The Stardust Lounge_ Stories From a Boy's Adolescence - Deborah Digges [62]
Franklin M. Loew
Dean
Cornell Veterinary College
Corrections and changes for Rough Music.
1 See acknowledgments page: Note that the poem initially titled “The Afterlife” has been changed to “Chekhov's Darling. “ The acknowledgment Ploughshares should read “Chekhov's Darling” under the title “The Afterlife.”
2. See dedication page: Note that the name Frank has been added to the dedication. Thus, the dedication should read: “For Stephen and Charles, for Trevor, and Susan, and Gerry, and Max, and for Frank.”
3. See table of contents page: The title of “The Afterlife” has been changed to “Chekhov's Darling” (17th poem).
4. See “Late Summer,” page 6. Note correction in line 23. “Theresa” has been corrected to “Therese.”
5. See page 12, second page of “Rune for the Parable of Despair.” In line 6 of the second page, note that the word “blessed” has been put in quotation marks.
6. See page 15, line 17 of “Rough Music.” There should be a hyphen between “breaking” and “glass.” It should read “breaking-glass.”
7. See page 32, “Morning After a Blizzard.” Drop the And” that begins the poem. It should read, “What could they possibly need to bury in heaven? “
8. See page 36, “Five Smooth Stones.” The first letter of line 12 should be capitalized since it is the beginning of a new sentence. It should read, uHe walks the streets opening gates for the yard dogs…”
9. See page 38. Change title of poem from “The Afterlife” to “Chekhov's Darling.”
At line five break line at the word “raised.”
Add a dash after the word “pain.”
Omit the lines, “like Chekhov's and it was clear to them the end was still far off…”
Chekhov's Darling
Then came the day even the water glass felt heavy and I knew, as I'd suspected, I grew lighter.
I grew lighter, yes.
Say, have you ever fainted?
Such a distinct horizon as you are raised above your pain:
And after forty years they entered Canaan…
Don't tell me about turning from what might change you, taking the second, not the first compartment in the revolving door, tossing the note in the bottle back into the channel.
No, the afternoon was not a practice for another.
The birds, they flew.
The virus spread throughout the city.
It was a real day and I grew lighter.
And I asked my fiend if I could hold his arm to keep myself from rising.
I picked up the rare city stones and put them in my pocket while the buildings dreamed themselves backwards to rubble, and the sun-smashed windows, the mortar back to sand, and Orpheus in the flesh set broken china into the fissures of the sidewalk after he d poured the grout and smoothed it with his trowel.
Then blue shard by blue shard he made a sky of the abysmal sepulchers across which the homeless floated, much as I, where the trains passed, and the ground shook.
It was like standing inside singing, knowing something of its need.
It was the troubled child grown old, happy, the lost in sight of home, and born for this.
There is a sadness older than its texts that will outlive the language, like the lover who takes you by the roots of your hair.
In this way I was awake, I was light, I grew lighter, though I had not yet been lifted.
If you had to describe house to an alien, you might begin with ours. It would be a simple lesson drawn in the dirt with a stick: a rectangle with smaller ones inside, front entrance, dining room to the left, living room to the right, kitchen along the back. Upstairs is as simple: two bedrooms separated by a bathroom off the landing.
Behind the house the woods bear in, shrinking the yard a little more this year, ferns and saplings sprouting from the leaf piles dumped over the fence, fallen tree branches from an ice storm dragged back and heaved over, weeds, dead bushes pulled out of the ground, bulbs that rotted in