.
I've always wanted my life to be more like
Henri-Pierre Roché's Jules and Jim
You Angelica and Tom have made it more that way
For you are careless and gay outside
troubled and deep inside
the way the ocean is when it's filled with sharks
or gay and careless inside
deep and gloomy without
the way clouds move over sunlight in water
or both at the same time
like when you're a citizen of two nations at once
and you go back and forth
Tonight I'm going back and forth
in time, thinking about how we met and what we said
and what we did and where with whom
and what we'll be doing
what we'll be doing exactly one year and a day from now
and how it's almost saddening how
nothing can be better than it is right now
which is great
though it suggests Disaster
like being shot in the eye by a nutty killer at sundown
or waking up one night to realize you are from Mars
I'm very glad neither of you are from Mars
because we'd have to wonder what we really feel about each other
and now we're free to be taken anywhere by our feelings
Do you know that everyone is uncorking great kind feelings
toward you?
And if we don't always show it
it's our tough luck, isn't it?
And if you disappear into colorful California
already dim New York will positively blanch
Now I will say something about drinking
Côtes du Rhone 1964 was a terrible year
But Tom and Angelica 1968 will be a great one
even if you disappear into colorful California
Tonight as I stand inside the rainbow of nuptial bliss
thinking of your rainbows
which are edging toward one another
to make a kiss
I am jealous of you Tom
because Angelica is marrying you
instead of me
and of you Angelica
because you are a girl marrying Tom
and I can't even be a girl
since I am already myself who is a man
if you get what I mean
The preacher calls you Man and Wife
and I think as time goes on
the "and" will grow between you
and assume a character of its own
the way a baby assumes one
and you don't have to call it Andy or Anne
or Love
"And" is enough
And I never did like Marianne Moore's poetry
very much
until tonight when I noticed her poem "Marriage"
You were Adam and Eve in the poem
and I was Marianne Moore
I was at Lewis and Anne's
it was their book
the one John Ashbery reviewed
I bought the paper and walked home
Times under arm
through more thoughts of you
falling in around me
the way you fell into my life bright
dei ex machinas
Champion: Ron Padgett, 1968/2010
Top layers of the earth's atmosphere leading to space: photo by NASA Earth Observatory, 2006
6 comments:
The great poet and great friend RP was the best man at our wedding forty-two years ago. He is still the best man today.
We are reminded of this.
what a sweety!
Thanks Tom, caught a glimpse of this yesterday, now get to read it -- Ron's "Marriage" poem (in which MM "appears" w/ her marriage poem), and YOU "appear" forty years ago (how amazing! congratulations!), moon still up there above the clouds above the oceans of the world . . . .
3.23
silver edge of sun rising above shoulder
of ridge, song sparrow calling on branch
in foreground, waves sounding in channel
as it begins to be from now
on, where there is sky
one who looks shows himself,
appears, and “is there”
cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,
shadowed green slope of ridge across it
Lanny,
Yes, ain't he?
And good morning Steve, thanks once more for reminding us of the world,
as it begins to be from now
on
Tom, this comes late, but Happy Anniversary to you and Angelica!
Many thanks Dale; and you know I have always considered you and H as, however belatedly and of course mostly through inadvertence, virtual parties unto this union; if only by a sort of informal familial extension, your elder son having got stuck with my name thus providing us a virtual grandchild; the blessing entirely ours of course.
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