The Milton Man and Other Poems
by Frederick Pollack

Dureé | Son of Bartleby | The Orc You Rode In On
Peep | Fanfare | Poser | The Milton Man

Dureé

In the spring of the year I set out
on a journey that is none. Spring, likewise, lacks
the expected appeal, as it always did
for allergy sufferers, and more generally
now that it’s mainly
a bullyboy, an enforcer
for summer, heralding plague and drought.
As for the concept of
a journey, be honest: does it apply
to you or anyone
now that vast areas of earth are barred 
except to the heedless, naïve, connected, 
or heavily armed? Executives travel
to conference tables like their own,
emigrants and refugees
to death—who or what can you name
that “journeys” now? Perhaps only drones, which
from the empyrean
approach battlefields, prospective targets,
and fungible earth, to see what they can see.

And the talking or silent
heads I pass either
look down or aggressively out, as if eyes
were a source of deadly rays. They have
nothing to say that does not require
intricate translation, skill at which
is hard to learn and hated by its objects
to the point of silence, denial that
there is more than one language, or
violence. Meanwhile the landscape
is similarly petulant:
trees, deer, fish, the premature
and drooping flowers, even my secret
disciples the crows seem dispirited.
They have grasped an idea, that of the End;
ask, When will Man the Master exert
his final privilege, claim 
the destiny of abusers, so that
our End may come, pain end,
and rats alone uphold the flag of mammals?

In the spring of the year I set out
on a journey. It went from book
to book, and poem to poem, which
I fully admit followed
the same map and whims. 
And spring was what everyone 
wished, and for which 
they would all come into the public squares
at the end of days, and never need discover
that it was a bequest of winter. 
Then the heart, my heart, freed 
from cliché but consigned
to a windowbox at the edge of the scene,
would flower at last, 
the spirit of the animals
return, while the throughline 
of pity, that meager thread 
of voice which had bound 
together all the books, would
no longer be drowned out by them

Son of Bartleby

I too would
prefer not to, but
must. Trying to be no longer chronically
late, I arrive for meetings
days, then weeks
early. Hang
in 24-hour places,
which are rare in the after-five deadness of
downtowns, or on the floors
of janitors’ closets and breakrooms 
lent by humane workers. So when I do
appear for appointments I’m generally musty,
often hungry. A friendly
executive lets me drink from his secret
flask, a doctor hands me
a glucose tab before they throw me out.

Considering then that my efforts to —
as mystics of all cultures
advise — reduce my imprint on the world
have not succeeded, I redouble them.
Sleep fully clothed on top of
the covers, which I smooth whenever
I get up. Shower in
a trickle, so as not to spot
the plastic curtain or invite mold to
the walls. Bake only with
a microwave, which cooks,
I’ve always felt, less with heat
than death.

So when, laterally
(though most would say downwardly)
mobile, I stroll your ever-gentrifying
streets, I am the audience,
the consumer of
the ad you are. Whose product I 
appreciate but can’t afford. The void 
I sell can only be bought 
with a kind of dreadful
humility; is otherwise free.

The Orc You Rode In On

Fantasists invite me
to address them. I’m not one of you,
I say — my work is 
as rooted in determinism
as my corpse will be. They laugh,
as at an outrage.  As I stride
through applause to their podium I notice 
I have become a large, green, fanged, odorous
ogre, and they indistinguishable
(though not to themselves, no doubt),
androgynous, purplish elves.  
“You shouldn’t assume,” I growl,
“that people who look like me
as you see me now will shrivel before 
your charm. Charm is
precisely what they want to slime
and shatter. Nor will your utter
ineffectual harmlessness
deter them; it invites.”
The tones of their recrimination range
from hysteria to poststructuralist
condescension to
sweet hipster nothings. I am accused of
hostility, even of phobias! 
Unheard, I cry that I am on their side, but that a
side is a line, a front,
not shapeless ooze. At which point
the doors burst open and the hall is seized
by bearded, bulbous and, of course,
heavily-armed trolls. 
Bullets and anathemata fly. I’m missed
or spared because, in
my present incarnation, I’m 
invisible to them; also, it’s
my fantasy. Disconsolately I sit 
among membra disjecta. Outside, the various
thug factions begin 
to do each other in. And/or 
(it takes a long time) liberals
get it together; there’s more
gunfire. Those who eventually enter
and rescue me
(I instantly resemble them) from among
the bones seem 
exhausted by history but still game; 
accustomed to community and empathy;
wear mild, Sumerian smiles or the look
of early mammals on an ancient veldt.

Peep

A firm but rather bland repeated call
consisting more or less of seven chirps
came from the headland, where his private stream
enters the sea. (When the sea rises, he’ll
rely on his helipad.) From distant stables, meanwhile,
the sound of a horse, which I had never heard
except from screens. The distant bird, horse, sun, 
compound, even the length of the bench
I sat on were his
distances, the divine leisure his
sublimity; only boredom was mine.

When they say It’s always five o’clock
somewhere, they mean there. He emerged
from nowhere, all of which he owns, holding
a mojito. A detail: total baldness, whether
from alopecia or because it’s a badge
among his stratum. “How’re ya doin’?” he asked,
the grin almost as convincing as a skull’s.

Fanfare

The quiet wakes me. It’s a different quiet,
confident and satisfied though tired.
The room, a kitchen, strange except
to archetypal or ancestral
memory: coils over the fridge,
oilcloth curtains beneath
the sink, no dishwasher;
on a shelf beside cans, a radio.
But the linoleum floor, though worn,
has been mopped; glass lately jelly-jars
gleams by the sink. Outside, beyond
the trees, and buildings just (I sense) like this, 
the quiet carries echoes
of marching men and instruments, 
cheered speeches promising
the world. No wonder the city is sleeping.
The sound of civic brooms removing
tickertape becomes the sobs
of someone across the table.
Prolonged sorrow has blurred 
her beauty, changed it to something
otherwise enduring. “Why are you crying?”
I ask. “Everyone’s happy.”
— “They’re more than happy, they’re victorious.
You know which victory, you were born in it,
and have been reborn, now that Time has drawn
its vast and unsuspected circle, each time slightly
more perfect. My loss
is part of victory and of that great round,
my grief the cornerstone of better worlds.” 
— “You sound like the speeches whose echoes I hear.” 
— “Those speakers didn’t lie. Go see.”
I open the sashweight window and look out.
Everyone’s Black. I’m Black.

Poser

My usual gloomy abstract question
(What is the point?) obtrudes, normally, for
no more than a moment unless
instantiated, for instance by 
an article saying the young no longer 
read for pleasure; interviews with them
appear, in fact, to reveal a sort of
disgust at the idea. A bird I
don’t know is emitting a loud,
strange call: short but complex, with
two dips and a loop that closes on
itself. I imagine what this 
would look like as an ideogram,
carved on a basalt cliff.

The Milton Man

            Good friend, for Jesu’s sake forbeare
            To dig the dust enclosèd here …

The danger in writing narrative poetry 
comes when you feel the story would have
a taste — and leave that necessary aftertaste —
in prose. Like an arch, deadpan
New Yorker thing of the old school. Then
you have to hustle to make sure it’s
a poem. Looser links, more “leaps.”
Parts sketchier, less obviously meaningful,
i.e., more suggestive;
the ending more obscure and metaphysical.
In those days there were English majors.
Some of us took “advanced,” more difficult courses.
At one point eight of us seniors were sent
to be lectured by the Milton Man.
I’ve forgotten his name. A legend
in the Department; had singlehandedly 
returned Milton — disliked by Eliot as
a Dissenter and regicide, and by Pound for some reason —
to prominence. Scarcely taught any more,
and only graduate students. It turned out
he lived in his office. Narrow cot
like ours, beneath a litho — not
of Milton at Cambridge or Cromwell’s side, 
or blind, dictating to his daughters — 
but of the plaque above Shakespeare’s grave, 
with its curse. Papers everywhere, 
the narrow leaded windows closed
against a mild fall day. Smoked Trues —
the ones with the futuristic plastic
filter. Sat on the bed,
the wide stone ashtray on a chair, heaped full.
Wizened, necktied, the gaze 
always twenty degrees from ours. 
Berated us. We should know, should already
have sensed that we must find not only
graduate schools to apply to but masters —
advisers, protectors, patrons. And
be absolutely sure what we had to offer,
i.e., what our theses would be. “You?”
“I like Yeats.” “He’s been done to death. You?”
(Me:) “The period between Pope and Wordsworth.”
“No interest in it, you’ll get nowhere. One or the other.”
He mentioned names, we wrote them down; advised us
how to approach them. Understand,
this was long before “theory,”
whose threat, delivered by minions
to a vastly diminished cadre, is doubtless
more upbeat and abstract. A half-smoked
True joined the pile, which ignited. The Milton Man,
going on about the distribution 
of geniuses on the East Coast, patted it;
butts fell on the grim, singed rug;
we bent to pick them up and return them to
the ashtray. When we left, half or more of us
were taking what he’d had to say 
to heart. But the times were such that
their expression was identical
to mine or anyone’s thinking No fucking way.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both from Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. He has published three collections of shorter poems, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023). And he has many other poems in print and online journals, including Mudlark in ’07, ’16, ’20, ’22, and ’23. His poetics are “neither navelgazing mainstream nor academic pseudo-avant-garde.” Pollack’s website can be found at www.frederickpollack.com.

The Milton Man and Other Poems by Frederick Pollack

Dureé | Son of Bartleby | The Orc You Rode In On Peep | Fanfare | Poser | The Milton Man