Curves and Angles:

NOT LUNAR EXACTLY(Detroit, 1948)New, and entirely new to the neighborhoodÉOne August day, it came to their own street:the Nutleys brought home a television!Nights now, the neighbors began to meetmore often than before, out walking, walking past the Nutleys, who, on displaybehind their picture window, sat frozenin their chairs, watching their television, which lay off to the side, just out of view, so you couldn’t make out what it was they were watching but only them watching, the four Nutleys, in a blue glow that was lunar but not lunar exactly. That was the summer we allwatched the Nutleys–no,we all watched “The Nutleys,”which was the one great showof the summer, it ran for weeks,with its four silent starsbehind glass, until nights went coldand damp and we turned to our cars if we ventured out after dark, and then–three in a row– the Daleys, the Floods, the Markses took the plunge, they brought home the glow, and the Nutleys, suddenly, belonged to a new community.FROM HERE TO THEREThere are those great winds on a tearOver the Great Plains,Bending the grasses all the wayDown to the rootsAnd the grasses revealingA gracefulness in the wind’s furyYou would not otherwiseHave suspected there.And there’s the wind off the seaRoiling the thin crowns of the greatDouglas firs on the cragged Oregon coast, uprooting Choruses of outraged cries, As if the trees were unused To bending, who can weatherSuch storms for a century.And–somewhere between those places,Needing a break–we climb out stiffFrom our endless drive to stand, dwindled, On a ridge, holding hands, In what are foothills only because The neighboring mountains are So much taller, and there are the breezes,Contrarily pulled, awakening our faces.SONMemory buries its own,And of what now forever must beThe longest day of his lifeWhat mostly remained was a blurUnder too-bright lights–so heCould scarcely tell if the thingsSharpest in his mind wereNothing but fantasies, sewnAfterwards, out of grief, And guilt’s imaginings.Yet it seemed memory called up(After the interminable birth,As his finger stroked the armOf a child who would not lastEven one whole dayAnd all of its time on earthMinistered to by vastMachines that couldn’t mend the harmIn a single transcription slipIn reams of DNA)A look so haunted, soHaunting, he would not confess(Not even later, to his wife)How it stayed with him, on him: the slowFlicker in a watery eye,The mute call–through allThe exhausted hopefulnessThe condemned come to knowIn the end–from animal to animal,Imploring, Please save my life.NORTH-LOOKING ROOM In a seldom-entered attic you force a balky door, disclosing a room made brilliantby an orange tree whose branches bear no fruit but maple leaves;We’re in New England, after all. Though rippling foliage fills the pane, the flush that tints the wallwill last a week or two, no more. * And this conception, if consoling, of a high, untenanted room lit solely by a treehouses as well–at least for those who’d sidestep round the fearthat in the give-and-take of calls to answer, calls to make,we lose the light most dim, most clear–a reprimand no breeze can shake.OVER LABRADORWhen miles of perfect whitenessGave way to a whiteness below(Snowed-under hills of a cloudlike brightness Under cloudbanks heaped like snow),By either light How fulfilling to contemplateDomains so evenly claimworthy– Unpeopled, complete.