Two Uncollected Poems
Editor’s Note
In 2014, when we were editing issue number eleven, which featured a tribute to James Schuyler, I obtained copies of some of his uncollected poems from the James Schuyler Papers at UC San Diego. For whatever reason, James Meetze and Simon Pettet did not include them in Other Flowers, their excellent volume of Schuyler’s uncollected poems. I transcribed a handful of these never-before-published poems and we included them in Court Green. There were two that I hesitated to type out. They were longer than the others, and seemed raw and unfinished—riddled with cross-outs and revisions in Schuyler’s not-always-easy-to-decipher hand. Recently I came across the drafts and gave them a second look. As I studied them, I realized that it was possible to transcribe copies that remained faithful to Schuyler’s intentions. I made only minute changes: corrected a few grammatical and factual errors. And added two footnotes, for clarity, to “A Friend.”
These poems were written in what could be called Schuyler’s late period—the years between completing the poems in A Few Days in the early 1980s and his death in 1991. Schuyler’s work became more diaristic, more casually intimate, over time. This is especially apparent in “April 9, 1988”: In his room at the Chelsea Hotel, he revels in the mundane details of the day, showing us just how eventful the uneventful can be. The subject of “A Friend,” according to Schuyler biographer Nathan Kernan, is Johnny Porter, the eldest son of Fairfield and Anne Porter, who died in 1980. Johnny was afflicted with a form of autism; Schuyler taught him how to use a tape recorder (described in the poem), an activity which became important to him. Kernan pointed me toward Anne Porter’s “For My Son Johnny” (included in her Living Things: Collected Poems), a mother’s moving elegy to the son she has outlived.
—David Trinidad
April 9, 1988
My cat, the cat
Tom gave me
when he went away (“. . . baked
ninety loaves of sumptuous bread,
risen to perfection, each loaf
shaped like the nave of a great cathedral”)
lies, a big furry snail,
coiled on the warm transformer: “. . . and ‘Lady
be Good’ to get things
going.” Barbara,
a tabby with white
socks, white belly, white throat
up onto her face: if I
reach down and tickle
her ear,
she lifts her head
up quick and gives a little
“Yerp:” not
a talkative cat. Behind me the light
bright yellow tulips—
I bought them early yesterday at the all-night
Korean market—
in a blue bottle
(cobalt blue), and
at the end of the room
a lily stem
bears two flowers
curling back their star-
fish
stippled with red
on rose
petals
and thrusting out their sex.
It’s
the tulips
I love: the spring morning lightness
of their yellow
and green,
green of leaves and light green striped and tipped
on petals, the brooding blue
of that bottle, a blue
of no sky
or sea
I’ve ever seen: dark,
glassy.
I’d name,
if I had to, the tulips
Lemon Sherbert
no, Lemon Ice:
a petal on the tongue
would burn, would freeze “. . . if
you’re gonna leave,
please, won’t you
set me free” (But no way
Lemon Sorbet).
Before seven,
after six,
after breakfast,
gray, raw and windy,
I go buy
four
grapefruit—white,
not pink—
heavy and big,
in a thin white plastic bag,
as an elephant’s balls
while Barbara
has her morning romp:
today, she stalks
the newspapers
on the floor
and then:
attack! Paper
flies everywhere, sheets
of mice, I guess. As long as she’s happy.
2
And so, as sure as Monday
follows Sunday, she is,
a family-size croissant
on the Hudson’s Bay blanket
on my bed. I
“Am goin’ crazy with the blues
Since I have heard heart-breakin’ news”
that I’ve lost
my good, my new
reading glasses I like so much. And
their case. I
mentally retrace my steps:
a Sunday
clearer than any bell
“Now Thomas, one of the twelve,
called the Twin, was not
with them when Jesus came.”
Quia vidisti me, Thoma.
Still had them coming home by way
of the bank,
and later, at this desk,
and looking up
what time the game
began: 1:30
greatest of pitchers
Doc Gooden
greatest of first-basemen
Keith Hernandez
ultimate third-baseman
Mike Schmidt
and with V8 Juice in mind
went to the supermarket,
at the corner
posted letters: did I
post my specs? I
sincerely doubt it. And used
my distance glasses to watch
the game and
waking this dark Monday a.m. found
no brown case beside the bed
or: REWARD OFFERED.
“. . . fire races through home
in Queens . . .”
“. . . tonight’s the night
in tinsel-town . . .”
Sortes Virgilianae
might fumigate my mind
“I cannot say but this very sudden
and awful event
has strongly affected me.”
John Constable to C.R. Leslie, 1832
Apt. Guess
I’ll go
wash my hair and syringe my ears
with vinegar. Maybe,
shave. No:
no shave. It’s Monday.
Later.
Cleaner.
Wiser:
Barbara was sleeping
on the stupid glasses
secreted
in a fold of the candy-striped white blanket
“What a difference a day makes
Twenty-four little hours . . .”
Most fuss, I find,
is so much never mind.
A Friend
I am, as they say, into Soul:
I listen a lot these days to Brook
Benton, though at the moment
the Duke is on the machine and the song
“Duke’s Place” a lively one
soon to switch to my fave
“Mood Indigo” : I can hear it
forever and forever and forever
We leaned together on the
mystery table of many woods you
understood so quickly that one must
thread the tape from the spool
here and the microphone
hang down facing this speaker
and forget about stereo
your tape is monaural
(here it is, “Mood Indigo”)
you had so many abilities life
never let you explore: life
is cruel and there are many saints
I know for sure you are one
Outside our bathroom we chat
I in pj’s and a yellow robe:
you naked, handsome, no
“swimmer’s skin” you went
swimming every chance you got
and what were we chatting about?
I say, in hope of knowing what
you think of a much-loved song
“How about ‘East Side, West Side’?”
and get the ultimate put-down:
that cliché! that chestnut!
Wow! Was your taste selective!
So you and your mother go
to Mary Poppins and hear
that greatest of singing stars
(sorry, I like hyperbole and
overblown roses: I
prefer the bitter taste
of a liquid tranquilizer)
Julie Andrews sing
“A Spoonful of Sugar”
and Jane Darwell in a farewell
cameo as the Bird Woman
on the steps of a simulated
St Paul’s and Ma Joad*
sings who-cares-what in a dubbed-
in voice and the terrific
climax: all the chimney sweeps
in London dancing and leaping:
in truth the life of a chimney
sweep was cruel, victims of sadism
here they dance in heavenly ecstasy
and we love it, your mother, you and I.
You became a Catholic and asked
was it OK to go
each Sunday to the church of your choice?
It was OK.
So much to remember, so little space
and time (good grief! “Mood Indigo”
again: so now for Peggy Lee and her
subtle rhythms) and Barbara**
says, “He died quite suddenly
in the woods in New Hampshire.”
Huh? You lived part of the year
in Vermont and your mother prepared
me for this in a quiet voice “two
attacks” : you did what I always want to do:
gnaw all the meat off the bone
and get food all over my face.
As John Keats said, “Already
with thee! tender is the night . . .”
and the bright constellations
shimmy and shake in your honor
and from the Blessed Virgin
colors and names of gems descend
in a rain of names of gems
and colors and flowers and the moon
rises tonight like a round of camembert
all is understood: all is forgiven
what is there to forgive? Nothing
at all and Isobel Baillie
sings “Let the Bright Seraphim”
to Dennis Brain’s obbligato
on horn and vigorous men in kilts
are marching about as you play
your tapes and swing your arms
and shout with pleasure the sheep
and the goats are sorted out
and are the goats forgiven? I
hope so for in the hospital
my roomie said, “When I saw you
naked I thought of an old goat.”
Perhaps your exuberance will guide
us all into heaven with its
pavines of gold and even
the Guest will be welcome Peggy
Lee says “I believe in love . . .”
and Heidi goes over the hill
to her grandfather’s
Editor’s Footnotes
*Jane Darwell played Ma Joad in the 1940 film The Grapes of Wrath
**Poet Barbara Guest
Photo credit: Chris Felver