This week’s Poetry Corner features the work of Richard Shelton, a Regents Professor of English at the University of Arizona. He is the author of 10 books of poetry and six chapbooks. Shelton is the recipient of numerous awards, including the United States Award from the International Poetry Forum, and two NEA Fellowships.
The Creephis compass has no needle
he is everywhere at once
arriving at the wrong moment
dragging an embarrassed shadow
if he does not come by he will call
if he does not call he will come by
if he comes by he will not leave
and if he leaves he will return
too soon it takes several weeks
to spend an hour with him
he is the one subject of all
his conversations but his life
is garbled like a bad translation
his mind is a series of interruptions
his voice an insult to silence
he is needy he wants
to tell you about himself
wants to hang himself on your wall
like a coat somebody forgot
just hanging there you can’t
wear it can’t throw it away
and each time he returns for it
he will forget it again
at parties he violates your space
when you step back he steps forward
when you look down you feel guilty
his shoes are ashamed of his feet
ambition’s blue vein twitches
in his eyelid he wants
to be famous for something
for anything to sign autographs
to be recognized wherever he goes
and eventually he is If I Were a DogI would trot down this road sniffing
on one side and then the other
peeing a little here and there
wherever I felt the urge
having a good time what the hell
saving some because it’s a long road
but since I’m not a dog
I walk straight down the road
trying to get home before dark
if I were a dog and I had a master
who beat me I would run away
and go hungry and sniff around
until I found a master who loved me
I could tell by his smell and I
would lick his face so he knew
or maybe it would be a woman
I would protect her we could go
everywhere together even down this
dark road and I wouldn’t run from side
to side sniffing I would always be protecting her and I would stop
to pee only once in awhile
sometimes in the afternoon we could
go to the park and she would throw
a stick I would bring it back to her
each time I put the stick at her feet
I would say this is my heart
and she would say I will make it fly
but you must bring it back to me
I would always bring it back to her
and to no other if I were a dog The Farm across the Roadgrew nothing but weeds
and the old man had used
its three-story barn to build
a perpetual motion machine
which he tinkered with constantly
often going without sleep for nights
the neighbors said as they watched
his lights and heard his racket
they said it never would work
laughed at him behind his back
but they wanted to see it
just to get an idea of how crazy
the old man was although he
never invited them into his house
much less the three-story barn
it was strange how everything
that belonged to us kids
when it got lost went straight
toward that barn like baseballs
arrows dogs kites as if the machine
already had the power of a magnet
and when the old man saw us
looking for something he would
come out and invite us in
so we saw the size and intricacy
of the machine with its one soaring
wheel as big as a Ferris wheel
only more delicate and beautiful
and we knew that as soon as he
got it started it would go on
forever which was longer than we
could imagine and plenty long enough
to show everybody in the county
what kind of fools they had been DestinationPerhaps we are going neither to Heaven
nor to Hell but somewhere else
like the foggy coast of Oregon in winter.
Perhaps our inability to know
what we are doing or to see what is
around us is merely practicing for death,
learning our lines before we go on
stage where there will be nothing
to do but wait for nothing
and every afternoon when the light
goes hard and nacreous before it fades
entirely, we will stand in a long line
for our only meal of the day, a soupy
gelatinous something served from a kettle
by a woman with fat arms and a mustache,
and then go to bed, almost contented,
on cots in a dank church basement,
surrounded by the snores and farts
and sighs of others of our sad kind. Canes 1.
Six blind children struggle down the street,
clinging to each other, ungainly as a giant insect
with white legs flailing in all directions.
Are they runaways from the school for the blind,
I wonder, or is this part of their training?
The little girl who seems to be leading them
has turned her face up toward the winter sun
as if she is following instructions from above.
The light makes a halo of her blond, uncombed hair.
2.
She had lost the sight in her right eye when she was 14 and in her left
when she was 16. Her parents insisted that she learn to use a cane, since it
gave her more freedom than if she had to depend on a dog. She told me
what she feared most was that she might blunder into an area where
many bicycles were parked. The cane is less than useless in a forest of
spoked wheels and handlebars. It had happened to her during her train-
ing. She had lost all sense of direction and had become helpless. She
hated helplessness more than anything. She also told me a story about her
adventure on a bicycle during her freshman year in college while she was
living in a dormitory with a sighted roommate. One Saturday night they
wanted to go to a party but had no car. She convinced her roommate,
after much pleading, that they could make it on bicycles. Before she lost
her sight, she had been an excellent cyclist. If the two girls rode side by
side, she felt sure she could follow her roommate’s verbal instructions.
And so they began, with the blind girl riding on the inside next to the
curb and her roommate beside her, using her voice as a guide. Things
went well for several blocks until it was necessary for them to head down
a residential street with cars parked along it. She clipped a protruding
rearview mirror, knocking it off and throwing her and her bicycle to the
ground. The man to whom the car belonged, hearing the clatter, rushed
out of the house and saw the damage to his rearview mirror while the
rider was struggling to her feet beside her bicycle. He was furious. “Look
what you’ve done!” he screamed. “Are you blind?”
3.
Once I met Borges in a crowded room
with his cane over his arm, led by a friend.
He was looking up and a little to the left
and seemed to be listening to words from above.
One does not inherit courage, he had said
in an essay on blindness. His courage had grown
as his eyes failed him. I shook his hand,
as close as I have ever come to worshiping
a human, and he quickly wiped his palm
with a white handkerchief. I was asking
for only a secondhand blessing but I should
have known better than to touch anyone
who was having a conversation with God.
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