Radio

"—science per se—"

my God, when I hear them on the radio saying that,

it slays me.

Is there a science that's not per se?

I don't get out much, rarely get to see any lakes,

gardens only sporadically and then behind fences,

or in allotments, that's about the size of it,

I rely on ersatz:

radio, newspaper, magazines—

so how can people say such things to me?

It makes you wonder

whether there are any surrogates for hollyhocks,

for warm life, French kisses, hanky-panky,

all those things that make existence a little luxurious,

and all of them somehow of a piece!

No, all this cerebration is not my cup of tea,

but there are sometimes hours on end

where there's no woman on any wavelength

(I receive medium-wave, short-, long-, and VHF),

no voice saying, "first you say no, then

maybe, then yes,"

nothing but these opinionated pedagogues,

it seems that everything the West thinks of as its

higher product is produced by the seated male—

as I say, give me the hanky-panky any day!

"—the last vestiges of the ancient culture would have completely disappeared—"

(well, and what if)

"—a sonorous past—"

(la-di-dah)

"—in villages in New Mexico

farmers still bless their fields and livestock

with these songs—"

(very nice, I'm sure,

but I don't get out of Brandenburg much).

We hear Professor Salem Aleikum,

the reporter still slavering over him:

"the professor is lying on the porch of his house

with his lute cradled in his arm

singing the old ballads"—

probably on an ottoman,

with a carafe of ice water at his side,

rejecting old hypotheses, putting out new ones—

the great rivers of the world

the Nile, the Brahmaputra, or what the hell do I know

wouldn't be enough to drown all those professors—

don't have any acreage, don't have any livestock,

nothing blesses me, life is one continuous affliction,

but nothing like those professors

teach, teach, teach,

from every pore,

who turn everything into illustrated lecture (with slides).

Source: Poetry (October 2006)