[p. 670]
The bus
door Leo Vroman
Waves nor wings can save our breath. Therefore take mine, will God it sings you gently past things’ many things along your dreary road to death, drowning your yells with mutterings. For nothing brings you anywhere else.
It was a dawn, March ’49;
the war forgotten, the weather fine,
smelling of ice, earth, limes, and wine.
I awaited, where I always wait,
my bus of twenty five to eight,
stamping my feet a little, maybe;
and early. I am never late.
Going to work seemed a thrifty feast.
Strangely hungry for it I had left
home, eager as a beast, without doing
what was needed first, well, at least I dressed.
This morning spring was in the air:
a friendly hand upon my hair.
Though when I reached – not there.
The streets were quiet, almost white,
so deserted, the sun so bright,
the day was like a ghost of night,
sketched with a crooked nail in paint.
Then traffic, as it often will,
burst into bloom shrilly, widespread.
Pieces of color flew and walked.
My bus came crawling up the hill.
[p. 671]
There was something in its broad flat face
that I had seen some other place.
It grew; it filled a ton of space,
and I stood there and stared at it;
it crouched, ashamed, then aimed a bit,
a giant kitten that dare not hit,
and roaringly it thundered by,
so near, I saw its mind run dry.
I heaved a sigh, hugged the stopsign.
An old man passed, his tired behind
observing me, not quite unkind
but apt to keep me in its mind.
Next a mother; a child; one cat –
two with and one without a hat –
Full face; profile. And that was that.
Quarter to eight. A windbome chime
whined: plenty of time yet;
more power to that sharp small dime.
Angered, I held it so very tight
that suddenly I felt it bite –
Released, it scrambled out of sight.
I searched, with thunder coming near,
I heard it veer, miss me,
smelled its hot gasses disappear.
It left me vaguely curious:
feeling not merely late, but thus
late, no matter come what bus.
[p. 672]
Slowly my day began to crack,
and flagging back, – almost whistling –
my morning habit, off its track,
I thought: though I look mostly groomed and clean,
under trees barely turning green
I cannot do this quite unseen, or can I?
The city slowly ceased to rush.
There was a heartless hush of waiting.
Then, I heard friendly water flush.
The house which breathed this sound of hope
sprawled on a flowerwaving slope.
Nearer, it smelled of wax and soap.
Its door seemed warmed by human skin.
The doorknob, fruitcool, asked me in.
Wat could I loose? (What none should win, haha).
A girl stood waiting. Now she said:
‘the tiny space, not for the dead,
reminds me of them, makes me sad;
but use it if you need it bad.
What’s often done I should not dread,
yet can’t help being left in hate
by all that I eliminate,
knowing that all I thus create
is deader than the things I ate.
On that paper it spells fate,
yet not, if ever read, as great
as simple words like Done, Too Late.’
[p. 673]
‘No’ I said, ‘your beauty just
leaves the sculptor its dirtlike dust
which from your molding marble must.
In artists fear, in nature trust.
So, warmest, now leave me inside.
What is no secret I must hide
to one so near and gentle-eyed.’
Inside it was clean, and small.
One toothbrush only on the wall.
And there was no lock at all.
So happily married? Or alone?
I thought at her rejected throne.
Then I heard a distant drone.
Louder, and louder, and less again,
like an earthbound airoplane,
steered by someone slow, insane.
I flushed, stepped out, tried to look strong,
but she, so young, saw what was wrong:
‘The bus you waited for so long…?’
And then: ‘I thought of you in there,
and how it passed us, while you were –
and while you – and I could not bear -’
I spoke: ‘I came with no pretext.
I missed this bus. I’ll take the next.
Hex not and thou shall not be hexed.’
By what I’d done I further swore
how much to her could have been more
the more be since, the less before.
[p. 674]
Thus I untouched her quite kissless,
for chill of which, under her dress,
she barely weaned me self-caress.
She said: ‘believe me, leave me be
before my falling shame leaves thee;
our love is frilful fantasy.
Sits like a lark upon the sea,
welts like a whale upon a tree.
Thy shadow weighs too well on me;
leave me, believe me, leave me be!’
So that was how I left, and how,
wiping the thick sweat off my brow,
outside I found high summer now.
Dust blew. Near-naked children jeered.
It all was worse than I had feared:
something had disappeared. The bus stop sign.
I mused. Then searched, and found my key.
I sharpened it, in extasy. On a wall.
Then I took a prick at me.
There was no rich and warming spurt.
With little blood for so much hurt
I wrote: bUs sTOp upon my shirt.
What waste is worse than to have bled
unseen? The sinking sun, instead
of helping turned the whole world red.
The trees were reddest of it all,
like flames, alarming wide and tall.
Their leaves began to fall like sparks.
[p. 675]
They fell till deep into the night,
when echoes darker than no sight
revealed their barrenness and height.
And I heard asphalt, zipped by wheels:
a bus, alight, tall as a ship
passed by on its final trip. Empty.
Then the winds, and icy rain,
came from all sides. Drew back again.
Silence spread a pale, pale stain
which weighed me more than merely snow.
Then – quiet was cured, like long ago,
by water flushed somewhere. And so,
this time to better darkness drawn
I turned my back upon the dawn
and climbed again that soft kind lawn.
The streetdoor was ajar. No one
seemed in. Far away I heard
a car. That was all.
In the house, the only door
which I knew, would not open.
should but would not. I tried another.
It opened. Bedroom, softly lit.
A muffled bed. She upon it.
And the stopsign, standing next to it.
Finding what one expects to find
can blow ones mind dull, deaf and blind.
My numbness was of this brief kind;
[p. 676]
for in this tender, dreamdrenched mess:
the tenderness of bedroom life,
she slept me more instead of less
than had she been my legal wife.
Flushes of symboles came and went
over her neck, sheets, feet, and lent
her motion she might not have meant,
and radiating pillowfolds
held her head like one who holds
a kiss upon his hand and molds
it softly to embrace his lips.
Flocks of folds across her lips
uniting dipped like water dips
to gorge rats, branches, deer and ships.
Shrieking ‘NO!’ she flew erect;
then whispered: ‘It is you…’
‘Correct. Whom if not God did you expect?’
She shook her head: ‘My friend, I did
a sinful thing’ (trembling, she slid
out of bed) ‘I must get rid…’
‘Leave it,’ I said, ‘I’ve seen the sign.
You took it from that spring sunshine
to lure me; prone to be supine…’
I saw her fearful eyes expand.
She spoke: ‘You fail to understand,
my dear; here, take my hand,
to feel its little muscles play;
with other ones I dare not say
how tight I have been since that day –
Let us be silent. Let us pray?’
[p. 677]
But first she blocked, with a thin black chair,
and with a mirror from her secretaire,
the door. Then, when I touched her hair,
she knelt down upon the floor,
stretched, on her back, facing the door.
My mouth refused to ask what for.
And I had little time to brood:
from where the meager chair had stood,
splinters, nails, sections of wood
one by one rose in the air
and around us everywhere
glass trianglets with great care
arranged themselves
to mirror pointed bits of face,
sharp nips of thigh and young white lace,
not to be meant for my embrace,
because all space before us cleared:
and the face I so much feared:
the bus appeared, the huge wide bus.
Sharpest I saw the nearest wheel,
a giant foot, no toes, no heel
creeping at her as if to feel
for the juiciest point from which to start
its sweet approach toward the heart.
This was no murder, it was art.
First it merely seemed to press
and empty slip of her long dress.
She winced, and paled nevertheless;
[p. 678]
or the reflections of lamplight
on the front fender moved, and might
have made her cheek and lips look white.
She said: ‘I do not feel a thing.
But then, it is only begin-,
ning; funny I keep remembering
the things I wanted not to tell.
And now it hurts. It hurts like hell’
(a sound of pebbles falling in a well),
‘rib, rib, rib’ she breathed, ‘how many?
Ma used to say I didn’t have any, because
I was so fat, no it was Granny,
how am I doing?’
‘Fine dear one, although not fast;
the wheel moves well, is almost passed.’
‘I can feel it. There, at last,
but stay, and help me to forget
the black back tire coming yet,
and then so many busses more…’
‘You bet.’
‘Wel’, she resumed, ‘I thought how else..’
burbles. Consonants. New vowels.
And suddenly, a wealth of bowels.
‘You are tired. Now let me speak’
I said. ‘You look so young, so meek
as Godly colors from you leak,
I swear by love, Love has no end:
by death it does thy walls unbend
to bear me organs to befriend,
[p. 679]
your stomach, mother-of-pearl, its tight
smooth muscle sheaths feeling daylight
and loosening losing force and fright;
your lungs, pink pillowkins of sigh,
upon their busy maze I lie,
deflating them and hear you cry;
and of your liver, young and bold
the lobes against my chest I hold,
that they may never feel the cold.
To hold you whole I cannot hope.
With what of you may I elope
to kiss it with a microscope,
and hug you closer to my eyes
one hundred, no ten thousandswise,
as wondrous wide as paradise?
But in your spreading interspace
strange vegetations shall replace
facts of your rarefying face..’
When I had finished talking thus
the back wheel, much too amorous –
Then, faster, came another bus,
and another, very fast;
I failed to recognize at last
this house, collapsing in its past.
With that, I have no more to do.
And she? Where was she smeared unto?
Onto these pages; into you.
