ROBERT PINSKY
143
In one of my poems I steal a bit from that poem, and I'll read it to you.
I play poker twice a month, mostly with doctors and lawyers.The nicest man
among us, Bernie Fields, got pancreatic cancer, which is virtually always fatal.
Bernie actually beat it with a very drasti c operation call ed the Whipple and
lived for two or three years. Then he died. He was a very famous virologist
who at one point was otfered a job as national director of AIDS research. I got
the idea to write a letter from Bernie to me, from the other side: at the begin–
ning of the poem he's trying to use the manners of the living; he salutes me
as "Dear Robert." But as the poem progresses, the manners of the dead take
over and he sort of fades away. "The Ice-Storm":
In mernory
if
Bernie Fields.
Dear Robert, Thank you for trying to rig
A conduit for me-linka ge, blank , bandage, thi s
Contraption made of grammar, with
''I''
for " he":
Words are no cl umsier than what we use to trace
Tangled up branches on the family tree
Of some culprit virus stowed in its rootclot.
Voice not you nor I, I not what I was or am,
You not wh at yo u are or were-poker crony,
Acquaintance, see kin g what gerl11 strewn in the sodcloud?
Fl ailing for instru ctive fa ilure.
" Hat 's life."
Muttered-not an adage and not an answer
To
!1'hat is I!fe?
(Not my field, th ough nearly.)
What is a life?:
that is th e better question ,
As I'd have sa id even before th e cancer
C hurn ed me ac ross dark water to this other side:
No opa lescent temple, no sages fringed and sidelocked,
N o smoking field where a hero craves a cottage.
No void no terraces no plani sphere. Nothing you know.
The day that Lesli e read those poems to me
He wasn't sure ! was li stening, dark shape
Unspeaking swo ll en o n the pillows. Tell him I was
What is a life? A specimen, or a kind?
A savage craving or civil obi tuary
Archi tecture of birth , attac hment, ac hi evel11ent?-
The
Tilllcs
rehearsing wi th mediated, R oma n
Sweetness the names of my dear kin, so cheri shed
In th e molten hold of attachment, sweet cooling lava;
