American Melancholy Read online

  swinging pendulum that never ceases

  once set

  into motion.

  A Dream of Stopped-Up Drains

  Köln, Germany

  6 September 1977

  1.

  And then we came to the cathedral city of Köln on the wide Rhine River.

  Never before had we come to the cathedral city of Köln on the wide

  Rhine River.

  In drumming rain the great Baroque cathedral rose over the rebuilt

  city of Köln on the wide Rhine River.

  “Look!”—but no matter how high you cast your eyes

  you could not see the tops of the twin spires

  of the great Baroque cathedral at Köln.

  In the drumming rain, a sharp smell of drains in the cathedral city of Köln.

  The ruins of the medieval city rebuilt on the wide Rhine River.

  The great Baroque cathedral alone had been spared from Allied bombing.

  So God protects His own churchmen, sometimes.

  So God stoops to intervene in the affairs of men.

  So God in His caprice selects who will live, who will die

  at the time God selects, and no other.

  Across the vast cathedral square of drumming rain and milling tourists

  there arose the wish to believe in the God

  of the great Baroque cathedral at Köln.

  In our hotel room, top floor of the newly constructed Königshof,

  a view from every window of the great Baroque cathedral of Köln

  and a smell of backed-up drains.

  In the bathroom amid the bright glittering tile, a smell of backed-up drains.

  “Look!”—for in the tile floor near the sink, a drain measuring

  approximately nine inches in circumference.

  An open metal drain through which you could see dark water churning.

  Dark water flecked with foam, or froth. In which something swam.

  Unless it was vibrations?—we stared, we could not see.

  A powerful smell rose from the drain.

  A smell of time, a smell of anguish, a smell of spilt brains, a smell of

  blue gas, a smell of raw life prevailing through time.

  God is this power of raw, prevailing life.

  A six-foot blond woman from the Königshof front desk came bringing

  Buz Fresh aerosol and disinfectant and a deft whisk brush.

  Brisk sound of faucets, toilet flushing. And again flushing.

  (How the heart sinks, a toilet twice flushed!)

  Perhaps something was retrieved from the drain for safekeeping, or

  perhaps it was flushed away into oblivion.

  No records are kept at the Königshof.

  “I am very sorry, these things happen.”

  The air was lavishly sprayed, a pungent flower scent. Out of the dark

  German forest, sudden aroma of white lilies!

  Carefully we placed the Köln telephone book over the drain.

  A smell of stopped-up drains prevailed in the cathedral city of Köln

  On the wide Rhine River, but we could no longer smell it.

  I had journeyed to Köln to give a public appearance.

  It was my duty in Köln to present myself in words.

  Yet we were in a desolate rural area.

  We had been brought here, to be taken elsewhere.

  Along a road, a truck with a dented fender moved toward us.

  The driver stopped. He spoke only German, a burly man with

  strong hands and a close-shaved head.

  His face was broad, frank and honest, modeled like a clay head.

  His eyes shone flatly like polished glass.

  Here was no man of mere language but a man of the soil.

  Here was no man of mere poetry but a man of the people.

  Here was a man upon whom the state could depend.

  He would bring me to my public appearance

  except I was not prepared.

  I had misplaced my material, I had no words in any language!

  That flimsy life raft upon which I had imagined I might survive.

  How quickly and shamefully I spoke. Yet there was defiance

  in my voice.

  I heard myself declare: Yes. I am partly Jewish.

  My family was Hungarian on my mother’s side, and Irish and German

  Jewish on my father’s side.

  My German-Jewish great-grandparents had emigrated to upstate

  New York in the late 1890s. They’d settled in northern Niagara

  County. They’d changed their name from Morgenstern to

  Morningstar, wishing to become American.

  These remote facts I explained to the driver.

  I had nothing to provide except my history.

  I thought—But I am not my history, am I?

  I thought—But I am free of time, aren’t I?

  Seeing the driver’s strong hands, I became agitated.

  The man was working-class, his nails were blunt and edged with dirt.

  He knew nothing of poetry, of subtlety and subterfuge.

  He knew nothing of my public identity, his instinct was unerring.

  We were in such a desolate place!

  What facts are there in history except which place? Which time?

  I was uttering words I had not ever uttered in any language.

  “Please hold me, please be kind to me.”

  My ancestors spoke, through the gritty soil stuffed into their mouths.

  The man’s strong fingers were stroking and caressing my head.

  Here was the simulation of protectiveness as when a father,

  his thoughts distracted, takes time to comfort a frightened child.

  The driver stroked my shoulders, my arms.

  I was only a child, I began to cry.

  I was very frightened as only children in their wisdom can be frightened.

  This is my dream!–yet I could not prevent what would come next.

  I thought—I must behave with dignity.

  How surprised I would have been in my former life to see

  myself on my knees in this desolate wooded place!

  The landscape was foreign like the language.

  The soil was rough, though sandy.

  The sky was the hue of wet, wadded newsprint.

  The wind smelled faintly of stopped-up drains.

  At a horizon, the sun glowed like a hot coin.

  The sun was a word for elsewhere, and another time.

  When you turned to the sun for more light the sun faded,

  like the fall into sleep.

  On my knees I hid my face. I wasn’t crying, I think.

  The driver closed his strong fingers around my neck and

  began to squeeze, grunting with effort.

  Death by manual strangulation. Which was not common.

  To be strangled is a terrible way to die, but

  I was not there for it.

  Bloodline, Elegy: Su Qijian Family, Beijing

  In the mud-colored Hai River a swirl of infant-girl bodies.

  In the river-trance the infant girls are propelled with the current.

  You stare, you blink—she has vanished.

  But—here is another, and

  soon, another.

  How small, how fleeting, of no more consequence than a kitten

  an infant girl drowned at birth

  before the first breath has been drawn, and expelled—

  No crying. We do not shatter the peace of the morning, with crying.

  See how good we are!

  In the mud-river so many, you could not count how many.

  Out of the bloody womb the small bodies betray the infant girls

  for they are revealed incomplete between the legs, pitiable

  the not-male, the doomed.

  We have not been drowned in the Hai River for we

  are of the privileged Su Qijian family. And yet

  ou
r dreams are filled with drowning amid the swirl

  of infant-girl bodies in the Hai River

  sweeping past our home.

  We do not want to know how the infant girls are our sisters or our aunts.

  We do not want to know how they are us, for (it is said) they are not us, that is all we have been told.

  And we did not see these infant-girl bodies in the swirl of the mud-river, for we had not yet been born.

  We are the largest family in Beijing. We are very proud to be of the

  Su Qijian family of Beijing. We have been chosen for the honor

  of meeting you today because we are a perfect family (it is said), for

  we have been born and our baby girls not drowned. Bloodline is all,

  and in our bloodline it is a marvel, it is a source of great pride, how

  our mother, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers had not

  been thrown into the mud-river to drown but were allowed to live.

  So we know, we are blessed! We are very special amid

  so many millions drowned in the Hai River as in the great Yangtze

  and how many millions perished in the Revolution of no more

  consequence than infant girls extinguished before they can draw

  breath or cry.

  Especially, we do not cry.

  We have never cried.

  You will not hear us cry—See how good we are! Even

  in the agony of death, our tiny lungs filled with the mud-river.

  We of the Su Qijian family have never lamented or mourned

  for our privilege is to have been allowed to be born.

  We are alive, there are twenty-nine of us alive and not one

  of us has been drowned at birth. So we are blessed, we are of the

  People’s Republic of China. We are alive.

  For some Chinese couples just one baby was allowed. For some

  others, more than one baby was allowed. And for some, girl babies

  were allowed. We do not understand these decrees,

  and we do not question.

  Bloodline is the very god. Bloodline is the nation.

  Bloodline is property of the Office of China State Council Information.

  And then in a dream it is revealed—

  it is the mothers of our family who drowned our sisters!

  Long ago it happened, in those years

  before we were born. It was a different China then (it is said),

  it is not the same China now. Our beautiful mother

  pleads for understanding. All our mothers weep and tear their hair

  in shame! They would tear out their eyes that such ugliness

  might spare them.

  How is it possible, our mothers are those very mothers

  who tossed the infant girls into the river to drown . . .

  Oh, but it happened long ago. The world was different then.

  Shuxia is saying, Junxia is saying, Lixia is saying,

  they are not evil. Not one of the women of the Su Qijian family

  is evil, they plead with us to understand, and to forgive.

  Our babies who are your sisters were torn from our arms,

  we could not nurse them, we were forbidden. You see,

  we had no choice. We are but

  female, we had no choice but to drown our own.

  It is China thrumming with its many millions that is alive,

  that is the marvel. In the distance you see the eye of our god

  the China Central Television Tower, rising above the suety Beijing

  skyline, that is a greater marvel. Rejoice! Our great nation

  is the future, and your nation is of the past.

  What is the meaning of our lives, we never ask.

  The creatures of the hive do not question the hive.

  The creatures of the river that do not drown

  in the river do not question the river, for the river

  has spared them, and that is the blessing. This is the meaning

  of all of our lives, and not just Chinese lives.

  That we are is the meaning, and that we have been blessed

  is the meaning, and that we are not drowned

  in the Hai River with our infant sisters is the meaning.

  In parting here is our gift to you, our American visitors: a plastic

  bag of photographs of Chinese monuments, Chinese citizens, the mud-colored Hai River at dawn when it glitters with light like the scales of a great serpent whose head you cannot see thousands of miles upstream, and whose tail you cannot see thousands of miles downstream, that abides forever.

  Harvesting Skin

  The skin is the largest organ in the body. The skin of an average-sized man has an area of approximately 17 square feet and weighs about 5 pounds.

  —medical handbook

  Fast & unfaltering to remove skin

  from the dead & soon-to-be

  is a delicate task.

  Few physicians are qualified.

  You must have advanced degrees

  in human-tissue studies & (of course)

  surgery. I’d

  begun at twenty-

  one.

  Burn-unit specialist is my title.

  You see me on the scene at executions, I

  am booked weeks in advance.

  Harvesting (human) skin

  requires a steady hand & eye

  & I take pride in customers

  satisfied.

  For skin is a body-commodity.

  We seek skin, kidneys, liver, heart,

  bones, corneas—

  for research.

  In fact these are for sale.

  I am not a salesman but a supplier.

  Our skin is sold to customers by

  the square centimeter.

  What’s our price? Depends

  upon the quality of the skin.

  If torn, mutilated, bruised, etc.

  If perfect, it’s expensive.

  And all depends

  (you know this)

  upon the Market.

  (What is the Market, no

  one knows. Ever-shifting

  as the tide our God

  cannot be worshipped,

  only just supplied.)

  At twenty-one

  so young,

  my hand shook. Forty

  minutes to an hour & still the job

  was often bungled & the harvest

  cheaply sold.

  Now I am experienced. I am

  skilled. Ten to twenty minutes

  after the condemned is killed

  is all I require, &

  ten harvestings per day

  is not unusual.

  Swift incisions into the dermis.

  Swift peelings. Swift removal.

  On ice the commodity is placed

  & rushed to skin-graft artists

  & their patients.

  Our prices are high, only wealthy

  customers can buy.

  All benefit: burn, cancer, injury &

  cosmetic patients, & the condemned

  who are spared lifetime in prison.

  (This season, between arrest

  & harvest

  as brief as 48 hours!)

  After skin, organs & bones & corneas

  are harvested, what remains

  is cleanly burnt.

  The donor does not know the recipient

  of his skin. The donor does not (sometimes)

  know that he is to die.

  For why

  such knowledge,

  lacking power?

  Yet his skin embraces the recipient.

  As an eyeball in an eye

  Socket, & blood

  Embraced by blood.

  The old way was wasteful, so

  much skin unharvested.

  Our new way is cruel

  you will say. But when

  you require skin,

  you will bargain,

  and
you will buy.

  (The speaker is a former doctor at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Hospital, Beijing.)

  “This is the Time for Which We Have Been Waiting”

  Dear Jim,

  I *finally got your letter enclosing your letter enclocussing your letter which was so ompportant foe me, thannkuok yuon very much. In time this fainful bsiness will soonfeul will soon be onert. Tnany anany goodness. If S lossiee eii wyyonor wy sinfaignature.

  I hope I hope I make it.

  Bill

  (handwritten signature)

  The first snowfall brings chaos.

  First the horizon disappears then

  you disappear. When

  William Carlos Williams suffered his first stroke

  he was sixty-eight years old, in 1951. His second,

  the following year. No man more loved

  our American speech. Vulgar & graceless

  as oversized boots he loved it. The pimply-

  faced girl he loved. Forms inside things gnarly

  to the touch. Smokestacks belching flame, mustard

  weed, chain-link fencing. Steely river seething with acid

  & sparrows picking in the dirt, like Death. Yet

  still just sparrows. Coarse beauty of nasturtiums,

  & fried oysters. Beauty of spiderwebs,

  Brueghel’s hunters in the snow. Except

  maybe the physician saw & heard too much!

  Maybe what the poet saw & heard

  was in his own head! Maybe in Rutherford,

  N.J., there was nothing. Maybe

  the poet was in despair, fierce lover

  Of women & adulterer & this morning waking to discover

  Someone has dressed him in an old man’s underwear—

  gunmetal-gray, woolen-itchy, soiled cuffs

  at bony wrists & ankles & the crotch unsnapped.

  Opens his mouth to curse

  & words choke like phlegm. A doctor doesn’t expect

  to die like the rest of us . . . Waking in the sun

  in Flossie’s garden back of the yellow house

  the terror strikes him maybe he’s dreamt it all?—male

  hands lifting a thrashing bloody infant

  from behind female thighs, &

  ironweed along the railroad embankment

  tough enough to thrive in cinders, &

  there he’s laughing typing on the old Underwood manual

  words leaping astonished out of the mute keyboard, keys

  so worn you can’t read the letters. And

  those clouds—

  clouds I’ve been noticing this morning, too.

  Diesel-dirtied, broken & yet dignified in motion