© 2009 Salvatore Buttaci


Sunday Visit

We kiss between the grating,
breaths heavy with longing.
Your talk is fast––stories of home;
There’s too little time.
Instead, we pretend this
is the day of my release.
We laugh like children at play
in a garden exploding colors
like a dizzy man’s stars.
But winter is everywhere.
We count the deserting moments,
touch fingertips through
the wire-mesh grating.
In your eyes the hurt’s unbearable,
so I quickly look away.
When my eyes return,
you are gone. Again heaven
slams shut the spring garden gate.


What the Moon Knows

wolves howl
from wooded sanctuaries
in the winters of night

if only we could translate
their lupine bayings
at the moon

if only we could learn
what the moon already knows
and hides from us

if we should tremble
behind locked doors
or ride the howling into sleep


The Crime of Autumn

winter in the wings
autumn soon enough
will don its heavy coat
rehearse down-the-back
shivers and tremblings
strut through nature
with a vengeance
suck dry
chlorophyll dreams

autumn says
somebody's got to do it
but then why
the diabolic sneer
the piercing eyes
raucous laughter
in the diaspora
of leaves
now brittle
in their colors
taking to the wind

autumn insists
winter demands
a prelude to
the white death
a syncophant
to rustle up
some dying
before winter
roars its frigid
killing breath


Once on My Street

it was a tall sycamore
proud of its roots
ostentatious each spring
in its display
of blossoms
and of leaves

still proud in winter
bare and shivering
in the white wind
the yellow moon
cupped
in its clawing branches

and then one June morning
they took the giant saw
to the trunk
of the unsuspecting
sycamore
brought low its green branches

and left only a stump
coated with concrete
to quiet the bark
of last impressions


Hobart’s Café Revisited

Why is it some refuse to buckle under?
Destiny assigns them a place in life’s schemes,
But they reject it, believing they can find their own.

The facts are these: last August she turned you away.
She made it quite clear she no longer loved you.
Remember her note, the one you read at this same table?

You committed the words to memory, allowed them
to burn brightly there. Can you explain the reason
You’ve returned here at the height of this cold December?

If love can die in a blooming season, what then
Can we say of winter? What you mistook for love
Was made of ice where nothing green can grow.

Still, you sit there, hands warming against your cup
Of steaming coffee, and you shake your head at me,
At my attempt to stop you from being a fool again.

Jane says she left the city in October.
She told the waitress she’d be gone for good.
In all her talks, she never once mentioned your name.

What makes you think good can come of this?
That she will all at once regret and make things right?
Use your head. Drink your coffee, just walk away.


A Coat of Many Colors

On sleek winter sidewalks hedged with mounds
of off-white snow, he shivers in a coat
of many colors: a gift to himself
in a better season, before the unraveling
threads of the woof and warp
tattered into strings of cruel reminders.

How is it he can trudge almost invisibly?
through a crowd of late-night Christmas shoppers,
cut a straight path with his grocery cart
the way the Caesars did in curtained litters
shouldered by servants
down stones of Roman streets?

Once upon a past along these same streets,
he hurried like these shoppers, head bowed
to the tick of office time, his worth measured
in the tickertape of stocks and bonds,
his wife and children loved with words
and gifts and promises of One Day Soon.

He thinks himself invisible
on the winter street, warm inside his cashmere coat,
a world away from a warm house, a daily shower,
breakfast devoured behind the rustling
of front-page news, he drags an infected foot
of a homeless body reeking in the cold air.

Sadly he remembers all of it,
and if he cared to speak, he would not find
the words. How does it come to be
that somebody's father, someone's son,
a man once needed, a brother, a husband,
a man worthy of love could feel so betrayed
he'd will his life away to this hell,
descend so deeply into the pit
of his own winter that only this coat,


once cashmere camel's hair, now torn and splotched
in a color patchwork of filth, the coat you see him
wear, cinctured with a belt of rope, buttonless


collar half torn away, this coat from which
he will not part, this coat that one winter night
he will close his eyes and die in.


Condemned

in a porcelain vase a dusty bouquet
of faded silk roses tremble in a steady
cold front breezing through the window sill.

in this empty house on this uneventful day
November once anniversaried with laughter
now garbs its flesh in ceremonial grief.

in the slow dragging feet of the condemned,
time mirrors what it measures and on walls
of stippled blue a thousand eyes stare
through daylight and darkness.

in the voices vibrant once when this house
lived and breathed, words have lost their courage,
and even spirits who haunt these rooms have absented
themselves in a show of lost-lovers' solidarity.
December


December wears her heavy coat,
earmuffs and a long red scarf.
Into her rosy hands all chapped
she blows hot air the sun won’t yield.

Sometimes when the wind blows hard,
December strains her ears to hear
and wonders if within the howl
the syllables of secrets lie,

or could it be, she asks herself,
if once again the end draws near
and she must acquiesce to Time,
pass on to January
the old year’s woolen gloves.



Transport

Today I will be a lonely train
A black machine on icy rails
Past villages buried in snow.
I will whistle haunting dirges
As I plow towards Siberia.

In the guts of me passengers
Lonelier than I mutter old
Remembered prayers and weep for
Mother Russia. I will be a train
Today. In my wooden seats

Huddle those who believe they shiver
From the cold. Outside they watch
The houses, the trees, all their dreams
Vanish in reverse, washed away in
Thick white strokes against their windows.

Tomorrow in a train yard I will
Repent. For my penance see myself
A New York City bus, open and shut
My doors to winter shoppers
And laughing school children.

But today I will be a train
Coiling around the Urals like
A serpent black and hissing.
And I will not brake until
I reach the gates of hell.


Oxymora

Like snowflakes descending from a dark sky,
his last note, a thousand shreds of paper now,
flutters down from her balcony. Why
couldn't he have written words to save her?
At least these sharp, hurtful words are dulled forever.
What cruel kindness! A final note to ease the pain
of parting. He will never return. From the balcony
she stares wet-eyed at the courtyard below
where children race to catch a summer
blizzard in their open hands.


Services

Old Father Murphy dressed in somber black cassock
recites prayers over Mrs. O'Bannion's casket
while all around the gravesite tears cascade
from mourners' eyes, some sincere, some contrived.
Downcast, they dig their chins tight against their chests.
Then, cap in hand, the gravedigger Flynn
clears his throat to signal to the rest
assembled here to note the time and say
their very last goodbyes so he can work.
Mrs. Reilly mentally runs through a new recipe
for the tuna casserole she'll bake tonight.
She nods her head as if each ingredient
were the name of Jesus-- a litany for O'Bannion.
The crowds shuffle towards their cars and waiting cabs
to the chagrin of Patty Sheridan,
uncle of the deceased, who thinks their hasty exit
vulgar. "A stampede of cattle, is it?"
he mumbles. "A fine send-off for that sweet
niece of mine. To be treatin' her like some castaway!"
Meanwhile, Father Murphy drones away at his Catholic
eulogy about how Margie O'Bannion
was a classic example of the sinless soul
prepared to meet her Maker. Mrs. Reilly mentally
chokes on her tuna casserole, coughs, then wonders
what will be said of her when death catches her here
in this sad place. Will the good Father Murphy's words
sprout her wings, present a clean white bill of spirit health,
and like O'Bannion, win her a brand new reputation?


Old Blue

When I was a boy on Grandpa's farm
it was a joy that winter, feeding
the animals he kept on three acres
he called Heaven. When the white fell, sheep
herded towards the barn and Grandpa's border
collie raced in crazy circles snapping
at snowflakes lighting on his panting tongue.
I laughed so hard! Old Blue Boy looked like
a mad dog barking at insect stars
fluttering down on Grandpa's Heaven.
Then, red with anger, Grandpa scolded Blue,
ordered him right there to lie down quietly.

I can still, after all these years, recall
how I stared down Old Blue Boy to rise up
and challenge my grandfather. Meanwhile
the storm whipped the air in swirling white,
until all that was visible in that field
was Old Blue Boy's tail wagging outside
a heap of snow. He would not move.
Finally, Grandpa waved me inside the warm
house, then, two fingers in his mouth,
forgivingly, he whistled for Old Blue Boy
to shake himself free and come to dinner.


I Could Have Loved Winter

I could have loved the death of nature
Embraced it like a friend
Raised hopes after the fall

I could have loved all things white
Raced my heart away from grief
Praised creatures hibernating

I could have loved winter
Faced all those tomorrows gallantly
Courageously in your company

I could have loved blizzards
Braced myself for all life might have offered
Chased contrarieties away

I could have accepted ice and snow
Graced the winter months with laughter
But in January you chose to leave me

I could have loved but chose instead to
Paste memories in scrapbooks, say “Love
Stays? Never!” For me you killed winter


What Can We Confess

This is the belly of the whale,
the paper-thin edge of the universe,
the dark bottomless pit.

From a coward’s mouth horrid screams
assault the quiet twinkling of the stars
nesting in this nighttime sky.

Who are we in this dark drama?
What whipping words lashed from
a foolish tongue cannot be rescinded?

In a multiple-choice question
of guilt, what dare we confess to clear us
of unproved accusations?

How can we disperse scoundrel clouds
from their intimidating poses
and re-ignite the stars?

This is the demarcation line,
the intervals on both sides of confidence,
along which clowns like us totter.

It would be so easy now
to throw off transparent disguises
yet we go on hiding.

In what seems a simple code of on-off
Blinking, the stars tell us something
But we pretend we hate the night.


World Peace

she pretends in the crib of her small hands
sleeps a weary world, a globe of blue and green
at rest in her open palms.

she imagines the world a train derailed
in a lazy clover field, free of ties and tracks
trekking towards destinations.

the world she says is sleeping in these hands,
it is dreaming itself peaceful like an infant
cradled in his mother’s womb.

she makes believe the world is safe,
it can be touched without fear of
sharp edges-- just a smooth ball:
a synergy of ocean and earth.


Riding Through Warsaw

You wonder about lonely windows
framed late at night
on the front of tenement houses
planted deep in Warsaw.

Riding by on the late-hour bus,
you see the light
but no one is there. Maybe people
living inside are laughing.

Somebody's daughter says something cute.
Someone's son might
be feeding his dinner to the fat
dog under the table,

but dark windows are the loneliest.
Eyes locked down tight,
you wonder Will they ever come back?
Do spirits walk empty rooms?

Pale beams of moon and stars
brace themselves
against the height
of these tired old buildings. How blessed
you are to be going home again!


Secrets

all my friends are dead
my secrets died with them
buried to a safe, quiet depth
but some nights
they all escape my dream mouth
dead friends and
the secrets I confided
the taste of dirt and ashes
grievous like gravel
choking in my throat
the confessional veil lifted
by incriminating words
that say how many fools I am
those secrets
tightly treasured in darkness
clenched in seeming absolution
even those secrets
in the least expected

in the least expected
sleep hours
come loosened
from the tongue
secrets like vermin
crawling free
from the surrendering hands
of old friends


For Vallejo

On some downtown cobblestone nightmare street
In Chile I hide in doorways that smell of cheap wine,
watch la policia rush by in search of me,
Listen to my heart boom towards implosion,
And wonder how in God’s name will I find
César Vallejo before the end of his next poem,
before they come to close down his life.
These are my nightmares, the horrors of dream,
That ride me in rios of blood, nearly blind
To exit isles, to logic, to alarm clocks
screaming me free of these concrete feet.
Vallejo, where are you hiding? César,
If you can hear me thinking, trembling,
Do not call out but let the litany
of your poems rattle off mute lips
Like monks at matins, repentant lovers,
The condemned. I have come a long distance
To track you down in the past of your time,
Hide you in the crook of my shirted arm,
And let Dios grow wings for us, sail us
To the future, a safe house in Brooklyn,
A room with a bath, a place you can write,
But when the police are all gone, your voice,
A coda of silence, your body still as your pen.
César, your brother Miguel, tus amigos
en revolución, the woman you loved––
All of you creak open the door through which
I run, stone feet on stone ground, to freedom.


Homeless Hannah

The park bench for a nighttime bed
or the alleyways along city sidewalks
where she catches a few winks under an old
blanket she has kept all these years,
Homeless Hannah trudges through her days.

Children poke fun but she's blessedly deaf
and nearly blind. Hardly a tooth left now
in her old woman's mouth; still, she
plods along, dragging varicosed legs
heavy as the doric columns of town hall.

In her pocket, food crumbs rummaged
out of garbage cans behind McDonald‘s.
In her pocket her prize possession:
a photo of the house she once owned,
creased so often it was hardly visible,

a kind of phantom photo that
could have been Hannah in her youth
or her children lined up like stakes
in a picket fence or the face
of the man she once loved when life was good.

She holds the photo in her arthritic hand.
Nothing else can make her granite face smile
or squeeze tears from the depths of her being.
Once she lived beneath its roof. Laughter rang there,
the walls took in secrets that keep her dreaming.


Last Winter

do you remember last winter?
heads tilted back,
eyes squinting half-closed,
our mouths wide open,
the two of us caught snowflakes
on smoking tongues
melting them with the heat
of our December laughter.

do you remember?
we trudged like arctic explorers
down the length of a ghosted
Main Street lined with blobs of cars
parked obliquely
beneath the white wraps
of a treacherous winter.

last winter: do you remember
the way the grey words we spoke
hung dancing in the air:
yours in soft breath steps
mine tripping in clumsy,
desperate exhalations
as if the words I spoke
feared the wind would silence them.

do you remember it at all?
we envied the snow people
sculpted on white lawns,
their black eyes seeing what
past their carrot noses
the laughing two of us perhaps
rising and falling again and again
on a soft lathered bed of snow.

what do you remember now in retrospect
that winter of our content-- what comes
to mind if anything at all?
the world is dead around us, you said,
as if we were exempt from nature,
but in the end winter's white took down
the colors one by one and killed us all.
When I awoke in spring you were gone.

now a year gone by the snow is back again
and I walk with slower feet this empty street
this white road that goads me to remember
laughter, smoky trails of spoken broken
promises, two adults romping in a white
childhood revisited, two lovers snow-mad,
delirious, terminally in love.
how unreal winter seems now!

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.12.2009

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