Mowing: A Suburban Ode
Much has been opined about Odysseus’ scar
and Achilles’ shield, usually to conclude
the blind singer said no more but what he saw
as was his epic wont, but few can tell a tale
of a simple day of mowing where a scythe
won’t whisper secrets a mower must hear
except in words, like the nobleman called Levin
in Tolstoy’s novel that a reader sunning
on his summer deck has butterflied open
at the spot in chapter five where this master
of the estate has gone slumming in the fields
with his peasants to salve a nagging conviction
of superfluous hypocrisy with an act
of studied humility—and indeed—the waltz meter
of the swishing scythe does induce in him
a humming mindless nothing as he swings
and sweats between a couple of half-freed serfs
who in their illiterate utter simplicity
self-embody God’s Grace and the gigantic Soul
of Russia, always as ineffable to Russians
as it is inscrutable to Westerners too decadent
in their democracies to suffer properly.
A yellow wasp, attracted to crimson red
of the plastic chair called Adirondack
where the reader drowses in softly pulsing
billows of yellow sun, gently bumps against hairs
along his arm, but since he’s old and savvy
in waspy ways he knows that wasps know
in stinging not to sting and decides to let
its tickle tingle rather than annoy and to permit
the insect to scent or taste the wet of his skin,
curious how curiosity feels in such a one
whose urges, he thinks, must be its only thoughts
if that be thinking, for how could a born blind
poet inside his darkness see shimmering fields
encircled by all the deeds of gods and men?
Three brusque coughs from a near yard
hidden by the leafy canopy that embowers
his suburban deck announce a ceaseless groan,
arousing him from idle reveries that entertain
his half-doze, for old book readers like him
drift throughout days in half-awake dreams
since nighttime beds stifle like coffins
as they lie open-eyed in lightless rooms
thinking far too clearly on muddled things,
and thus alert he resumes reading how Levin
exults in an earnest love of hard labor
that erases his nagging need for answers
to questions like “What’s to Be Done?”
and “Who is to Blame?” that drove effete
serf-drivers to a stasis of degout de soi.
In the neighborhood’s new hum the reader
gazes up from the page to reread the scene
as old school creative readers once did,
hearing the scrape of a black wet stone
running along the scimitar blade of a scythe
change to a hissing whistle, smelling wafts
of hot sweet grass, imagining the scratch
of a grizzled muzhik’s beard on his master’s
soft cheek as he encircles him from behind
to grasp his wrists like we’ve all seen golf pros
nudge the feet of bankers in plaid pants
into position (haven’t we?) to guide in tandem
a driver’s long arc to its apogee without us
reading anything more into it, as is said,
than what it is, though once said, saying it
makes any such embrace seem to suggest.
The snoring threnody of one rider mower
whispers like a long sigh through double-ply
windows to nappers before flickering screens
they see without perception, whose jabber
they hear without really listening, and in a thrall
they cannot understand themselves they arise
from couches, letting slippery magazines
spill off their tummies as they hasten to mount
their own lawn tractors to begin a growling crawl
over circumferences of plotted betterments
the banks let them call their own, driving together
though apart until a great OM drowns all
the noise and silence of the world alike,
a buzzing hum numbing backsides and brains
alike, and the reader deftly shoos the wasp,
closes sliding glass doors against the clamor
and reads no more that day.
and Achilles’ shield, usually to conclude
the blind singer said no more but what he saw
as was his epic wont, but few can tell a tale
of a simple day of mowing where a scythe
won’t whisper secrets a mower must hear
except in words, like the nobleman called Levin
in Tolstoy’s novel that a reader sunning
on his summer deck has butterflied open
at the spot in chapter five where this master
of the estate has gone slumming in the fields
with his peasants to salve a nagging conviction
of superfluous hypocrisy with an act
of studied humility—and indeed—the waltz meter
of the swishing scythe does induce in him
a humming mindless nothing as he swings
and sweats between a couple of half-freed serfs
who in their illiterate utter simplicity
self-embody God’s Grace and the gigantic Soul
of Russia, always as ineffable to Russians
as it is inscrutable to Westerners too decadent
in their democracies to suffer properly.
A yellow wasp, attracted to crimson red
of the plastic chair called Adirondack
where the reader drowses in softly pulsing
billows of yellow sun, gently bumps against hairs
along his arm, but since he’s old and savvy
in waspy ways he knows that wasps know
in stinging not to sting and decides to let
its tickle tingle rather than annoy and to permit
the insect to scent or taste the wet of his skin,
curious how curiosity feels in such a one
whose urges, he thinks, must be its only thoughts
if that be thinking, for how could a born blind
poet inside his darkness see shimmering fields
encircled by all the deeds of gods and men?
Three brusque coughs from a near yard
hidden by the leafy canopy that embowers
his suburban deck announce a ceaseless groan,
arousing him from idle reveries that entertain
his half-doze, for old book readers like him
drift throughout days in half-awake dreams
since nighttime beds stifle like coffins
as they lie open-eyed in lightless rooms
thinking far too clearly on muddled things,
and thus alert he resumes reading how Levin
exults in an earnest love of hard labor
that erases his nagging need for answers
to questions like “What’s to Be Done?”
and “Who is to Blame?” that drove effete
serf-drivers to a stasis of degout de soi.
In the neighborhood’s new hum the reader
gazes up from the page to reread the scene
as old school creative readers once did,
hearing the scrape of a black wet stone
running along the scimitar blade of a scythe
change to a hissing whistle, smelling wafts
of hot sweet grass, imagining the scratch
of a grizzled muzhik’s beard on his master’s
soft cheek as he encircles him from behind
to grasp his wrists like we’ve all seen golf pros
nudge the feet of bankers in plaid pants
into position (haven’t we?) to guide in tandem
a driver’s long arc to its apogee without us
reading anything more into it, as is said,
than what it is, though once said, saying it
makes any such embrace seem to suggest.
The snoring threnody of one rider mower
whispers like a long sigh through double-ply
windows to nappers before flickering screens
they see without perception, whose jabber
they hear without really listening, and in a thrall
they cannot understand themselves they arise
from couches, letting slippery magazines
spill off their tummies as they hasten to mount
their own lawn tractors to begin a growling crawl
over circumferences of plotted betterments
the banks let them call their own, driving together
though apart until a great OM drowns all
the noise and silence of the world alike,
a buzzing hum numbing backsides and brains
alike, and the reader deftly shoos the wasp,
closes sliding glass doors against the clamor
and reads no more that day.
