In Memorium

FREDERIC WILL

FREDERIC WILL

SIX POEMS

I: SUBAQUATIC

I suspect we go down into

ourselves, mate, as deep as we can swim.

That is the depth.

I descry the perennial figures there.

They emerge to the seeing blobbed.

Fishlip lust, loose at the gills,

Charges of hightail salmon

pricked. Learnéd

philosopher seals

glaucous of eye.

The Boys.

Through what I am.

Indigenous hosts.

I raise my tube through the weeds-

you see it pass.

Its bubbles convince the wary

that I have survived myself.

2: IN TIME OF TAPPING

I left microphones in my own wall

there was no embassy.

The delegates

from the foreign countries

had taken the latest planes.

I was completely alone.

In the medulla

and under the fingerskins

in the impressions of the toes

the scalp, its follicles.

And listened there

and heard

rumbling the slight

imaginable torrent of the blood.

There were descriptions of me

in other minds

but nowhere

anything like this.

I went to the window

organs and all

and slashed

the recumbent world

with glances.

4: IN MEMORIAM

I went out into the immensity

(in burying mood) and looked around.

The middle of inspiration, dull,

in touch by sight with one hill

an acreage of huts and distant sea.

So this is the Greece I am,

not swollen but hardly mute,

though far from the nearest shepherd.

It was the excellent midnoon

most feared. The priests were asleep

in various revelations.

And advancing from town to town

I could see the pretense of the sky

that was for these men prodigious.

I saw an evocative lamb of god.

Toward evening the shingles of other roofs.

I came to the haggard square where

plane-trees chattered the evening in.

A dozen old man birds were cackling.

The funeral was underway

in the softdomed church's hall.

I had known the bereaved before

in the center of various losses.

And lost myself in the group.

At the casket's corners angels

of asphalt sealed the defeating lid.

We took the road through town

at the blackening hour.

Chickens and dogs surveyed.

At the graveyard edge we turned.

FREDERIC WILL

Through thickets of yew to the pit.

And stood there holding our breaths

for the priest to take.

Then watched the descent and shovels.

And strewed our particular salt,

On that ground we were first ourselves.

5: NE EN ILLINOIS

Among others it is especially

to be sought, whatever it is.

There chance yields at least to concern.

For others are eminents of concern

in their yellow jackets, ties

knotted or flowing, shoes of suede

or manners of love wholly

expectable yet never met

in Urbana, Illinois.

Among others other childhoods.

They are not held to fault, nor you.

Simply there were other gardens,

Others who coddled or scolded

other sounds to nipple to language.

I do obeisance, holding

back only a snickersworth

and that most nearly hidden.

The United Nations.

The guy next door.

The long fleet rows of cars

with unknown faces.

The slate Atlantic, Europe bound.

Among others.

Or the I who is other.

6: FOR A CHILDHOOD

Charles and Ross, I thought of you,

Crossing the park this afternoon.

It was one of those afternoons.

And the park was bare except of things.

We had begun, almost begun, together.

In the long afternoons. Illinois,

Constructing childhoods. The days

Then as now end with this kind of sun.

I will tell you a miracle as a result.

We have not parted. Something essential.

The grackles crow still as shifting

Their forms like evil hags in the elms.

Urbana was manifest. Today too.

There is an equality in the thing

Hidden below the intensity of the thing.

This we cannot unbalance.

Or the impossible virtue of aging.

I see us now in extremis

By the tennis court. Sweat

Flowing like unction over our wrists.

And imagine you tonight over books.

Reading or leaning against yourselves.

Containing the opened world

With the certitude of dying men.