Read Online The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly by Denis Johnson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Denis Johnson
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this rain following the movies down a lonely fever,
daylight-saving virulent with romance,
phone booths with their lights on in the rain,
neighbors talking ragtime while the stink
of mowing carries over the lawns
on stretchers through the rain the little griefs
to make us cry? How do you stop
creating the worthless pastâday, hour, minuteâ
the place forgetting us, the backward-looming
mist we couldnât see when we were in it?
Waitress, afterimage of a flame,
God, she thinks, why do they make you live
in the restaurant that cannot last forever?
Â
There are equals-signs all over the street,
and I feel like a scaly alien among you
waiting to be rescued to my home. The regret
turns all golden and I either fade
or watch it fade but in any case fail
to be touched by or to touch it. The rights
to the images of the past are confused.
Thereâs a war over the rights to the images of the past,
an unspeakable, delirious war in the dreaming self,
a war of tears, standing by the window and listening
to a song. I will always love you and think of you with bitterness,
and when someone offers a remark in a voice
that brings back your loosened voice and your inebriated fear,
Iâll be wounded along scars.
The Honor
At a party in a Spanish kind of tiled house
I met a woman who had won an award
for writing whose second prize
had gone to me. For years
Iâd felt a kinship with her in the sharing
of this honor,
and I told her how glad I was to talk with her,
my compatriot of letters,
mentioning of course this award.
But it was nothing
to her, and in fact she didnât remember it.
I didnât know what else to talk about.
I looked around us at a room full of hands
moving drinks in tiny, rapid circlesâ
you know how people do
with their drinks.
Soon after this I became
another person, somebody
I would have brushed off if Iâd met him that night,
somebody I never imagined.
People will tell you that itâs awful
to see facts eat our dreams, our presumptions,
but theyâre wrong. It is an honor
to learn to replace one hope with another.
It was the only thing that could possibly have persuaded me
that my life is not a lonely story played out
in barrooms before a vast audience of the dead.
Poem
Loving you is every bit as fine
as coming over a hill into the sun
at ninety miles an hour darling when
itâs dawn and you can hear the stars unlocking
themselves from the designs of God beneath
the disintegrating orchestra of my black
Chevrolet. The radio clings to an un-
identified stationâsomewhere a tango suffers,
and the dance floor burns around two lovers
whom nothing can touchâno, not even death!
Oh! the acceleration with which my heart does proceed,
reaching like stars almost but never quite
of light the speed of light the speed of light.
Proposal
The early inhabitants of this continent
passed through a valley of ice two miles deep
to get here, passed from creature to creature
eating them, throwing away the small bones
and fornicating under nameless stars
in a waste so cold that diseases couldnât
live in it. Three hundred million
animals they slaughtered in the space of two centuries,
moving from the Bering isthmus to the core
of squalid Amazonian voodoo, one
murder at a time; and although in the modern hour
the churchesâ mouths are smeared with us
and all manner of pleading goes up from our hearts,
I donât think they thought the dark and terrible
swallowing gullet could be prayed to.
I donât think they found the smell of baking
amid friends in a warm kitchen anything to be revered.
I think some of them had to chew the food
for the old ones after theyâd lost all their teeth,
and that their expressions
were like those we see on the faces
of the victims of traffic accidents today.
I think they threw their spears with a sense of utter loss,
as if they, their weapons, and the
this rain following the movies down a lonely fever,
daylight-saving virulent with romance,
phone booths with their lights on in the rain,
neighbors talking ragtime while the stink
of mowing carries over the lawns
on stretchers through the rain the little griefs
to make us cry? How do you stop
creating the worthless pastâday, hour, minuteâ
the place forgetting us, the backward-looming
mist we couldnât see when we were in it?
Waitress, afterimage of a flame,
God, she thinks, why do they make you live
in the restaurant that cannot last forever?
Â
There are equals-signs all over the street,
and I feel like a scaly alien among you
waiting to be rescued to my home. The regret
turns all golden and I either fade
or watch it fade but in any case fail
to be touched by or to touch it. The rights
to the images of the past are confused.
Thereâs a war over the rights to the images of the past,
an unspeakable, delirious war in the dreaming self,
a war of tears, standing by the window and listening
to a song. I will always love you and think of you with bitterness,
and when someone offers a remark in a voice
that brings back your loosened voice and your inebriated fear,
Iâll be wounded along scars.
The Honor
At a party in a Spanish kind of tiled house
I met a woman who had won an award
for writing whose second prize
had gone to me. For years
Iâd felt a kinship with her in the sharing
of this honor,
and I told her how glad I was to talk with her,
my compatriot of letters,
mentioning of course this award.
But it was nothing
to her, and in fact she didnât remember it.
I didnât know what else to talk about.
I looked around us at a room full of hands
moving drinks in tiny, rapid circlesâ
you know how people do
with their drinks.
Soon after this I became
another person, somebody
I would have brushed off if Iâd met him that night,
somebody I never imagined.
People will tell you that itâs awful
to see facts eat our dreams, our presumptions,
but theyâre wrong. It is an honor
to learn to replace one hope with another.
It was the only thing that could possibly have persuaded me
that my life is not a lonely story played out
in barrooms before a vast audience of the dead.
Poem
Loving you is every bit as fine
as coming over a hill into the sun
at ninety miles an hour darling when
itâs dawn and you can hear the stars unlocking
themselves from the designs of God beneath
the disintegrating orchestra of my black
Chevrolet. The radio clings to an un-
identified stationâsomewhere a tango suffers,
and the dance floor burns around two lovers
whom nothing can touchâno, not even death!
Oh! the acceleration with which my heart does proceed,
reaching like stars almost but never quite
of light the speed of light the speed of light.
Proposal
The early inhabitants of this continent
passed through a valley of ice two miles deep
to get here, passed from creature to creature
eating them, throwing away the small bones
and fornicating under nameless stars
in a waste so cold that diseases couldnât
live in it. Three hundred million
animals they slaughtered in the space of two centuries,
moving from the Bering isthmus to the core
of squalid Amazonian voodoo, one
murder at a time; and although in the modern hour
the churchesâ mouths are smeared with us
and all manner of pleading goes up from our hearts,
I donât think they thought the dark and terrible
swallowing gullet could be prayed to.
I donât think they found the smell of baking
amid friends in a warm kitchen anything to be revered.
I think some of them had to chew the food
for the old ones after theyâd lost all their teeth,
and that their expressions
were like those we see on the faces
of the victims of traffic accidents today.
I think they threw their spears with a sense of utter loss,
as if they, their weapons, and the
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