Bob Perelman

Bob Perelman is the author of 14 poetry collections, including JACK AND JILL IN TROY, IFLIFE, Virtual Reality, The First World and Ten to One: Selected Poems. He collaborated with his wife, the painter Francie Shaw, on Playing Bodies. His latest critical book is Modernism the Morning After. He taught at UPenn for 25 years and now lives in Berkeley.

poems from Jack and Jill in Troy

Classic Sunrise

Red-nosed dawn arose

-- but it had been worth it!

All those gulps and gasps

had made the edges

of her eyes so sharp

that now when she finally

did heave herself up out of

the tossing sea

barely into

the eggshell sky

temples throbbing

-- that goes without saying

without saying without saying --

she could see

all that was not her,

see the immortal not-self

perfectly, as in a spotless mirror.

The Keep

Jack and Jill went up the hill

to the windy keep of Troy.

This was long before

apnea set in and all our woe.

The keep is where

you keep things,

things of value,

cataloged carefully,

no matter whose they used to be,

which eventually makes for

provenance problems

up and down the hill,

big ones, little itches

dogging you

into every enclave,

nagging like a summer cold

when you’re not young,

when someone’s got

what’s yours, has it,

up on the windy keep,

up whatever, the thought roots

and won’t be budged:

that certain someone

is getting decimated,

him and all his glittering connections.

Divine Laughter

The gods’ inexhaustible laughter is an Iliad formula, a minor one, but with a modicum of hits in

later centuries. It’s an idea that works in different ways, some of them nice. The gods laughing

inexhaustibly: eternity is happy, a “their eyes, their glittering eyes, / are gay” kind of thing,

hinting at how life can arise from matter, or providing an early glimpse of unlimited energy,

perpetual laughter betokening some inexhaustible amusement arising from the weave of existence.

But there’s also a tier-sensitive take where, OK, the gods are up there in the skyboxes, laughing at

the tragic hijinx below, while we’re down here subject to all they find so amusing. The gods like

gamers with endless free lives and us Super Marios, Ms. Pacmans, tokens striving and dying to

hold their attention.

However we hear “laughing inexhaustibly,” the word “inexhaustibly” suggests the laughter is

always happening. But it only happens twice in Homer, both times at the pratfall of a fellow god.

First time is at the end of Book 1 of the Iliad, when Zeus and Hera are quarreling at the banquet. Suddenly

limping tech-god Hephaistos intervenes, triggering the first outburst of inexhaustible

laughter.

They didn’t stop,

it was that funny

seeing Hephaistos

stumble out there

taking over the wine-pouring

himself, so funny him

hobbling around,

clubfeet and all,

pouring the perfect wine,

clowning and abasing

to defuse the situation

with the Big Man threatening

some really grotesque things,

the wife’s eyes

wide as dinner plates.

So quick distract Big Man’s

troubled mind,

grab the wine, stump around

and keep pouring,

keep them laughing,

which will kill

two birds with one stone:

1) it keeps things on the rails

and 2) caters to the divine class,

who so enjoy being served.

At Emma's Grave

1 They say the mind

can keep sense alive

about seven seconds

and that we can register at most

seven things, coins, pebbles, apples,

or six, five

almost nothing.

2 Maybe that's why

we invented the present

as a place to live, to keep the things we do know,

know so exactly, keep them exactly, keep

everything, keep what we know

near, at hand, alive in our minds:

Emma.

3 It's hard to remember

what the light looked like then,

what it was saying in such detail,

hard to count the blackbirds in that pie,

the extra-special one, four and twenty they said,

but we only see the released flock, the single flying mass,

each one the first and only birth.

4 Such a small set of seconds to put everything in,

since not everything is here that we love,

which makes it impossible not to want

that small set to have been utterly different,

the flock to have swooped right,

not left up back, to have landed

in any other tree.

5 Not the look of the light,

clear, vertical, soft, childlike,

or whatever our seven seconds say,

but how fast we’ve already seen

what is here, and what is not,

that's what makes the seven seconds

so hard.

6 What we see

makes us not remember

what it looked like

just a second ago

now all different

with us at a loss

with that stone there.

7 It is our privilege alone to disappear,

to never forget that we do,

never forget to set down

what must be set down

so that it not be forgotten,

not be lost in all this time:

Emma.

Acknowlegment

Some of these words

have appeared in the following places:

my mind, tongue, ear and files,

and in the minds, tongues, ears and files

of loved ones, friends, acquaintances,

the wide world I’ve heard

and not heard,

flyers on the sidewalk,

billboards lit and peeling,

oceanic screens and private polling places,

any other mouth the ideal location

to hear these words

transing, flaunting, sniffing, standing at attention,

beaten into twitchy sameness,

moodily bowing to the monotonies

of the convinced lash.

The bodies of these words

stretched out seemingly endless but animated

like the green hills lining the freeways

in New Jersey or Indiana,

half-mile hills thirty feet high

you glide by

and out the windshield,

suddenly there’s the dull stub

of a small smokestack,

a little grey tube stuck

in the middle of this next elongated green lump,

and then not long after,

another one slides behind,

each tube expressing

its own signature output

of the slowly cooking plastic

and fatigued newsprint

secreted beneath the undulating

green hills offgassing

the invisible news,

our sacred intoxicant.