BYTIME IN YANGLAND
two
I
took in the quiet of the hard apartment, sand on tile,
a
memory of salt air, grapefruit tree at window,
tangelo, had been out a month at night would not
see
full moon now
A winter in Yuma not to
forget what had tracked you to it
Colorado and Wyoming
had washed this way
would await the heritance money to come and I also meant
to
think had always done it afoot, man of the road, sitting
a
death to me, but my last camp out an iron ache had hit
one
hip, not let go, Mittry Lake
her feet at the end were knarred up
and minded you of old China
there will never be another
like your mother
would get a job in the psych-tech trade, read too, what
novels I had not intended to skip that had to do with
native yinland plain not Arizona California Mexico
Ole Rølvaag
Sinclair Lewis
Wright Morris
Larry Woiwode
I
did not think to stay in yangland byplace, would look
however
the main town atop a loaf of
brown-sugar sand no need to climb
on Pilot Knob to see the dunes
Algodones
reek
of burnt scrap wood one morning led my eye to smoke
rise
out toward northern naked mountain Castle Dome, one
other life I had not known might have been moving to meet
me
there, who knew, I would have to watch
unwonted gray the Sonoran
like a giant Latin plaza
gray rain wind driving all its weight
into your chest
and
walk, I made me do it, tow that leg to East Main Canal,
egret, a heron, to the Yuma
cárcel
museum the market, I had a potato and refrieds awoke to
loud
young angry music three ay-am but only quiet lasted
you cannot have been more alone
than now wives gone and parents dead
a cockroach is afraid of you
in the night room
I
dreamt that a child’s hand arrived in padded mailer the
middle digit missing, my third wife had sent it, I had
wanted no home or children had known too late almost,
a
road man, what not to do, what to, I got in the car and
visited
San Luís
Imperial Dam
Martínez Lake
the Gila
Mountains’ knifelike rock, weird mining ruin
you were open, they needed not have dug
I
told the earth and climbed a needle peak in middecember
no
shirt on to find byview of what might happen yet
a ten-thousand ar-vee elder
camp has taken the desert down
to whatever might be left in
it of meaning
a
friend that worked in government Indian health
wanted to see me on a job trip to Yuma, bird
woman Rima to my mind, ivorine yet weightless,
did
not much laugh, we had hiked on Coconino
Plateau and I had directed her to
Green Mansions
Rima
had a limp now too but could fly, we ate at
Mi Ranchito
she
heeded my look what little I said, mayhap would find
in
me the dad that had burnt to death, we two remaining
guarded, I talked of
Robinson Jeffers
whom
she a medical did not know, would enjoy
if part of you flew to Morro
Bay another would follow and
drunk on the wind be ridden of
the doubt you saw
I
would give her a pamphlet on the coming
Salton Sea International Bird Festival
not
hear if she had read him, have enjoyment of my own, the
lone
apartment, radio no tee-vee to interrupt the silence, high
winter sun to walk not limp in now, I found a job at modern
contract madhouse run by an em-bee-ay, marine airfield next
to
it, yard gravel spotlit in the antedawn, the woman I would
call
mad sainte harrowing the ward did not mind me
hi handsome, I got raped as a kid, I’m a virgin though
tall
epileptic Mormon Iroquois from Syracuse, original
salt city
of
the one whose droll faith had led to another, I quit, they
kicked her out, at a chance meeting in market the mad sainte
told
me that she wanted home to
Zion
I
paid too much for a mountain bike she had, ticket money,
and
I noted makeup earrings when she delivered it but took her
to
the station not the night room, went outing of my own to
El Golfo de Santa Clara
gerontology coach, all day
avocet feeding with a gull
in dirt seasand where you can buy
two naked-women pictures on
one tarjeta
my
wash dried on the line before I had the half of it hung,
radio man inserted a glottal stop tween
Yuma
and
Arizona
the
graven date in rock at foot of Cargo Muchacho read seventeen
sixty-five, what had I not intended to skip in the novels that
had
to do with my yinland
Rølvaag and Morris the better at style
I
wrote in log
Lewis a cartoon, Woiwode not, the novel comes of a belief in Christ,
the word made flesh, all Western art, naturalism, the roman-fleuve
goes on and on out of duty, stewardship
not
much to draw me but I would leave the yangland anyway,
faint-scented note that came would date my plan, the next week
bird
woman in a road daze, animated
I’m moving to Minnesota
Indian agency transfer, we went to Century House in old
town
to see the olden parrots, would maybe hike in the north,
each
find one other life we had not known, a delicate Rima
hug
denied the much that had not happened, been said
tangelo blossom early March
curlew movement on the park lawn
evening will bring you traily wind
edge of weather
Janet Lewis
dead
at ninety-nine, wrote me once, I thought as a kid that
Eva
had gone to hospital to die, baby sister came of that, I
now
took part-time job of trucking wealthy old to clinic,
treatment for depression
slap therapy
the
big cee
magnetic field
to
gleamy thriving medico hutments, shade to wait in
maybe you and she had fallen
in avian love already
had the affair and not known or
even noticed
Glenway Westcott on
odi et amo
thought poet mad at the gods for making him undersexed but
how
would undersexed man know who yet had heat to write or
act,
I hated no one anywhere yet needed to deride a place, say
Yuma is the last refuge of a
scoundrel or patriot in order to get to the road
in Yuma every day is everyone’s first day on the job, nobody knows
what to do
I
sold the mountain bike for too much money would give it
to
mad sainte in Zion if I dared to stop, or mail it
Catullus had wanted a thew
of arm and mind he lacked and saw
in Lesbia got quick bird love
and a bird hate
would not be going to Rima nest in Kingman, Flagstaff
either, too-known byground of the mourning cloak, I had
looked my bytime to an end
turn to the now of the human
yinland past or have it adeemed
tänk på svenska
there will never be another
like your mother
GLOSSARY
Algodones
name of dunes west of Yuma
cárcel
prison
tarjeta
postcard
odi et
amo
I love, and I hate. (Catullus)
tänk på
svenska
think of/in Swedish
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