Bell - Mars Being Red

Rampant [2004]

Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000 [2000]

Poetry for a Midsummers Night [1998]

Wednesday: Selected Poems 1966-1997 [1998, Europe]

Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Vol. [1997]

The Book of the Dead Man [1994]

A Marvin Bell Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose [1994]

Iris of Creation [1990]

New and Selected Poems [1987]

Drawn by Stones, by Earth, by Things That Have Been in the Fire [1984]

Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews [1983]

Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry (with William stafford [1983]

These Green-Going-to-Yellow [1981]

Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See [1977]

Residue of Song [1974]

The Escape into You [1971]

A Probable Volume of Dreams [1969]

Things We Dreamt We Died For [1966]

COPPER CANYON PRESS
PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON

Copyright 2007 by Marvin Bell

All rights reserved

Cover art: Michael Spafford, One Greek, One Trojan #15, 2005.
Oil on paper, 30 x 40 inches.

Copper Canyon Press is in residence at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington, under the auspices of Centrum.
Centrum is a gathering place for artists and creative thinkers from around the world, students of all ages and backgrounds, and audiences seeking extraordinary cultural enrichment.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bell, Marvin, 1937

Mars being red / Marvin Bell.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-55659-257-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Title.
ps3552.E52M37 2007
811.'54dc22
2006101743

98765432 FIRST PRINTING

COPPER CANYON PRESS
Post Office Box 271
Port Townsend, Washington 98368
www.coppercanyonpress.org

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors who published these poems, a few in earlier versions:

American Poetry Review: Assisted Living Quarters, Cable News Night, The Campus in Wartime, Doo-Wop, Fifteen Minutes, I Didnt Sleep, and Slice of Life.

Asheville Poetry Review: Regardless.

The Best American Poetry 2007, Scribner: The Method.

Born Magazine (zine): Why Do You Stay Up So Late?

Caffeine Destiny (zine): Poem Post9/11/01.

Chance of a Ghost: An Anthology of Contemporary Ghost Poems, Helicon Nine Editions: The Book of the Dead Man (Ghosts).

The Chickasaw Plum: Politics and the Arts (zine): Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002.

Chimera Review (zine): The Broken Rose.

Coe Review: Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Crazyhorse: Days of Superman, Dream of a Dream, and The Method.

Denver Quarterly: Art in Wartime, CQ, and Elegy for Jim Simmerman, with a Call to Michael Burkard.

Empyrean Press (broadside): I Didnt Sleep.

The Georgia Review: Five to Seven and Why.

The Gettysburg Review: The Book of the Dead Man (Memory), Veterans of the Seventies, and What Things Are.

Hunger Mountain: The Book of the Dead Man (Writing the Dead Man Poem).

The Iowa Review: Astronomers May Have Reason for Milky Ways Lumpiness, Coffee, Ode to Night, and Poseur.

Kenyon Review: An Apology to the Vietnamese and Iraqis, Art Shoes, and Bus Stop Essay on Rampant Capitalism.

Long Journey: Pacific Northwest Poets, Oregon State University Press: People Walking in Fog and Why Do You Stay Up So Late?

The Long-Islander: About His Eyes.

Lost Horse Press (broadside): Coffee.

Natural Bridge: The Book of the Dead Man (Recent Dreams).

Near East Review: Archaic Apollo, The Broken Rose, Her Shyness, and Stupid Time.

The New Yorker: Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002, Homeland Security, Oppression, and Prodigal?

Oregon Literary Review (zine): It.

Paterson Literary Review: Unable to Sleep in Frosts Bed in Franconia.

Ploughshares: Mars Being Red and People Walking in Fog.

Poetry East: Yes.

Poetry Miscellany: Mirror Image and The Time I Tore My Kneecaps Off (La La).

Prairie Schooner: Geezers and The Poems I Want to Hear.

Rattle: Deadline.

Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, Salmon Publishing (Ireland): Theory of Relativity (Political) and Why Do You Stay Up So Late?

Shakespeares Wages, Gendun Editions: The Broken Rose, Poem Post9/11/01, Poseur, and Why Do You Stay Up So Late?

Silk Road: West Coast Oceanic.

Solo Caf 2: American Winter 2006 and Bent.

The Southern Review: The Book of the Dead Man (Time), First-Generation American, Now the News, and Ordinary.

The Spoken Word Revolution Redux, Sourcebooks: Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002.

Third Coast: Stubby Sag Harbor Sonnet.

Visiting Frost, University of Iowa Press: Unable to Sleep in Frosts Bed in Franconia.

Wednesday, Salmon Publishing (Ireland): Theory of Relativity (Political).

Willow Springs: Hard Times for Army Recruiters and Messy.

Dorothy

If I put some straw into the suitcase,
Ill always have a bed. Scraps of olive wood,
slow to light, dense, will burn all night.
Some hard pumpernickel for good gums.
A sad bundle of underwear. A leaf
dropped by a poor scrub oak to remind me.
It will be a long Monday when I go.
The alarm throbs inside me, the early news
is crowded with bodies returning.
Im off to the front lines in the war to preserve
the privilege of myth-making,
the consternations of art, the nerve to think
the future and remember the past. Others
left their homes to sail and trek, to consort
with consorts and outsiders and so
learn the reaches of mankinds instinct
for survival. They breathed the fumes and ate
the stew. They lived among the heroic
who did not want another life, and if
they erred in creating bigger-than-life characters,
they broke bread with the unspeakable,
and that is worth something.

I didnt sleep in the light. I couldnt sleep
in the dark. I didnt sleep at night. I was awake
all day. I didnt sleep in the leaves or between
the pages. I tried but couldnt sleep
with my eyes open. I couldnt sleep indoors
or out under the stars. I couldnt sleep where
there were flowers. Insects kept me up. Shadows
shook me out of my doziness. I was trying hard.
It was horrible. I knew why I couldnt sleep.
Knowing I couldnt sleep made it harder to try.
I thought maybe I could sleep after the war
or catch a nap after the next election. It was
a terrible time in America. Many of us found
ourselves unable to sleep. The war went on.
The silence at home was deafening. So I
tried to talk myself to sleep by memorizing
the past, which had been full of sleepiness.
It didnt work. All over the world people
were being put to sleep. In every time zone.
I am busy not sleeping, obsessively one might say.
I resolve to sleep again when I have the time.

Of the knees we might say they beseech,
seen together on the floor, the head bowed,
wherefrom one senses penitence and dread.
From a future of the numerous, a single sword
is held aloft. It takes two hands. From the sound
of no-sound the soon-to-be-beheaded is aware
the steel blade is beginning to descend. At once