SIMON meets the poet at the International Arrivals Building, holding one hand behind him. The nine-hour Finnair flight from Helsinki has been ex?hausting, but she has met A, B, C, and D -- Russian poets so fabulously gifted that none of them has been allowed to publish so much as a weather report. "Thats terrific," he says. "You look beautiful." "They all speak English," she says, "this half-misunderstood English which is three times as good as regular English." She notices that he is holding something be?hind his back. "Whats that?" He produces a large, naked steak, a steak big as a Sunday Times. She is em?barrassed and pops the steak into her canvas carryall. "I dont get your metaphor," she says in the cab. "Is it hunger?"
Shes right, it is hunger. Dont tell her.
They sit in her kitchen. "The burning barns in your poems," he says, "why so many? Isnt that a little. . . repetitive?" "My burning barns," she says, "my splendid burning barns, Ill burn as many barns as I damn please, Pappy." He is older than she is, by ten years, and she has given him this not altogether welcome nickname. She looks absolutely stunning, a black three-quarter-length skirt embossed with black bird figures, a knitted sleeveless jacket, a yellow long-sleeved blouse, a red ascot. "Seriously, do you think there are too many? Barns?" Its the first time she has asked his opinion about anything connected with her work. "I was half teasing," he says. "But they did burn," she says. "Every one Ive ever known." "Simon says," Simon says, "Simon needs a beer." She rises and moves to fetch a St. Pauli Girl from the refrigerator.
The poet lives in the country, in an old Putnam County farmhouse that she has not touched except to paint the walls pale blue. She has painted over the old wallpaper, and the walls puff and wrinkle in places. The furniture is junk golden oak, one piece to a room except in the kitchen, where there is a table and two mis?matched chairs. "This one is Biedermeier," the poet says, "from my mother, and the other, the potato-chip jobbie, is Eames, from my father. That tell you any?thing?"
Simon takes the train from Grand Central to Put?nam County. He doesnt like the train, almost always in miserable repair and without air conditioning, and he hates changing at Croton, the rush from one train to another more like a stampede than anything else, but the views of the stately Hudson from the discolored windows are wonderful, and when he alights at Garri?son at the end of this trip she is sitting on the hood of her circus-red Toyota pickup, drinking apple juice from a paper cup.
The poet sings to him:
Row, row, row your bed
Gently down the stream. . .
THE professional whistlers wife calls and says that if the resident bitches and tarts dont keep their hands off her husband she will cause a tragic hap?penstance.
"Sounded a little pissed," Anne says.
"These housewives," says Veronica, "I guess you cant blame them they dont have the latitude."
Dore says, "Let her come around, her ass is grass."
"Simon is passive."
"I dont think hes so passive he grasps you very tightly. I think the quality of the embrace is important."
"I think hes more active than passive. Im still sore. I dont call that passive."
"Hes at a strange place in his life."
"Youre like one of those people who have tiny little insights of no consequence."
"The hell you say."
"Youre like one of those people who have weird fig?urative growths on their minds that come out in dismal exfoliations."
"Youre funnin me."
"Youre like one of those people who dont know their ass from their elbow."
"Well theres no need to be vulgar."
"Yes there is."
"Who says?"
"I say."
"Well theres no need to be vulgar."
"You want one?"
"One what?"
"Bang."
"Whats it got on it?"
"Sprinkles."
"Naw Im not decadent."
"Hes slender."
"You call that slender?"
"I except the paunch."
"He can go maybe eighteen times in a good month."
"Thats depressing."
"I think its depressing."
"I really want to be more vulgar than I am at present being."
"Well who the fucks stopping you?"
"I guess nobody."
"I guess we could dance cheek-to-cheek."
"I guess we could tear up some little bunches of vio?lets."
"Well theres no need to be destructive."
"We pretend to be okay."
"Im fine. Im really fine."
"I was fine. Spent a lot of time on it, buffing the heels with one of those rocks they sell in the drugstore, oiling the carcass with precious oils -- Then I found out. How they exploit us and reduce us to nothing. Mere knitters."
"Howd you find out?"
"Read it in a feminist text."
"I heard theyre not gonna let us read any more books."
"Whered you hear that?"
"Just around. On the Rialto."
"Maybe it would be better for us so we wouldnt be so exacerbated."
"Youre like one of those people who lay down the flag in the dirt before its time."
"Well thats what you say you fool."
"I want the car of my dreams."
"What is it?"
"Camaro."
"Youre like one of those people who have really shitty dreams, know what I mean? Really shitty dreams."
"How can you say that?"
"I played in a band once."
"What was your instrument?"
"Tambourine."
"Cant get a union card for tambourine."
"My knee all black and blue, I banged my tambou?rine on it. First the elbow, then the knee."
"I saw a beautiful ass. In a picture. It was white and was walking away from the camera. She was holding hands with a man. He was naked too it was a beautiful picture."
"Howd that make you feel?"
"Inferior."
"Well thats what you say you idiot."
"Id like to light up a childs life. I apologize I was wrong."
"Yes you were wrong."
"But I still think what I think."
"Its hard to get a scrape when you want to light up a childs life."
"Ive done it three times."
"Leaves you heavy of heart."
"It does."
A: Ive crossed both major oceans by ship, the Pacific twice, on troopships, the Atlantic once, on a passenger liner. You stand out there, at the rail, at dusk, and the sea is limitless, water in every direction, never-ending, you think water forever, the movement of the ship seems slow but also seems inexorable, you feel you will be moving, this way forever, the Pacific is about sev?enty million square miles, about one-third of the earths surface, the ship might be making twenty knots, Im eating oranges because thats all I can keep down, twelve days of it with young soldiers all around, half of them seasick -- On the Queen Mary, in tourist class, we got rather good food, there was a guy assigned to our table who had known Paderewski, the great pianist who was also Prime Minister of Poland, he talked about Paderewski for four days, an ocean of anec?dotes --
Q: I was tempted to become a shrink. But then I de?cided it wasnt science.
A: But what if she stabs me in the ear with the scis?sors?
Q: Havent you realized that she is not going to stab you in the ear with the scissors?
A: A lot of people go along assuming that. And then they get stabbed in the ear with the scissors.
Q: You saw yourself, in relation to the three women, as an artist working in fat.
A: No no no.
Q: Im a doctor. You can tell me. Im used to hearing terrible things.
A: I felt blessed.
Q: Your hands are trembling.
A: That happens in the mornings sometimes.
Q: Which one was the best?
A: All lovely, all.
Q: I dont have a clear idea of what these women looked like.
A: Dore had a scar. Right on the cheekbone, parallel to it. A good inch-and-a-half. About as thick as a pencil line, but white. Her hair was what they call ash-blond; she had black eyebrows. Veronica was blond too, a blonder blond. Very good forehead. Wore a ponytail a lot of the time. Anne had dark hair, very long. She had the longest hair.
Q: Did you feel, when you went out on the street with one of them, or to the market, that you looked strange together?
A: Never occurred to me.
Q: You do wear young clothes, youngish wretched clothes, garb of the youth culture slightly misunder?stood --
A: Nothing the matter with my clothes. Ive always worn these clothes.
Q: You see clients in those clothes?
A: Of course not. I put on a jacket and tie and --
Q: Harris tweed, a blue chambray shirt, dark-red tie of rough wool --
A: Its a uniform, yes.
Q: Im greatly comforted. I dont like to think of people not wearing their uniforms, out of uniform.
A: Nor do the clients.
Q: Bellies. Ive always been greatly drawn to the fe?male belly, as a more subtle, less overt, sculptural repre?sentation of all the other tactile values we associate with --
A: All sculpture is about women, if you care to look at it that way. Buildings are about women, cars are about women, landscape is about women, and tombs are about women. If you care to look at it that way. The Grand Canyon.
Q: The Eiffel Tower?
A: About women in the sense of being addressed to women.
Q: Who speaks for the male?
A: Monks.
Q: Is the bicycle about women?
A: Speeds us toward women as twilight time de?scends and the lamplighters go about their slow incen?diary tasks.
Q: What about coveting your neighbors wife?
A: Well on one side, in Philadelphia, there were no wives, strictly speaking, there were two floors and two male couples, all very nice people. On the other side, Bill and Rachel had the whole house. I like Rachel but I dont covet her. I could covet her, shes covetable, quite lovely and spirited, but in point of fact our relationship is that of neighborliness. I jump-start her car when her battery is dead, she gives me basil from her garden, shes got acres of basil, not literally acres but -- Anyhow, I dont think thats much of a problem, cov?eting your neighbors wife. Just speaking administra?tively, I dont see why theres an entire Commandment devoted to it. Its a mental exercise, coveting. To covet is not necessarily to take action.
Q: I covet my neighbors leaf blower. It has this neat Vari-Flo deal that lets you --
A: I obey the Commandments, the sensible ones. Where they dont know what theyre talking about I ig?nore them. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest discoursing on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermon one turns to the other and says, "I wish I knew as little about it as he does."
Q: God critiques us, we critique Him. Does Carol also engage in dalliance?
A: How quaint you are. I think she has friends whom she sees now and again.
Q: How does that make you feel?
A: I wish her well.
Q: Whats in your wallet?
A: The usual. Credit cards, pictures of Sarah, drivers license, forty dollars in cash, Amex receipts --
Q: It seems to me that we have quite a great deal to worry about. Does the radish worry about itself in this way? Yet the radish is a living thing. Until its cooked.
A: Carol is mad for radishes, cant get enough. Ra?chel gave us radishes, too.
Q: I am feverishly interested in these questions. Eth?ics has always been where my heart is. Moral precept?ing stings the dull mind into attentiveness.
A: Im only a bit depressed, only a bit.
Q: A new arrangement of ideas, based upon the best thinking, would produce a more humane moral order, which we need. Apple honey, disposed upon the sexual parts, is not an index of decadence. Decadence itself is not as bad as its been painted. As for myself, I am con?tent with too little, I know this about myself and I do not commend myself for it and perhaps one day I shall be able to change myself into a hungrier being, one who acts decisively to grasp --
A: The leaf blower, for example.