Poetry |

“The Problem of Hope,” “Stiff Neck” and “A True Account of Talking with a Robin on the Mulch, Near My Radius Ordained”

The Problem of Hope

                         in memory John Ashbery

 

 1.

 

It stumps, the meagerness of hope,

which can never shout with

as full a throat as its opponents.

 

You discover you don’t want to hope,

and there’s absolutely no reason to.

All hope is latent,

 

the way all cats are opiated —

absurdly.

All hope is manic,

 

like a fastfood chain

trying desperately hard

to be good for you too.

 

Yet I believe

in the secret small work of hope.

 

2.

 

Who made hope forlorn anyway?

The nasty paradox of hope,

that it switches on just when, necessarily,

 

it can’t achieve its end.

If you ever were hopeful,

you’ll be hopeful again,

 

like the “lost” woman

who accidentally joined

the search party looking for her

 

and was, necessarily, found.

As a new apartment doesn’t feel like home

until you’ve been out all day

 

and come back at night,

hope settles in once you recognize

its current usefulness.

 

3.

 

Hope deferred

makes the heart sick,

but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

 

4.

 

When I think of

the old masters, whose hopes,

like shingles on a house,

 

have slipped out of notch,

 

fifty times I hope

for every cent

they never spent.

 

5.

 

Years start dying

and the man with hair the color

of dandelion fuzz

 

prepares to conclude

his cave-like jest.

He predicted much,

 

deduced not at all.

Imagine you have hope—

why would you reject

 

the ideas he prodigally included?

He tenders social hope,

evocations of pleasure

 

and solitude and how steadily

we now and then believe.

Petals drop through the fog

 

with abandon.

Fifty times you hope:

may your troubles be appeased.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

Stiff Neck

 

Left has nothing to teach me.

Right has nothing to show.

Why write a poem the public can’t use?

Why write one they can?

 

Here’s the window.  It hurts to turn away.

Someone’s traced an ache in haze

and called it the moon.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

A True Account of Talking with a Robin on the Mulch,

Near My Radius Ordained

 

What drama took place on the deck,

where I nursed a primitive state,

fear leading to anger!

With this, one July day

(my gray cat

sleeping beside me),

I avoided my poems

and the ways I could be of service.

The coming of fall,

the coming of fall —

I knew that my future was in loneliness,

in the hospital,

even in death.

Angst in the suburbs

is a despiséd thing.

I am a white middle-class woman

born in the 20thcentury,

enduring in the 21st,

who exists in herself,

answering her own ends,

who possesses

less than she wants

and more than she deserves.

 

On the deck I spoke out,

the words forced from me

by my ever-tyrannical

BIG FEELINGS,

“Why,” I asked “must it all

hasten so slowly?

Some story I tell,

with no pictures

and a bummer of an ending.”

I shouldn’t have expected an answer

but expectations linger,

just like memories.

No matter how much I had

that I didn’t deserve,

I wanted more, more,

more adjustments to the universe

so that some approving eye

always turned, cheerily, toward me.

With a torpor worthy of a brown bear,

I didn’t ask again,

but I couldn’t resist a final statement,

aloud, to the uncaring

suburban summer regalia:

“Here am I,” I whispered,

“oarless.”

 

“It’s a lovely confusion,

I have it myself,”

said a Robin, on the mulch,

full of wit and berries

(near my radius ordained).

Grateful for his attention

but unable to trust his wisdom,

I watched him, wary,

for a few minutes.

It was true. I observed

his utter whimsy and his

utter lack of conflict.

Trusting now, I began to speak

but before I could, he asked

“What are you working on?”

as if he were chatting at

a literary cocktail party!

“Frankly, Robin, I’m stymied.

A novel, an essay, a couple of poems…

all stopped dead.”

Hell no!” he chirupped.

“You of all people know

that inspiration feels terrific

but isn’t a great stockpiler.

And besides,

your ear, what an ear!

The world needs that.

Put all your future in it

and you’ll have stars in your ink.”

 

This bird, this glider, this chirruper,

whose cheer up, cheerily

woke me most mornings,

was a true friend!

I tried to be a friend to him:

“What brilliance!

Brilliance and beauty!”

At that moment,

a Mockingbird began screaming

at my gray cat,

my duststorm on the deck.

The cat dozed and had no wish

to attack the Mockingbird,

yet every morning

this screamer tormented him.

I was reminded of my anger.

I was angry at the Mockingbird

(though I knew the cat and I

are both natural predators)

and I was angry at aggression

wherever it occurs, and it occurred

everywhere that July.

 

The Robin saw.

“Breathe, dear! To a mother,

for example, as you well remember,

a tricycle can be more sinister

than a panther. And a wing

would be more eloquent

than that infernal screaming

but the poor thing doesn’t know it.

Anger is only useful if it makes you fly.

You have to work to activate anger,”

he continued,

cocking a sterner eye,

“work so that it enlivens

rather than oppresses,

I mean,

but it’s light work, not heavy.”

I did breathe deeper then,

and I swear the cat relaxed too.

What a very small compass is salvation!

“Thank you, Robin!”

 

“It’s time for me to go now,”

the Robin asserted melodiously.

“I have my impulses to follow!

Well, that, and I must feed myself.

See that you do it too.”

“Do which too?

Follow my impulses or …?”

But I knew that the only answer,

ever, is Both,

and he knew I knew.

Reluctant to let him go

I said, at the risk of seeming ungrateful,

“Robin, talking with you

has been a marvelous refreshment,

it reminds me of …”

“Vladimir and Frank, I know.

Well?” “Well, I’m just saying …

They had the Sun to talk to

and I have you.

And I wouldn’t trade,

believe me,

but the Sun is large, universal, fiery,

and full of majestic eruptions.

While you’re small, suburban,

intermittent,

and you modestly conceal

your fiery breast

under gray wings. Tell me,

is it because I’m a woman?”

 

“I don’t profess,” he replied,

“to understand the ways of the muse.

Certainly women’s work of all kinds

is shamefully undervalued.

But consider,

the Sun and I,

we each wake sleepers.

Some wake to light,

some to song.

Both seem equally charming

from my perspective,

and I don’t consider myself lesser.

I wake to light,

then I carry that light

through my song

to those still dreaming.

You’re still dreaming.”

With that, he flew,

the Mockingbird bowed

on his teetering branch,

and the day, the real day,

began.

 

 

 

 

 

Contributor
Kathleen Ossip

Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Do-Over, The Cold War, The Search Engine, and Cinephrastics. 

Posted in Featured, Poetry

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