The Beforelife Read online

COMMERCIAL FOR ABSENCE

  Try it,

  just a touch

  of being noplace

  at the pulse points.

  And I’m not

  mad (when I’m mad

  you will know it)—

  I am here, and I’m not

  angry with anyone.

  Can’t you sense it.

  I’m here, and I’m not.

  THINKING OF FRANCE

  from Celan

  Think along with me: Paris sky, spacious eternity of fall.

  From the flower girl we bought these hearts:

  they were blue and bloomed in water.

  It started raining in our room

  and the neighbor came over, Monsieur Le Songe, a haggard little man.

  Then we played poker, I misplaced my pupils;

  you let me wear your hair, I lost it, he depressed us.

  He walked through the door, the rain following.

  We were dead and could still breathe.

  THE WAY WE LOOK TO THEM

  Though perhaps when I thought you were looking away

  you, too, were wishing

  not to be seen; when

  I thought you were looking at me

  with coiling sneer, or pity, maybe

  you too with your eyes

  were beseeching

  to be seen,

  friend—

  THE MIRACLE

  You mean I am not an automaton

  subject

  to his most thoughtless whim? You mean

  all this isn’t his dream?

  She mixed tears with a little dirt, and applied it to her eyes—

  suddenly she was seeing.

  And then she was not going back

  there tomorrow, so

  nothing could stop her.

  REQUEST

  Please love me

  And I will play for you

  this poem

  upon the guitar

  I myself made

  out of cardboard and black threads

  when I was ten years old.

  Love me or else.

  HOMAGE

  There are a few things I will miss,

  a girl with no

  shirt on lighting a cigarette

  and brushing her hair in the mirror;

  the sound of a mailbox

  opening, somewhere,

  and closing at two in the morning

  of the first snow,

  and the words for them.

  TO A BLOSSOMING NUT CASE

  Why isn’t Jesus’ face ever described?

  Because

  in heaven unlike earth

  it doesn’t make a difference

  what one looks like,

  I suppose

  face up

  on the motel bed

  And yes I’ve seen

  my records

  in three manila volumes

  thick as the Boston white pages

  It looks like a suitcase

  you can’t get to close

  it looks like a bed that hasn’t been made

  in over a year

  Face

  up on the grubbled sea

  of this infected unfamiliar

  and infinite room, the sheet

  tenting my nose

  the toilet filled with blood

  And I almost forgot

  is my mind in this

  room or this room

  in my mind

  all in my mind

  Dark the computer dies in its sleep

  LEARNING A LANGUAGE

  She’s reading your minds

  as you pass by the

  dipsomane déguisée en rose

  While she waits

  for her date

  to turn up, the moon

  in the man …

  She knows exactly what is going to happen

  she’ll be guided

  upstairs

  to a bedroom, and turning around

  he will show her his

  gun

  He’ll ask if she would like to

  hold it,

  which she will

  amazed

  at its lightness

  and beauty

  this thing

  it must have taken 4 million years to make

  squeezing it she will feel cold

  and invisible light flowing

  into her spine

  So there is a door out of here after all

  And to visit a new place creates one

  in the brain

  How do you say no

  How do you say anything

  to throw up in

  Can I use this room to cry

  Radiant fuel

  body

  of water

  along which she walks, she is

  walked

  Why

  did we leave, and how

  are we ever getting back—

  FINE PRINT

  Look at the hand you’ve drawn

  the corpse of diamonds

  for the third time.

  PRIMOGENITURE

  My dad beat me with his belt

  for my edification and further

  improvement and later that other

  stranger took over

  somewhat more expertly

  which both learned from their fathers

  some heavily armed

  monkeys, from Plato’s cave

  to Darwin’s— …

  So that’s how it is done

  here,

  I thought

  and may my hand wither

  may it forget how to write

  if I ever strike a child.

  MOVING

  You were gone love

  voice invisible

  presence

  for lack of which

  welling up

  how would I live

  No lightbulbs

  And how would I write

  without

  light

  corner of Nowhere and Everywhere, I swear

  on my own grave

  I’ll never move again

  PLANTING

  The table set

  the endless

  table

  set inside

  the seed

  It’s not

  what goes into

  your mouth that defiles you but

  what comes out of it

  On second thought

  the definitely finite

  places set

  There will only have been

  so many of us

  PC LULLABY

  Martian polar storm as seen

  in blue light with sound of the wind there

  Recording of a Chinese bird bone flute 9,000 years ago

  This is better than looking at pictures of gorging nineteen-year-old vaginas

  Your human blood under my fingernail soul-

  black dawn of these streets gorgeously empty yes

  It is still

  dark out still snowing

  You are still here still asleep

  DYING THOUGHT NEAR THE SUMMIT

  Apples have wings, true or false.

  And this is just one place, one time

  EMPTY STAGE

  My name is Franz, and I’m a recovering asshole.

  I’m a ghost

  that everyone can see;

  one of the rats

  who act

  like they own the place.

  CLARIFICATION

  Someone once told me about a Buddhist

  monk who on awakening

  each morning said, “Master!”

  Then he would answer

  “Yes, master?” And then

  in a loud voice demand

  “Become sober!”

  Listen to what I am saying,

  but listen especially

  to what I’m not saying—

  Of all the powers of love,

  this: it is possible

  to die; which means
/>
  it’s possible to live.

  Now it is possible to die

  without being mad or afraid.

  NOTHINGSVILLE, MN

  The sole tavern there, empty

  and filled

  with cigarette smoke;

  the smell

  of beer, urine, and the infinite

  sadness you dread

  and need so much of

  for some reason

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Franz Wright was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. His most recent works include Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and IllLit: Selected & New Poems. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He works at the Edinburg Center for Mental Health and the Center for Grieving Children and Teenagers and lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, Elizabeth.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  This book was set in Monotype Dante, a typeface designed by Giovanni Mardersteig (1892-1977). Conceived as a private type for the Officina Bodoni in Verona, Italy, Dante was originally cut only for hand composition by Charles Malin, the famous Parisian punch cutter, between 1946 and 1952. Its first use was in an edition of Boccaccio’s Traffafello in Laude di Dante that appeared in 1954. The Monotype Corporation’s version of Dante followed in 1957. Although modeled on the Aldine type used for Pietro Cardinal Bembo’s treatise De Aetna in 1495, Dante is a thoroughly modern interpretation of the venerable face.

  Composed by NK Graphics,

  Keene, New Hampshire

  Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers,

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  Designed by Virginia Tan

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2000 by Franz Wright

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which a number of these poems previously appeared: Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Conduit, DouhleTake, Field, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slope.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wright, Franz, [date]

  The beforelife: poems/by Franz Wright.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-55457-4

  1. Narcotic addicts—Rehabilitation—Poetry. 2. Drug abuse—Poetry. I. Title.

  PS3573.R5327 B44 2001

  8II′.54—dc21 00-042854

  Published January 31, 2001

  Second Printing, June 2004

  v3.0