Robert Lietz
	from Maxima                        For A. Matuschak,  proprietor of Matty's, a clothier who built the family  business from      Depression near-bankruptcy to its present 3 locations.  He rretired in 1976, and died in '81.  After highschool and 2 years in the Pacific Northwest with the Civilian Conservation Corps, Matuschak returned to manage the struggling business his grandfather had started. Owner of the green, broad-banded Parker Maxima with which I began the poem, he prospered, married at 42, after years of regrets over separating from his Portland-born first love, and fathered 2 sons he’d left to  carry on the business.  The poem alludes to the science-fiction films of the 1950s as well as to the poliitical climate from the 30s through the 50s. 1        Employed and loved enough, ornery enough to bring a life to bear, you catch adventuring, speaking the heart of it, in letters home and holding back how stomachs churned, addressed to women worrying kielbasa and piroghi.  3rd from center left, 1935, setting out for Eugene or Spokane, "civilian," as they say, unsure what conservation  held in store as day-labor.  So you collect yourself, and mean, in mid-recovery, these jobs years script to seem the memories of grandkids, brought through camp-hazards and laughter, straight pool, near-beer with the help of a friend's sentence, home to one of five custodial rites, to shopkeeping and apparel, from thundering saw-toothed seasons and northwestern skies.  I hear this third or more of neighborhood make plain.   And hear the general intent, their charmed superlatives, the voices of boys come home from fire-fights to comforts, from log-hauling and dam-labor, their voices urging, in successive springs, a business prospering, nothing to spill or smear, the Maxima put back with rites of quarantine, with filmed accounts of the last war and talk of the next peril.  I imagine, 1955, a man's eyes cheered by conversations with the buyers, a 3rd shop's opening, and these, happily dressed, with no brutalities but private, here to wish him well, happy, probably right, leaving with pens no hand would hope      to scribble heaven by.   2        1938.  Once, and now. An odd clarity in a cup we'd thought run out.      Angels invite a man from all his lingering, sealing his grief, these newlyweds      and these canal skaters, another year, 3-quarters continent between.      You let the contradictions burn, and grandfathers, worn out from storms,      boys with storms to come, inviting stories on themselves, open-sleeved      and open-collared now, believing the sway of parable, Eugene or Spokane,      and you, Matuschak, feeling the set of body clock, the last important blood      to carry on the business.  Beneath these stars that almost show themselves,      and stars that vanish after all in good denials, you feel the seismic relevance,      that God-my-God  then vanishing, and now this brighter pass of children in fatigues,      1942, leaving men for blocks remembering, their hands more deeply fit      to pockets with exhaustion.  Even as the buyers come, the buyers leave more splendid      in apparel, you nurse these visions rain permits, this shop that cost you      your employment in northwoods, obliged by bank and postal runs, by these      more common routes, these modesties, bearing the mark of real time, once      and once, this play at one of many lifetimes in the body, once and once, picking      the lingo out and following instruction, bearing with hot drinks      news a shortwave radio will bring you, the news in eyes spared abstinence      and cheap success.   3        1938.  Men turning on their stools, in stalls and shops, in the banked light      of capitals, will be feasting on cold cuts, grumbling nights their kids      spend over macaroni suppers, new beards and peasant skirts, in rooms      with smoke and beer, with thumping jazz we only now perceive,      and how their conversations strain, to find in late-come weathers      speed to change, without kin, they think, without a science, without a place      condensed to neighborhoods and family. Initials caution, overplay, implying      the party faiths, the shop doors pledged to Delano, absorbing our consent, the appeal      of body light enlightened by apparel, by tricks of spring, after the hours      dulled at work or over party studies, a man sparked live as wheels climb,      west in memory, speaking again to that first love as if he's picked up a new language,      remembering the splendid sweat, with wine that seems to replicate a structure,      and fingers, smoking as they fly, leaving a heart at risk, a spirit hankering      for depths, smoking as fingers fly, and in inspired registers.      4        Satchels packed.  An eastern train rescheduled. You imagine ruins, the charred boards      love would leave behind, a moment set on hold, and that love, like an imperfectly set stone,      there still, after the nickel dancing ends, quickening capture now, and after the quarter kisses      men had feasted on.  Oboes advance the clarinets, so linked by wine and feelings to the planet.      And by these eyes that met your own, confident, seen remembering, pine genius and pine luck,      entailing motion in long-traveled light.  Imagine the first coordinates.  And ask what hands      these were that shook the stars from their bright stockings, that rolled these earths like coins      to see which one might prove them lucky.   Prove love, you think, defecting from pine light,          unable to abide her steady pertinence, teasing her then with these queer gods, agreeing, before Time,      to people this green sphere, devolve as spirits might devolve, choosing the forms      they might become, and, feeling the music's sweep, the calendar as subject, agreeing to words      and fingers lightly running on wet lips, the burdens of form, you think, in service to the Beauty,      until the phrases drag and scratch, the pitch of love declines in honest ownership, like comedy      gone wrong, like fortunes lost in simmerings and detours, raising the linden up, building      ice on the gene tree, this feel of years, like grace and gadgetry, until nothing      strikes you funny anymore. 10        Nights he walks the ballgames off, what's a boy to think, or man to think of him,      of history, fraying with the moonlight over them, this spidery pillage each of the terrible words      catch on, where civilizations end, where lumbermen collect, where lumbermen      and clothiers might collect to make their cases?  I hear the news      that Danny Biasone is dead, who made Time work for him, and have      this hometeam's photograph, these memories of children pleased to play      among the rubble, their well-made or stumbling rhymes, incandescing riffs,      the memories of boys, so moved by hybrid circumstance, by dreams      of their next friction with patrols. And I imagine Saturdays what might keep      midweek, and what might come of partnerships, of selling out at cost, of ads that seem      amusements after all, imagining a clothier worn at heart, by late night talks      of world governance and spy-rings. How the heart and mind adjust!  And the fingers      now, drifting in a cash-drawer. And how the hand adjusts, studying technique,      to the razor's temperament.  Whatever that was to bring 3-quarters century to finish,      whatever it was to hawk those pasts, unrelieved by matinees, by the pitch of wounds      or motions of conspiring, the last shop’s closed for good, their talk with milk or brandy      finished with their breath, and with this throb as late-born sons      discover honor on all-4s, leaving that past to all the blue-green wash      spilled over it, leaving behind the tracks good luck or death      would make ends of.