T. Merrill
T. (Tom) Merrill is a poet, painter and photographer who prefers to let his
words, paintings and photographs speak for themselves. In fact, it took a
considerable amount of persuasion on our part to get him to reveal so much as
his name. But once we had earned his trust, Tom agreed to give us a number of
his poems in the form of "exclusives," which delights us, and hopefully will
delight you also.
Frequent Flyer Program
Life sometimes seems like slower suicide,
Since taking happy flights is half what kills:
The fuel consumed, the surge and beat past dawn
Of countless re-accelerated thrills.
Still, why put off all flying stunts till heaven
When now or never's when to claim your due—
With yeast to hand, and Sodom yet uncrushed
Why not let geysers gush in Xanadu?
Embarrassment abates inside a cloud,
Where blushing selves more freely join the act—
Sworn tipplers lose and find themselves in fog,
With other trippers who steer off the track.
Some say it's best to live before you die,
And silent choirs of angels all know why.
Bypassing The Mill
Man added to our last reward the torture
Of doing things one hates, on old death row—
And as grape turns to raisin in the scorcher,
Aghast his slaves all face where they must go.
Condemned though innocent, one serves one's time
Because...because—it seems the only choice?
And while the world mechanically wheels by,
One does what seems required with muted voice.
Yet there are those who do not bear the yoke,
But find a way around the rote ordeal—
Who let sweet Chemineaud and the odd toke
Command their hours and get them primed to feel,
Who if they waste in some half-snuffed Gomorrah,
Still let Old Faithful spout and tend the flora.
The Marionette Show
Back on his business, the king's men come
In search of a role, a stint with the leery,
A ticket to pipedreams, new means when they're done
To breathe hallowed air and seldom grow weary.
He jockeys them well, their coarse, grainy lord,
A puppeteer whisking them to and fro
From treasuries tapped, to divine reward,
Sweet pinches of salt burned after each show.
His slaves labor hard, and play a part too,
Sometimes so eager to please and suffice
It enters your head that it might be you
They are seeking, and not their true love's price,
You even who might be pulling the strings—
As if one could rival the king of kings.
Personal Exemption
Though almost every time he spoke
His nose was sure to grow,
Truth's beauty did not much concern
Our Old Pinocchio—
Except in love, where pugs were all
And unequivocally
He'd warn each passing schoolgirl crush:
Just never lie to me!
An Ideal Substitution
Erase, erase, erase—call up a blank,
Let nothing be where nothing was before,
A nothing that seemed something—only see,
Behind your eye, some piece of dead decor.
Empty your head of haunters, wring and wring
Desire's root until you squeeze it dry,
Gorge on ideals, till bored by everything,
Lapsed and replete, your mind is free to die.
Ever and always singing their old tune:
"You won't be disappointed, O you'll see!
Back and back we'll all be coming soon,
Prepare yourself for promised ecstasy"—
And onward ticks the clock, and no one knocks.
Time to review some ancient mental buttocks.
On the Urgency of Replenishing the Workforce
When all earth's paths are bound to double back
Upon themselves, no matter what we do,
It somehow seems mere critical presumption
To be demanding anything of you
As if one bore more claim to any right.
The fly is on the wheel, and we are on it,
All brought around in time, to something black,
Dumb and unknowing, cured of every zeal,
The race's bluster, and all pride of reason.
Enough to bear with that, to where it leads
Without a superadded servitude.
No wonder some slip harness and secede,
Go snatching wages where and how they dare,
Then fling them cavalierly in the air.
Time in Eternity
When you were as an angel in my arms,
Had laid your bare head just below my chin,
Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms
My whole youth's starward longing could not win;
With still the murmur of your love in me,
Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,
I wished that there might start eternity
And seal forever that sweet envelope;
And as it did, my thoughts are now for you
As every star is blotted by the sun,
And so the sun itself
Has perished too,
And with it, every dream of mine
But one.
The Rock of the Redeemer
Each week he orbits back again to mine
Old quarries, prop the faithful, and be swept
Rock-borne from door to door, through days and nights
And on to where revered remains are kept.
Some groomed disciple then will softly keep
Long watch, until the moment when at last
All done with sacrifice, the rock rolled back,
The lamb bursts forth, intent on breaking fast;
So weekly feasts are hastily prepared,
By way of thanks for many feats performed
And toils endured to keep old fans attached—
Some scourging, blood, and other gifts to leaven
The outlook of his flock, which deems the rock
His church stands on, the keystone of their heaven.
Madame LaBouche
Her ears pricked up so much, Madame
LaBouche, decrying all disturbance
Insisted sounds around be less
City-like and more suburban.
One bistro gave Madame no rest
Until it was at last subdued,
And vexed by yakky cabbies next,
She finally got their stand removed.
Yet still, some night-owl might abort
The dreamshift of LaBouche's week,
And pop her prized unconsciousness
By passing with a piercing shriek,
Or other nuisances emerge—
But when, for my part, out a window
I spot Madame surveying things,
Hard eye a-gleam, arms set akimbo
All poised to nail some passerby
With shrill bursts from her magic flute—
I see the sole noisemaker I
Have lately dreamed of going mute.
Behind Enemy Lines
"I have learned that to be with those I like
is enough."-----Walt Whitman
Spotted where dropped, its neat, unread
Still folded pages testified
I'd been afloat inside my head,
So buoyed by a presence I'd
Escaped resorting to the trends,
Or tracking our squirearchy's scheme
For locking my more wayward friends
Out of the landscape of their dream.
Then—lift for lift—I'd played chauffeur—
Slipped out an outcast who slips in
And braves the backlash of the pure
To smuggle me my favorite sin
Or just pass out a room away
While I drift in my mind all day.
That Old-Time Religion
"Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy
your philosophy of life, too."-----John Ashbery, from "My Philosophy Of Life"
Ashbery wishes us good times,
And me, I hope they won't abate.
I want the moments I have now
Never to evaporate.
I've made a niche, and won some thrills
By luck at playing hit or miss—
Enough to keep my outlook rich
And life appearing generous.
Since one now holds a special claim,
I tend desire's lesser leaks
Until that bronze funicular
Returns to run me to the peaks
And sets an eager artist free
To blanch a canvas jauntily.
-----------pour Beekerson Fleurimond
A Loan and A Lease
He lay so quietly I reached
Over to feel if he was warm;
Hearing no breath, I needed proof
No chill was on that too-still form.
He came without his one-track side,
Just humbly handsome and polite,
And it was good of him to both
Show himself and spend the night.
A switch I got to mute the bells
Stays off or on as I allow,
But at the moment keeps the peace.
My house will not withstand its flaws,
But while my lucky star shines on
I'm hoping to renew the lease.
Come Lord and Lift
Come Lord, and lift the fallen bird
Abandoned on the ground;
The soul bereft and longing so
To have the lost be found.
The heart that cries—let it but hear
Its sweet love answering,
Or out of ether one faint note
Of living comfort wring.
Letting in the Draft
Like birds, my friend, our goose will soon be cooked
And there'll be little else to hold our view;
There's prob'lly somewhere else that someone's looked
But I have no idea where or who.
I know it's not myself who's speaking now,
It must be he who comes on certain nights
And gives me something special to endow
The reading public with, on their rare flights.
It's . . . well, like leaving earth a while and then,
Far out among the visions one beholds . . . .
Just . . . letting you be you, or just pretend
You weren't in sight of all the constant scolds.
It has its way of making one content.
I'm not so much a rebel as a gent.
Officially Speaking
What nugget gleaned may we bestow
To mark the passing of the torch
Who watch the darkness watch us go
Steaming across a lamp-lit porch.
A few steps off our haloed stage
The boundless night with sealed lips
Counts out the customary wage:
An ineluctable eclipse.
It comes to us in daily thought
And haunts us every day we breathe,
How we without a hope have sought
To love where we could only grieve
And only honed a skill so wise
To take a sage to his demise.
So Seasons Sound
I speak to them, I notice, in my strange
Yet native tongue, and let them guess what's new
Where out beyond the mythic land I range
And storied wonders cannot gloss the view.
So some against annulment preen their sound,
As if all slates were not to be wiped clean
Or honers of a bloodgift were less bound
For all their fanfare never to have been.
So seasons sound their trumpets and subside,
Inflate and wizen for sweet nature's sake,
And while swung oceans fling to either side
The latest chosen for a foamy wake
The news still spreads our goose is hard to cook
And no blank page will mark us in Time's book.
On A Proposed New Course
It's said they keep their distance, perhaps are
Vainly cryptic, for all their humble prose,
And no close kin to any erstwhile master.
Well surely it's not everyone who knows
To tune his lyre to a living ear.
Some find their vaunted taste for our true tongue
Belied by phrases ringing less familiar
Than those of those we daily prate among.
The outworn ousted way was out of touch.
These birthed a lingo nearer to our own,
Clipped clean of artifice and with a much
More earthy lean.
—Sweet secrets wrapped in loam!—
A full house, then, will be assured, of course?
What native could not wish to master Morse?
Novenas
After defeat, in grief's most hopeless hours,
With no resort remaining but the void,
The vanquished yet may turn to hidden powers,
Begging protection for a heart destroyed.
As crown or cross perhaps recalls some scene,
Bead by sad bead they may beseech the air,
As though in precincts silent and unseen
Lost angels could be helped by human prayer.
Each may, as if some hearing had begun
In secret parts where all the dead yet live,
Cry out to walls the innocence of one
Whom now no other aid is left to give.
And whether justice anywhere may reign,
None here can prove their witness was in vain.
In God We Trust
Absolve yourselves, believe them saved,
Whom hungrily you brought to fare
As chance decrees, and leave to them
The fortune to which you rose heir.
Now theirs shall be the kingdom too,
This one and that, and all they hold,
All marvels present, and as well
Fresh wonders when the flesh turns cold.
All you who by blind pulse renew
The primal blessing cast in heat,
And to a season's course entrust
Frail issue weather can defeat,
Who from flung seed grew anxious too—
Deny earth feeds on them and you.
A Brief Alarm
Like everything, this too will soon be lost,
Forever out of sight and out of mind,
A brief alarm resorbed into the sum
Of passing things that leave no trace behind.
For its duration, it would summon all
To a restraint heroic—to be brave
Beyond all generations gone before,
And make a sacrifice more sure to save:
To starve the ground, and lay no further feast
For bloated Earth's unflagging appetite,
But be content to plow redemptively
A barren field in which no seed seeks light
And make your plots the last wherein to toss
A harvest raised for neverending loss.
A Demurral
Why keep your senses grounded here,
Or let them have you sharp and clear
Who wakened you to numbered days
To yoke you to their futile ways?
While tickings winch you nearer toward
Your execution and reward,
Why not imbibe—or pick your trip,
Let them ram home the standard script
As you, absorbing what you like
Risk transport on a one-way flight;
Let our grand architects complain,
Who pull their mighty weight in vain,
Only to end as they began,
Fragile freight of a circling hand
That flicks the feeble out and in
And each back to his origin.
A Slice of Life
When two drugged men in Bucharest
Met recently for a repair,
And one became less self-extending
In consequence of the affair,
Just how the sleeper sensed the change,
Or by what absent feeling learned
He was not quite his former self
When duly consciousness returned,
Who knows—but in a clearcut way,
Though their engagement took a twist
Unscheduled and surprising, he
Yet found himself as promised, fixed
Since in a burst of rage, his healer,
Soused, had scythed his foremost feeler.
Cell Theory
Where they now go to catch a wink
Who stretched out on the green before
Or made hard benches beds because
They lacked a key to any door,
Who knows, but parks gone tenantless
And prisons crammed and overfull
Suggest how sudden aesthetes made
The local scene so wonderful.
Fat tabs for sleeping out of doors
Collectible in cash or time
Now equal several millions owed
Le ville by ones without a dime,
And jail for all nonpaying guests
Keeps flowerpaths more picturesque.
Square Times Blues
The only show in town shut down,
Dispatched to some unknown address,
A leafy peace has settled in
Where none had come to convalesce.
Le carnaval, for all those tricks
Condignly sampled on the cheap,
Still leavened with expectancy
A long day's journey into sleep.
Perhaps in some unpurged locale
Yet free for all to occupy,
Our banished horde of hawkers hail
And hook such gamer passersby
As we who, undeprived had plied
A city not yet countrified.
A Mon Vieux Mon'ray'al
Not to clip sick summer leaves,
Nor watch them drop like autumn gold
Into a leafy lane nor see
A mimic's rustic dream unfold,
Not to endure a vision void
Of promise more than early sleep,
Not for a filtered view was my
Balcony seat acquired cheap.
It was because all clocks had stopped
Before the wholesale cleansing came,
And for a common ground where most
Could set themselves and stake a claim,
Or loose and slick and maverick, roam
The scene, and almost feel at home.
Palmistry in Paradise
Strange, how in the
park today,
Three wheeled around on me and one
Required the reason I was there;
No doubt some wondered what I'd done,
As I, best as I could impaired
By lips gone gummy with alarm,
In forced defense invoked the plot's
Exclusive new Edenic charm.
Directed—"for our safety"—next
To show my palms, I did; and then,
"We want no more dead bodies here,"
Said he, who may, to weed out men
Check lifelines of all comers who
Resemble him he said I do.
Preparing for the Pageant
Our tiny central park transformed,
Renewed, its state-appointed heirs
On brighter workdays come at noon
To claim the space an hour as theirs.
Few, of the once emboldened who
Had plied a seedy green unchecked,
Now brave the odds and navigate
The precincts of the New Elect.
Unleashed by some contestant's dream,
Wry rovers licensed to coerce
Compliance, hound and hold them back,
While I, who watch the tide reverse,
See, where the undisturbed now tarry
A pretty city cemetery.
Death in Life
Though his demise was not like that
Of billions lodged beneath the ground,
Yet it was cast as such to one
Who must believe him buried now.
It helped sidestep analysis
Of faith's demolishment by phone,
And rendered pointless idle queries
About affairs no longer known.
Should he be spotted on some rue
Not visibly yet void of breath,
That hunched ghost shinning into view
Might but recall his sudden death,
The funeral held, the obit quoted,
And down an aisle a coffin toted.
Reactionary Phase
In martial mode they pass and pass,
On bicycles, in cars, on foot,
Relentlessly parading proof
Old laissez-faire has gone kaput.
But strategy grows more refined:
Compounding tensions on the rise,
In unaccustomed spots appear
Sly pairs positioned to surprise.
You had supposed yourself alone,
When something then still out of view
Was poised to startle your repose.
Seated on a park bench two
The other day—I felt their eyes—
Tracked traffic in New Paradise.
US In Them
The long neglected park now blooms,
Is groomed, subdued; its tame affairs
Kept bland by badgering patrols
Who promenade the streets in pairs.
The shift appears about complete,
From hub of local untaxed trade
To guarded garden spot reserved
For workers less covertly paid.
Cyclists wheeling in at night
In search of rebel remnants scan
The iron-fenced perimeter,
But beams disclose a vacant land,
Beachhead secure from blade to bough,
A strong south wind prevailing now.
Diluvian Meditation
More and more, as he kept tracking new
Awakenings of flesh, and nothing served
To ease the pained awareness out of mind,
He feared his final bill for life was due.
As rivers trespass fields in a flood,
Defy containment, spill their banks and run
To regions rarely focused on, so spread
Such poisons as men nurture in their blood.
Though apprehensive, he resolved to wait,
Content to ply his pleas as antidote
And hope a miracle might detour fate,
And while odd feelings preyed upon his peace
Supposed, if something had him by the throat,
This way or that, sensation yet would cease.
Confidence Man
To prove the seasoned skeptic still
Hopeful enough to cheat,
He plied the same smooth promises
His doubles never keep,
Then pocketed his gains, and left
A fool to fume regret
While watching clockhands calculate
One more dishonored debt.
Unwithered
Unwithered by all casting out
My demon drives me yet
Down the dark path that always ends
In sorrow and regret,
And leaves me to repent again
My neverending part
In injuring a perfect love,
And breaking my own heart.
Forever Lacking
However well you show the way,
My brave and ailing child,
By meeting every demon with
A spirit angel-mild,
Still I go plunging toward regret,
And cannot learn your art,
Forever lacking strength to bind
My action to my heart.
Of Modern Mysteries
My love is no new poet,
But has a simple tongue;
To love, no use in speaking
Except as to the young.
And whom else should we speak to
If not the one we love?
And so I seldom speak as
If speaking from above.
I do not darkly draw what
I most want understood,
But often say "I love you,"
As bygone poets would.
Who Long Kept Hid
I prayed to stars, when I was young,
To lure love where I lay
Lone as a shore that calls a sea
The tide has turned away.
Love did not come, and oh they seemed
Indifferent to my cry,
Who long kept hid how love could be
A kindness to deny.
Excerpts from the Author's Note to Once Scenes, the book in which
certain of the photos and one of the poems below ["There But for the
Grace"] originally appeared:
Two weeks before 9/11, 200l, at the end of August that all too memorable summer,
I was proudly showing off Manhattan, my birthplace, to a French friend who had
come to the US to spend some time with me and see some sights. We had driven
down from Boston, where I now live most of the time, planning to spend about a
week in the city. One day during our visit—I believe it was August 29th, but I
could be off a day either way—I took him to have a look at the WTC. It
had turned into a foggy, drizzly day, a good time to be indoors, so we decided
to enter the center and see what we could see from the top of the south
twin. Due to the weather, the openair rooftop promenade, which was located
above the tower’s top floor, the 110th, wasn’t open, so we took in the
sights from the observation deck on floor 107. I had brought my camera with me,
and, moving from wet window to wet window, spent maybe half an hour snapping
pictures of the city as it stretched out in various spectacular ways from the
four sides of our since-demolished outlook. At the time I had no idea, of
course, that the pictures I was shooting might ever mean more to anyone than the
usual holiday mementos.
The horrific vision of the explosions, and then the collapse of those two
soaring behemoths, in which so many were trapped in an avalanche of destruction,
has branded itself into the memories of millions. The first section of this
book, especially, "Lost Island Views," is intended as a commemoration
of that tragic watershed moment in our history. Since the city lay under a
blanket of fog at the time all but one of the pictures in this chapter were
taken, and the tower’s windows were blurry, the overall mood of these views
seems somber, the accident of weather having imbued them with an atmosphere that
seems peculiarly fitting to the theme of loss and grief.
The Manhattan series segues into a series of scenes captured further north,
in Quebec. The picture entitled “Spotlight,” which leads off this second
group, was placed at the chapter's beginning because it seemed a kind of visual
metaphor of 9/11, and in fact brought back to my mind the TV coverage,
incredulously witnessed by so many, of the buildings burning. It was that photo,
also, that inspired my poem “There But For The Grace,” which also appears in
this chapter, and which expresses my feeling of personal connection with the
tragedy.
In the Stillness of Many
Many nights when undrawn to the living,
I have gone to the graveyard instead,
And sought out my truth among ashes,
And for beauty,
Lain down with the dead.
In the stillness of many a midnight,
I have warmed to their wakening sound,
The impassioned, and scorned, and unliving
Who speak to my heart
From the ground.
How Only Cold
If to such happiness an end must come,
As ends may swallow all dear hopes and dreams,
And should you vanish, and my heart grow numb
With sorrow, as though yet so soon it seems;
And if the bitterness should long consume
My thoughts of you, who briefly lit the day,
And sun no more return to re-illume
And lift the flower withered in the clay;
Yet memory of a distant atmosphere,
Travail obscure as rock in some dark field,
The glassed-in din's dull pulsing in my ear,
Faint throb of stars, so long astir but sealed,
Recalls a love left even more alone,
How only cold released the ache of stone.
I Had of Love
I had of love, when it first came,
A single, lonesome bolt;
It had but one—and I could find
No living antidote.
And so, I made my cure of hearts
A cold night wind instead,
And all the sadly brimming stars
Shone down on our chill bed.
And then I hummed forgotten fields
A lover's lullaby,
And by the fallen gates of hope,
We wept, the wind and I.
Though Sorrow Mock
I shall not give you up for lost,
though grief prevail,
tears overcome,
strength fail;
Though silence join with ash
to prove all perish;
though sorrow mock my hope
for all I cherish.
There But for the Grace
Tripped by a flash
painting of a silhouetted
square pair twilight-crowned
with fiery sunburst flaring
out over them
like a blast from an open
furnace cleaving cloudmass into dark,
smoky,
billowing wings a vision branded
deep revives, sudden
cable-snap, freefall
in side by side
shafts,
cascades
of dust spilling down,
tombs sealed the way snow
slips off mountains, gravemaking
thaw of steel
or ice,
how a curious
master of heights surveying
the world from a summit late
one summer stepped
so casually, blithely
recording last days, lost sights.
Then Pines
How spring's first green is gold
the not yet weeping
willows show,
when in the sketch called April, they
like faint forsythias glow.
Then pines,
like men who must endure
though all their treasure pass,
mark summer's end where fall's first change
lies golden in the grass.
Companions
Composing the flock I thought I heard
When wonder drew me out the door,
A solitary mockingbird,
Busily being more,
Absorbed in his little crowd of sounds,
A parody of me,
Was gathering in his singleness
Some songs for company.
I Do Not See
I do not see the stars tonight
Nor wonder if they shine,
For many years have passed since I
Wished any beauty mine.
I do not seek the flowered wood's
Unworldly hush and stir,
Nor are there cherished haunts of mind
As long ago there were.
I find no sail to lull me now
Away to courts of dream,
And upward from the sod I push
Blue skies fade out unseen.
Then to Thee Gladly
O Lord,
if in the sight of Thee
is peace, and happiness
fills all who look
on Thee;
And where Thou art,
all troubles
truly cease, and Thou
art truly, and as said
to be;
Then to thee gladly
I send forth
my love—to Thy
protection, speed
an ill-used guest;
From sorrow, anguish,
tears, to aeons of
that light,
which but to look upon
is rest.
This poem hangs between two flags in the museum at the
Cathedral of the Pines in New Hampshire.
Summer Yardwork
I seek no gift of song today,
no melody
self-made,
but something hard
and uninspired,
to draw the chilling shade.
Doubtless sleep would better serve
to rouse them
from their lairs,
and make the stealthy shadows come
and take me
unawares.
But in this blind
and watchful mood,
which stalls the flow of time,
since dreams are far,
I move the sun
by wrestling out a rhyme.
Clocking a Harvester
Clocking a harvester,
from nut to underground larder and back,
I
found the course consistently run
in thirty-five,
forty seconds maximum—
and I clocked his clockwork awhile;
and seeing how hard he worked
at building up his stockpile—
at such a relentlessly steady pace—
and since a rest seemed due,
I
slipped out and scattered a few
by the hole to his home.
When I looked, later on,
they were gone.
I had put out the peanuts to see
if the jays
or the squirrels would get to them first, but instead
found a new mouth to feed—
not at all to complain. Truth be told,
sharing such stores I suppose is an old
custom of mine,
and recalls a time
when all my best handfuls were aimed
at arming another against the coming cold.
Return
When somehow you appeared and took
this heart not mine to give,
and spring broke out again and gave
me every cause
to live,
It seemed as if some power had sent
a spirit to restore
that other Eden
that I knew,
when all was lost before.
Blessing the Cup
While morning yet was rose,
not thorn,
earth glistening
as if newly born,
I came across
a romance here:
he hadn't seen
the shadows clear,
nor seemed
to be at all aware;
she watched,
and was content to stare.
I thought of how a love began,
of Eden, too,
the dawn of man
and how that garden
turned to grief;
of sorrow
borne without relief;
and yet,
I did not fail to bless
the tainted cup of happiness,
nor reverently to tiptoe by
this sleeper in the flower's eye.
Tomorrow Some New Star
Upon the stars tonight
appears some care,
some stricken pulse, as blurs the silent pool
or wavers in some ancient's vacant
stare;
Say they were borne there
by a love proved cruel,
drawn as by some brute hypnotic power
out into fields of deep night's lonely hell;
as vigil lights
are wrenched in their low hour,
something not yet lulled by time's dim
spell
seems waked in them; which heart's fresh longings
rise tonight,
and reach up there to wring
perhaps some life from those emerging eyes
so almost moved in their frail glimmering?
Tomorrow some new star must yearn,
as when
one heart grows still, and one turns blind to men.
