I HEAR SOUNDS NOBODY HEARS

                                                

 

 

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__ ___ _____ ______ ____

 

(A) mazing how those signs and letters swarming

from the computer in sequences and rhythms

are being turned into words: for the sick

a kind of salvation--the mechanical data of the machine

blooming out of its dark womb like gods of light.

“It’s a Cat-Scanner,” the doctor tells me;

“the man who needs it is due in the afternoon;

he’ll stay weeks, you’re here only for the day.”

 

(I) n the meantime the signs come and go,

black and white, telling the story of a soul

in dots that multiply to numbers that uncover

whatever bone and flesh hide.

There are no feelings in the heart; the brain

is the seat of all human activity.

 

(W) ith me they used the two-step procedure:

parts of my lump, fixed in formaldehyde

embedded in paraffin, were studied

by the pathologist. It took several days,

but he was able to diagnose: okay.

 

(B) ack, my husband and I were relieved

the horrid thing was over. We returned

to our duties with abated zeal,

a bit suspicious about worldly ambitions.

At an All Souls’ Mass, the preacher

droned on: all temporal worries

will bring us glory greater than the trouble.

 

(S) even months later they pried into my bosom

and realized the report had been partial.

They would proceed with an enlarged biopsy:

a modified mastectomy by which

arm and shoulder mobility of the patient

are left intact. The epidemiologist’s name

for my case: fortunate, with no metástases

anticipated spreading from the spot.

I had an illness and could certainly be cured.

 

(I) surfaced from the second operation

weaker but, as they stated, out of danger.

They were going to reconstruct my breast,

that Everlasting Symbol of the Female.

“It used to be the vagina,” my Doc said.

“Now it’s the tits. I wish they’d save their soul.”

 

“(A) sk those false prophets can they save their soul,”

the priest had said. “A Christian concentrates

on things that are unseen.”

I must confess I do not sigh to have

my home in heaven put on over me.

I know He promised it to us

so we’d be full of courage. Yet my courage

comes from this earth, this patch of dirt I rub

against until I burn.

 

(A) s I darn L.’s ripped shirt or finish

hilarious G.’s latest comedy,

this modest meadow is my boundless West,

mine the lines that sing: “Do not ask

His permission to embrace me, Good Time.”

My husband’s brother reprimanded me often.

 

(O) n a visit to us from rich USA

he made no comments on my being sick.

Instead of discussing God’s existence,

justice and love, he moved quietly about,

horsing around with his nephews, leading them

to what I thought they had always ignored:

music, freedom, silence as work to

“get hooked again to the pull of the sun.”

 

(S) prawled on a deck-chair on the terrace,

I recap yesterday’s events: I took

a part-time job as a secretary in a school.

With my nose close to the geraniums,

my feet in the sun, the ugly bosom

tapped by a gentle breeze,

I then dreamed of my first operation,

 

(O) f Sophocles who craved the time

he would no longer have lust

to battle with--only old age and wisdom.

No more temptations.

                                    But I am not tempted.

I just can’t stand those glum theologians

pining this world will wash away,

that only death is the eternal permanence.

In liberty from the bonds of attachment,

they say they venerate the living;

to me, they die for an abstract mystery,

a mausoleum of sacrifice and blood.

 

(Y) our mind is clogged, my brother-in-law would say.

However you put it, every day is followed by night,

and we and the earth get older. Nobody knows

where the night comes from: it’s there and it means

the loss of the sun. A shorter time for forgiveness.

It’s just hiding, I would answer back.

It will return tomorrow; so what if I’m older.

Youth is an imposture, the cruelest. To be old means

to flow with whatever exists and say: I am here.

A tiny focus, a little flame burning.

 

“(A) tiny focus, a little flame burning,”

the oncologist says, “but no fear.

Even if a few obnoxious cells

have indeed trod from your left breast to your right,

to make certain the benign thing won’t crawl

we’ll poison it with our know-how.”

                                                            “In our town

we swallow poison every day,” I say.

The pathologist smiles with the surgeon:

“Not in the right amount.”

                                            They are so clever

in hospitals and prisons, using the

same ingredients to give life or death.

They are the true image of God.

 

(G) od. Did I get this slant

because I kept at shameful deeds?

Because I falsified His word?

To avoid more cells mushrooming,

I make friends again with Christ

and his demanding church of abstinence.

Does a tumor spread from a center

to surrounding circles much like

the ripples of a stone on water?

 

(I) remember. I had forgotten.

This shadow that falls from the stars

will brush on me but will not touch me.

I was often tested, but not crushed;

sometimes in doubt, but never in despair;

had enemies, but was never without friends.

 

(A) fter eight months of prayers and delayed

breast refurbishing, a letter summons me

for reappraisal to the hospital. I have it.

I am no apostle, no sacred vessel.

Only a woman of clay wanting to believe.

So why cancer, God? To make me doubt more?

Out of darkness emerges my church,

my man. The turtle scuttles away

when he approaches with the garden shears.

He doesn’t want the children on the grass.

He doesn’t want the neighbors on the grass.

 

He wants the grass splendid there, all by itself.

 

(T) oday I flew into a rage and yelled at C.

He said I was mean--which cut me to the heart.

Am I losing my balance? I was proud

because of what I accomplished:

my children. Now they criticize me.

It’s the foul stench of the drugs

that turns into an uproar in my veins

where demons have a feast.

 

(I) make myself as pretty as I can be

with glassy eyes and the deep lines on my neck,

I wash and comb my hair, put on a new blouse,

and hop on the first bus into town.

I stroll by the Sforza Castle

slow as an old woman, eyes teary with wonders.

Aren’t they afraid of losing me?--

saliva gathering at the corners of my mouth,

a stooping posture, an absent-minded stare.

Statues and parks, Leonardo’s grinning horses,

shop-windows--everything winks at me,

sends me hot kisses. The Duomo’s spires

pierce my side with their thrust towards heaven.

 

(T) he spirit follows the laws of freedom;

the body follows the laws of necessity.

When I come home, my feet are mangled

by the high heels, my mascara’s streaked,

my back’s broken, but I’ve relished to the hilt

the world’s grandeur and Alemagna’s cookies.

As I breathe roses in, I wait for the birds

to alight on my hands. I smell cucumbers,

strawberries, peppers. I stay out till the lawn’s

emerald’s black. I don’t want the sun to set,

the day ever to finish. Why are the children

calling me in? For supper. Darn supper, I say.

My husband is out with me, without talking, drenching

the soft camellias. Unsociable and clumsy,

he is what I cherish. Simmering,

he too is looking for an exit.

 

(I) am safe! The damn chemicals worked.

He did not punish me, then, for what I did to Him.

In His light now, I recommend myself

to everybody’s good conscience

and live in a spirit of truth, honor God on Sundays.

My husband and kids have me back and purr. They taunt

my usual sloppiness. I do not show my glee.

Today I swore to a butterfly

to leave all my belongings to the poor.

 

(F) our blissful months.

Then the headaches return in full force.

I tell the doctor of pressures in my skull:

he gives me steroids, but only as a precaution.

For what precaution? When I fall downstairs at home,

word is out at last. They made the wrong diagnosis.

Two days, and I’ll go for the Scan.

If the picture is blurred, it’s a glioma.

 

(A) s I wait, I hear sounds nobody hears.

My left eye also is doing funny tricks.

And so is my balance. It’s dark.

So dark I barely see the children playing

in the court-yard, my husband striding back

from work to my claustrophobia.

I lean on the doorpost, contemplating the night,

a world that is leaving. My world.

Am I no longer its mistress?

I wonder, as shadows grow deeper,

night cracks open, and the sky drips blood.

                                                          II

 

 

(DAY FIVE)

 

(D) ay after day

in a secret place

in solitude she does what’s to be done.

Will her actions

bring rain from above?

Be still soul of hers: to you

gold  stones  or the earth are one

Hoping for nothing

desiring nothing

let her find a place that is pure

& a comfy seat

neither too high nor too low

with green grass & a skin

& a cloth thereon

 

(DAY FOUR)

 

(S) he takes procarbizine and vincristine

(the names tell the story), envisions

her husband walking behind her corpse.

She is all eyes & they have shaved her head.

Unwilling acolyte, she hates God &

this world of grief He has prepared for them.

Non-omnipotent, she needs her husband,

the children her. She cannot go just now.

But come, angels that guard over man’s death;

be her witnesses lest she abjure you

at the time of trial. This agony

cannot be a number, a sign

among signs. She is unique.

So, before she curses, do come.

She cringes at torture’s onset, fears it’s Satan.

 

(W) hen darkness is utter, light is known. Bright light

engenders darkness. That is why we need

a veil over our faces: we’re all Moses.

Between the shadow and the light, choose light.

Oh may her body be reformed entire

for her husband, her children & her friends

when she comes back from the dead,

two gorgeous breasts ballooning on her chest

& speech coherent in her mind and mouth.

 

(DAY THREE)

 

(L) eaf  (F) lower  (F) ruit

Her words disintegrating.

Speak for her, brother that saw it all. Erase

all wrongs done to her shadow. Make her real

self fulgurate, after this graceless passion.

Be thou the final love she could not give,

her last & impossible farewell.

We all go into the dark. Have pity.

Mercy that conquers all.

 

(S) he trudges along to the garden

& sees the turtle twice its size.

Even the laurel looms larger, takes up the whole lawn.

She picks a hydrangea & scatters

its petals, smells mustard gas

they rush her to ambulance, sirens.

It is the end of her life.

Her knowledge shattered, dismantled,

heart pitted against brain

reclaiming as she vainly threads the maze

words such as bee be tree

all sounding eee in the air

around her roaring like a mega ä:

incomprehensible first

dumb heart losing its battle

(DAY TWO)

 

(S) he hears only her terrible cr (y)

Aí Eye Aye

No longer faces, children, no world

No husband’s voice or god’s her writhing body

plunged into blinding darkness

Pain and the absence of pain

as if hurled down a mountain peak

she worried only about where she’d fall

about air.

                 Her mind’s also there

a gray form around her head

a neuron without core

signals and numbers ending in a whorl,

a fall, a cacophony of screams

fiery vowels  fearsome lines

on a chart not from the sky:  dots in a computer.

Computer says  Evil Here

Gliomas won’t hear  don’t care

They keep on growing according to instructions

 

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__ ___ ____ ______

 

from their source

 

(DAY ONE)

 

(C) ells signal for help against the kill

Signal is not received

More dots more pain fewer signals

from some cavities a tongue of fire

that could be hell hail leicht

brain split

heart split

the wor(l)d back to the (source

before)

out of the

 

(D) ................... (ark)

(N) ----------------------ess (l) ight  (w)

(A) ---- ------ --------- ---------- -------------- s  (form) ed

 

 

 

© Ned Condini