Friday I visited Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most of the book shops I knew are gone, but Dawn Treader Books was still in business— a survivor from the great old days of Ann Arbor book shops. The poetry section was smaller than I remembered, with a few shelves so crammed with collections it was difficult even to dislodge a book from its place. I felt sad looking over titles and names. They weren’t just books. They were people I once knew. So much self-importance. So much certainty in their own greatness. Now here they were, interred in the last poetry mausoleum. I left Ann Arbor thinking I had wasted my life. But then I also thought this, how could I waste a life I’d chosen. That is something. That is perhaps something.
Author: Salvatore Ala
Barbershop Mirrors
Mirror barbershops,
Reflect space, imitate waiting,
Affix stillness, mimic motion,
Brush hair, touch faces,
Weigh shaving cream
In mirrored hands,
Maroon towels, mix tonics,
Cut conversation,
Amend silence, trim excess
In excess of excess.
Open Letter to my Son
I’ve been mulling over our conversation. I suppose for a young person today there is a lot of pressure to be successful. You’re ambitious and that’s good. The allure of worldly riches is strong: money, cars, private jets— even islands and countries can be bought. Don’t confuse ambition and happiness. They masquerade for each other and you might not see the difference for a long time. I’m glad though that you can talk to me, that part of you has sympathy for an ageing, not very successful poet. Something tells me you knew I’d say stay in school, finish your degree, don’t sellout your intelligence for mammon. I’ve also met business people with lakefront condos, expensive cars and boats… Their dialogue is all negotiation and their presence half facade. Not one of them could count among their riches the many gifts you already possess. Some of us were chosen for higher things. Love dad.
High Winds
Many broken branches, heavens eroded,
Trees uprooted, the heartwood with rot.
Roof shingles raised, power lines down.
I’ve never seen such wind-blasted light,
Blue diffused into dark, transparent night.
In my mind distance travels like the wind.
Outside our losses, the road of the wind.
State Mental Hospital
A sound structure in architectural
beauty and ruin,
Lovely grounds overrun by weeds,
Narrowing trails through forest,
The farm now fallow and wild.
Ghosts of place move on,
Legends vandalize experience,
Peace remedies chaos,
Kindness cures brutality
Bound to no restraints.
If facts are fake poetry proves true,
Patients shine with health,
Society suffers lunacy,
Institution disperses,
Madness finds proportion.
Homemade Wine
The best thing about homemade wine,
Drinking it at the right time,
When the grape is in Madre Vino
And the moon in its libration;
When the chimes are bleeding
And barrels breathe into ullage,
The finish in the beginning—
The beginning in its prime,
The sunset of your labor
Steeped in field grape red–
Nights of happiest dreams,
Warmest tones, touch and taste;
When the body of the wine
Fills spirit to the rim, it is ageless;
When wine spirits the air
Like spring mornings, it is ageless;
When drinking from the barrel
Inspirits time with roundness, it is ageless.
The best thing about homemade wine,
Drinking it at the right time.
Pavlov’s People
Pavlov’s people eat the world
Bark like dogs
Trained conditional reflex
To salivate and attack
But who can blame them
We’re all Pavlov’s people
Watch us gather at the bell
Caesar
The pack turns on you
Temple of Concord (What Immigrants Bring to a Country)
I dreamt I saw the Temple of Concord
Outside a rural Canadian town.
Farmers stood round the temple
Wondering what to make of this…
Naturally the farmer was compensated
For the foreign structure on his land.
The temple, enclosed in clapboard,
A country church and farmers’ market.
But when I drive near that alien corn
I see the Temple of Concord glowing
Against the green, beautiful in snow,
Though no one else can seem to see it.
Snowglobe
The poems of the old century hold their magic. “Cemetery in Snow” by Xavier Villaurrutia is such a poem. You can think about the poem several ways but because the subject is so singular it is trapped in the glass of its making. Shake it and the letters will settle back in some insensible way, burying the cemetery just so. The poem was probably not so much a matter of writing as of polishing glass, clarifying silence, making each different letter fall the same way.
Pictures at an Excavation
Bright figures swim in a Roman bath
Sunk in shadows of an underworld
Neptune and seahorses mid ocean
A boy on a dolphin leaps into light
Mosaic land of impossible stone
Beings trapped in dimensionality
Beings detached from stone
Gods on the surface of a dream
Supine and recumbent statues
Extruded from swampland
Buried like mystery religion
And backward flowing skies
Tessellated spiral lines
Like nets between stars
Multitudinous motionlessness
Oceans of unweighted time
Clearing the silt of words
From the mirror of mind
Eroding the same earth
A mosaic of merchant civilization
Fish and sails wine and grain
Amphorae amphora repair
Open to the mouth of the Tiber
Fishhead man gulping the sea
Salvatore Ala 