What Is It All But Luminous Page 7
To bathe in the fountain you must take off your clothes.
Stage Life, so much less than it seems to be.
Spoken for and available, vulnerable to cant,
raked amid rivers of instrument cables,
even the floor is aslant.
We’re caterers, the band and I,
we serve courses from “El Condor” to Marvin Gaye,
the soundmen, the haulers, each in our way
pray for moments of truth.
We set up the lighting truss, go through the sound check,
look for the ensemble to fuse. Listening is everything.
Give it all up to the Gods and then get out of town…
But first stick around a while after the show:
They’re loading the speakers into the truck, miles to go
…I turn to the faces I sing for—I hear it, in the deep
heart’s core, there at the stage door. I see it, their glittering eyes are gay!
Fountain spray.
Each in her way went awandering while we played.
I personally prayed to the “verb” all night,
to the reverb, the echo, the wetness of sound.
I know my call. It’s all around me as I sign my name.
I feel the heart jump—all eyes dewy,
within a band of fans, I stand in makeup,
naked at the pump.
I AM ARTHUR, WHAT IS ART? WHAT’S AN ARTIE AT MY AGE? SHOW BUSINESS AS REAL LIFE? IF I’M TO BE A GARFUNKEL, ISN’T GOD A JOKER? KIM IS KATHRYN. KATHRYN IS KIM. THE ONLY TRUTH I KNOW IS HER. HER HEALTH IS STABLE NOW, THANK GOD.
I’VE DONE A THOUSAND CONCERTS WITH MY FOUR-PIECE BAND. I LEARNED TO PERFORM WITHOUT PAUL. CONCERT HALLS, CASINOS, WITH ORCHESTRAS, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE AMERICA. MY MOTHER’S GONE, JAMES IS TWELVE. MY BROTHER JULES IS SOON TO DIE. THE FRIENDLY FELLOW WHO PICKS UP OUR PIZZA IS NOW IN THE OVAL OFFICE.
AND SUDDENLY SIMON & GARFUNKEL FALL BACK IN STEP TOGETHER AGAIN. NOBODY NEEDED THE MONEY. BUT ONCE YOU HOLD A REHEARSAL, YOU DRIFT BACK INTO THAT MAGICAL, EFFORTLESS BLEND. WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? FROM SEEING THINGS ALIKE IN JUNIOR HIGH. FROM LAUGHING AT NICHOLS AND MAY.
Come and watch over us,
May we yet be blessed
Forgive ourselves
And lay it all to rest.
Camogli, east of Genoa, along the coast beyond Sori. Election Day six days away—the mystery of how we allowed George Bush. And as he reigned it was Hitler explained. We should’ve known that self-righteousness only inflamed. “God on our side” rocks the world. Dylan knew and we used to know, forty years ago. Am I still on my way to Istanbul? Aren’t all bets off with Bush?
The sea paces. Death is waiting, shimmering
From sushi to sashimi,
from a walk to a jog,
France becomes a trainer’s ramp.
Summer cannot wane or age
the walker’s bead on a new stage.
The heart moves in from the left.
The Pitted Kettle begins to make
a sound surrounding us,
resounding to the Evermore,
another thaw—
I am in awe.
I forgive.
10 REASONS WHY I AM IN AWE OF MY WIFE:
1) She has the silhouette of a nubile Egyptian princess.
2) Three billionaires are loyal to her.
3) She never cooks a bad meal.
4) When she tires of seeing Provence on the back of a motorcycle, she falls asleep forward (clicking helmets), not back.
5) She tells the mayor of NYC to have a heart about taxi drivers’ wages, and she uses a one-minute photo op with the president at the White House to ask George about his global bearings.
6) She possesses a considerable range of great kisses.
7) She can emit a living object out of her body which is twelve times larger than the aperture of emission. (In man’s terms: like passing a gerbil through the penile canal.)
8) She has transcended money, and uses it only for classes and clothes (jewelry, real estate gaining).
9) Her beauty as a mother, pure gold to me, puts the Virgin Mary into the silver.
10) She’s a kickass actress, and she loves me.
WE SHOWCASED THE EVERLY BROTHERS, PLAYING ARENAS IN THE USA AND IN EUROPE. WE CLOSED THE TOUR WITH A FREE SHOW IN ROME—600,000 FANS IN THE FAMOUS STREETS. SUMMER OF 2004.
une vie quotidienne de chansons
Now that it’s over and nine hundred twenty-two songs have been done before six hundred eighty-eight thousand fans to show we can do it—all the world’s a stage, a play we intuit—I tender my love to the Lord Almighty for letting the notes, divinely spun, come alive each night preponderate, allowing me to be the conduit.
Chamonix, France, 1988
What is a day? What’s the point of it all?
We never chose our nose or the names we wear.
Set adrift by the gift of life, it’s a pall to bear.
How shall I fill the morning, the night?
Spending time in rhyme or in grateful prayer?
Is it a fall through air or a sacred rite?
What if there’s great regret at the end?
Does He intend to move us toward Aware?
Does it behoove us to blend the sight,
the flight and the plight in each day’s
share of delight?
It might have rained last night. The day is fiercely beautiful. Radiant sun falls on interfolding hills climbing to the spine of Tuscany, La Lima to Pistoia and to Brunelleschi’s dome, home to art majors like me, a walker in the dells (here, church bells), faint Etruscan images only Carrara marble tells in gorgeous morning air. Two eyes over Italy, ridge in the Mediterranean floor. Before me, shells on the Adriatic shore, then down to the Dardanelles.
Simon and Garfunkel at the Roman Colosseum onstage, screen 2004
BEAU DANIEL GARFUNKEL, OUR SECOND SON, WAS BORN TODAY, OCTOBER 5, 2005. THEN BROUGHT TO THE HOTEL BEL-AIR.
Enter the second son.
Into the Land of a Thousand Gardeners.
Into the open wind and the mortal wound.
My notion of the place that awaits us beyond the world is like my memory of a certain synagogue on a hill—vague. It was down our block, into the reeds, around the lake, where you climbed a hill to a shimmering temple, alabaster sky, June in the afternoon. The light, the lectern, the emerald shade…my brother Jules runs on ahead.
…remorse, regret, shame, and wasted time…
AT THE START OF THE 21ST CENTURY, THE WHOLE WORLD AND ITS COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS HAD MOVED TO FEAR—IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF IT, FEAR IT. IF YOU SEE SOMEONE SINGING WITH AN IPOD IN THE AIRPORT, IS IT YELLOW ALERT? ONCE AMERICA NEEDED AN ACT OF PROVOCATION TO INVADE ANOTHER COUNTRY, NOW ONLY SUSPICION AND PARANOIA ARE REQUIRED. ALL THE FORA OF REASON AND CARE, ALL EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND DIFFERENCES AMONG NATIONS, AND THEIR SHADES OF GRAY, SEEM TO HAVE BEEN SWEPT ASIDE BY THE SECOND BUSH ADMINISTRATION. SIMPLISTICALLY, SHOCKINGLY, IT ALL BECAME A WAR OF OIL AND RELIGION (MUHAMMAD VS. MCDONALD’S) AND IT DROPPED CIVILIZATION BACK FIVE HUNDRED YEARS. “IF YOU FEAR IT, ATTACK IT.”
Jacques Barzun or anyone
who talks to me like him
wins my sympathy in this decadent age.
What has “learn to earn” meant
but a fight against civilized discernment?
Is it that “time thins out things”?
Does the quality of life lessen
with human increase?
If it all dilutes through the centuries,
then from Rembrandt’s soulful portrayals
to Chartres Cathedral
to Aquinas
to Greek ARET
people have seen their better day.
My poetry bits are organs. What is the least connective tissue that sets them in a body?
From February 1999 to January 2006 I read 179 books. These 26 books stand out:
Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter (1998)
Philip Roth, American Pasto
ral (1997)
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)
A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (1954)
Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959)
Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence (2000)
Jakob Walter, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier (1850)
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1926)
Artie Shaw, The Trouble with Cinderella (1952)
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters (1866)
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1905)
Jean Rhys, Sleep It Off Lady (1976)
Harold Nicolson, Good Behavior (1955)
Lucien Febvre and Hanri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book (1958)
Charles Bukowski, Post Office (1971)
Majid Tehranian and Daisaku Ikeda, Global Civilization: A Buddhist-Islamic Dialogue (2003)
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002)
Aesop, The Complete Fables (c. 550 BC)
Groucho Marx, Love, Groucho (1992)
Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Vol. I (2004)
Laurens van der Post, A Story Like the Wind (1972)
Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (1990)
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1873)
Émile Zola, The Debacle (1870)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)
Today I’ll judge my books by their covers.
I’ll watch a pot, count unhatched chicks,
I’ll fix the unbroken, hold secret gods divine.
A thousand fine soldiers, resplendent in
their jacket designs, are lined in shelves in my aerie—
All the noble sentiments quilled,
Cry for all the milk that’s spilled,
Let the unaware buyer be sold—
If the book cover glitters, it’s gold;
I’ll make a Top Forty polled for pretty veneers,
how the book appears, and how it feels
to hold and be held the whole night through…
Today I’ll do exactly what you’re not supposed to do.
Take the word “PRECIOUS”—
it loses its value as we marginalize “SWEET.”
We push away poignancy. Nothing’s profound.
And “PRETTY” things, like furry slippers,
are for the effete.
Take opals in a brimming cup—
what would you say if you saw some
now that “AWESOME” ’s used up?
Is there wholeness still in “WHOLESOME”
or did it go McCall’s? IS there anything left
at all that calls to God?
Here’s a letter from Precious Knudsen.
I haven’t met her but she interviewed here
for a nanny position about a week ago.
Slowly I open the envelope.
—I heard from the agency that you do
not think I am the right fit…
O Precious Knudsen, what’s in a name?
If life had no language, would it be the same?
We played a small park band shell in Leipzig the sixth of July. I opened with “Homeward Bound” and went through fifteen tunes. The rain had stopped, the roof leak ceased. After “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” my son came out for “Cecilia.” He greeted the audience in German, introduced himself in German, he thanked them for waiting in the rain. He hoped they would enjoy “Mr. Blue” as much as he did. He wore his daddy’s black-and-white Elvis shirt. He looked to be one very attractive pop star. James Arthur was a hit.
At the U.S. Open tennis tournament, September 8, 2002
After the show we were leaving with the driver. There were fans at the gate. We stopped to greet them and sign autographs. I, in back, shared the contact—such love—with two dozen East Germans. James, in front at the window, was telling this lovely girl, smiling up at his eyes, what his email address is. She’s coming to tomorrow’s show in Munich! Her name is Emily. The flaming torch of rock ’n’ roll is passing from father to son.
Big free show at the Roman Colosseum,
six hundred thousand Italians,
a year and a week ago.
I walk the Siena road today
through middle Italy.
Little we know of the way of things,
of the Buddha’s art—
of what will connect
and what will remain apart.
IN ROME, IN THE VILLA BORGHESE, IS A MUSEUM WITH SCULPTURES BY THE GREAT BERNINI.
See Daphne trapped in trees. The myth has her running from Apollo, turning into a tree at the moment of his touch. Hence, forever elusive….But I see Arthur chasing Kathryn trapped inside the trunk of a willow tree, her history. At his touch, the bark falls away. The young sculptor, Michelangelo, began one day with a block of stone. As he found the Pietà within, so I embrace the emerging Kathryn.
I was her love pest.
Like aphids in the garden.
Mold on her bloom.
I was fungus underneath her nail.
Crust in her eyelashes.
Trust in the atmosphere.
Dust on the pictures of places we’ve been.
I’m her old bed linen.
The thrust of the argument.
Honey for tea in a bear.
There in the X-rays,
I’m the horn in her side
cornucopia.
I am her underwear.
Solder and weld.
Fused in our children.
Behold and be held.
Darling Kim. I AM your dream. I AM the man you think I am. You DID divine my spirit quite rightly when you were little. Now we mature. Both our inner spirits are “busied over” with our lives’ events. As cataracts becloud the eye with age, so the soul—the core of one’s self—must stay aware. The flame of one’s life is 100 percent flame for as long as it burns.
I BURN for you, baby Kim, while I live. There is no arc, no peak then fade. I am so close to you, you feel so attached to my heart, wherever I go…darling, your nature—when you come to me of a sudden, in the little village of Laglio, on Lake Como, is divine. So I AM on the other end of your powerful thoughts of me. I DO receive your prayers through the air.
This love of ours is very beautiful to me. Time polishes it beautifuller in spite of the admixture of my aging crust, thickening bark of the trunk of a tree, maturing and spreading itself with air and forgiveness sooo beautifully. The tree of us is getting a little big now, darling. Dancing in the wind, it says: “I embrace
Paul’s mother, Belle, dies. June 15, 2007. This is the age of dying—the end of June, abundant fecundity. Laurie Bird, Rose Garfunkel, Belle Simon….Why do they leave just then? Is it a showdown for them—a fork in a larger road? Keenly, with alienation, do they say to the ripest earth: “Today, you go your way…”? (Or is it just a clock run down?)
To Paul, from Art: We’re out under the stars now, the harbor we came from is gone from view.
When the biological imperative to continue the race is achieved and the need to create is done, birds can lose their song, color is extraneous, and briefs become boxers. Why stick around? Because the world needs delight to care to grow
To chase cachet is to unleash the cliché
and turn kitsch into so much quiche,
as when K___ casually mentioned
her friend Rajneesh—
Though the namedrop was blatant
I teased out her pretension instead
until The Bogwan was said.
THE ACTUAL PARIS SOLO SHOW
8 P.M., MARCH 21, 2007
Olympia Theatre
FIRST HALF—40 MINUTES
EL CONDOR PASA
AMERICAN TUNE
AND SO IT GOES
A HEART IN NEW YORK
CRYING IN THE RAIN
THE BOXER
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING
PERFECT MOMENT
SCARBOROUGH FAIR
SECOND HALF—50 MINUTES
MRS. ROBINSON
HOMEWARD BOUND
BRIGHT EYES
QUIET NIGHTS
ALL I KNOW
REAL EMOTIONAL GIRL
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
CECILIA
KATHY’S SONG
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
GOODNIGHT MY LOVE
WHAT’S GOING ON
We have a three-foot-diameter plastic globe
that sits on the floor of our bedroom.
The countries are colored. The ocean’s aqua.
These days we keep it unlit
for little Beau’s safety’s sake.
Through the east window comes the morning sun.
The bedroom is radiant with joy,
the Brandenburg IV is medium-loud.
Little Beau swooshes before me, pushing the globe
out the door; little feet pumping strong,
he rolls the world along the tiles to the kitchen.
It bangs into furniture. The denting is global.
I know I should take it away.
Beau and the Globe are a two-character play to me.
The things they do reverberate.
See Beau imitate his family of singers
as he puts his mouth into the opening
in the North Pole.
His one-year-old stretch gets him up and over
and down and in, calling his tenor note
across the earth’s interior.
Now there’s a big welt across the English Midlands,