Watchful Waiting

                Let's see what happens. 


I'm waiting at the bar at Gene's, a place 
On West Eleventh Street, just down the street 
From the Larchmont Hotel, where I usually stay 
When I'm in New York. I come to New York a lot 
Since I've retired (from what? someone asked). 
Gene's is down some stairs, and sitting at the bar 
You can watch people walking by through a window 
Above your head, the way I'd imagined New York 
When I was a kid, or imagine Dawn Powell's New York. 
I sometimes think of life as a vicarious attempt 
To make sense of yourself, balancing what you did 
And didn't do so that they'll come out even at the end; 
And then I think that's probably a waste of time. 
It's not a book at all: there's too much time, 
And then it's gone; that sense of something waiting 
To unfold is missing, leaving only the waiting, 
And when something does occur it's always late, 
Too late and incomplete, like a small residue of feeling. 
We care too much about feelings—feelings for what? 
Feelings can be stupid, maybe not in themselves, 
But in the way they magnify and reduce, leaving you 
Exhilarated and confused. I guess I'll call Diane 
In a while, to see what I have to say. I could tell her 
About the things I saw today: the anti-Kitty show 
At the Japan Society; Shio Kusaka's white pots 
With small blue dots; the drawings at the Morgan; 
Eataly and the Shake Shack; these people in the window 
Walking by on their way home, or God knows where. 

That's the thing about time: it can take you anywhere, 
And yet it takes you home. It leaves you the same person 
In a different place, still always metaphysically alone, 
But with friends that you can phone and tell your travels to. 
I can't tell you what it is, but I can feel it flow, and flow away, 
Until a memory breaks its spell and I'm in school again, 
Or on a bus to college, or walking down Fifth Avenue in a daze. 
The memory doesn't matter—what matters is the interval 
It restores to life, the feeling of abstracted time made tangible, 
Of duration without any destination, of a sense of a life. 
I keep reading my story over and over again, my one story. 
"Readers of this column are probably familiar with its details" 
And I won't go over them again—they're as changeless 
As the pages of those novels I keep rereading on the planes 
To New York, washed in a noir California light, the scent 
Of canyons after rain, the house on a canyon I won't see again. 
Does it make any difference? I try to tell you these things 
Not out of an urge to communicate—you have your stories too— 
But for their own sake, and my sake too, and to make the days go by, 
As though the point of taking stock were just to pass the time 
Until there isn't any more, and the art of losing were its own reward. 
Is that really the best one can do? To stay at home forever, living, 
As Wittgenstein once put it, entirely in the present, burnishing the words 
Until they're like a second nature, better than the first one, as though 
Living in the moment weren't to simply let life happen, but to get it right? 
Why is everything "as though," that great hope of the subjunctive life? 
I ought to decide where I'm going to eat tonight. In Hebdomeros, 
Giorgio de Chirico's novel in the form of an extended thought, 
There's a passage about "those men who eat alone in restaurants," 
Inhabiting "the infinite tenderness, the ineffable melancholy" 
Of a moment "so gentle and so poignant that one doesn't understand 
Why all the personnel of the premises, the manager and cashier, 
The furniture, the tablecloths, the wine jugs, down to the saltcellars 
And the smallest objects don't dissolve in a endless flood of tears." 
I think there's so much freedom in that thought: you stroll out 
Into the night as (!) into a wilderness of traffic lights and neon signs. 
I love feeling lost in the Village: crossing Seventh Avenue 
Below West Tenth I get confused, and I love feeling confused, 
Like a lamb in "The Whiffenpoof Song"—following the confusion 
Wherever it may lead and (as I said a page ago) exhilarated too. 
Later I can find my way back home ("wherever that may be"), 
But now I'm wandering through a maze whose every prospect pleases, 
Lingering on the curbs and corners as I make my way to nowhere 
In particular, celebrating the end of the day with a drink and dinner 
And a slow walk back to my hotel, pausing to look at the menu 
Of a new restaurant at the end of Greenwich Avenue, across from 
Mxyplyzyk, in the space where Café de Bruxelles used to be. 

"Watchful waiting" is a way of handling prostate cancer. 
It's such a gradual disease that rather than immediately rush in 
With scalpels or radioactive seeds, you take a wait-and-see approach, 
Ready for the worst if it should come to that, but meanwhile 
Letting nature take its course. The worst is always on your mind 
Of course, but at least it's not a foregone conclusion, as it is 
With so many other cancers: browsing a famous blog last week 
(A blog where poets seem to go to die), I saw that Paul Violi had died. 
I'd always liked him, though I hadn't known him well. In January 
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; ten weeks later he was dead. 
It made me think of David Sachs, a philosopher and boyhood friend 
Of my advisor Rogers Albritton (emphysema). He'd had his heart set 
On retiring to Scandanavia, but as retirement approached was 
    diagnosed 
With pancreatic cancer too, and died. It "concentrates the mind," 
As Samuel Johnson said of hanging, but what it concentrates mine on 
Isn't the past I usually brood about, but the idea of the future— 
Not the political future, which I've given up on, but the personal 
Future, with its fragile possibilities and plans. Starting from the past 
You move along a settled arc of life that leads from then to now; 
But since the future isn't fixed the road that leads you on from there 
Is open-ended, like starting out in the evening without any end in view. 
The journey, not the distant destination; the scenes along the way, 
And not the long look back—all great advice I guess, if great advice 
Is what you want, instead of simply waiting for a shoe to drop. 
Hello Diane. I don't even know where I'm calling from anymore, 
Because the scenery keeps changing: I'm wandering around New York, 
And then I'm back in San Diego on a canyon, or I'm sitting on the 
Deck at the Bean House, or at the Wright House in Two Rivers, 
Looking at the view across the river as the fog rolls in and the light 
Keeps changing, and the only constant is unchanging change. 
"Unchanging change": that phrase is from "The Crystal Lithium," 
A poem of Jimmy Schuyler's I adore—his great long poems remain in 
Place as they move forward, marking their time until there isn't 
    anymore. 
I know that I'm repeating myself, yet it's precisely what I want to do: 
There's a kind of naturalness and grace that comes with repetition, 
With advancing by accretion through a space of rediscovered 
    possibilities 
Into a new world, which is the old world once removed, where I can 
Almost imagine your face, and my face too, you to whom I write 
Without writing, as though in talking to myself I also talked to you. 
We both know life is an adventure. Death is an adventure too, 
Like an experiment to be concluded in the laboratory of the future, 
One whose outcome is completely certain, yet impossible to observe. 
The suspense is in the details, as it morphs from an abstraction 
Into something personal and real, drifting from the dark shadows 
At the back of the mind into the bland light of an ordinary day. 
And just as the fear of death and the unknown becomes diminished 
By coming out into the open, so life accommodates its end 
By starting over, by leaving home to find another place to live. 

Where was I, and where am I now? I know of course 
Exactly where I am—at the desk in my study in Milwaukee— 
But that's beside the point. It's where you are in your imagination 
That's important, for the life of simply staying where you are 
Is a shadow's life, that leaves you by yourself, alone and scared. 
Why can't we just move on? The light up ahead is soft 
And seems to beckon us, glowing with a promise of beginning 
Once again, as if there were still time. Do you remember 
The "death march" along Via Veneto, and the Big Happy Bed 
In Berlin? I don't think of them as memories, but as opportunities 
To take advantage of or miss. Why don't we both revisit them, 
Not to try to bring about the past, which was Gatsby's fallacy, but as part 
Of what the future holds in store, where there might even be room 
For that dog (although I can't imagine where)? Even Gene's, 
Where all of this began, keeps pleading with us to appear once more 
In the window over the bar and amble down the stairs. There's so much 
Left to do, and redo, before it's time for me to show up on that blog— 
The question is if we should make it new, or try to get it right, 
Or put the question to one side and stroll once more into the night, 
Or onto crazyJet and fly to Paris from Berlin, and check into 
That terrible hotel, La Louisiane, the one you nicknamed 
Hotel Claustrophobia, and make our way along the rue de Seine 
To the Metro out to La Défense, then back to the hotel and to a night of 
Quiet bickering over dinner at Allard. We could go there again 
And stay in a better hotel, or just be less fastidious this time around; 
Or we could visit someplace new. I've always wanted to go 
To Mexico, though perhaps this isn't a propitious time. Anyway, 
At least it sounds like a kind of plan, however vague. Shit, 
We could go to Vegas. 
              C'mon Diane!