Thomas Murphy Read online

  Truth you will not tell.

  Truth is for later.

  WINTER ENTOMBS US. Trees icicled. The rivers, padlocked. Our hearts, padlocked. The ball bearing of the Earth grinds its gears toward the light at last, and the sea, solemn sea, sheds its discipline. I am five, on the strand tonight, looking for a sign. Even now, at this frightened age, one feels the shadow of truth. I have lain under the cold stars at night before Ma called me in, yearning to remember something I never experienced. I knew who I was. Beside the white, beaten stones, I watched the sheep huddle, and the unbroken horses and I knew who I was.

  How slick the petals of the ocean as they bloom again. How fierce, how businesslike the tern in its hieroglyphics. The Earth grinds on its axis, the strident wind goes slack, and the stars are steady as my gaze. I would travel now, if I could. I would walk across the ocean, past the startled fish and dreaming whales until I reached some shore of thought and language. Not this night, though. On this night I am content with a ripple of warm air and the horizon’s ambiguity.

  So many times like this, before. So many yet to come, with my dull ignorance cracking open the padlocks and straining toward the spring. I need rigor. I need geometry. I need to settle into a form. My form. Me. I must create the sensibility by which I am understood. How do I know such things, at five? How do I know them without knowing? The way the Earth senses the new season, I imagine, for having known it before. When did I know it before?

  AS A POET, I have to believe in God, though I have little affection for the God I believe in and he has none for me, none that he shows, anyway. Yet I must believe, or I could not write words, structure, anything. The whole process of writing a poem is mystical, to me at least, mystical and beyond my reach. Have I told you about this? I begin a poem with an image out of nowhere (where did that come from?), and at once suspect I am part of a plan, and the poem I’ve begun is part of a plan. The process of writing, then, is the progression toward someone else’s design. And who could that someone else be but God. It’s why, I think, whenever a poet arrives at the end of his poem, the moment is always unsatisfactory, a letdown. Because you think: Is this all he had in mind? But there you are, nonetheless, sweating like a pig and breathing hard, and knowing you’ve tried your hardest to fulfill what was decreed, preordained. And, of course, you’ve failed.

  It’s why I tend to write simple poems with rocks in them. I have throes of fanciness in me—I have to beat them down sometimes—but generally I dismiss them as fake thinking, as fiddling with knowledge or language for the silly sake of doing it. I know that dandyism does not make for real poetry. Arse poetica. This comes from my da, too. He could not stand waste—of time or behavior or language. He’d tell me, Most talk is horseshit, but not as useful. So he always spoke in a straightforward way, putting one word in a slot where a lesser man would have stuffed three. Thus every word he said was, to me, beautiful.

  There is a connection between this simplicity and my feeling that a poem of mine has been written before I write it, that I am tracing the original drawing, the way children trace. And, in that same way, the tracing is different from the drawing beneath it, even if it follows the lines as carefully as the child is able. As a poet, there is always something uniquely yours in the traced work, something your own that even the original artist may not have divined. Like those copyists of the Old Masters who were compelled to leave a clue that they, mere copyists, existed too. And to reach that point in a poem, it is best to keep the language simple, like my da’s, so as not to muck the thing up.

  What happens, then, even though you know you have failed to follow the plan perfectly, is that you’ve done something worthwhile on your own, imperfectly. You have kept it simple, but it is not simple. The poem has taken you to the edge of the sea, to the point where the vast sea is revealed. And though you know you cannot re-create the sea, with all its welts and fathoms, with its treasure ships half buried in the sand on the bottom, among the kelp, and its killing fish and its killing winds and manacles, still, you have brought yourself to the brink of revelation on that shore. And the beginning of revelation is, for all intents and purposes, revelation.

  You never crash if you go full tilt. It takes a kind of courage to write a poem—my ma’s and da’s courage, and Cait’s courage, and Oona’s, when she was certain she was doomed, and Sarah’s courage too, when she was little and knew that she had to live all her coming days in the dark, and yet got on with it. The courage to gun it, even though you’re predetermined to fail. Because between that certainty and the attempt to refute it is life, boyo—dreadful, gorgeous life.

  HOW DO WE KNOW that God isn’t in Hell, and Satan in Heaven, where he started out? Whose word do we have to go on? Dante? Milton? Literature is literature, my esteemed geniuses, but those poems of yours are just grand guesses. What if God simply couldn’t take Lucifer’s complaining and posturing and Sturming and Dranging day after day, night after night, and decided to pack his bags, get out of there, and go straight to Hell, to put as much distance as possible between himself and that irritating cocky bastard. And once that happened, let’s say that Lucifer calmed down and remained in Heaven among his fellow angels, who never gave a shit about him anyway, happy that the pious asshole was out of his sight, yet sulking that he had no enemy in his weight class worthy of railing against, or usurping. And let’s say that these two impressive personages have lived in both locations all along, from the start. So we have Lucifer out of place among the vanilla goody-goodies, and God sitting around with the fire and brimstone, and a bunch of cackling junior devils. Wouldn’t those newly dead people assigned to one place or the other be in for the surprise of their lost lives when they got there. Good would be mixed in with evil, evil with good. And God would exist in eternal confusion. And Lucifer, too. Just like the rest of us. Thus spake Murph.

  JACK LEFT SARAH a voice mail. He was safe. He was happy. He had found “the love of my life.” He hoped Sarah would “understand.” He apologized “for causing you so much pain.” But a man “has to follow his heart.” He didn’t know what else to do, so he’d “just bolted.” He hoped Sarah would “find it in your heart to forgive me eventually.” He thanked her for “all their great years together,” but he was sure she had recognized that their marriage had “gone stale.” That was it, Sarah told me. After eight years, a voice mail. What a mess, Murph. He’s a mess. That’s one word for it, I said. Her voice went in and out. She was having trouble completing sentences. She stammered. Are you crying, Sarah? Not for him, she said. Not for our marriage. It’s just sad, Murph. I thought I’d forgotten how to be sad.

  ON A DARK EVENING in the early 1900s, Synge was boarding a train in the west, headed for a celebration in Dublin honoring the memory of Charles Parnell, the great nationalist leader. A wild crowd filled the station platform, many of them from Aran. Hooligans and drunks, for the most part. In the carriage compartment, a little girl from Connaught was seated next to Synge.

  When the train started moving, a fight broke out among soldiers. The women who followed them were in a rage, too, cursing and swearing. Soon the women shifted moods from anger to lamentations, equally frantic. The little girl beside Synge began to cry, while a sailor in the compartment talked nonstop with what Synge described as “a touch of wit or brutality and always with a beautiful fluency.” Nothing appealed to Synge more than the wild temperament of the west.

  The girl began to shed her shyness and allowed Synge to point out the countryside that was coming into view in the dawn light. He described the trees to the girl, who was too small in her seat to see out the train window. He described the shadows of the trees. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. “But I can’t see it.” Her quiet appreciative presence contrasted notably with the strange wildness of the elders, and this mixture of moods made up the spirit of the west of Ireland to Synge—all of it moving east on a train full of people bound to pay homage to the dead Parnell. Would Sarah like Ireland?

  ENTER MÁIRE, bearing plans. Apparently
I need to get out more, to walk a mile a day, and focus. I need to focus. You’re at sixes and sevens, she says. Thirteen, I say, and ask if this is another numbers test. She snarls. It’s always worth getting Máire riled, just to see Oona again. Same rippled brow. Same scowl. I picture her scolding her clients. She does wonders with other people’s money. That much I know. A guy I met at a reading told me, your daughter’s a genius. I gave him a free book. My genius jabbers on. When a word of mine slides in edgewise, I ask her how she’s doing. Got a new boyfriend. She says I’d like him because he reminds her of Greenberg. Gay? I ask. Not so you’d notice, she says. I’d like to put her on top of a cake.

  Who’s that in the picture on your desk? she asks. Dad. Daad? A wicked smile and a brightening of the eyes. Do you have a girlfriend? Nah, I say. That’s just a new friend. Uh-huh, she says. Uh-huh, I say. Uh-huh, she says. Christ. Am I blushing?

  Know what she does the day she tosses Fuck Hughie out on his ear? She comes over and sits where she’s sitting now, and before her mother and I can dish out the predictable bromides and consolations, she tells us, don’t worry. The two of you taught me to play fair and square with the world even when the world doesn’t play fair and square with me. I’ll be fine. I wanted you to know that. I tried not to look over at Oona because I knew she was bawling. I couldn’t see anything anyway, though eventually I made out the Kleenex. Ach Murph. You sentimental old fart. How about a drink? Don’t mind if I do.

  So, I’m thinking she’s about to go, when she says the three dreaded words. By the way, Murph, her voice slower and more hesitant, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. By the way, she says, William and I are moving. I have a new job offer. Big and important, Murph. You’ll be proud of your little girl at last. She knows I’ll say, Always have been, so I say it. It’s a huge investment company, she goes on. Billions, all over the world. And I’m in charge of a chunk of it. My eyes narrow. And just where in the world will you and William be going to be in charge of this chunk? I ask. London! She tries to make the word happy, but of course that’s impossible. London! My outcry echoes into the misty centuries. London! As in London, England? She laughs. Is there any other kind? she says. Well, that takes the cake, I say. You sashay in here and announce not only are you moving away from your poor old father, but that you’re kidnapping the best friend he has in the world in the bargain, livin’ the life. Taking my grandson into the house of the enemy.

  Please don’t look at it that way, Dad. This is an amazing opportunity for me, and for William too. New country. New schools. And no Murph, I say. You can visit us, she says. We’ll come to you. It’s just a few hours away. It’s a civilization away, I say. But, she says, you can see why I’ve been concerned about you living on your own. I wanted to make sure you were looked after before we took off. Even if you have that e-4 gene, she says, Dr. Spector’s on the case. I think, Whoopie! My eyes grow narrower still. And did William know about this? I ask. She says, I just told him this morning. And what did he say? She gulps. He said, Is Murph coming with us? Whenever my heart sinks, I get belligerent. Oh missy, I get it now. London, fucking England, is just a few hours away when it means a social call, but it’s a distance of light-years when you’re in charge of a chunk of the world, and can’t be bothered to think about your old man’s mental health.

  Now she looks the way she did as a little girl, when she thought she’d done something to displease me. And, as I always did then, I relent. It’s her life, after all. And this all may be for the best, as I am thinking about my falling asleep when I should have been watching William—though, Christ, what will I be doing walking in Central Park without my little man beside me? I give her a hug nonetheless, and tell her it’s great and that she’s great and the job sounds great and that I’ll be great, and that I’ll swallow my pride and try to learn to speak English. And I dance her out the door before she can see my fucking eyes.

  DEAR SARAH, I got me a Perkins Brailler because it’s unnatural to be on the receiving end all the time, without writing back. I hope you don’t mind, but you can’t expect an Irishman to keep his big mouth shut too long. Bad for the lungs. He’ll suffocate himself. I’ve been thinking a lot about Aran lately, my Inishmaan. Did I write that? My Inishmaan? Have you ever been to Ireland? If I drive out some of my darker memories, the way Saint Patrick is said to have driven out the snakes, the place returns to me as beautiful. Full of brave, kind, and gracious people. And lots of laughs. A red rag on a hedge. That’s what it is. A flash of life and color caught in a hard place with thorns. But the thorns reveal the color of the rag as much as the rag reveals the thorns. A red rag on a hedge. I think you’d like Inishmaan. As ever, Murph.

  PS. There never were any snakes in Ireland in the first place. Patrick was full of shit. Maybe my dark memories are fiction, too. You never know.

  PPS. Tonight I plan to go out in the courtyard and sing “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” I’ve done it before. Lovely tune. Do you know it?

  PPPS. I’m giving a reading at the 92nd Street Y next Wednesday night. Want to go? With me, I mean.

  YOU NEVER CRASH if you go full tilt. Sure. But one morning you look around, and you’re the only driver on the road. You can say that has nothing to do with your attitude. You are Mario Andretti at any age, and you go go go whether others are there or not. And there are no more cigarette butts in the ashtrays, no more ashtrays, or big laughs and not a drop taken where once it was taken, and you thought you heard a cough but it was a dead limb cracking and falling, well then, all you have left is the books to stave off the obvious. That, and a few ripe berries.

  Through the Christmas season, TCM shows a montage of the people in movies who have died during the year. Why do I weep at the sight of Greer Garson, Ronald Colman, Lana Turner, Elisha Cook Jr., Van Heflin, Butterfly McQueen, and Burgess Meredith? I knew them not. Yet they were part of my life, of all our lives. They made an impression. Burgess Meredith, not croaking and creaking in Rocky, but rather Burgess Meredith in Winterset, under the Brooklyn Bridge, young and yearning, with an old, crackling-cellophane voice way back then. But it’s not just the movies we saw these people in. They went full tilt, you see. People in movies have to go full tilt, because their lives are compressed into 90 minutes or 120. And you realize that they too, the gone, surveyed the scene at some point in their lives and saw all the others gone. They left the theater alone, and hunted for a cab.

  What I love about being a poet is that I see the world as a poem—a thing that lives between the lines, between the nodes, as Sarah puts it. Trouble is, those spaces increase as life increases. Mystery compounds mystery. And then one afternoon you want to say to someone, Look at this. Will you? And as you say that, you glance to your right, and Oona’s gone. And you glance to your left and Greenberg has gone too. And Máire and William soon gone. Not dead, thank goodness. But gone. They become part of the space. They add to the invisible mass. Do I want to be the last man driving, only to assess the empty world as existing between the lines?

  There’s much to say for space, much to say for my da’s gone leg, except when there’s nothing to contrast it with. Burgess Meredith. Whenever they invoke The Twilight Zone’s greatest hits, they trot out old Burgess, wandering the wasteland city in search of peace and quiet and something to read. When he crushes his eyeglasses underfoot by mistake, that’s supposed to be the tragedy of the tale. But the tragedy comes before that, when he wanders around and no one is there. It wasn’t a small tragedy—poor Burgess not being able to go into seclusion with his beloved books. It was the greater tragedy. He could not see other readers. Maybe I ought to join AARP after all, and enjoy the many benefits of membership.

  My hands loosen their grip on the wheel, and I shoot forward into the empty supermarket, and out again into the empty stadium, and out again. I drive to Bethlehem, Paris, Akron. Not a soul anywhere. I drive to Tinian, whence the Enola Gay took off for sleeping Hiroshima. I drive the runway, now weeds and midges, built extra-long for the
weight of the bomber. Nothing there. Nothing in the hospitals in Galway. Nothing in the swimming pools in Mamaroneck, or in the Belnord courtyards, either one. Nothing in the New York Public Library, not even Burgess Meredith. I blast through the stacks, going a hundred, maybe two. Look. No hands. Go Oona. Go Greenberg. Go William. Go Máire. From here you look like berries.

  In memoriam, everyone. Much love.

  AFTER THE READING, we go to a bar on Third Avenue, with photographs of dogs covering the walls. I describe some of the dogs to her. She asks how they are dressed. We chat about this and that, but not about Jack. I’m relieved. I think she is, too. She says she liked the reading, but thought the Q&A afterward was a waste of time. Always is, I tell her. A novelist friend of mine deliberately times his readings to end within ten seconds of the hour allotted, so as to eliminate room for the Q&A. Even so, I went to one of his readings where a guy got his question in within those ten seconds. He asked my friend how to get an agent. Some of the greatest Q&A moments occur at the 92nd Street Y, I tell her, because Jews are so crazy. They’re Irishmen, I’m certain of it. Ireland, a lost tribe of Israel. Same gloom, same jokes, same fight in ’em. Same fixation on one point of view. I tell her of the time I finished a reading of poems at the Y that I, for one, thought moving and heartbreaking. A bearded guy in the front row raises his hand, and says, I saw you on TV. Not knowing how to answer that question, I scanned the room in search of another. From the back, a woman calls out, I saw you on TV, too. Then the first guy pipes up again. On TV, he says. I saw you on TV.

  Crazy kikes, I say. Crazy micks. I love those words, says Sarah. I know you’re not supposed to say them. But they have such life. Coons. Wops. Yes, I say. And most are one syllable, giving them a special kick. Gook. Hebe. Slope. Jap. Chink. We go on like that, trying to come up with all the delicious slurs and verbal no-no’s forbidden in polite company, all one syllable. Cunt. Fuck. Cock. Tits. Which reminds me, she says. Why are you men so taken with our tits? It goes back to our babyhood, I tell her. We long to suckle. Bullshit, she says. It’s because you’re such an uninteresting gender. Even blind as a bat, I can tell when a man is staring at my tits. Am I staring at them now? I ask. (I am.) Of course you are, she says. If I wanted to make all men happy, I’d wallpaper their houses with pictures of tits, the way these walls have dogs. Bitch, I say. Dick, she says.