The poem published here is part of an extended episodic work in verse, another section of which, “Prologue to the Book of Jesse,” appeared in the Standard.
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fac eas Domine de morte transire
ad vitam quam olim Abrahæ promisisti,
et semini ejus. (Make them, Lord, pass
beyond death to the life you promised
of old to Abraham and his seed.)
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Now Job—behold him ragged of soul
and brittle in the arteries—stood
before the opaque of his window
tense for the striking hour, uncaring
for the book of days upon his desk,
with all notations made for yesterday,
today, tomorrow, or granting it, eternity.
Job heard no requiem for glory
past or still to be, saw no sunset
as the broken light caught the dust
that hung distended in the air.
After the bells had signalled,
Job would gather up his bones
into the tentative shroud of coat
and push them to that cube of floor
and wall and ceiling he called a home.
Yet in his guarded movement through
the fever of spontaneous streets, Job
still felt the twitch of glands
raddled but still tenacious,
clutching desire, clothed in the brash
of youth—and limbering beauty
made spasms in his veins,
at his nerve-ends music.
The tattered song of men
who miss the boat to death—
the casuals of senescence—
is not unlike the muddied
vinegar of spoiled wine.
And revery second-hand
a corruscated sludge
when the shining metal
has been poured into
a mold now forgotten.
Rust is the payoff,
a rusty song played
on a rusty hinge,
a rusty gate
to an empty house.
If pity knows this song
tragedy laughs; comedy
blows its putty nose.
Job can sing at evening
breaking a path to his room
through the glimmer of the city,
taking his song to his room
like mist on a platter, borne
aloft in ceremony via sharp stairs
and contemplated behind a locked door.
In darkness, before the single bulb
has cast its opulence upon a cot,
a chair, a bureau, and a length of rug,
Job shreds the tissue of his song,
retiring awkwardly to still-death.
The ledger on his desk is shut
by muttering chars who see it
for obstruction to a dust-broom, not
as the meticulous record of something
grotesquely turned to nothing.
And Job is translated into bride
of Christ, laying mortality neatly
upon the bed, while spirit capers,
a Tinker Bell at ninety . . . .
The flesh lying in state upon a cot
has its own memories, parsing the past;
the spirit perched on this wretched cornice
whispers a song from Aretino.
Now street lights hang patterns
on his wall, and in his clothes
Job Thanatos sleeps and mutters,
simulates a mummy with the mange.
Stupid, miserable Job, where
is the holiness that made you, where
the choking stillness exploding into
melody?
Is it a gust among the towers, sighing?
Spacious and most holy, do not say:
Job, return to the dung-heap.
O do not say at all
Sleeping in sackcloth, Job
blasphemes himself before his god,
shoveling ashes, till earth revolves,
and terror-drenched the sun returns.
The ledger on the desk blows open,
pavilion for dancing mice
whose waltzing feet obliterate
what Job’s waning hand inscribed
by day, the secret, unuttered
tetragrammaton of maculate deception.
Sing, trumpet, quietly,
and meditate the lost of heart,
the tired in the brain,
reflective of foot.
Play, trumpet, let vibrato sing
the bursting cadenza, the tension
pocketed, felt in the hand,
caught by the rustling clarinets.
Let lip explain
what stifles in the conscience,
nerve against blood,
tears assaulting pattern.
Breathe out through twisted brass
the hesitant command to men
who live and stir and fade away.
Sing sadly, trumpet,
in the dark night mournfully.
Job will not die.
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