Weigl - On the shores of welcome home: poems

ON THE SHORES OF WELCOME HOME ON THE SHORES OF WELCOME HOME POEMS BRUCE WEIGL AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES, NO. 175 BOA EDITIONS, LTD. ROCHESTER, NY 2019 Copyright 2019 by Bruce Weigl All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition 19 20 21 22 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at . Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Codeare made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; the LGBT Fund of Greater Rochester; and contributions from many individuals nationwide.

See Colophon on for special individual acknowledgments. Cover Design: Sandy Knight Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster BOA Logo: Mirko Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Weigl, Bruce, 1949 , author. Title: The shores of welcome home : poems / Bruce Weigl. Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., 2019. 175 Identifiers: LCCN 2019019107 | ISBN 9781942683896 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam War, 19611975Psychological aspectsPoetry. | VeteransMental healthUnited StatesPoetry. | Older veteransUnited StatesPoetry. | War poetry, American. | War poetry, American.

Classification: LCC PS3573.E3835 A6 2019 | DDC 811/.54dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019107 BOA Editions, Ltd.
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A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (19381996)For Sonny Bunzo and Mila Vy CONTENTS . . . Our schemes are so fragile a fire
begins mincing childishly through
the backstreets, through our fingers
and well never forget;
the whole world is a library of fire
and well never get out of itJames TateAgainst Forgetting (Two)I didnt remember where to start my life. I thought of this in the fourth grade. I figured out that words meant exactly what they said, and at the same timemeant nothing at all. I figured out that words meant exactly what they said, and at the same time meant nothing at all.

Schoolwas downhill for mefrom then on Part One THE ELEPHANT GIFT IN THE ROOM Sun refuses the last nanosecond before night; stars explode in your cold headold, nostalgic bombs and rockets, classic mortar rounds but no one understands, and no one hears you speak, and no one even sees you standing there in your sixty-two years, soldier. YOU CAN HIDE You can hide behind this You can hide behind my eyes You can hide behind the trigger You can be hurled unnamed through dusty sunlight And not know anything because a rocket even close Will do that to you Go away slim shadows Open as if in communion but nothing goes away I walked and I crawled The ocean crossed me Asleep in my cocoon but nothing goes away Waiting like it does always Something that gets ahead of you somehow As in an ambush a beautiful word On the mouth to say. PAINTED BOX BURIED IN THE YARD The yard of our sadness where we buried things after some man hung himself in the basement of our apartment. Circa five years old who found him was named me, but the I didnt know drunk and fucking around from hung right off to death and it was a long time before I put that particular two and two together, and saw him in my minds movie more than once, swinging there, pale as our autumn sky. Sometimes you need a great notion to survive even one single moment of your life; someone pushed to the edge, and then see what happens. GRACE BEING SAVED Grace being saved, even between thunder raps under the storm a certain light bends itself through clouds and around trees and you can find it there lighting up like a catastrophe then gone as a kiss, never to come back.

Or theres my other face in the mirror in the Ascending Dragon Hotel, Tng n Street, though I dont know who he is, nor do I remember such elegance, but what you see in the mirror is nothing, and is not nothing, the way time wanted me that day; the way time came with its voracious, drooling jaws and snatched the light away. ANECDOTE OF THE IMPRESARIO OF MY BRAIN The dead people I see are not happy when they know that I see them. They frown a strange death mask at me from passing motorcars, or in the dimly-lit hallways of unfamiliar buildings like the one where the keeper of records presides. He knows everything about us, but he doesnt know that he is dead. When I ask for my records, he refuses to look at me so that the darkness gathered in the corners begins to reel outward, exactly like a tiny tornado. If youve seen that then you know what the fuck Im talking about, climbing the ladder, and the rigmarole of other places where the sidewalks are poured in a different paradigm than ours, and the rivers are not interrogated about their direction so flow the bright waters straight through you is how it feels later on, back in custody.

SOME STAGES OF THE MAYFLY You dont have to write anything down; you dont have to say anything at all or even gesture with your head or your body or your face or your eyes or your hands. You dont have to make a sound and still someone will understand you the way a mayfly understands at a precisely particular angle of light that its time to emerge from the nymph and swim towards the light and towards great wings that burst through to dry on the gleaming surface, then carry them off into dark trees from which they parachute on thin wings that same night to die. AGAINST POETRY I didnt want to hurt the earth so when I weeded the garden I spoke to the plants like souls the way the teacher taught me and never mind the centuries of suffering the razor sting of words that wont mean anything except to tell one doom or another and not even your own. The night delivered to the stars matters; the distance the light must travel painfully long but coming for you. RIVER OF BLOOD IN ONE MAN Dressing up for your guests for example, the blood so red when it comes from where its not. So red on the paper, and so much that you stand up, fixing your trousers, and walk out into the formality of nothing but life and death encounters with strangers, and weirdness in your correspondence too; please, let me have my iron mask; the blood thats crimsons not as bad as the darker red that comes from deep inside, river that it is, beautiful meanness of the heart that keeps beating, empty in its cage of love.

PRAYER FOR MY TEACHER A sky in my head tonight, only I dont know if its a star or not, I dont know what it wants, like the wind surely must want something the way it calls me through the trees and across the still green lawns of my quiet neighbors like someone hissing a curse or a last blessing before hell, but what I found inside the dark this time was a wave of something warm that almost seemed to, or did, hold me there for a long enough second so I could see the brightly sonic outline of everything that wasnt there, and be freed by that and made happy for you, so here is the smile of my mouth, only half, as it should be, and here is the smile of my eyes I hope you see some light in, and here is the smile of my fingers held up in the shape of the lotus, that heals and that satisfies, but I dont know why peace is still too much to ask for, or why the landscape must include the inconsequential corpses from both sides, as if posed for some demonic puppet show for the generals and their overweight children to enjoy in the imperial garden. The flaws of our reason have finally shivered into shifting plates of what we knew all along, come to pass. AGAINST FORGETTING (ONE) Startling when the brain can see the mind, accomplished only with the most precise surgery, for example, performed by beings whose hands are made of a kind of glass that you are not allowed to touch. You are not allowed to ask certain questions afterwards; questions about the paradigm are especially discouraged, and never appreciated. They maintain security at all times. I want to ask if I am the same, or different, but it is not allowed, and even before the thought completes itself and the words are not yet on my lips, someone is tsking to me inside of my head, wagging their finger like a mother or a drug cop in the rearview mirror of my horizon.

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