Still Water
Prose Poems
Copyright @ 1989 by Arthur Garfunkel
ISBN 0-525-24795-5
Used by persmission of Author - All Rights Reserved
46
Konstantin
Chernenko is dead. I am the newsman.
In my bedroom, I push off An Actor Prepares from
the top of the television set and put up the tape deck,
preparing to sing for my album.
Next week,
the Wimbledon Kings College choir—
two dozen fortune-bred boys of eleven singing the
animals' witness to Christ in his birth. The week
after, U Street in the ghetto of Washington, D.C. I
play S.D. Blass, a somewhat has-been writer of the
local daily news.
And I have Lisa for my muse now. And a vision of
yesterday's sail. With a lantern up in the crucifix—
its light and the wind shining into canvas, a 2-piece
moonlit billowing, the papal hat of Corbu. On a
course of two hundred sixty degees from Raiatéa to
Maupiti, in the Polynesian chain.
The stereo is perfect from the wheel in the stern.
The wind is in my hands. Gregorian chants are in
my ears. The setting moon lies north, northwest.
Across the South Pacific laps a moonbeam to hold
our direction by…and I am learning with my
tutor on this enchanted evening turned to night. She
teaches me to master the play of the flag in the
masthead as she touches me below.
New York CityMarch 1985