The Watch Maker

from Chris to Beck
April-29-08


Gus Pappas had a strong box containing promises. I am Gus Pappas now.
I have a watch,
which must have been owed to him in the depression
(the Great one; not the everyday depression that makes people
go mad in difference), From Rosa to Streight—
in beautiful script it reads—Dec-25-10.
I have a watch,
and I don’t know how it came to me. My brother,
I think, tried to have it fixed, repaired it a few times.
It worked for several days, once for a week.
Eventually, however, I got it—placed it in a metal box
and accepted that it only looks good.
That should be enough.
Can it tell me time and also shine its faded crest,
like the knight’s face of the Virgin inside his shield?
This one’s like a heart with flowers. How cliché!
A watch with a crested, flowered heart
and such a lovely inscription from so far.
If it were buried, I could lie and say it kept good time.
I have a watch,
which stopped counting at 6:17 and 23 seconds,
probably in 1988 or so (that's twenty years ago). I worked for my brother then,
lived in Central Park near the fairgrounds
(The neighborhood my grandfather’s house was in,
bought in the same Great depression for $2000,
the fairgrounds where he would take us to get dizzy on the tilt-a whirl,
my brother puking always head down in his shadow on the bench).
My brother and I cut grass together then, did landscaping—little square yards
(12 rows or 18 columns) for $20 a yard. We had a niche.
We rode around in his truck, checking on the other workers.
We talked about the watch. He got it fixed again, had it on a chain.
I have a watch,
and I am wealthy for it, filthy wealthy. I never sleep again.
Not since the even tide waved over us.
Not since our bed is turned against the meridian, against
the grain. Maybe we’ll move tomorrow. Put the bed in another room
on another wall. We’ll use a compass this time (not the one you know),
maybe leave space on either side, in case the hand refuses again to point.
I have a watch,
have watched it for days and minutes and seconds.
E. Howard Watch Co., Boston. The man that engraved it in 10, the designer.
The designer must have no idea where his watch has landed.
Does he know that its hands have ticked not for decades now,
or that it sits here beside me, an object of my activist stock and plan?
Must the designer still exist? Perhaps the designer is one handed or dead.
I have a watch
with a peculiar but standard feature. It has a front and back door.
The front reveals its hands: the function (and the fact that it’s broken).
The back door hides the inscription of love in lovely graveness.
The words still work, even now—this very moment, they work on me.
The hands and their failure lead me, and have always led me,
to put my watch in the grey, metal box. It becomes an artifact now, again.
If it worked I’d have it hooked in my pocket. I’d be exclaiming, I have a watch!
See this! See here, I have a watch! Perfectly polished and ticking!
Ah, the ticking (like the waving) symbolizes movement. Movement, yes!
Come closer to me now. [Softly] I want to tell you what I mean.
Movement is the original of all poems. Stop this day and night.
I have a watch.
I have watched this watch wait patiently for years, decades again, even.
I have known the value of its watching (or failure to do so),
which worked only briefly through the years. And still I kept it, proud.
I have a watch,
an old and useless watch, with an inscription for lovers
by lovers the same in 10(that's 1910). It must have cost quite a lot for them—
when Rosa bought the inscription (cents a letter) at the watchmaker’s shop—
as much as the one week anniversary card I etched in pen today on a napkin
for my brilliantly beautiful bride at our private, picnic brunch in the rain.
Still, can paper endure like a watch?
I have a watch,
which, when polished, will reflect a flash of sun upwards to where
even a child’s grasp falls short. Higher than a jet will go or an eagle—
or even where an up and down become just space, with no place or direction.
No hands will know which way to point it out, a flash which merely floats about.
I have a watch,
which though it does not work, does not cause time to cease. Oh, but if it did. . . .
If it did (I wonder). If it did, then I would bury it deep beneath that sand!
Yes, I’m sure of that! For though the designer has long ago surely died,
and though this watch may never point to another empty second,
I am in love with its time. I’ve had its brokenness locked away with me
for decades now. My lover sleeps by me but knows not what it means,
and maybe neither do I, placing it back in its safe place, with license
and other important documents. Some day I will show it to her
and tell her how close I came to smashing it on the night
I overwhelmed her with spirits and spells and pacing down our floor.
Perhaps I’ll tell her some day that I have a watch,
which has never worked but has always been inside [something] gaining value,
a pocket in the coat I wore the day we vowed together
to provide a home, home to each other. On the day we stood in the center
of a circle and passed the new people out (the two of us, that is)
with tears and poetry and dispelled doubt, passed them out with holy water.
Yes, someday I’ll tell her my toes felt squishy in the sand as I now watched
her walk through the wooded path to me,
and how I sensed the hands massaging my heart (so slight) to singing inside again.


CP

Unspeakable Suffering

I heard them this morning, Jen.
The humble and the loud one.
One just sings
and one needs to sing.
I thought it was you
all outside my window
playing bird again.

End of Another Fourteen Hour Day on Another Ranch in Mississippi

for Beck with all my love

groups of three and four
flock in the newly
sprigged pasture

strutting in black sheen coats
complaining about
the scarecrow

two stretch into flight
flex slick wings
to perfect pitch

shrinking shadows
twist against the plow
they rise, they fall

below a ceiling of clouds
hoisted by stage hands
disguised as angels

Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place

We are Beautiful

I want my epitaph to say this is the title.
And yours, you say, you are here.
But we are not where we begin here,
and now, we are moving for the gulf,
what’s left of it—the spray of voices.
There's something more here than just voice,
the true song in our hymn.

We had locked us away to sing.
And though we felt scared alone,
we were always strong enough to go.
We are viable. We are spreading.
We will not be dead for a long time.