Mobile Thinking

However much the highway makers want
to redesign it, land
is not rectangular, and birds resist
the shortest distances between two points
of rest. Even the interstate
must make concessions, breasted
by hills, bushwacked by whatever
stubborn undergrowths of hair.
Tacked on a wall, America's at home,
the state lines stack up square
against the rectitude of architects.
But travellers find in fact,
by accident, by air,
in window cinemas of stream
and film and field no understated
frames: the inland borderlines
are lost in their translation, are
not there. And all the mapmen, Mad-
ison Avenue small talk and model
mongers stay unmoved by dust
and thunder storms, becoming
more remote to me, who hit
the road, than any ruminant
well-meaning cows that don't
know one tit from another.
Down to earth, I know her
shifting motherhood, I leave
a little rubber on her lips. The tourist
pictures tell the truth: the earth
is very old. Her lovers learn
no ease or symmetry on trips.
My roadmap, full of wrinkles,
will not fold.
— Heather McHugh, "Wheels," in The Ardis Anthology of New American Poetry, David Rigsbee/Ellendea Proffer (eds.), p. 258.

Between the trial for embezzlement and the trial for impiety
Phidias sickened in prison and then went mad.
When we brought his water he flung it on the floor
and scraped up the hard-packed clay with his rotting nails
to mold crazed figurines:
a man with his head attached between his legs
and on his shoulders a great erection,
women with holes in their breasts and teats on their buttocks,
babies with too many arms and not enough legs,
a hunched hermaphrodite with a giant hand
coming out of its rump like a rooster's tail

When they put him on trial he crowed like a rooster himself
and when they asked what he meant by that he said
he was Zeus the Cock crowing so the sun would rise.
They convicted him, but some of the jurymen wept
and all of them shuddered. Back in prison
while his friends were scraping up his fine
he ate crusts of his bread but molded the insides
with his saliva into indefinable forms
intestines that flowered into cabbages,
livers with claws, things without names or existence
except in his hands and our half-tainted eyes.

He began to save his excrement in a corner
saying that it was his earnings to pay his fine.
That last day when we found him he had torn
one wrist with his toenail, blending the oozing blood
into the lumpy mass. It lay beside him,
his masterpiece self-portrait, like him dead,
only a little more stinking than his flesh
and not much different for long between them.
We buried it beside him, never spoke of it.
We jailers learn too much we don't dare tell.
Some nights I dream that the whole acropolis
quakes into chaos and the long walls crumble
golden Athena melts and this bright air
glooms into prison dimness and the stench
of Athens rotting.
— Ann Deagon, "The Death of Phidias," in Ibid., pp. 313-314

Ballade
I die of thirst beside the fountain
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth
In my own country I'm in a distant land
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames
Naked as a worm, dressed like a president
I laugh in tears and hope in despair
I cheer up in sad hopelessness
I'm joyful and no pleasures anywhere
I'm powerful and lack all force and strength
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I'm sure of nothing but what is uncertain
Find nothing obscure but the obvious
Doubt nothing but the certainties
Knowledge to me is mere accident
I keep winning and remain the loser
At dawn I say "I bid you good night"
Lying down I'm afraid of falling
I'm so rich I haven't a penny
I await an inheritance and am no one's heir
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I never work and yet I labor
To acquire goods I don't even want
Kind words iritate me most
He who speaks true deceives me worst
A friend is someone who makes me think
A white swan is a black crow
The people who harm me think they help
Lies and truth today I see they're one
I remember everything, my mind's a blank
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

Merciful Prince may it please you to know
I understand much and have no wit or learning
I'm biased against all laws impartially
What's next to do? Redeem my pawned goods again!
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
— François Villon, in The Poetry of François Villon, Galway Kinnell (tr.), pp. 177-179.