LONELINESS

So many different kinds,
yet only one vague word.
And the Eskimos
with twenty-six words for snow,

such a fine alertness
to what variously presses down.
Yesterday I saw lovers
hugging in the street,

making everyone around them
feel lonely, and the lovers themselves--
wasn't deferred loneliness
waiting for them?

There must be words

for what our aged mothers, removed
in those unchosen homes, keep inside,
and a separate word for us
who've sent them there, a word

for the street loneliness of salesman,
for how I feel touching you
when I'm out of touch.
The contorted, pocked, terribly ugly man

shopping in the 24-hour supermarket
at 3 A.M.--a word for him--
and something, please,
for this nameless ache here

in this nameless spot.
If we paid half as much attention
to our lives as Eskimos to snow . . .
Still, the little lies,

the never enough.
No doubt there must be Eskimos
in their white sanctums, thinking
just let it fall, accumulate.

Stephen Dunn -- BETWEEN ANGELS (1989)

STEPHEN DUNN
 

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¼Å§Ò¹Ë¹Ñ§Ê×ÍàÅèÁÍ×è¹æ ¢Í§à¢Ò¤×Í Looking for Holes in the Ceiling (1974) Full of Lust and Good Usage (1976) A Circus of Needs (1978) Work & Love (1981) Not Dancing (1984) Between Angels (1989) Local Time (ä´éÃѺÃÒ§ÇÑÅ Nationao Poetry series 1986) Landscape at the End of the Century (1991) New & Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994) Loosestrife (à¢éÒÃͺÊØ´·éÒÂÃÒ§ÇÑÅ National Book Critics Circle »Õ 1996) áÅк·à¢Õ¹ÃéÍÂá¡éÇ Walking Light: Essays & Memoirs

 
HAPPINESS

A state you must dare not enter
      with hopes of staying,
quicksand in the marshes, and all

the roads leading to a castle
      that doesn't exist.
But there it is, as a promised,

with its perfect bridge above
      the crocodiles,
and its doors forever open.

Stephen Dunn -- BETWEEN ANGELS (1989)
 

INSOMNIA

What should be counted was counted
up to a hundred and back.

And sleep came by, I think,
sensed too much movement and left.

Now there's desire meeting absence,
the multiplication of zero,

the mind, as always, holding out
for a perfect convergence

like a diver entering water
without a splash. There's a part

of me terribly stilled and alert,
a silence that won't shut off.

And there's this need to put on the light,
to not sleep on sleep's terms, sleep

which is after all like you, love,
elsewhere and difficult.

Stephen Dunn -- LOCAL TIME (1986)
 

IN THE HOUSE

I am attracted by the dust
and silence of an upper shelf,
the strange air

that causes linoleum
to bulge in the cellar.
I know the walls come to hug

like grizzlies
if you stare at them too long,
and the kitchen knife

wants to be held.
I sense the aromas of sex,
the delicate, stale drift

of arguments and spite
no amount of cleaning will solve.
I know when love goes

it slips through all insulation,
forgets your name,
becomes sky.

Stephen Dunn -- FULL OF LUST AND GOOD USAGE (1976)
 

THE ROOM AND THE WORLD

The room was room enough for one
or maybe two if the two had just
discovered each other and were one.
Outside of the room was the world
which had a key to the room, and knowing
a little about the world he knew
how pointless it was to change the lock.
He knew the world could enter the room
anytime it wanted, but for the present
the world was content to do its damage
elsewhere, which the television recorded.
Always, he kept in his mind the story of a man
hanging froma cliff, how the wildflowers
growing there looked lovelier than ever.
That was how he felt about his one chair
and the geometry of the hangers in his closet
and the bed that fit him like a body shirt.
Sometimes the world would breathe heavily
outside the door because it was obscene
and could not help itself. It was this
that led him eventually to love the world
for its pressure and essential sadness.
One day he just found himself opening
the door, allowing the inevitable.
The world came in and filled the room.
It seemed so familiar with everything.

Stephen Dunn -- NOT DANCING (1984)