Page 7

Three Poems by Bink Nol-
Sharing the Wee Hours With Two Classmates
  Long After Our Families Have Gone To Bed
I've taken pains to have the backyard
look spellbound-its back turned on the man
in the street, cold shoulder, the way high
bourgeois art by definition turns:
along the street the tight sapling fence
to screen our revels from passersby,
not one of which has passed by since one.
Out there an elm dies its artless death.
Inside the fence-besides my old friends-
ancient hackberry and walnut trees,
black lawn, color drained from flowerbeds
as though they too happen in a dream,
shrubs in mounds, white lanterns, rotting brick,
the bronze Italian fountain plashing-
Tennysonian sound. Otherwise,
good gin and transcendental quiet.
The universe helps out: not one bug
since we came out, and the sky at last
floats a big moon out. Hours ago
we stopped arguing about who's wrong
and concentrated on getting drunk.
If they came out and caught us, our kids
would criticize our carefree ease, whom
we've so far spared much to care about.
They can't tell yet what it's like to need
middle-aged flesh to put off its weight.
Who cares what we've talked about? We have
flown consequence so well tonight
we can't even remember of what.
We are our professors' dreams come true,
gentlemen, the flower of our time.
When we pee on the shrubbery we plash.
Our bodies feel luminous as moons-
as the three lighted ricepaper globes
hung at the far end of the terrace.
A zephyr crosses. And chills the hair
on our arms. On the wrought-iron chair arms
the first dew has begun to condense.
Dawn waits. The backdoor is miles away
when one of us must go fetch more ice.
  Keeping in Touch
  Weeks after Epiphany I learn by heart
  your tidings-y our single-sentence jottings, notes,
  dittoed letters, real ones and plain best wishes.
  Done, I toss the m in a used grocery sack
  and muffle mys elf for ten-below to go
  burn them in a] i oil drum between garages.
  Your names leave my hands yet leave me in Wisconsin
  grateful for the year's news about all of you
  one by one crossing the great meridians:
  journeys, job cl anges, changes of address,
  parents' senescence, their partings, other partings,
  children grown up, espousals, spawnings, ill health,
  dangers, muted hurt, good luck, gardens, honors-
  the annals of people out of step enough
  to care about al d write their brief lives to be
  read and reread in an unlettered country
  given to random buddies and amnesia.
The Burglar
Some things gone, obvious and insured. Plus cash.
How could he-raised in an opposite class-not
have failed to distinguish the truly dear? So,
no harm done. Just the nuisance of straightening up
after the plunder and waiting for the house
to repair its privacy, as if he had
only wit enough to scratch on windowpanes
HOUSE EATS, and not to steal away with pictures
of our family confort in that felon's skull.
Thank god. I can afford to, so to speak,
reglaze windows. ". . . can afford" and radicals scold
"You have too ml ch." The burglar has vulgarized
their error. How Iure-like a hyena's-his
purpose is. He sneaks in to scavenge the dream
he dreams of wea th and eats up essential parts.
Direct as a child e takes justice into
his own hands. From nursery on, MY/MINE breeds
More bound to it than I, my wealth degrades him.
I can afford to pr tend to feel sorry
that that's what h annpnc- hilt if T'e-1 cnaliht himan
war.
........ o -.-.s .. ''^-  ".  -    .. .L X....111111..J V~I1
ership would have clamped my hands on his throat.
As it is, he already savages on
to the next thrills of fright, of not being caught-
exquisitely wary, swift, trained: a success-
while house forgers him. Like me, it can afford
just this much wea lth to be redistributed,
a sign of vigor. We eat his manhood up.
June 1983/Wisconsin Academy Review/7
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