Year: 2014

I walked my dog

I worried about my life

My dog was in a butterfly museum

 

Kävelin koirani

Olen huolissani elämäni

Koirani oli perhonen museo

Life in America

 

I dreamt last night I was riding on a train

I met a cowboy philosopher

He spoke about the joy of adjectives

and then he stole my luggage

 

 

Elämää Amerikassa

 

Näin unta viime yönä olin ratsastus junassa

Tapasin cowboy filosofi

Hän puhui iloa adjektiiveja

ja sitten hän varasti minun matkatavarat

 

Once on a trip to Italy with my wife Connie and my guide dog Corky we went to the vast Milanese “city of the dead” the “Cimitero Monumentale di Milano”. I carried a bouquet of roses to place at the tomb of Vladimir Horowitz. The great pianist’s family had left a considerable sum to Guiding Eyes. The Wanda Horowitz endowment provides graduates with veterinary assistance funds in cases of financial or medical need. Long ago, in the early 1960’s the Horowitz family owned a released dog from Guiding Eyes as a family pet. No one at Guiding Eyes suspected the great composer would eventually leave his Manhattan townhouse and his Steinway piano to a small school for the blind. As for me, I’d grown up listening to Horowitz. I’d worn out my LP of his 1965 “return concert” at Carnegie Hall. His recordings of Schumann owned a  central place in my music library. Once I’d even seen him live in Chicago from stage seats—I’d been only ten feet away from the Maestro.

 

The Horowitz tomb is really the Toscanini family tomb—Wanda Horowitz was the great conductor’s daughter. I laid the roses before the wrought iron gate of the tomb and Corky scented the soft air. Connie pointed out a funerary monument shaped like a pyramid and the famous avenue of trees. We walked a long way. We passed the tomb of the composer Amilcare Ponchielli and the poet Salvatore Quasimodo. The birds sang. I felt the mysterious and unforeseeable ways we’re interconnected. I felt warm. Felt how much I loved my life. And the dignified upright gravediggers waved as we passed. One of them said “cane guida”. “The grave diggers are more cheerful than the waiters in Milan,” I thought.

 

From a Notebook, 1998: 

In the hotel Visconti I told a waiter my dog’s name was fortune. Somehow in a Milanese restaurant “fortunato” sounded better than Corky. The waiter liked the name. “Bunoa fortuna,” he said. “Good luck.”

 

Working a service dog in Italy wasn’t easy. Italians had three kinds of responses to a guide dog: disinterest, hostility, and lovey dovey. The first two were most common. Our first morning in the hotel the maitre de refused to seat us for breakfast. An unruly conversation ensued. The manager was called. There was a lot of cliched hand waving and rapid fire Italian. I stood straight before them with my obedient dog. All around us people sipped blood orange juice and coffee. Finally the manager took my elbow and said “sit sit” as though I was also a dog.

 

More hostility came our way at the Santa Maria delle graze. A nun refused to let me in. Her umbrage was sizzling. Like Peter in “The Last Supper” she might have been pointing a knife. “No no no no!” she cried. I urged Connie to go in alone while Corky and I stood outside in a shaft of mid day sun. As I stood and rubbed Corky’s ears I had to laugh. The nun had made a gurgling noise like an angry swan. But still, the larger picture wasn’t funny. Guide dog acceptance among Italians was clearly conditional. At the Duomo a machine gun carrying guard waved us straight into the cathedral. At “La Scala” the opera house, no one said a thing about Corky. But I never knew, step by step, whether we’d be accepted or dismissed. Italy does have a guide dog school, “Scuola Nazionale Cani Guida per Ciechi di Firenze-Scandicci” (National School of Guide Dogs for the Blind in Florence-Scandicci). There are guide dogs in Italy, and there are laws protecting the rights of guide dog users to travel everywhere the public goes. But somehow the word hadn’t penetrated everywhere. “You know,” I said to Connie, “when the law isn’t understood, then you’re traveling on sufferance. Which in its way is a kind of sport. Will you strike out, or get a hit? You just don’t know.”

 

If disinterest and hostility were problems they paled when met by the lovey-dovey. Strange, perfumed women in fur coats would throw their arms around Corky’s neck and sing nursery rhymes to her while I stood helpless. Happy people are the world over gifted musically. What else can you say?

 

You only get to tell your story if you haven’t given up on love. I tell this to students sometimes. You only get to tell your story if you don’t seek comfort from others. I say this too. Let happiness slowly crawl into you as your speak or write. Know its delicate. Know silence is on your side. Tears are on your side. The nothing that is not there and the nothing that is…

 

I got down on the floor with Corky and cried. The season was incomprehensible and strong. I cried because I would never give up on love. Cried because I was tender inside. Cried because my dog could bear my weight just then, just there. “Our fate is in the stars, dear dog,” I said.

 

A dog is a comfort. We got up together and walked outside in the spring twilight. We were both far away from home. We both loved one another sincerely. We walked around a pond. I told my dog life becomes slow and strong, but only when we’re lucky.

 

Only when we’re lucky my dog. We only get to tell our story if we haven’t given up on luck.

 

 

It rains in the apple trees

Where three crows land

In a dome of blossoms—

I watch with my clear head

The way blind people do

Feathers wet leaves

Bird’s feet

Scratching boughs

I like the one who doesn’t speak

She’s perfect—

The unlit candle in a church

Green sorrow

Is a waste

Do not seek comfort

From others; nor music

Breathe against a window

Write your name

 

There’s always something remaining, that’s the trouble—

this book for instance, with its woods and one dark house.

Someone’s always talking and he’s not from this world.

Breathe at the window, draw with a finger

words of no consequence, give it a go—

autumn rain wind childhood,

don’t forget eyes behind the leaves…

 

I often speak of flowers I can’t see

or talk of wild geese

as they fly south—

the rhetoric of sightlessness

fills with nouns

the way some people’s houses

have mirrors

in the attic,

and night

is starry and clear.

 

Once when I was in a very dark time, having lost my job and losing my eyesight, I received a cruel letter from Mia Berner, a Swedish writer, who’d been married to the late Finnish poet Pentti Saarikoski. I’d sent her some of my Saarikoski translations. Her letter was exceedingly vicious. She said I was a fraud. (The translations were good.) She went on and on about what an execrable writer I was.

 

My mistake? I’d signed my original letter to her as “Professor” Kuusisto.

 

I was depressed for days. I couldn’t get out of bed.

 

**

 

There’s no “nowadays” nowadays. & I’m unbowed by the past. I can imitate stones if need be.

 

Always there’s a new part of time.

 

**

 

If the world comes true…

If you ramble home…

If whatever we passed…

If the self will never be right…

If you study the floor…

 

**

 

Stranger, my actions, only a long life can explain.

 

If you are oppressed, wake up early.