MOMENT TO MOMENT: A HISTORY |
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Yesterday I
answered a letter from Joanna, a young woman in New York, who observed that I write a
great many poems having to do with love. Sometimes I’ve used romance as a canvas for
an entire book. It usually involves the device of a diary to make the individual poems
come together as a story line; And Autumn Came & Listen To The Warm were both diaries.
I do, in fact, keep a diary and a daybook, trying to jot down something in it every day.
At one point it got so personal that the first instruction in my will now provides that
upon my demise certain diaries are to be destroyed. Secrets are secrets and I prize myself
on keeping them. Without being around to sort out the fact from fiction it doesn’t
seem fair to involve others in my ramblings that might feel compromised or ill at ease.
When and how does poetry move between fact and fiction? I don’t believe any poet
could tell you that. . . . this one certainly couldn’t.
Moment To Moment was first published by Cheval Books in 1972. In the main it was the diary
of an episode in my life that took place in Holland. The following year a slightly revised
version appeared in England through W.H. Allen, omitting seven poems under the heading
"Sketches of Friends".
I was never completely happy with either of the first two editions of "Moment To
Moment" so later on I added several prose sections to the Amsterdam part of the book,
dropped 18 poems that had appeared in both earlier editions under the headings
"Pieces of Glass" and "Coming of Age". And, I added 19 completely new
poems based on experiences in Mexico, entitled "A House By The Sea." This
final version of the book was published in September 1974 by Simon & Schuster in the
United States. One poem that managed to survive all three editions appears under the title
"Another Monday: Two Months Later" but is better known as "Now I Have The
Time."
What follows is a winter passage from a longer prose section entitled Hotel De
L’Europe. Two poems, "Saturday Noon" and "Saturday Night" close
out today’s flight plan.
- RM 11/13/98
Later On
I wake up. Wondering, not knowing where I am.
What time is it? Where am I? Geographically, Holland. In my thoughts and in my head I am
no place. Nowhere that I have been before. I am away, that much is so. Nothing is
familiar. But it has been this way for some days now.
I pass by mirrors and walk with my reflection, go out in the cold Dutch night and see my
breath before me, buy things and pay for them with money from the bottom part of my jeans,
elicit smiles and sometimes get them back, write my name and see it on the page in front
of me, throw popcorn to those few brave birds who still brave winter. People not known to
me recognize me and so, I am.
I participate, act out, think. All these things are tangibles, done, seen by me. I am
alive. I function.
If I sleep the wrong way and wake up knotted, I feel the pain. I drink too much and the
headache every other morning is real. It takes the same time going as it always did. I
caught my finger in the door a week ago and the swelling hasn’t yet gone down. Though
it almost never rings, I answer the telephone and hear myself speak. Proof that I’m
alive. I react, I have reactions.
But I am not here; as sure as I am not in Boston or driving through Detroit with Jack. I
cannot discern how long I’ve been away or if I’m still in transport. I might be
on the edge of dying or living. Clearly I am on the edge.
- from "Moment To Moment, 1975
This Day In History
The oddest thing happened on this day in
history, nothing. It was as if it was Saturday or something and all the historians took
the day off. Hope you make some personal history today or tonight.
- RM 11/13/98 |
TWO POEMS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT |
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Saturday
Noon
Here now the maples trees
ejaculating in the fall wind.
They’ll be bare in only hours
while the wind not even breathless
will rape and rampage
on the higher hills.
Such an effortless excess,
those light limbs letting go,
but given the wind’s full passion,
what willow would not
bend to it?
The pines sweep down
the sky’s broad bottom
uninterrupted by the fog
and not bedazzled by the rain.
Each a many fingered broom
not pretending to be stately
more uncommon or more useful
than a simple broom.
Saturday Night
To see them dance
is always such a marvel
whether they run down
the length of Strauss
or stand in place for Stony End.
Their motions are as fluid
as a kind of liquid neon,
even on a floor so crowded
that each of them appears
to be the other’s
next of kin.
The dancing
like the darkness
has no starting place
and seemingly no real end.
If you come here
three nights running
you begin to feel
the night starts only
with your arrival
and stops as quickly
when you go.
I wasn’t dancing
but I wasn’t standing still.
I wasn’t hunting, but I hoped.
New Year’s Eve did not fill up
the forefront of my mind.
I didn’t need tomorrow
only now.
Maybe I stayed longer
than I’d planned
for with the music
and the lateness of the hour
before I’d finished living now
I was driving through tomorrow.
Later on the street
the last fall leaves
were flying through
the railings
to float
along
the dark
canal.
Another evening maybe:
with the winter dead ahead
I had three dozen nights
lined up and waiting
no different than the one
I’d just come through.
I could be content
to walk back slowly
and finally slide down into
the same safe security
that only hotel beds afford.
Knowing that it waited
empty in the darkness
my footsteps quickened.
- from "Moment to Moment," 1972, 1973,1974 |
