The Living by Robert Pinsky

The Living

Robert Pinsky
wikipedia
Poetry Foundation

 

The living, the unfallen lords of life,

Move heavily through the dazzle

Where all things shift, glitter or swim –

 

As on a day at the beach, or under

The stark, absolute blue of a snow morning,

With concentric peals of brightness

 

Ringing in the cold air.  They seem drugged.

Their abrupt good fortune clings heavily

With the slow sway and pomp of dirty velvet,

 

Their purple, the unaccustomed garb –

Worn slipshod – of the Court

Of Misrule: animal-headed, staring

 

As if sleepy or drunk, riding a goat

Or perched backwards on a donkey,

Widdershins, hectic.  Beggars, bad governors,

 

We thrive awkwardly – some maimed slightly

In the course of war, some torn by fear sometimes;

Yet not paralyzed: we are moved.  The strange

 

Stories of the degradations of the martyrs –

Crucified upside-down, cooked live

On a grille – bother us doubly: in themselves,

 

And because a strange opiate intervenes

As if they were suffering now, at this

Apex of time, and for some reason we

 

Could not concentrate, lost on the slopes

Below.  We ape court manners clumsily,

Or shale fists, in awkward parade,

 

Exalted and confused.  Even in affliction – grotesque

Illnesses, poverty, ruined hopes, the world’s

Rage and the body’s – the most miserable

 

Find in the mere daylight and air

A miraculous daily bread.  Fairy bread:

We eat and are changed.  Survivors

 

After a catastrophe, transported, feel

Nearly as if they could find the lost,

Luckless ones, somewhere, perhaps not far –

 

Crowded, maybe, behind some one

Of the innumerable doors of the palace.

Plump Chance beams like an effigy

 

Of Mardi Gras – the apparent origin

And end of so much: disease, fame,

Unemployment, intrigue.  The world, random,

 

Is so real, it is as if our own

Good or bad luck were here only

As a kind of filler, holding together

 

Just that much of the adjacent

Splendor and terror.  Only,

Sometimes, a sharp, violent burr, discordant,

 

Sizzles for one instant in jagged

Hachures in the brain – momentary scream

Of the powersaw wincing back

 

From a buried nail.  Seizure: with a rising

Whoop, like a child on a steep slide,

A woman fell heavily to the floor

 

A few feet away from me, her scalp

Split a little, blood on my sleeve

As I raised her shoulders, acting the part

 

Of a stranger helping – asking a clerk

To please get something to cover her,

Please call for an ambulance, maybe

 

She has had a seizure.  Epileptic –

The falling Evil; something about the tongue,

Something for the teeth.  But her mouth

 

Was not rigid, her eyes open – why

Should she look at me so knowingly,

Almost with contempt, was she crazy? –

 

As if I had made her fall: or were no

Stranger at all but a son, lover lord

And master who had thus humiliated her

 

And now, tucking the blanket around her,

Hypocritical automation, pretended

To urge – as if without complicity or shame

 

Or least sense of betrayal – the old embrace

Of this impenetrable haze, this prolonged

But not infinite surfeit of glory.