Oh
we find it
and photograph it
bury it out of sight
and try to sleep with it
tunnel the earth
for one of its hands
to lead us
as if
we could follow you
as we followed to Bedlam
and part
as we followed
past Live
but you give us the slip
poem by Eric Torgersen
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When They Draw Us
When they draw us, the children,
as great beaming sun-faces
balanced on sticks, waving sticks,
can it be that they see us so soon
with a clarity we believe
comes only with age?
They draw us out
of ourselves, our trembling palaces,
into the fragile worlds
they play, dream, fear into being,
as if they know even now
we will be going.
poem by Eric Torgersen
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New Leaves
In the kitchen window
the coleus I cut down to stumps
to make cuttings for friends
is spreading new leaves to the sun.
Small hairs
the light catches
rise from the new leaves;
red seeps into green
along the veins.
The newest
is brightest.
The plant
cocks intelligent
faces
at the sun
and looks and looks and looks.
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poem by Eric Torgersen
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Case Studies: I
You thrust into the coffin
where your young wife lay cold
and even more hauntingly beautiful
for the tragic manner of her death
every one of your unpublished poems.
The poet in you, you wanted
the gesture to say, had died with her.
You would not love again.
This is the nineteenth century.
But seven years have passed.
There are men with shovels.
If you do love again, how much
do you love yourself,
her memory,
your enchanting new mistress,
poetry?
poem by Eric Torgersen
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After Gaetan Picon
All seeing is joy
when it is simply seeing.
It is from the mind
that the trouble comes.
When it is simply seeing
the eye is lucid, whole;
the trouble comes
when the mind divides.
The eye is lucid, whole,
illiterate, agnostic;
where the mind divides,
the worm of blindness enters.
Illiterate, agnostic,
the stunned eye falters;
enter the worm, blindness,
the serpent, text.
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poem by Eric Torgersen
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The Man who Broke up the Dinner Party Answers
It made me feel small, like a husband,
and I never married, never owned
a table worth turning over, china
worth shattering, linen worth blood
from the cut hand I sucked and cursed
and wrapped in a torn shirt, in a pocket.
Can't they make it new again, those bees,
those communist women at their weaving?
It was only the long lines, the slow,
enforced pace, solemnity, cold white glitter;
I was only too proud to eat cold history,
to stand in the breadlines at the tomb;
I only declined the feast in the mausoleum
as Yesenin did, who wrote his regrets in blood.
poem by Eric Torgersen
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Re: That
That was no language that was your life.
That was a punning linguist.
That was the headline Author Gets Off.
That was an offer of amnesty and amnesia,
a garden variety fantasia,
a sobriety test and I'm sorry, you passed.
That was in love with the history of the West,
in league with mastery, in line with most of the rest.
That was a linguist's boast.
That was no language boat and you broke it.
That was a love boat and kept you perfectly dry.
A boat in the sky.
That was a scheme with a name on it.
That was to blame and too blind to see.
That was me too.
It was you.
poem by Eric Torgersen
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No Dancer / Still Walking
In one of the open-air restaurants
along the beach at Progreso
three shy pretty Indian girls
danced for us with trays bottles
glasses balanced on their heads
and I picked one out I always
pick one out
Back in Mérida at a juice
and licuado stand a woman
fell down was helped toward a chair
fell down again and a blind man
brought his dog to dance
for money for the crowd around a woman
who couldn't even walk
I've never been much
of a dancer at least not with anyone
looking but I can still walk
take my pick of the dancers
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poem by Eric Torgersen
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Chanson Américaine
If I, as I drive the Caravan
with its nagging blister of rust
on the driver's side door
home from the office on the day
the odometer turns over 153351,
if I, with my wife at work
and my daughter away at college,
slip into the cassette player
the Johnny Mathis Greatest Hits
tape I have just bought
at a yard sale for a quarter,
and if hearing that voice,
its luscious rise and fall,
which my mother loved as much
as she loved her romance novels
from the lending library,
I sing along, the words
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poem by Eric Torgersen
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The Lone Ranger Rides Off
Thank God he's gone,
on his horse
of all colors-
we can take up again
the lives
he rode shooting into
in the blind
mask of belief
in the legend of himself-
and why should we have
to think we've failed him?
ransomed
these lives of ours,
let him ride off
with his guns and his needs
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poem by Eric Torgersen
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