A Lexicon for People Who Don't Talk Too Much

Does anyone still say he runs
a right smart cattle? Does anyone

believe the man who's pucker-mouthed
and runs those cows is doing right

or being smart? If you have heard
his whoop or watched his dewlap quiver,

if you are ready to accept
a holler and watch the cows become

a lowing line that moves from hill
to bottomland and breaks itself

to silent dots before the moon
reweaves the field as heaven's cloth,

if you cannot escape the fact
that cloth is finely woven, then you

will never doubt that the woman who says
she's bound for yonder when the day

arrives will make the river glad
when she tests it with her baby toe

and strides across it, or her wake
will be remembered by the river

as a joy, the likes of which would be
untelling if it ever was

before, but sure to be back then
when God was just a little thing,

the river just a bitty trickle,
and all things in the main were small.

-Maurice Manning, 2007

Receiving the Stigmata

There is a way to enter a field
empty-handed, your shoulder
behind you and air tightening.

The kite comes by itself,
a spirit on a fluttering string.

Back when people died for
the smallest reasons, there was
always a field to walk into.
Simple men fell to their knees
below the radiant crucifix
and held out their palms

in relief. Go into the field
and it will reward. Grace

is a string growing straight
from the hand. Is
the hatchet's shadow on the
rippling green.

-Rita Dove, 1982

I ended my trip in London, which was probably a good place to finish, because I was tired and the English-speaking nature of...England...made London the easiest city for me to navigate. I stopped in at some tourist destinations, but I also did simple things: ate street food, went to a movie--the sort of things you can do anywhere, technically, but it was nice to be in a city where the options for food and movies were varied and plentiful. I'm still trying to parse what, precisely, the purpose of all this travel is, but maybe it can be as simple as enjoying the advantages one place offers that yours does not. Europe has history and culture distinct from America; these cities I've been visiting have things Tromsø does not. But now I'm back in Tromsø, curled up in bed with a mug of tea, and outside it is snowing. Tomorrow I will go back to work and dailiness, because right now Tromsø holds something the places I've been visiting lack: my life.

Paris was next on my whistle-stop tour, and I threw it in at least partly because I overdid it on Hemingway this fall. Well, not just Hemingway; there's also Rilke, who wrote: "I am in Paris. People who hear this are glad; most of them envy me. They're right. It is a great city, great and filled with strange temptations." While here, I visited the Musée Rodin and learned that Rilke and Rodin were friends, and wondered, as I ambled past shops and brasseries, who of these writers and artists had been here, or here, or here. But I also wondered about our ideas of Paris, the way the city is structured in our minds. I hadn't entirely wanted to come here. I didn't need to see the Eiffel Tower (though now I have), and something about this city's reputation--pretentious, romantic--never quite captured me. Except then--reading about the Lost Generation, reading Rilke's 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge'--it did. So I added Paris to the itinerary.
I rented a shoebox apartment for the handful of nights I was in the city, on the fourth floor of a canalside building on the north side of town, close to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. To reach most of the conventional tourist sites I had to catch the metro or trek several miles, but the neighborhood was lively and I could get a baguette and an almond croissant from the bakery on the corner for just over two Euros, which is a privilege that shouldn't be discounted. The New York Times recently ran an article called 'My European Ritual,' which asked the residents of various European cities to describe their rituals. For the few days I was there, my Paris ritual was as simple as this: going down four flights of spiral stairs, walking to the corner, buying a baguette and an almond croissant, eating the croissant for breakfast while I drank tea and made the baguette into sandwiches. It's the sort of touchstone that makes away feel a little bit like home. And then I would walk out into the city, which was awash with sun, which was very old and very large and had plenty of stories to tell. I didn't have time to listen to all of them, but I heard a few--most notably in the small, idiosyncratic, Musée National Gustave-Moreau--and that was enough to convince me: Paris is a great city, and so much more than I had (naively, I think) anticipated.

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
----And the mussel pooled and the heron
------------Priested shore
---------The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
---------Myself to set foot
------------That second
----In the still sleeping town and set forth.

----My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
----Above the farms and the white horses
------------And I rose
---------In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
---------Over the border
------------And the gates
----Of the town closed as the town awoke.

----A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
----Blackbirds and the sun of October
------------Summery
---------On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
---------To the rain wringing
------------Wind blow cold
----In the wood faraway under me.

----Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
----With its horns through mist and the castle
------------Brown as owls
---------But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
---------There could I marvel
------------My birthday
----Away but the weather turned around.

----It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
----Streamed again a wonder of summer
------------With apples
---------Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
---------Through the parables
------------Of sun light
----And the legends of the green chapels

----And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
----These were the woods the river and sea
------------Where a boy
---------In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
---------And the mystery
------------Sang alive
----Still in the water and singingbirds.

----And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
----Joy of the long dead child sang burning
------------In the sun.
---------It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
---------O may my heart’s truth
------------Still be sung
----On this high hill in a year’s turning.

-Dylan Thomas, 1945

Amsterdam was the second stop on my current tour, at least partly because of my brother's enthusiastic reviews of the city. There are plenty of good reasons to visit Amsterdam, I'm sure, but if I'm honest I hardly knew anything about Amsterdam prior to my arrival except that Jack liked it. If pressed I might've been able to come up with a few other things--Anne Frank, pot, bicycles. I'll admit that I skipped the Anne Frank house and the pot. But the bicycles won me over.
There are heaps of bicycles in this city, and I mean that literally: they are heaped on bike racks, piled around lampposts, lumped into piles with no discernible base. And, the bicycles are used, besides: cyclists whiz around Amsterdam's narrow bike lanes, across rickety cobblestones, over bridges, along canals. And I joined them. I'm not sure I need to make another good decision for the rest of my trip, because I rented a bicycle in Amsterdam and that was a perfect decision. I took my bike out at night, flicked on the generator-powered headlamp, and rode circuits through the city's parks and alleyways with no destination in mind. I rode past tourist attractions I didn't bother visiting. I really don't care that I never visited the galleries of the Rijksmuseum, because I rode under the museum's ornate facade at night and that was enough. I am sure there's more to Amsterdam than I saw, but isn't that true of any place a person visits? And a few days spent flying through Amsterdam's streets on a bicycle will be enough for me to have something of this city in a pocket of my mind, a small point of reference. I'm writing this in the downstairs of a coffee shop (the kind that just sells coffee, thanks), and outside the window I see a cyclist fly past, and then another, and then another. Bicycles are ubiquitous here, and for that reason alone, I'm happy that's the one thing I've taken from this city. Which is good, because it's time for me to catch a train.

I am in transit again, taking a short, somewhat haphazard tour of Europe. First stop: Stockholm, where a friend I met in Tromsø was kind enough to host me. Having a guide makes it especially easy to slip into the dailiness of a place: grocery shopping, navigating public transit. But that doesn't entirely preclude the rite of wandering around and gawping at things. There's plenty I could say about Stockholm; it's old, lively, beautiful. I liked it. But I also liked the last day of my visit, when my friend and I took the commuter train out as far as we could, then walked further, on train tracks that hadn't seen a train in years, until we reached a quiet lake. We wished for a boat. We explored the woods and admired the handiwork of the local beaver. We sat on the ground and ate cheese and sausages. In short, we made a day of it, taking a small vacation from both our lives. And then we got back on the train, and slipped through the Swedish countryside and back into the capital city, as you do.

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
--------------------and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
--------------------and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
--------------------lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
---------------------------------to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
------------------------------------------------Koktebele
--------------------------formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
---------------------------------when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
---------------------------------going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
--his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
-----with a sable collar over his robe
--and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
--and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
--------------------or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
--be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
--well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
--say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
-----------------------except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
--heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
--and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
--rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
--by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
--to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
--watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

-Nazim Hikmet, 1962

Next Time

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
----or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I'd know more—the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
----like a light.

-William Stafford