Poems by Robert Klein Engler
Evening Raga
The light falls platinum against the Civic Center wall. We are in Topeka, Kansas, the navel of America. There is a landlocked loneliness around, and, too, a loveliness of rolling hills not far off. I remember the face of a woman waiting yesterday for a bus on Dodge St. The evening light falls on her face like the moon as she sets a shopping bag against a poll. The bus will be a while. She has time to think of her daughter and the two kids. It's not been easy but it's been good. From the hotel window we see a Jeep follows the road's curve into the low hills and then is lost from sight. My mother would be rocking now on the front porch looking out into the bowl of night to ask what star could be a widow's star.
Shopping for Nothing at Lowe's
wheelbarrows are lined up
deck chairs all in a row
the orphan geraniums wait
I tried to tell him there’s
a talking cure but it’s hard
to say once you take away
the wound there is nothing
nothing inside
the young man who loads
sheetrock on the flatbed truck
is beautiful but he doesn’t
know it so he bites down
hard on his chewing gum
and let’s the sheetrock fall
on the flatbed there is a puff
of white dust that’s all
Jenny's Poem for Garrison Keillor
your voice comes to me on KVNO in Omaha
that station plays mostly classical music but
at nine in the morning after BBC propaganda
you tell us who was born on today’s date
and read a poem by then summer sunlight
has burnt away the fog that hugs the river on
humid mornings and I see clearly my work
and why I must fix a false line in the painting
of my mother dead so many years and if you
really cared you’d come here to see this because
I always hear you say at the end “be well, do
good work and keep in touch” but how phony
is that — when you never answer my letters
Headstone
1
he’s writing poems for the petite-bourgeoisie
who don’t want them OMG how can that be
he must have lived in another time when
men wore fedoras and horses clopped with
motor cars there he moved like a ghost
in the city writing poems like ghost signs
that fade silently while a flight of bats pass
below the moon the way seasons pass or
stories pass into the grave and cemetery dust
the way my father passed and never heard
of Ezra Pound or Lowell or even Eliot
about their poetry he could give a shit
there was a cloud of burnt perfume from
his fat cigar while mother dished out
potatoes on his plate after he came home
from work late a spoon a hand a silence
a boy can’t get it out of his head those
funeral flowers the aroma of the dead
that nursery rhyme oranges and lemons
say the bells of St. Clemens we are like
shellfish carrying our calcium caravans
a band of gypsies where habit is the auto-
pilot of desire oranges and lemons
a kaddish or a radish offered for the dead
what do we achieve by the art of words
after drinking from Wittgenstein’s well
art is artificial poems are about poems
Dante on his Dante-way had his Dante say
but I won’t send a motherfucker to hell just
let them get there in their own damn way
she takes the bait his marriage falls apart
the old Republic’s seen a better day
behold the worm that gnaws the heart
I head down the hall too much to drink
the roast the wine the talk of virtue and
philosophy now makes me stop to think
isn’t it true Plato we always want more
I’d love to turn around to see him stand
beckoning in the doorway like a whore
2
dead metaphors are about
as helpful as a dead father
try to
find a brilliant
set words that sums
it up the rose the thorn
a reason why we’re born
yo bitch make it new again
the process is the poem
forgive me I was too
hard on them flesh
from their flesh
one day you could be rummaging in the backyard and
turn over a stone and see something that shimmers
in the mud and that is like how one day he looks
in the mirror and sees he is in love(again)and it
is another foolishness but still is a surprise
that the once dry well has yet at the very
bottom that which glimmers in the
moonlight and so he lowers his
bucket and wrenches
up what he can
and drinks
you’d think
he’d know better
after the blizzard of ’67
a hand upon a thigh is not enough
worse still he wants more than he can get
yes the politics of desire is written down
because Monica Monica Monica
plays the pink harmonic
ashes ashes all fall
down
3
down
the ashes fall and fall
he plays the pink harmonica
oh dear Monica Monica Monica
yes the story of desire is written down
a child cries
and cannot write a poem
such is the world a dream a
sore a joy what is this growing
sour my boy regret lingers like the
canvas light above a field of snow what
is this going out this coming home to live
alone is practice for the grave a faith without
community was the way of life for Lazarus risen
from the dead but always to wear a mask of perfume
see how I string words the way my mother would
string our laundry along the sag of a clothesline
I would watch how my father’s shirts filled
with a breeze as if his ghost were upon
us and then turn to watch bees visit
the pink phlox that grow along
the backyard fence where
there is in shadows
a doom
here’s what they said in smokey
Paris cafés
you can live without religion
but not without art
Cézanne cleaned his paintbrush
after every stroke
my father had a failed heart
when winter covers our trace with shrouds
of snow so much we want will be erased
perhaps by shades perhaps by light
4
behind a comb of rusty colored trees
steam from the power plant billows up
against the Loess Hills white to gray
then more and more to end the day
I remember a sunset over the Ganges
the holy men are dressed in ashes
funny how the bloom comes and goes
or how the high jets write their vapor
trails and then below the bitter cold beats
down like a hammer on an iron plate
from my high window you see where
the river bends and a grid of streets
and then the dark where Omaha ends how
fortunate we are not yet to have the mass
graves of politics here but if you wish
to play that game then murder is at stake
if we could make it through the month
of expiation to have a life in a dilapidated
house with the curse of cats or not to be one
of the aborted with only stagnant puddles
of thaw for memories then we should be
thankful for today or any day because
the sense of it is mingled with desire beyond
my wit or sophomoric trust in dry philosophy
the clerics say they care but never give a shit
you know our wish is like a constant moth
we fly towards that sustaining fire even if it
is a pale light shining through a muted cloth
I had a friend who could have been a noble
Roman who had courage to die without help
from the gods I think of him come Mardi Gra
come play the evening raga listen as the tabla
pulses in with its heart beat rhythm see here
how flows the River of Arrows and there
the River of Sorrows how could such a love
ever find a place in the world it was pure
imagination it was desire and it was release
5
nowadays poets want to write prose poems because American art is all about facts like after I see the hawk take the pigeon I don’t see much more except how sunlight burns away the morning fog that clings to the river and every now and then there is a flash of chrome off cars that speed on the expressway and then tufts of feathers like snowflakes float past my window and later
I sit in Mr. Toad’s far from the noise of
the street and drink a beer to see above
the bar is a painting of an odalisque
who reclines on a couch with breasts
like twin moons in an alien heaven
while her leg disappears into shadows
and I remember Benares with its jigsawed
temples that press on smoke along the
Ganges where a man parts the water
as if it were the muddy Sea of Reeds
then lifts his dripping hands to heaven
that was the year of NO the Dante NO
now, the flame of a declining sun burns
its way into evening the centering gravity
of Omaha says I am homeward bound
listen, what is that knock upon the door
tell him to go away not yet just a little
more someone calls us here and someone
calls us all away cantant quasi cantium
nouvam that burns away the world and
makes the ash of love like new again
what is written, is spelled in lemon ink
and what is loved is loved through
a glass darkly and so they settled here
to live in sod houses and gave birth to
a son who saw in the ocean of prairie
and endless sky archangels announcing
the wheat will be cut out from the chaff
forsooth we are the forlorn sons of Cain
even if love is mistaken it is not wasted
River of Arrows River of Sorrows
we throw our shadow down and count
our yesterdays but not tomorrows
rain falls in the ocean that needs it not
Mumbai to Kolkata Kolkata to Agra
listen cecidet cecidet Babylon magna
Robert Klein Engler lives in enjoyable exile in Omaha, Nebraska.