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The Batteries
i. Battery Rathbone-McIndoe
--So
many ways I could begin.
There is history: built 1905, decommissioned
1948,
guns
(four, each 6" in diameter)
sold
for scrap.
There is nomenclature:
2nd
Lt. Samuel B. Rathbone,
killed
War of 1812,
Maj.
Gen. James McIndoe,
slain
in France, 1918.
To the east, Upper Fisherman's Beach,
pale
bodies against black sand.
To the west, Point Bonita's vigil.
And the south tower of the bridge, its harp,
its
iron mandolin curding the city
into
strips, grey, vertical,
gleaming--
Can you believe I once stood for war?
(Can
you believe I once stood against it?)
***
In the narrows, a lone sailboat.
Late
rain for the season.
Uncommon
to see a sailboat out this far.
It moves slowly, from left to right,
as
if trying to say something
very
precise,
and
then again, from right to left,
as
if erasing.
***
East pillbox: APATHETIC YOUTH,
roots
of words
ancient
in two cultures.
But there is also OKSANA, 9/23/00.
CITY
OF INGLEWOOD, CA!
DON
L/S MELISSA,
JESSICA
& JOE,
SAUL
+ YOLANDA.
MY
GIRLFRIEND BLED HERE.
In smaller letters,
NO
WAR ON ANYBODY.
Smaller
yet:
I
AM GOD.
***
West
pillbox, unmistakable
smell of urine.
Black spraypaint:
IVONNE
JOSÉ KARLA DANIEL
4/22/99.
ED
+ SONIA,
NANCY
© JESÚS.
In chalk, baby blue
with
yellow highlights:
"Love
Your Family & Nature."
(Underneath,
neatly printed
in
what looks like White-out:
WHY?)
***
One by one the barges, like small planets,
socket
past, below the bridge and into the harbor.
They
take their time.
Steel rivet of sky,
horizon's
bulkhead.
Some
say
trade
is like war, only slower.
***
Natural history; or,
the
more successful invasions:
miner's
lettuce, coreopsis,
Hottentot fig.
I walked here, there were
no
guns, no gates, now
everything
is permitted.
No
one had sold the sand in my shoes.
No
one has yet tasted his death
on
my tongue,
this
is before
as
there must always be before
(just
as what comes next
is
after-)
Bloom
of the blue-eyed grass.
Soak of an April squall.
West
pillbox
((further
yet, as if in answer))--
THE
BLACK DOG RUNS BY NIGHT.
ii. Battery Wallace
A turn--to the left--
it
is day again, the habitations of men
spill
from cliff to beach,
from
partridge to kestrel
across
the narrows:
Possession. And rife
with
report of our frailties,
myriad.
***
AND THE GOD OF USA DECLARED
I
SHALL INCORPORATE WEAPONS
OF
MASS DESTRUCTION
INTO
MY NATIONAL PARKS.
--This is not quite right. The weapons
came first,
mass,
the destruction; then
picnic
tables.
Built in 1919 as an open firing platform.
Rebuilt
1942, casemated
with
reinforced concrete ceilings
covered
by earth
and
camouflaging vegetation.
Abandoned,
1948.
The 12" coastal rifles
were
intended to duel with battleships
seventeen
miles at sea.
***
In the round of the south casemate:
E.T.
IS HERE.
NORM
LOVES DREW BARRYMORE
AND
JULIA SCHULTZ.
WAR
ROOM.
ETERNAL
LOVE!
ART
= FAITH = PROMOTION.
D-DAY
9/12/02.
--a
woman's candystriped panties;
a
sketch of Point Bonita
and its lighthouse
rendered
passably in charcoal
on
the plastered wall.
***
Night.
I dream
there
exists a maturity apart from place,
like
picking berries
from these sharp canes.
God doesn't mind.
The
juice stains my palms.
I want to be humane, but in my heart
nineteenth-century
Californians
keep
telling yellow peril jokes.
Why?
--to keep Him enthralled?
--within
the drama of representations?
--or
for some other purpose?
***
What I meant:
that
there is volition
as
there must also be consequence.
We make an industry of beauty.
See,
here, the crank, the dripping
flange.
The lupine,
the
paintbrush, the harlequin:
incorporated:
And wanting, at last, to know
that
other, that
underneath--
I
drop a coin.
It
echoes in the shaft.
My
refusal.
iii. Battery Mendell
This is become a place of children.
I squat, and with the muscles of my calves
suspend
my rhythm
--the
dirge, the waltz--
over
these sea-cliffs.
Inheritance, then:
that
which cannot be refused;
that
which is beyond purchase;
that
which is a given,
given.
***
The mustard, the tansy, the sea-fig,
the
tolling of the buoys--
Let us agree, for the moment, that this
is
a religion. Let us imagine
these
shrines
in the guise they now assume:
superaltar,
amphitheater,
ERIC
+ STACY,
GINA
L/S WADE.
(And what they assume
we
shall assume: these are the rules
of this game.)
***
In
one story,
it
is a child that calls to each of us
in
his time,
from a low stone wall.
A
cut-up. A mimic.
His
salt is our salt.
His
hair is the wheat
we
grind for bread.
--Have
you not heard this story?
Could it be possible
you
have never heard it?
--In
one version,
this
child had a brother.
***
I rise as the children run
up
and down the catwalks,
along
the concrete galleries.
They are delighted, they ask
"Can
we really go in here?"
They
wait
for
condemnation
as
we wait for mercy.
How they blaze with their small fires!
They
are the warnings we ignore,
the
beacons.
They are so hot now we cannot touch them.
They
will not be held.
They
turn as this world turns,
as
the cormorant, as the gull,
all
life
dives
within hunger--
That window.
I
hear
the
rushing of the wave.
iv. Battery O'Rorke
What is written here fades quickly.
Faces
drawn in chalk,
names,
the
idea
of
defense, of a beach
ripe
for landing.
West, east, the longitudes of war.
This
is no place for monuments.
***
If I had ever doubted
then
hid for cry, gill for
gull
and
the incision
a
careless thing,
stain
of interval.
I walked to the sea as I walk to the sea,
I
am a creature of the sea
as
I am also its fastness,
its
sharp holt.
The sea is a conspirator of great forgiveness,
it
is the cardamom of waters.
It is a mistake to suppose one's self lonely.
I carry the bones of the pedagogue
in
ivory brackets,
my
hand is steady,
I
mix consecration
with
consecration.
Still
I want:
the body of that other,
the
magnitude, the chalice.
***
The beach is the ocean's daughter,
she
dances on her diagonal
in
the moonlight.
There will always be some
who
take pleasure
in
what the body can be made to do:
The playing of the lute.
The
marathon, the obeisance,
the
pestle, fitted to its mortar.
The
Catherine wheel.
The
bascule--
***
The beach ignores the power of words
as
words ignore the power of things.
O
stranger.
v. Battery Smith-Guthrie
Miwok
in Miwok means "the people"
just as the people in the language
of our people
means
"the people."
This
is convenient.
The purpose of images
is
to attract other images,
one
beside another,
above,
beneath,
eventually
superseding.
Like attracts like.
"One"
is never large enough, nor "two."
This
is the story of life
as
it is the story of death.
This
is also the story of naming.
***
TIM
+ KHRISTINE
I LOVE IRISH.
VIVA
LA RAZA!
ERACISM.
*NAZIS
SUCK*
'69 MUSTANG CHARGER,
'72
TOYOTA.
ILLEGALLY SANE (AND LOVING IT).
I
AM THE BONEMAN.
ANGELA
LOVES ERNESTO.
NOT
US!
YOU BE THE DEER.
***
Let us consider, then,
the
office of the guard,
the
treasurer, the hierophant,
the
lone policeman on his city beat.
Are they not like sunlight on this empty
beach?
Are
they not bound, as we are?
***
In Miwok legend,
there
was a mysterious land
far
to the north:
"wali-kapa
was a sort of cliff or mountain.
Beyond
it the young ducks lived.
They said that on the other side
the
sky came way down.
This
land cannot be reached.
Its
passage is closed."
"Coyote tried to regulate the tides,
but
he had them so low
most
of the fish died.
Later,
he
corrected the error."
"The dead go toward Point Reyes.
They
say there is a little chunk of wood there
which
they use to make a fire.
A
piece of rock two feet long is at the spot
where
they jump into the ocean
and
then follow a road
back
of the breakers."
***
So the cup
reclines
from
one hand to another.
So
residence, so title.
I
mount no reasonable excuse.
This room was large enough already:
through
a clever acoustical trick
I
find that if I speak
I
can hear myself.
"In the early days, people didn't die.
But
Coyote wanted to hear people crying.
He
liked to listen to the noise...."
Here there are no prizes, no awards,
no
dietary supplements.
Here
there is only the ocean
in
flames.
vi. Battery Alexander
But we are far from a capital city
just
as the Monterey cypress
is
far from its Monterey home.
The
capital lives in us,
extinguished
but sanguinary, sanguinary.
This
is the concealment, the deception:
As we live within the bounds of the capital
the
capital lives in us.
***
Down a flight of stairs.
A
cellar, a catacomb,
a
landing.
A
door. A grille
and
beyond that grille
a
perfumed garden.
A
maze of pipes. Or,
nothing
at all.
Question:
What is defense without a pretty view?
Answer:
Geometry.
Eight mortars with snub barrels, 12" in
diameter.
"These were designed specifically
to
catapult shells in a high arc
onto
the wooden decks of steel warships."
A meaning of intelligence, then:
in
descent
the
blind save their eyes
for
the approaching flame.
***
Above, a hawk, harried
by
a red-winged blackbird.
(Theirs
is a private argument.)
Below, the hawk's prey,
everywhere.
During the tenure of my occupation
the
only legible graffiti at Battery Alexander
read
PRO-DEATH
NOW.
Down, then--
also
to
be the object of desire.
***
Night.
In this dream I am a tour guide
but
I speak in some other language--
I
am the only one
who
does not understand
the
words I am saying.
At a long oak table I lift the lid
of
a tool box,
remove
each implement,
explain
its purpose.
Lay it aside.
Move
on to the next.
With
each
the crowd around me grows larger,
more
silent, more attentive.
One
after another
I
remove the tools from their box:
the
coulter, the adze,
the
iron hasp, fine gold strung
like
a pocket lyre.
We stand in a room with no windows.
We
stand this way for a long time.
***
--Day
again.
"Not that which goeth into the mouth
defileth
a man;
but that which cometh out of the mouth,
this
defileth a man."
Hence,
dimension.
If
you possess me, I am clean.
If
I hunger for you,
I
am as the stinking flats of a delta.
Nevertheless
I hunger.
The grass sings in the parity of its consumption.
The
lupine,
the
sea-fig are singing,
even
the Scotch broom is singing
its
barbarian song.
vii. Battery Bravo (I)
One mile, six miles, seventeen:
the
limit of our reach, the tangent
of
our defamation.
Twenty,
thirty.
Sixty,
seventy-five-
Long before the proof
we
understood, intuitively,
that sound has speed, the space
between
listening and hearing:
as
the ear's whorl
so the hammer, the anvil, path along which
we
step
one
into another.
***
I wanted to work aboard the dark ship.
I wanted to carry my bouquet
of
checker-lily and wild radish
and
cast it out
upon
the salt waters,
far
enough
that
the tide would wash
it
further, and from this shore.
This
was to have been
my
charm against covetousness.
Now I rub these words
in
salt and ochre
on
this tavern wall.
***
Once I wrote
I
will be a poet of broken things.
But
what claim have I trampled
into
these bare hills?
What
fragment have I prised?
I have managed only
the
sleight of the contrafactum.
I
have risked perjury,
I
have withheld my source; I have denied
three
times, thirty
in
the parliament of burnt horses.
I
am the Martha of men,
nursing
my busy grudge.
Night comes to night as night comes.
There
is no distance between night and night
as
what happens in the night
is
new, eternally.
Night comes to night as night comes.
With
whom shall we be caught up
in
the air?
viii. Battery Bravo (II)
Let us then
proclaim
the
new Athens, the new Rome!
We are not the first, but we are worthy.
I would walk with you
along
the colonnades,
at
dusk through the piazzas.
Fact:
the
Nike-Hercules missile
could
achieve speeds above 2.5 mach--
altitudes
of 4000 feet--
in
3.5 seconds.
Guidance system by Bell Labs and Western
Electric.
Nitroglycerin-based solid fuel system by
Thiokol.
A typical launch facility
contained
two batteries, eight launch pads,
and
employed 135 men.
Fact:
the
main American testing site
for
the Nike-Hercules missile
was
White Sands, in New Mexico.
The
main European testing site
was
in Greece.
***
Did you think it would be so easy, to become
free?
How
long have you been running?
-
-And yet we have waited for you.
We
are the song you sang in your sleep
when
you huddled among furs
on
Mt. Tamalpais.
We were the short tips you left
in
the cafés of San Francisco.
You look upon the summit of governance,
that
acropolis.
Fact:
the
Nike-Hercules missile
was
designed to ascend to a height of 28 miles.
To
seek its target
from
above.
***
There was also, at one time, a matter
of dogs.
They
were trained here,
they
worked, four at a time, four
and
each its handler--
German
Shepherds mostly.
The men who trained these dogs were sad
men.
We can imagine that the men who trained
these dogs
were
sad men.
Fact:
when
I described these dogs
as
"attack dogs," I was corrected.
Attack
dogs are trained to attack,
the
park ranger told me.
These
dogs were trained to kill.
***
But oh, the glories of this New Rome!
Of
Bell Labs, of Thiokol, of Western Electric!
Here
there shall be no distance.
I
will say "I am"
at
the precise moment
you
know this to be true.
And
as we have outlawed distance,
so
we proscribe necessity:
Here there are piers from which no fish
are caught.
Here
there are wide avenues
in
which the hooves of horses
are
no longer heard.
Here
on
the hard clay of tennis courts
we
practice every motion, slowly:
Draw
the sword.
Return
it to its sheath.
Here,
we gave the glassblowers every privilege.
Here,
we invented a new language for the poets.
Here, we let the artists
build museums for themselves.
Do
you not yet understand?
There was a myth of our city
but
it has slid from us in a trickle of earth,
in
the frescoed waters of a fountain.
--Do
you not yet understand?
(We
have been waiting for you.)
Oh,
the glories of this New Rome!
ix. Battery Townsley
Nothing is off limits, now
everything is permitted.
The
last gates have been removed.
In the east there is war
and
in the west there is war.
The walls bring news of war
as
they also bring
news of love:
RASTAFARI.
APOCALYPSE
NOW
NO
SMOKING
NOTHING
CHANGES, JUST REARRANGES
I
DIDN'T DO IT-BUBBY DID.
LET
ME OUT PLEASE.
THE
ARMY IS SO LOGICAL!
UNITY
+ SERVICE = RECOVERY
BRIAN
-n- LAURA
I
LOVE YOU.
In time of war the poets turn to war,
each
in his best manner.
***
I look up, as a dictionary
to
the living language,
as
a cur to its high table
I
plead for a scrap and am offered the sea.
The hawk and the raven are my wardens,
they
review every transaction.
The
sun on my face is a bronze coin.
My
steps make a circuit
as
bread makes a circuit.
I am not afraid of the story you ask me
to tell.
(In
any case it is no longer
my story.)
***
The lanes of the sea weave brightly
in
the afternoon sun.
The
buoys toll
depth,
proximity.
Down by Point Reyes
lie
a piece of rock, a chunk of wood
but
I will not go there yet.
There
remains one garment I have not worn.
There
remains my brother,
whose
wounds I have not tended.
There is an eagle branching like a tree
in each of my bodies.
There
is a grey stone with a white band
in
my left cheek.
You must fill me now with your story.
(Once,
I too was a child.
--Did
you not know?)
-- 'Batteries' i.-v., vii.-ix. originally
published in Georgia Review
-- vi. 'Battery Alexander' originally published
in Colorado Review
Author's Note:
Each of the nine poems in this sequence
is named for and was first drafted at the
site of one of the nine former gun emplacements
at Forts Barry and Cronkhite, demilitar-ized
since 1974 and today part of the Golden
Gate National Recreation Area. Battery Bravo
and its companion battery (the former now
a museum, the latter housing the California
Marine Mammal Hospital) were nuclear missile
launch sites during the Cold War. The other
batteries contained conventional armaments,
were constructed between 1898 and 1944,
and were decommissioned immediately following
World War II. All quoted grafitti were actually
recorded on-site in April and May, 2003.
The Miwok lore recounted in "Battery Smith-Guthrie"
comes from Headlands: The Marin Coast at
the Golden Gate, by Miles Decoster et al.
(University of New Mexico Press, 1989).
The nod at the close of "Battery O'Rorke"
is to Mahmoud Darwish.
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