A POSTMORTEM GUIDE - Stephen Dunn

                                        For my eulogist, in advance

Do not praise me for my exceptional serenity.

Can't you see I've turned away

from the large excitements,

and have accepted all the troubles?

Go down to the old cemetery; you'll see

there's nothing definitive to be said.

The dead once were all kinds—

boundary breakers and scalawags,

martyrs of the flesh, and so many

dumb bunnies of duty, unbearably nice.

I've been a little of each.

And, please, resist the temptation

of speaking about virtue.

The seldom-tempted are too fond

of that word, the small-

spirited, the unburdened.

Know that I've admired in others

only the fraught straining

to be good.

Adam's my man and Eve's not to blame.

He bit in; it made no sense to stop.

Still, for accuracy's sake you might say

I often stopped,

that I rarely went as far as I dreamed.

And since you know my hardships,

understand they're mere bump and setback

against history's horror.

Remind those seated, perhaps weeping,

how obscene it is

for some of us to complain.

Tell them I had second chances.

I knew joy.

I was burned by books early

and kept sidling up to the flame.

Tell them that at the end I had no need

for God, who'd become just a story

I once loved, one of many

with concealments and late-night rescues,

high sentence and pomp. The truth is

I learned to live without hope

as well as I could, almost happily,

in the despoiled and radiant now.

You who are one of them, say that I loved

my companions most of all.

In all sincerity, say that they provided

a better way to be alone.

FOR SOME A MOUNTAIN - Stephen Dunn

For some a mountain, say an Everest or a Kilimanjaro,

exists to be conquered, the kind of obvious big thing

my father, that valley dweller, would casually diminish.

What’s wrong with life in the lowlands, he’d say,

why not just look up, enjoy imagining

how you’d feel at the top? And interesting people,

if you need them, are everywhere. They can be found

in a glade or a clearing, even in a suburb.

 

My father is dead; he only has the words I remember

and choose to give him.

 

If I were to say my need to define myself

involves breathing air not many have taken in,

and the excitement of a little danger, I’d hear him say

Do some good work, mow the lawn, carry wood

from the woodpile. Don’t confuse the dangerous

with the heroic.

 

But the truth is I’d like to be a mountainizer,

someone who earns the pleasure of his reputation.

When it comes to women, I desire them married

to their own sense of accomplishment, each of us

going our own way, coming together when we can.

 

Not enough, he says. If they lack generosity

they take back what they give. If they have it

they remind you, ever so gently, that a man

who climbs mountains leaves behind his beloved.

 

It is impossible to win arguments with the dead.

 

Everywhere you go there’s danger of being a no one,

my father insists. Is he changing his position,

or is that willful me changing it for my sake?

The grave was always his destination, the modesty

of his ambition obscured now by lichen and moss.

Comes the mountain before the reputation, I say.

Comes the unsure footing, the likely fall, he says.

The Inheritance - Stephen Dunn

You shouldn’t be surprised that the place

you always sought, and now have been given,

carries with it a certain disappointment.

Here you are, finally inside, and not a friend

in sight. The only gaiety that exists

is the gaiety you’ve brought with you,

and how little you had to bring.

The bougainvillea outside your front window,

like the gardener himself, has the look

of something that wants constant praise.

And the exposed wooden beams,

once a main attraction, now feel pretentious,

fit for someone other than you.

But it’s yours now and you suspect

you’ll be known by the paintings you hang,

the books you shelve, and no doubt

your need to speak about the wallpaper

as if it weren’t your fault. Perhaps that’s why

wherever you go these days

vanity has followed you like a clownish dog.

You’re thinking that with a house like this

you should throw a big party and invite

a Nick Carraway and ask him to bring

your dream girl, and would he please also

referee the uncertainties of the night?

You’re thinking that some fictional

characters can be better friends

than real friends can ever be.

For weeks now your dreams have been

offering you their fractured truths.

You don’t know how to inhabit them yet,

and it might cost another fortune to find out.

Why not just try to settle in,

take your place, however undeserved,

among the fortunate? Why not trust

that almost everyone, even in

his own house, is a troubled guest?

THE PARTY TO WHICH YOU ARE NOT INVITED - Stephen Dunn

You walk in, your clothes dark
and strangely appropriate, an arrogance
about you as if you had a ramrod
for a spine. You feel posture-perfect.

When you speak, women move away.
You smile, and men see tombstones.
They think they know who you are,
that they could throw you out

as they could one man. But today you are
every man who has been omitted
from any list: how quickly they see
they would have no chance.

You pour yourself a drink,
as if ready to become one of them.
Under your skin, nerve endings, loose
wires, almost perceivable. Something

somewhere is burning. You tell them
you’ve dreamed of moments like this,
to be in their lovely house,
to have everyone’s attention. You ask

of the children, are they napping?
You extend your hand to the host,
who won’t take it, reminds you
you were not invited, never will be.

You have things in your pockets
for everybody. House gifts.
Soon you’ll give them out.
If only they could understand

how you could be ruined
by kindness, how much
you could love them
if they knew how to stop you.

Traveling - Stephen Dunn

If you travel alone, hitchhiking,

sleeping in woods,

make a cathedral of the moonlight

that reaches you, and lie down in it.

Shake a box of nails

at the night sounds

for there is comfort in your own noise.

And say out loud:

somebody at sunrise be distraught

for love of me,

somebody at sunset call my name.

There will soon be company.

But if the moon clouds over

you have to live with disapproval.

You are a traveler,

you know the open, hostile smiles

of those stuck in their lives.

Make a fire.

If the Devil sits down, offer companionship,

tell her you’ve always admired

her magnificent, false moves.

Then recite the list

of what you’ve learned to do without.

It is stronger than prayer.

HIS MUSIC - Stephen Dunn

It wasn’t that he liked being miserable.

He simply had grown used to wearing

a certain face, become comfortable

with his assortment of shrugs and sighs.

His friends said How are you?—

and prepared their sympathy cards.

Miserable was his style, his insurance

against life’s frightening, temporary joys.

And when the truly awful happened,

some rejection or loss,

how ready he was for its aftermath,

how appropriate his posture, his words.

Yet when she said she loved him

something silently wild and molecular

began its revolution; he would’ve smiled

if the news from the distant provinces

of his body had reached him in time.

He frowned. And did not allow the short sigh

which would have meant pleasure

but now, alone, was just old breath

escaping, the long ahhhh, that music

which soothed him, and was his song.

COLLECTING FUTURE LIVES - Stephen Dunn

Now that everybody was dead

only he and his brother knew

the blood secrets, the unequal

history each nervous system

keeps and rehearses

into a story, a life.

Over the years they’d agreed

to invent and remember

a long hum of good times,

love breaking through

during card games,

their father teaching them

to skip stones

under the Whitestone Bridge.

The smart liar in them

knew these stories

were for their children

who, that very moment

over dinner, were collecting

their future lives.

But sometimes

in their twice-a-year visits

late at night

when their wives had tired

of the old repetitions,

they’d bring up the silences

in the living room

after a voice had been raised,

father’s drinking, mother’s

long martyrdom before the gods

of propriety and common sense.

In their mannerisms

each could see the same ghosts.

And if they allowed themselves

to keep talking,

if they’d had enough to drink,

love would be all

that mattered, the love

they were cheated of

and the love they got,

the parental love

that if remembered at all

had been given, they decided,

and therefore could be given again.

AT HIS HOUSE - Stephen Dunn

In my friend's face it's not easy to separate

what's serenity, what's despair.

What the mouth suggests the eyes correct,

and what looks like acceptance

is a kind of détente, the world allowed

to encroach only so far.

At his house, we put aside

the large questions: Is there? And if so?

replace them with simple chores.

We bring vegetables in from the garden.

We shuck corn. Is it possible

to be a good citizen without saying a word?

Both his wives thought not, wanted love

to have a language he never learned.

He'd make wine for them from dandelions.

Sundays he'd serve them breakfast in bed.

In his toolbox he was sure he had a tool

for whatever needed to be fixed.

The deed reveals the man, he says.

I don't tell him that it's behind deeds

he and I often hide.

I've got a face for noon, a face for dusk,

a fact he lets slide. Both of us think friendship

is about what needn't be said. 

It seems we're a couple of halves, men

almost here, hardly there. At his house less

feels good. I always come back for more.

Solving the Puzzle - Stephen Dunn

I couldn’t make all the pieces fit,

so I threw one away.

No expectation of success now,

none of that worry.

The remaining pieces seemed

to seek their companions.

A design appeared.

I could see the connection

between the overgrown path

and the dark castle on the hill.

Something in the middle, though,

was missing.

It would have been important once.

I wouldn’t have been able to sleep

without it.

THE MAN WHO NEVER LOSES HIS BALANCE - Stephen Dunn

He walks the high wire in his sleep.

The tent is blue, it is perpetual

afternoon. He is walking between

the open legs of his mother

and the grave. Always. The audience knows this

is out of their hands. The audience

is fathers whose kites are lost, children

who want to be terrified into joy.

He is so high above them, so capable

(with a single, calculated move)

of making them care for him

that he's sick of the risks

he never really takes.

The tent is blue. Outside is a world

that is blue. Inside him

a blueness that could crack

like china if he ever hit bottom.

Every performance, deep down,

he tries one real plunge

off to the side, where the net ends.

But it never ends.

At the Restaurant - Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people

and a public place the wrong place

for what you're thinking--

stop this now.

Who do you think you are?

The duck à l'orange is spectacular,

the flan the best in town.

But there among your friends

is the unspoken, as ever,

chatter and gaiety its familiar song.

And there's your chronic emptiness

spiraling upward in search of words

you'll dare not say

without irony.

You should have stayed at home.

It's part of the social contract

to seem to be where your body is,

and you've been elsewhere like this,

for Christ's sake, countless times;

behave, feign.

Certainly you believe a part of decency

is to overlook, to let pass?

Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan's

black dress, Paul's promotion and raise.

Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.

Insufficient, the merely decent man.

Sadness - Stephen Dunn

It was everywhere, in the streets and houses,

    on farms and now in the air itself.

It had come from history and we were history

    so it had come from us.

I told my artist friends who courted it

    not to suffer

on purpose, not to fall in love

    with sadness

because it would naturally be theirs

    without assistance,

I had sad stories of my own,

    but they made me quiet

the way my parents’ failures once did,

    nobody’s business

but our own, and, besides, what was left to say

    these days

when the unspeakable was out there being spoken,

    exhausting all sympathy?

Yet, feeling it, how difficult to keep

    the face’s curtains

closed - she left, he left, they died -

    the heart rising

into the mouth and eyes, everything so basic,

    so unhistorical

at such times. And then, too, the woes

    of others would get in,

but mostly I was inured and out

    to make a decent buck

or in pursuit of some slippery pleasure

    that was sadness disguised.

I found it, it found me, oh

    my artist friends

give it up, just mix your paints,

    stroke,

the strokes unmistakably will be yours.