Mark Wagenaar

January 26, 2020

“Elegy” by Mark WagenaarPosted by

Mark Wagenaar

ELEGY

Though this place, Chinsekikan, housed
1700 rocks that resembled human faces,
we mostly went there for the people—
today, an Elvis impersonator shaking his hips
for Rock Elvis, a woman asking Rock Nemo
if her father would bother to come after her,
the kid expecting Rock E.T. to answer his
who can I call now? Today I finally asked
Rock Buddha if it was just me, or did he too
think the language of accumulation hollows
us out some, & his beatific face & perfect
silence answered me. We walked out
behind a woman praying to a miniature version
of Rock Jesus, for the health of her collie,
& on this street of museums in this city
of tombs, we swerved to avoid the crowd
of Deadheads come to pay respects
to Rock Jerry Garcia, & found ourselves
in the Museum of What Should Be Remembered
This Week—& I, like everyone else, looked
for our names, our children’s, God, just
one thing I did this week, but found
nothing, & I confess the exhibits blurred
a little as I passed them, looking for one
in particular—& when I didn’t find it,
I took a marker & wrote on a window—
David Olney died on stage this week.
Said I’m sorry, closed his eyes, chin to his chest.
Even held on to his guitar. Who doesn’t long
to go as gently. And who can begin to count
the distances & dusky roads his songs opened
in us? The lack, the heartbreak that hallows us.
I turned after I left & saw the place
was little more than a glorified barge—already
workers were untying the ropes to unmoor it
as the week began to turn. And where is it
sailing. At the mercy of memory. Like all of us.
Jerusalem, tomorrow. The river of heaven the next.

—from Poets Respond
January 26, 2020

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Mark Wagenaar: “This week David Olney died onstage, while playing a set–didn’t even fall off his stool. His friends called him a gentle soul, and it probably takes a gentle person to go like that. Seemed worth remembering.” (web)

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August 28, 2016

“Poem for Max Ritvo, Perhaps” by Mark WagenaarPosted by

Mark Wagenaar

POEM FOR MAX RITVO, PERHAPS

As for me I arrived a day late
with postage due. A day late
& a buck short, big league

in a ghost town. I began
as a glimmer in a cat’s eye.
In my bones were great trees

full of darkness, swelling
with cricket song. The rain
had gone hoarse reciting

the names of the dead.
In the mirrors great clouds
roamed, as distant & untouchable

as tumors. The moon
was my inheritance.
My instructions were to love

mercy. A day late, & late
to your songs, Max,
which reached me in a place

of sudden water, little town
with two tracks running
through, little town sponsored

by Oxy & Mountain Dew,
& I didn’t know what was
inside my bones until

I heard your songs, whether
it was a dream or the rain—
as when you descend a stone

stairway in Paris & wonder
if they’re the same ones
as in Doisneau’s photograph,

you know the one,
a musician beside the gleaming
road holds his umbrella

for his cello, stairs vanishing
behind him, or when you bend
down to one of the cold rails

brittle with moonlight & feel
for the tremble, the slight
shudder that heaven leaves

in the rails as it sails on
past the sleeping prairies,
as when I wonder if my life

will be measured by the mercy
I have shown (though I’ve
deserved none) or against

the weight of the wings
steering by starlight in the skies
above, as when I can’t remember

what I am missing, & it’s
everything breathing &
falling, & your name,

which has been placed
upon the tongues of rain,
but right now it’s after midnight

& I’m walking beneath
the great trees full of night
wind in their top reaches,

& I just heard someone say
I miss Paris, let’s go back
tomorrow we’ll be in Paris

& maybe in the morning
someone will lean out a window
to tell us that everyone’s okay.

—Poets Respond
August 28, 2016

[download audio]

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Mark Wagenaar: “I wrote a poem about/for the poet Max Ritvo, who passed away Thursday. I re-read a number of his poems yesterday, and after watching half of ‘Jules & Jim’ I walked the dog through late night small town Indiana streets. A number of his lines had been echoing through me, mixed in with lines from the film, & I dreamed about both, but don’t recall specifics. Anyways I felt strange about writing this one, but had the chance to spend the better part of the day on it, & just felt haunted by his poems & his passing.” (website)

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June 7, 2016

“Little Song (Altar)” by Mark WagenaarPosted by

Mark Wagenaar

LITTLE SONG (ALTAR)

I found the way
of no way by avoiding
the path that had been
avoided. What did
I hope to find
but a self beyond self,
one past hunger,
or ambition, some
essence past essence.
Like the Bee Gees
without blow or a beat,
or a redneck sans
mullet, like a self-addressed
ransom note, or a map
with no directions—
only the places where
horses have drowned.
I thought of the juggler
without his one impossible
trick: to make one
of the balls in the air
completely still
while the world goes on
around us. If you
had a ballot without
names, would you
have a ballot for
the nameless? One
for the vanished.
My friend, there will
never again be a
Mediterranean Sea
without the thousand
who drowned this week.
Their names are no-
where. Can you pray
for those without?
And what would a prayer
without names or words
sound like? And if
there’s no cathedral
you could dream for
this prayer of no
prayer, you might say it
in this little skiff
that once carried
refugees, now dry-
docked for good,
boat that no longer
serves as a boat
but a reliquary of
fifty square feet
of empty air, while
you break a body
that is not here
to remember a death
that was the death
of death, you hold still
while the incense cloud
billows like fog
upon the water,
& remember those
you never knew who
you lost, remember
the one who told you
I will make you
fishers of men.

—Poets Respond
June 7, 2016

[download audio]

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Mark Wagenaar: “A priest used a former refugee boat as the altar for Mass, to memorialize the refugees who had drowned.” (website)

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