter of my mind, this winter of asylum
Where I live assailed on every side.

Inside and outside walls of stone and
Bone, strange flags jangle on their poles,
Flap and flutter in the heavy wind.

—After Hölderlin

♦

JOHN MATTHIAS, a contributing editor of The Fortnightly Review, is also editor emeritus of Notre Dame Review, emeritus professor of English at Notre Dame and the author of some thirty books of poetry, translation, criticism, and scholarship. Shearsman Books published his three volumes of Collected Poems, as well as the uncollected long poem, Trigons, two more volumes of poetry, Complayntes for Doctor Neuro and Acoustic Shadows and a novel, Different Kinds of Music. Tales Tall & Short— Fictional, Factual and In Between  was published by Dos Madres in 2020 and The New Yorker recently published his widely read memoir, “Living with a Visionary.” His Fortnightly archive is here.