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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Journeys Close to Home NORMAN WILLIAMS ________________________ A Christmas Song Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man's hat. If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do. If you haven't got a ha'penny, God bless you. Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow Drift down like Christmas suicides, Layering the eaves and boughs until The landscape seems transformed, as from A night of talk or love. I've come From cankered ports and railroad hubs To winter in a northern state: Three months of wind and little light. Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled, I am now proof against the cold And make a place before the stove. Mired fast in middle age, possessed Of staved-in barn and brambled lot, I think of that fierce-minded woman Whom I loved, painting in a small, Unheated room, or of a friend, Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed And fitted out his house by hand And writes each night by kerosene. I think, that is, of others who Withdrew from commerce and the world To work for joy instead of gain. O would that I could gather them This Yuletide, and shower them with coins. [321]
An Invocation from the Hot Noon of Central Ohio Off the interstate for gas in Marion, Another town whose business district runs These days to missions, adult films, and thrifts, I watch the old emerge toward afternoon To tend the hollyhocks beside garages, Or budge their walkers down the buckled walks With bags of vegetables. Inspecting belts, The attendant tells of a farmer south of town, Foreclosed, who last night set his house ablaze With wife and son locked in. Jesus, he says, Wiping his hands, and, nodding, I agree. That oath stands in the heat that silvers from The pumps and racks of tires for all that we, As strangers, cannot say, about the clutch Of banks and government, or of the way That madness, without motive, creeps toward us With a music as singular and strange As a glass harmonica's. I pay the man, Decline my stamps, and nose the car once more Past Cal's Roast Beef and Burger Chef. All day, Between top-forty songs, I hear his half- Hoarse voice come back, rising in the humid air, Repeating that one word until it seems, By turns, a muttered curse and stammered prayer. [322]
Taking Panfish Cedar Lake, Indiana September now—the summer hordes Have left this mudsink for their jobs At stamping plants or salvage yards. Unemployed, my father lobs A worm and bobber out, then pours An early drink. His idleness Has its rewards. He tells of wars Waged by the pike and small-mouth bass That lurked here one, and as he speaks My bobber dips, dragged bottomward By unseen fear. A crappie breaks The surface, flailing, hook set hard: My father leaps up, yanks the rod, And jerks the fish up past the rail. "Keeper!" he crows, and I thank God For not permitting me to fail. Before my eyes, its stipple fades. It gasps, but cannot catch its breath. Wide-eyed and quivering, it bleeds Behind the gills, then thrashes with What seems a frantic, desperate Resolve. My father, blade in hand, Lays hold and bends to operate To save the hook and leader. Stunned And motionless, the crappie mouths A final prayer which, if heard, is not Allowed. My father whacks it, sheathes The knife, then, squaring for a shot, Flings it toward the Evinrude. All day, As the fish grows slowly stiff and curled, It fixes one unblinking eye On me, as though I made this world. [323]
Those Left To Tend Across the bottomlands, the barns go down Like fighters felled by one unlooked-for left: They twist and stagger to the ground. Wash sags Across the porches. Tractors, narrow-faced And awkward as the men who drive them, peel Back rinds of callused earth. Most now have quit This place, that once had seemed so promising. Each spring, abandoned orchards bloom across The hills like lost ballets; clematis coils Through old foundation stones, and, toward November, Maples ignite beneath the black damp fog Like candles at a vigil. The dead are there, High-up, in hillside plots: confederates Brought back in carts; miners, broken-backed; And infants under unmarked stones, who died Before their christening. They have the views, Those sightless beings—they and those who tend Them there, who lay bouquets or plastic wreaths, The widows or the widows' only sons. They are the left-behind, odd-mannered ones, Who speak in starts, list when they walk; bereft, In debt, in need of counterbalancing. [324]
Our Station Stiff above the field's edge The marsh hawk floats and winds. Tuned to the slightest stir Of milkweed stem or sedge, It checks its flight to pitch With talons spread, before, On backward-beating wings It grasps a zagging hare And rises, uttering A shriek of joy in which, Despite our doubts, we seem To join, while, in our minds, We clench our prey and climb. [325]
Independent Contractor Forty degrees; the threat of rain. That time of fall When we are most inclined to end it all. Denim-jacketed, with a faded sweatshirt hood, He draws his plane along a length of wood, Then takes a chisel to a cornice piece With two light taps. His movements never cease; His cracked and callused hands, in gloves with fingers cut, Rub up for warmth, then start like hares hawked by his thought. He knows no other work; wants none. He learned this from His father—brace and auger, bob and plumb— The same way he learned how to hunt or take a beating: Not by words but by a look, and by repeating In his mind each grimace, wince, set of the jaw. His job is more than workmanlike. No flaw Or gap offends the eye. Each post and bull-nose stair Seems proof of love—if love is proved by excess care. [326]
Near Antietam Shunning the British tourist bus, we walk, My child and I, the West Woods where, like dogs Who know their death is due, the wounded took Themselves to give up hope. The horror begs Imagining—the soldiers hauling limbs Hacked off or messmates dead, and everywhere, Mixed with the summer scent of swelling plums, A stench of putrid flesh and burning hair. Here Lee was turned. That night the forest filled With muttered names of loved ones left, and cries From mangled soldiers pleading to be killed. Seeing my distant look, my daughter tries My sleeve: "What is it, what?" she asks, and I Say "nothing, nothing"—though "nothing" is a lie. [327]
Pegging Out Behind his kitchen chair the drizzle gathers, Slug-like, then slithers down the window. He cuts And deals, as though his bent, arthritic hands Were engineered for it. At ninety-one, His orbit's been reduced to table, stove, And sleeping couch. "Will need a cut," he now Announces, sloughing to the crib. I turn A one-eyed jack for knobs, and we are off: A fifteen-two, a go, a thirty-one. It is a language used by whalers once, By soldiers in their tents, and also by My grandfather, who mastered idiom And dialect while still a boy, confined On winter nights to one stove-heated room On the far reaches of the unlit plains. It is a game of getting round. We speak, Between discards and counts, of climate change, Prices of crops and politics, till on The final turn he asks, "Hear from your dad?" As one might ask a ballscore or the weather. He means the man who ran out on his daughter, Stuck him with debt, then every Christmas called Collect from California. Nor does he want An answer yet, but only means that we Should think of him together, silently, As we might pray, or watch TV. "Not much," I say at last. "Another game?" he asks. I nod. It's raining still, and there is not Much better left to fill his time. Nor mine. [328]
In Pavidus On this first small-leafed day of spring, A mourning dove, like Jeremiah Complaining in the limbs, starts with His allah-hoo-hoo-hoo, and we, Who came to celebrate, survey Instead the winter's take. A rose, Frost-blacked, does not send shoots. Nearby A shagbark hickory extends, Amid the early gold and green, Its lifeless limbs against the sky. How lightly we've escaped. No scare Of cancer staggered our routine; No madness mocked our courtesies. I press my cold and cracking hands, Not knowing if my nerves will hold; Not knowing if my sins, by some All-touching mercy, were excused Or if, when brought at last to light, Will bring the torment they deserve. [329]
The Dow Is Off Southbound, downwardly mobile in A knocking ten-year-old LeSabre, Totaled once and salvaged, rust Gnawing at the rocker panels like Fire at the curtains in a melodrama, I imagine those for whom such news Must matter; suave, smooth-featured types, Untroubled by the odd details Of racing forms or powerball, Who, while I drive truck or stock shelves, Are wisely planning their estates, Diversifying portfolios, or buying A summer place with acreage. Yet how their evening now is shot! How flat the chardonnay, how bland The tips of tenderloin must taste! Of course, it's not the Dow alone— The dollar's through the roof, T-bills Have plunged, and, even now, the wife Is pussyfooting at the club. How birdsong-sweet and full of joy Seems my life by comparison: The Gulf's two hours off, where rigs Pound at the solar plexus of The earth, and where, on moonlit nights, Perfumed mulattoes weave like snails By the shore, leaving shining trails. [330]
October in the North With this first frost, the forest quickens— The squirrels which, a month ago, Had screeched and somersaulted trunk To limb, now scratch the hickory For nuts, like urchins desperate From poverty. The final birds Today start south. A fox, whose coat On summer evenings gleamed among The goldenrod, this morning strikes A neighbor's coop and drags away Its kill. There is a forest sense: Some larger hand, once generous, Is closing to a miser's fist. [331]
Words for a Young Widow in Maine The sinew of the hickory that grips The axe, the rasp of salt against the skin, Or rockbound earth that shines the steel plough In spring, are thought along our coast to lend A native character, though none can match The force of grief: compare the fisherman's Scored cheeks; the ligaments that rope the necks Of lumberjacks; or the farmer's gnarled wrist— Compare these with the widow's fisted look, Then judge who has the most to bear. Think of The ghost that each night slips between her sheets Or of the sudden joy of being alone Which troubles her for weeks. And you, who thought Him mean, or too devoted to his drink, Consider how the common fingerstones, Bathed in the tidal slabs, grow luminous. [332]
From A Journal of the Ascent Breaking Camp Shadowed on the two-man tent, The leaves of aspen shift And blur like quarters In a riffled pool. From a thousand feet below, An updraft brings sweet news Of sage and juniper. A locust chirrs. Why rush? And yet we shake our sleeping bags, Knock down the tent, and thread Our way through larch and lodgepole Toward ice and knife-edged rock, As though we could not be content To age with grace Or die with equanimity. Weather Changes Last night, the wind turned On itself and, like a tragic Greek, Lashed the unloved and loved alike, Raising hackles on the lake, Wailing in high passages, And stripping deadwood from the pines. Rain followed until morning, When we emerged into A keener mass of air and saw The mountain ribboned by new falls. One thought of rooms Filled with unexpected music, Or of an aging face Transfigured by swift memory. Toward Treeline As we switched back, through smaller And more gnarled firs, The early-morning beings of fog Skulked into the thinning air. [333]
A roebuck, startled From his standing sleep, Hightailed through the underbrush. At timberline, we came upon The carcass of a savaged ram And, beside a kettle, found The flesh-hung bones of elk Kept from foraging by snow. Surrounded, now, by glaciers, bowls, Streams and saddlebacks, we sensed A law that, in its purity, Would not admit of clemency. Fall Strewn across the mountain's flank, Enormous boulders lay like loaves. Staggered by top-heavy packs, We worked and picked our way Until, with one unholy crack, A wedge-shaped stone came loose And reared: Leviathan disturbed. Upended, then, I sensed The clutch of jaw and loins That is our instinct for the worst And, landing in the sliding scree, Took a rock across the jaw. Awakening, unmoved, I gained Myself by slow degrees, Feeling first the sunlight, Then rise and fall of breath, Then, at last, the bone-deep ache. Night Following Burrowed in my mummy bag, I catalogue my body parts, Newly serious, like a widower Struck by a winter flu. My fingers chart out temple, Lobe, ribcage, and jaw With the half-familiar sense Of absent residents returned. [334]
The backpack's weight Still haunts my shoulderblades; My feet, freed of their boots, Lodge in one another's coves Like a couple from the hinterlands: Shy, ill-shapen, and in love. Camp at Thirteen-Nine The creek that blazed our route Lies stilled at twenty-two degrees; A final August light Coruscates the ice. One hears The groans of rock being forced By cold, and then only The soundless zero of a place Where zero has prevailed. Blessing Today the morning overcast Gathers into scattered clouds, Revealing our bare granite peak Like a blackened Gothic spire Above a stone-walled market town. We pass communities of marmots At their obscure devotions, While, beneath, the valley floor Lies flecked: an Appaloosa's flank. Scaling one last summit wall, The mile-closer sun reaches deep Into our necks and backs. The day itself then seems Like some true gift, Unsought and undeserved, Beyond our power to return. [335]
Farmhouse Left The trouble is, I think, as water floods A bootprint left behind me in the mud, That I would rather walk my troubles off Than face them, one by one: repair the roof, Remit the traffic fine, send out the damned Apology: "O.K. Should not have slammed Your kitchen door. Pathetic life. Or lover. Behaved most boorishly. Forgive. Yours ever." Why's that so hard? I wonder, clambering Across a broken birch that blocks the path. There's some would see it done all in a morning: You know, the can-do types, successful, with Attractive wives, wide lawns, homes on a tour— And yet, for all of that, a little dense, In that they do not seem to grasp the lure In failure. Absurd! they snort. Makes no damn sense! Whereas, myself, I grasp it in the bone: The small, subversive thrill in letting phone Bills slip, appointments pass, jobs slide until Life starts its slow, tectonic tilt downhill— And endeth here, where lives are scraped from sides Of deer and garden plots; where double-wides On concrete pads abut a hard-pan road, And, in the hills, abandoned barns implode. Back in, the road become a rivulet, I stumble on a farmhouse left, it must Be fifty years, untouched, with dishes set And pans left out. A bathtub, black with rust, Has crashed, claw-first, into the sitting room. Mice skitter in the walls. A perfect cone Of sawdust forms beneath a ceiling beam. Vermin at work! The house is coming down. What happened there, to interrupt their meal? These northern woods, like families, conceal All sorts of sordid facts and histories— Was there a poisoning? Sudden disease? [336]
A midnight flight from creditors? Or did Some jittery recluse, joined to a cause, Claim title to the place in simple fee And shoot at any who might disagree? On my way out, I check the local store For some report on what it was that chased The occupants away. "Gone since the war," The shopkeep shrugs. He is not one to waste His words—a custom here, or ritual. But why? The thought, it seems, has not occurred To him before. "Nothing unusual," He says at last. "Or else we would have heard." By which, I take it, he must mean the kind Of facts which always win out in the end: An eldest son gone off without a word, A drought, or brucellosis in the herd. Bad luck, and yet the sort that's bound to come In fifteen years, or forty: Which shows that some Mistake was made, a hope held out or debt Incurred, which, in the end, could not be met. Now, like some shining logo of success, A jet glints toward the pole, Paris-bound, Or off for Rome, while I'm stuck on the ground, A counterweight, fouled up and fortuneless, To notice how the place slips into myth: To watch roads rut, herds thin, gas stations close, And to endure a time of year which those Above would rather not be bothered with. Here spring begins its slow, corrosive work: A single drip, another, then a third Drill cigarette burns in the snow. A bird Bends to its business, like an office clerk. The creek begins to quicken. Ice shelves retract, While, deeper in, the high sun ulcerates A frozen pond, until its center floats Unanchored, like an old dog's cataract. [337]
Norman Williams is the author of One Unblinking Eye (Swallow Press, 2003)(The Waywiser Press, 2003) and The Unlovely Child: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Hudson Review, New England Review, and New Criterion, among other periodicals. Williams, a 1979 graduate of Yale Law School, practiced at Coudert Freres in Paris before withdrawing to Vermont where he litigates all kinds of cases. Williams represented himself in the eponymous Williams v. Vermont, 472 U.S. 14 (1985), which resulted in the refund of millions of dollars of unconstitutional motor vehicle taxes by the State of Vermont. He lives with his wife, daughter and son, in Burlington. "A Christmas Song" was first published in The New Yorker, "An Invocation from the Hot Noon of Central Ohio" in The Kenyon Review, "Taking Panfish" in New England Review. These poems, together with "Those Left to Tend," "Our Station," "Independent Contractor," "Near Antietam," "Pegging Out," "In Pavidus," "The Dow is Off," "October in the North," "Words for a Young Widow in Maine," "From A Journal of the Ascent," and "Farmhouse Left" were collected in Norman Williams, One Unblinking Eye (Swallow Press, 2003)(The Waywiser Press, 2003). "The Family Jewels," "Forerunners," and "For the Anonymous Builder of a Graystone Farmhouse" are from Norman Williams, The Unlovely Child: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). |
