HENRI COLE ~

 

Land of Never-Ending Holes

I don't want you to leave.

I don't want you to leave this place I so love, where

    underbrush, jackrabbits,

        and the desert press in on us.

Waiting under a date palm, with a suitcase and cell phone,

        listening for the train whistle—this is how I picture you.

Don't strut or you will stumble.

Make your mess into a message.

Make your roof tight and your cothing sufficient,

        and you shall never be wanting if you value "the best

            property of all —

        friends" (Emerson)

Remember the Zen axiom: Nothing lasts, nothing is finished,

    and nothing is perfect.

Out there is a land of never-ending holes, where brown is the

    new green.

Out there are omnivorous, dazzling human voices—coarse

    cries, air falsettos, heady

        blues, soul, and solemn low rumbles—speaking and

            teaching.

It is never useless to say something or teach someone.

The obscure human soul—it is sad and happy at once.

Men sweep and stir up the dust, but women sprinkle water and

    settle it,

        sweetening the air.

Out there, it is swarming, venal, frivolous, vexing, crude, and

    hypocritical,

        but you must never cease to listen, look, and feel.

If you love a zebra, do not settle for a tapir.

Think of all you have so far as a shelter made of tarp and rope,

    and build

            something marvelous.

Uplift, transformation, radiance—when you turn the old horse

    toward them,

        he will always pick up his step.

See those bulbous clouds forming over the small San Gabriel

    Mountains?

They are greater than any tanks or armored vehicles.

See out there beyond the ash, avocado, lemon, and peppertrees,

        a little trail ends at a highway leading to spin rooms and

            war rooms,

        but also there are bee spawn, motion dazzle, and

                maple syrup.

I don't want you to leave.

Out there, in the land of never-ending holes,    

        may those who love you love you, as in the proverb,

        but may God turn the hearts of those who cannot love you,

        and if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles,

        so you will know them by their limping.

_________________

Henri Cole

Blizzard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2021

    The finest poem in this fine book,

first published as a Claremont McKenna College

commencement poem. I would have liked to

been in the audience. 

[ BA ]

HENRI COLE ~

The Lonely Domain

         "A Coffin — is a small Domain"




She had a bleeding vagina but no bosom

and a man's voice that barked, "Shut the fuck up."

as she carried a carpenter's bench to the kitchen

and chose some boards from the yard. But I spoke

anyway, believing in words as the basis of people

living together.  

                          She sat a long time making a sketch

measuring the planks to mark them with a pencil,

and then all afternoon a saw wheezed

across the boards as her hands went back

and forth planing them, but even with a ruler

and chisel, it was hard to make the domain-end

wide enough for my shoulders. "Sorry about that,"

her voice vibrated.

                               Dogs bite strangers, wolves catch lambs,

lightning strikes trees, but strangely — without any

premonition — she quit her revenge, and the spell

was broken. "Let's talk, I said, sad and happy.

The kitchen smelled like a pine forest,

everyday thoughts that are my world

returned to me, sunlight was white

with many distances, and I lived.






City Horse



At the end of the road from concept to corpse,

sucked out to sea and washed up again —

with uprooted trees, crumpled cars, and collapsed houses —

facedown in dirt, and tied to a telephone pole,

as if trying to raise herself still, though one leg is broken,

to look around at the grotesque unbelievable landscape,

the color around her eyes, nose, and mane (the dapples of roan,

a mix of white and red hairs) now powdery gray —

O, wondrous horse; O, delicate horse — dead, dead —

with a bridle still buckled around her cheeks — "She was more

    smarter than me,

she just wait," a boy sobs, clutching a hand to his mouth

and stroking the majestic rowing legs,

stiff now, that could not outrun

the heavy black, frothing water.



—————————
HENRI COLE
Nothing To Declare
Farrar Straus Giroux
2015

ELIZABETH BISHOP (Meets Colm Tóibín) ~

Princeton University Press 2015

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/eavan-boland-reviews-on-elizabeth-bishop-by-colm-t%C3%B3ib%C3%ADn-1.2146004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCfT7ccPAP4