Cover Page

THE NIAGARA RIVER

ALSO BY KAY RYAN

Say Uncle

Elephant Rocks

Flamingo Watching

Strangely Marked Metal

Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends

THE NIAGARA RIVER

poems

by
KAY RYAN

Dedication

For Carol

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these poems first appeared:

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR: Tired Blood; Still Life, with Her Things; Legerdemain; Nothing Getting Past, THE ATLANTIC: Hailstorm, BOSTON REVIEW: Caps, Ms.: Late Justice; Hide and Seek, THE NEW CRITERION: The Well or the Cup; Thieves; The Material; Shipwreck, THE NEW YORKER: Green Hills; Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard, PARNASSUS: The Self Is Not Portable, POETRY: Tenderness and Rot; Stardust; Post-Construction; Expectations; Home to Roost; The Niagara River; Backward Miracle; The Other Shoe; Least Action; Tune; Repulsive Theory; The Light of Interiors; Chinese Foot Chart; Sharks’ Teeth; Carrying a Ladder; Almost Without Surface; Blue China Doorknob; Chop; The Best of It; Houdini; Duck; Latents; Rubbing Lamps; Felix Crow; Fake Spots; A Ball Rolls on a Point; He Lit a Fire with Icicles; Atlas; Thin; Tar Babies; Rats’ Tails; On the Difficulty of Drawing Oneself Up; Salvage; Lighthouse Keeping, SPEAK-EASY: Last Chance, THREEPENNY REVIEW: Absences and Breaks (originally titled Not News); No Names; The Past; The Elephant in the Room; Chart, WATER/STONE: Added Significance, YALE REVIEW: Desert Reservoirs; Theft; Weak Forces, ZYZZYVA: Ideal Audience

“Home to Roost” also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribners, 2005). “Chinese Foot Chart” was reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXIX (Pushcart Press, 2005).

The author is deeply grateful to both the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for the great help of their fellowships, and to The Poetry Foundation for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

THE NIAGARA RIVER

THE NIAGARA RIVER

As though

the river were

a floor, we position

our table and chairs

upon it, eat, and

have conversation.

As it moves along,

we notice—as

calmly as though

dining room paintings

were being replaced—

the changing scenes

along the shore. We

do know, we do

know this is the

Niagara River, but

it is hard to remember

what that means.

HOME TO ROOST

The chickens

are circling and

blotting out the

day. The sun is

bright, but the

chickens are in

the way. Yes,

the sky is dark

with chickens,

dense with them.

They turn and

then they turn

again. These

are the chickens

you let loose

one at a time

and small—

various breeds.

Now they have

come home

to roost—all

the same kind

at the same speed.

CARRYING A LADDER

We are always

really carrying

a ladder, but it’s

invisible. We

only know

something’s

the matter:

something precious

crashes; easy doors

prove impassable.

Or, in the body,

there’s too much

swing or off-

center gravity.

And, in the mind,

a drunken capacity,

access to out-of-range

apples. As though

one had a way to climb

out of the damage

and apology.

SHARKS’ TEETH

Everything contains some

silence. Noise gets

its zest from the

small shark’s-tooth-

shaped fragments

of rest angled

in it. An hour

of city holds maybe

a minute of these

remnants of a time

when silence reigned,

compact and dangerous

as a shark. Sometimes

a bit of a tail

or fin can still

be sensed in parks.

FELIX CROW

Crow school

is basic and

short as a rule—

just the rudiments

of quid pro crow

for most students.

Then each lives out

his unenlightened

span, adding his

bit of blight

to the collected

history of pushing out

the sweeter species;

briefly swaggering the

swagger of his

aggravating ancestors

down my street.

And every time

I like him

when we meet.

WEAK FORCES

I enjoy an accumulating

faith in weak forces—

a weak faith, of course,

easily shaken, but also

easily regained—in what

starts to drift: all the

slow untrainings of the mind,

the sift left of resolve

sustained too long, the

strange internal shift

by which there’s no knowing

if this is the road taken

or untaken. There are soft

affinities, possibly electrical;

lint-like congeries; moonlit

hints; asymmetrical pink

glowy spots that are not

the defeat of something,

I don’t think.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

It isn’t so much

a complete elephant

as an elephant

sense—perhaps

pillar legs supporting

a looming mass,

beyond which it’s

mostly a guess.

In any case, we

manage with relative

ease. There are just

places in the room

that we bounce off

when we come up

against; not something

we feel we have to

announce.

A BALL ROLLS ON A POINT

The whole ball

of who we are

presses into

the green baize

at a single tiny

spot. An aural

track of crackle

betrays our passage

through the

fibrous jungle.

It’s hot and

desperate. Insects

spring out of it.

The pressure is

intense, and the

sense that we’ve

lost proportion.

As though bringing

too much to bear

too locally were

our decision.

THE BEST OF IT

However carved up

or pared down we get,

we keep on making

the best of it as though

it doesn’t matter that

our acre’s down to

a square foot. As

though our garden

could be one bean

and we’d rejoice if

it flourishes, as

though one bean

could nourish us.

CHINESE FOOT CHART

Every part of us

alerts another part.

Press a spot in

the tender arch and

feel the scalp

twitch. We are no

match for ourselves

but our own release.

Each touch

uncatches some

remote lock. Look,

boats of mercy

embark from

our heart at the

oddest knock.

SHIPWRECK

I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky
in a sea shallow enough to stand up in.

—Fernando Pessoa

They’re laughable

when we get there—

the ultimate articulations

of despair: trapped

in a tub filling with

our own tears, strapped

to a breadstick mast

a mouse could chew

down, hopping around

the house in paper shackles

wrist and ankle. It’s

always stagey. Being

lost is just one’s fancy—

some cloth, some paste—

the essence of flimsy.

Therefore we

double don’t know

why we don’t take off

the Crusoe rags, step

off the island, bow

from the waist, accept

your kudos.

THE OTHER SHOE

Oh if it were

only the other

shoe hanging

in space before

joining its mate.

If the undropped

didn’t congregate

with the undropped.

But nothing can

stop the midair

collusion of the

unpaired above us

acquiring density

and weight. We

feel it accumulate.

ATLAS

Extreme exertion

isolates a person

from help,

discovered Atlas.

Once a certain

shoulder-to-burden

ratio collapses,

there is so little

others can do:

they can’t

lend a hand

with Brazil

and not stand

on Peru.

HE LIT A FIRE WITH ICICLES

For W. G. Sebald, 1944–2001

This was the work

of St. Sebolt, one

of his miracles:

he lit a fire with

icicles. He struck

them like a steel

to flint, did St.

Sebolt. It

makes sense

only at a certain

body heat. How

cold he had

to get to learn

that ice would

burn. How cold

he had to stay.

When he could

feel his feet

he had to

back away.

RATS’ TAILS

For Joseph Brodsky, 1940–1996

All that’s left of him is rats’ tails.
There’s a fate I could envy.

—Joseph Brodsky

Let’s say

some day

all that’s

left of him

is rats’ tails,

just scattered

bits of script:

a loose e,

an s or two,

a g, an almost-

n. If he had

hands he’d

rub them as

the test begins:

to see how little

will suggest

the rat again.

ADDED SIGNIFICANCE

In the wake of

horrible events

each act or word

is fortified with

added significance,

unabsorbable as

nutrients added

to the outside

of food: it can’t

do any good.

As if significance

weren’t burdensome

enough. Now

the wave-slapped

beach rocks not

just made to talk

but made to teach.

CHOP

The bird

walks down

the beach along

the glazed edge

the last wave

reached. His

each step makes

a perfect stamp—

smallish, but as

sharp as an

emperor’s chop.

Stride, stride,

goes the emperor

down his wide

mirrored promenade

the sea bows

to repolish.

DESERT RESERVOIRS

They are beachless

basins, steep-edged

catches, unnatural

bodies of water wedged

into canyons, stranded

anti-mirages

unable to vanish

or moisten a landscape

of cactus adapted

to thrift, a wasteland

to creatures who chew

one another or grasses

for moisture. Nothing

here matches their gift.

HAILSTORM

Like a storm

of hornets, the

little white planets

layer and relayer

as they whip around

in their high orbits,

getting more and

more dense before

they crash against

our crust. A maelstrom

of ferocious little

fists and punches,

so hard to believe

once it’s past.

EXPECTATIONS

We expect rain

to animate this

creek: these rocks

to harbor gurgles,

these pebbles to

creep downstream

a little, those leaves

to circle in the

eddy, the stains

and gloss of wet.

The bed is ready

but no rain yet.

GREEN HILLS

Their green flanks

and swells are not

flesh in any sense

matching ours,

we tell ourselves.

Nor their green

breast nor their

green shoulder nor

the languor of their

rolling over.

RUBBING LAMPS

Things besides

Aladdin’s and

the golden cave

fish’s lamps

grant wishes.

In fact,

most lamps

aren’t lamp-

shaped and

happen by

accident: an

ordinary knob

goes lambent

as you twist

or a cloth turns

to silver mesh

against a dish—

something

so odd and

filled with promise

for a minute

that you spend

your only wish

wishing someone else

could see it.

TENDERNESS AND ROT

Tenderness and rot

share a border.

And rot is an

aggressive neighbor

whose iridescence

keeps creeping over.

No lessons

can be drawn

from this however.

One is not

two countries.

One is not meat

corrupting.

It is important

to stay sweet

and loving.

TAR BABIES

Tar babies are

not the children

of tar people.

It is far worse.

The tar baby occurs

spontaneously

nor do we adhere

at first. There is

an especially

unperverse

attractiveness

to the tar baby—

although currently

she is a little sick.

When you start

to help her

is when she

starts to stick.

TIRED BLOOD

Well, not tired

so much as freighted.

As though foreign objects

had invaded.

As though tiny offices

had dumped

their metal furniture

among the glossy lozenges

and platelets—

chairs that stick together,

painful cabinets.

THEFT

The egg-sucking fox

licks his copper chops.

The shell cups

lie scattered from

the orange debauch.

It is honest

straightforward theft—

unlike whatever

cruel thing

steals thought

the full weight left

and the locked room

still locked.

IDEAL AUDIENCE

Not scattered legions,

not a dozen from

a single region

for whom accent

matters, not a seven-

member coven,

not five shirttail

cousins; just

one free citizen—

maybe not alive

now even—who

will know with

exquisite gloom

that only we two

ever found this room.

CAPS

People should be

open on top like a cup.

A piece of bread

should be able to sop

some of us up.

We should be milk-like

or like wine. We should

not have to be trying

to get our caps off all the time.

The storybook boy

attempts the simple gesture

of baring his head

for his emperor,

but another hat has appeared.

This happens over and over.

Who does not share

his despair of simplicity,

of acting clearly and with dignity?

And what pleasure can we find

in the caps, brightly feathered

and infinitely various,

that pile up so high they bury us?

THIN

How anything

is known

is so thin—

a skin of ice

over a pond

only birds might

confidently walk

upon. A bird’s

worth of weight

or one bird-weight

of Wordsworth.

STARDUST

Stardust is

the hardest thing

to hold out for.

You must

make of yourself

a perfect plane—

something still

upon which

something settles—

something like

sugar grains on

something like

metal, but with

none of the chill.

It’s hard to explain.

REPULSIVE THEORY

Little has been made

of the soft skirting action

of magnets reversed,

while much has been

made of attraction.

But is it not this pillowy

principle of repulsion

that produces the

doily edges of oceans

or the arabesques of thought?

And do these cutout coasts

and in-curved rhetorical beaches

not baffle the onslaught

of the sea or objectionable people

and give private life

what small protection it’s got?

Praise then the oiled motions

of avoidance, the pearly

convolutions of all that

slides off or takes a

wide berth; praise every

eddying vacancy of Earth,

all the dimpled depths

of pooling space, the whole

swirl set up by fending off—

extending far beyond the personal,

I’m convinced—

immense and good

in a cosmological sense:

unpressing us against

each other, lending

the necessary never

to never-ending.

BLUE CHINA DOORKNOB

I was haunted by the image of a blue china doorknob.
I never used the doorknob, or knew what it meant,
yet somehow it started the current of images.

—Robert Lowell

Rooms may be

using us. We

may be the agents

of doorknobs’

purposes, obeying

imperatives china

dreams up or

pacing dimensions

determined by

cabinets. And if

we’re their instruments—

the valves of their

furious trumpets,

conscripted but

ignorant of it—

the strange, unaccountable

things we betray

were never our secrets

anyway.

SALVAGE

The wreck

is a fact.

The worst

has happened.

The salvage trucks

back in and

the salvage men

begin to sort

and stack,

whistling as

they work.

Thanks be

to God—again—

for extractable elements

which are not

carriers of pain,

for this periodic

table at which

the self-taught

salvagers disassemble

the unthinkable

to the unthought.

ALMOST WITHOUT SURFACE

Sometimes before

going to sleep a person

senses the give

behind the last given,

almost physically,

like the strain

of plush against

a skin.

The person imagines

a fig or peach,

perhaps a woman or

a deep constellation:

some fathomless

fruit.

But we are each

that, while we live,

however much

we resist: almost

without surface, barely

contained,

but crazy

as clouds compounding

each other, refusing

to rain.

THE LIGHT OF INTERIORS

The light of interiors

is the admixture

of who knows how many

doors ajar, windows

casually curtained,

unblinded or opened,

oculi set into ceilings,

wells, ports, shafts,

loose fits, leaks,

and other breaches

of surface. But, in

any case, the light,

once in, bounces

toward the interior,

glancing off glassy

enamels and polishes,

softened by the scuffed

and often-handled, muffled

in carpet and toweling,

buffeted down hallways,

baffled equally

by the scatter and order

of love and failure

to an ideal and now

sourceless texture which,

when mixed with silence,

makes of a simple

table with flowers

an island.

THINGS SHOULDN’T BE SO HARD

A life should leave

deep tracks:

ruts where she

went out and back

to get the mail

or move the hose

around the yard;

where she used to

stand before the sink,

a worn-out place;

beneath her hand

the china knobs

rubbed down to

white pastilles;

the switch she

used to feel for

in the dark

almost erased.

Her things should

keep her marks.

The passage

of a life should show;

it should abrade.

And when life stops,

a certain space—

however small—

should be left scarred

by the grand and

damaging parade.

Things shouldn’t

be so hard.

THE PAST

Sometimes there’s

suddenly no way

to get from

one part to

another, as though

the past were

a frozen lake

breaking up. But

not from the

top; not because

it’s warmer

up here; it’s not.

But from underneath

for some reason—

perhaps some heat

trapped on its own

for so long it’s

developed seasons.

REVERSE DRAMA

Lightning, but not bright.

Thunder, but not loud.

Sometimes something

in the sky connects

to something in the ground

in ways we don’t expect

and more or less miss except

through reverse drama:

things were heightened

and now they’re calmer.

FAKE SPOTS

Like air

in rocks, fake

spots got here

really far back.

Everything is

part caulk.

Some apartments

in apartment blocks

are blanks;

some steeples

are shims. Also

in people: parts

are wedges: and,

to the parts they keep

apart, precious.

LEGERDEMAIN

Some days one gets

the in but not

the out part of the

rabbit/hat trick.

And the longer

a creature stays,

the worse it sticks.

Dispatch means

so much, one

remembers again.

A thing can get

too conjured

for legerdemain.

HOUDINI

Each escape

involved some art,

some hokum, and

at least a brief

incomprehensible

exchange between

man and metal

during which the

chains were not

so much broken

as he and they

blended. At the

end of each such

mix he had to

extract himself. It

was the hardest

part to get right

routinely: breaking

back into the

same Houdini.

HIDE AND SEEK

It’s hard not

to jump out

instead of

waiting to be

found. It’s

hard to be

alone so long

and then hear

someone come

around. It’s

like some form

of skin’s developed

in the air

that, rather

than have torn,

you tear.

LEAST ACTION

Is it vision

or the lack

that brings me

back to the principle

of least action,

by which in one

branch of rabbinical

thought the world

might become the

Kingdom of Peace not

through the tumult

and destruction necessary

for a New Start but

by adjusting little parts

a little bit—turning

a cup a quarter inch

or scooting up a bench.

It imagines an

incremental resurrection,

a radiant body

puzzled out through

tinkering with the fit

of what’s available.

As though what is is

right already but

askew. It is tempting

for any person who would

like to love what she

can do.

PITCHER

A pitcher molds

the air in it, dividing

from the air beyond

the air it holds. And

should the pitcher

vanish, something

would take a minute

to escape, a gradually

diminishing integrity,

a thinning pitcherful

of pitcher shape.

POST-CONSTRUCTION

Who knows better

than the builder

not to trust

a structure, where

it’s off kilter,

how too few

rafters bear

too much roof?

And still it

may stand, proof

against craft,

strong as though

ghost ribs

had been added

after one left.

CHART

There is a big

figure, your age,

crawling, then

standing, now

beginning to bend

as he crosses

the stage. Or

she. A blurred

and generalized

projection of you

and me. For a

long time it seems

as remote

from the self

as the ape chart

where they rise up

and walk into man.

And then it seems

the realer part.

NOTHING GETTING PAST

If life is a

thin film

sandwiched

between twin

immensities

of nothing,

you get the best

taste of this

out west in

the open country

where a keen

could mean the

double scrape

of nothing almost

touching nothing

or the wind

coming through

dry grass. In

either case it’s

pretty close

to nothing

getting past.

THE MATERIAL

The ratio between the material Cornell collected
and the material that ended up in his boxes
was probably a thousand to one.

—Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway

Whatever is done

leaves a hole in the

possible, a snip in

the gauze, a marble

and thimble missing

from the immaterial.

The laws are cruel

on this point. The

undone can’t be

patched or stretched.

The wounds last.

The bundles of

nothing that are

our gift at birth, the

lavish trains we

trail into our span

like vans of seamless

promise, like fresh

sheets in baskets,

are our stock. We

must extract parts

to do work. As

time passes, the

promise is tattered

like a battle flag

above a war we

hope mattered.

THE SELF IS NOT PORTABLE

The self is not

portable. It

cannot be packed.

It comes sneaking

back to any place

from which it’s

been extracted,

for it is nothing alone.

It is not an entity.

The ratio of self

to home: one part

in seventy.

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DRAWING ONESELF UP

One does not stack.

It would be like

a mouse on the back

of a mouse

on a mouse’s back.

Courses of mice,

layers of shivers

and whiskers,

a wobbling tower

mouse-wide,

with nothing more

than a mouse inside.

DUCK

It isn’t ever

all green thought

in green shade,

is it? When even

a duck pivots

beak-down in

pursuit of the

succulent options

that tuck and

cling among the

dangling roots of

an emerald dream,

parts stay so

independent they seem

foreign. With the

duck, for example,

the improbable

curl-peaked

eider island

that bobbles

above him.

LAST CHANCE

No more water

for 80 miles

or gas or

beer. If you

need some

get it here.

It’s just a gap

between stations,

a serviceless

hiatus—only

your last chance

in that sense—

really no more than

a glimpse.

NO NAMES

There are high places

that don’t invite us,

sharp shapes, glacier-

scraped faces, whole

ranges whose given names

slip off. Any such relation

as we try to make

refuses to take. Some

high lakes are not for us,

some slick escarpments.

I’m giddy with thinking

where thinking can’t stick.

STILL LIFE, WITH HER THINGS

Today her things are quiet

and do not reproach,

each in its place,

washed in the light

that encouraged the Dutch

to paint objects as though

they were grace—

the bowl, the

goblet, the vase

from Delft—each

the reliquary

of itself.

THE WELL OR THE CUP

How can

you tell

at the start

what you

can give away

and what

you must hold

to your heart.

What is

the well

and what is

a cup. Some

people get

drunk up.

CHARMS

The dead do not

become stars or ghosts.

In fact, they are

hardly undone.

Soon their randomly

dispersed parts

reappear one

by one on

foreign hosts—

the beloved ear

or freckled arm,

separate as a

milagro or bracelet

charm. It is not

grotesque, though

odd. Even a piece

does us some good.

ABSENCES AND BREAKS

It’s what we can’t

know that interests

us—the pre-Greeks

or Australopithecus—

where there are more

absences and breaks

than bits of bone

or pot. It’s not

news, but it

fascinates—our

love of hints, our

mending minds that

love to patch up

other times like

plates, and how this

might extrapolate

to hearts: explaining

how here can be

too much matching part.

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPING

Seas pleat

winds keen

fogs deepen

ships lean no

doubt, and

the lighthouse

keeper keeps

a light for

those left out.

It is intimate

and remote both

for the keeper

and those afloat.

LATENTS

Just the hints, say

the side ridges of

fingerprints that

don’t rule out

innocence; or

the loose approaches

to tightening mazes;

ambiguous, smudgy

places. The dilation

dark absorbs; the

thing we don’t

think through

before it happens:

all the early

stations of desire—

the first slight tug

against the string

that threads the

wire that threads

the cable that

guys the bridge

that alien traffic

plies.

TUNE

Imagine a sea

of ultramarine

suspending a

million jellyfish

as soft as moons.

Imagine the

interlocking uninsistent

tunes of drifting things.

This is the deep machine

that powers the lamps

of dreams and accounts

for their bluish tint.

How can something

so grand and serene

vanish again and again

without a hint?

LATE JUSTICE

Late justice may

be more useless

than none. Some

expungings or

making-rights

or getting-backs

lack the capacity

to correct. The

formerly aggrieved

become exacting

in unattractive

ways: intolerant

of delay, determined

to collect. And shocked—

shocked—at their

new unappeasableness,

who had so long

been so reasonable.

BACKWARD MIRACLE

Every once in a while

we need a

backward miracle

that will strip language,

make it hold for

a minute: just the

vessel with the

wine in it—

a sacramental

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