THE SAN BERNARDINO ELEGIES an electronic chapbook by NEELI CHERKOVSKI in remembrance of Richard C. Rodriquez 1946-1996 Proem: if I told you about Mount Vernon Avenue in San Berdoo, viaduct, Railroad yards, antique roundhouse Manuel's furniture, boy's club, Irish beat cop's red roadmap face red-light World War Two brown courthouse facade Carnegie's sinister library creaking floorboards Antler's dim cocktail lounge dividing high desert tracts, dread hotel near to tracks, Traveler's green lobby, big black locomotive a sentinel, the whole light of the world gleaming in it's steel eyes, prophetic somber, enchanted street lamps voices made of dry grass, I've been working on the railroad, what elegy measures up to drifting wind, burnt mountainside, raging fire seen from below, trickle of water Coldwater Canyon observed leaping flames, drove past orange trees stacked like cordwood on the freeway siding, death to this enterprise, vacant eyes, Democratic Luncheon Club part of my ghost life now, who's going to enter this house of desire? deadlines, speeches, pleadings, election night tote-boards, beerhall musing, Tijuana Street echoes, Arrowview, Arrowhead, call from Big Bear, Chad's short order cook, died near Lone Pine, they held a celebration, directed railroad museum, you can turn into old bones, genuine skeleton late-night phone conversations, steal into L.A. to mitigate solitude, downtown Mission Hotel Night Owl Cafe, Thrifty's blue plate brain cells handsome shop windows, names thrown against prevailing winds, poor Zanja unknown, dead river, rise--Cisco--How do you do?-- in the morning, massana, compassero, it's a sure bet we've got to dive into darkness--brings you home again Santa Fe whistle calling, but I left home twenty years ago, drove north through the Central Valley, I've been working on an elegy, Sunset Limited, fine chairs that fold-back, excellent service in the dining car we met during Eisenhower's reign death eyes, death fingers, dead voice, dead tongue dead song, talked to you, dead noontime the day JFK fell, flag burning sunlight Yang-na, concrete veins, gran jef" brilliant mind elegant manners relating to his elders I saw Winter rising in your eyes your enormous hand gestures carved a circle in the air I if I told you about my friend would end come for rain and thunder, day close for darkness over light century fold near skulls, would you know my friend any less, any more, will Ireland reveal its hills Mexico its hidden mask, would Peru suddenly jump up and embrace Japan, will you walk north on Muscupiabe to find Arrowhead or south on E to understand E, is there an end to our monkey business dazed fingers of time demand no markers on the road, he was solitary, secretive familiar with branches of a white bird who sang into a tunnel of mirrors if I told you about light I'd most likely be describing an island of monkeys, a mountain of birds, a terrain of wolverines and ferrets, a nest of leaves, I'd be talking about you and me and the poet of our concrete river grown over with weeds through cracks in smooth pale surface, I'd be taking your time as time falls away, I'd be asking death to stand on the corner with black robes and red candles, I'd be flickering like a flame, if I talked about love it'd only end in dissent and misapprehension all around, so I bring up a forest and a mountainside, cool running water, a creature just like the one you feel everyday poking out from the mirror if I knew your head I'd topple your ark of animals if I told you about death you'd want to find every possible game left behind your early years, laughter embedded in knee-jerk reactions, serene ideals that flipped on their side and fell forever away, positively you'd ask what is the shape of death and its color, does it always have dominion in this house you'd have to ask every leaf on every tree and all the animals two by two, and then you'd still not be sure of who to love, who to hate, what to say and when to say it II I'm alone by the Bay thinking of your life who's to say when we're ready to embrace the snow, a bluejay San Gorgonio towers over the Valley of San Bernardino, just look east on Baseline mid-morning a clear day leaves like rusted sheets of metal I hear you now exploring the possibilities of sleep and final destinations you said once that the words in your head were like fields of wheat and that the sun is a coin burning in your eyes death is a double row of roses sitting pretty Summer noontime bracing for Autumn, finally clipt to fit with Winter's icy fingers and then promised Spring I imagine your room split in half light half a light glowing stacks of newspaper clippings business cards, an appointment book humming refrigerator, Rocky in his cage that white fury of feathers memory of those aunts who raised you, box-like place on E Street next to a flashing McDonald's sign, give me one more death to file away in this secret cove of mine your father placing bets downtown on Third Street I remember you telling me as I stand at the point Berkeley Marina a cold winter morning thinking of your thirteen year old eyes grown older worn down hardly fifty drawn and failing they say your room was a disaster zone you slept near newspaper headlines scribbled notes, daily planners and telephone numbers across open air rippling water you were heavyset, handsome articulate, giving in your turn spellbound before the throat of Francisco Goya III 7 a.m. we're at Denny's Restaurant causing a rift in the wide word of perception, eggs, bacon, toast, butter coffee, sugar, salt, orange juice, the daily paper half folded, your restless intelligence bouncing on the windows and walls, four highway patrol officers huddled together, steam rising from hot cups of mud on the road to Alexandria long years ago it's ten a.m. and we're in the office making calls charting day's course, re-writing the history of timeless preoccupation, it's a political campaign, I need to order five hundred lawn signs, four billboards, three thousand white carnations against the enemy, your drowsy eyes, I saw you were already sick, a Roman phalanx moves in your head, you shake yourself loose, walls crumble round Rome, we're egrets when we fly, we are eagles when we dance, we're butterflies as we speak, we are wolves now we tremble, bees and mantis light in the unspeakable dungeons past the prosaic world and its official seal poetry and silence leapt onto map of your hands, in and out of life, you served and were sometimes served, this valley of arrowheads and old Spanish tiles, I came to feel what is God and when is God and who offers mass and why do they light candles, you stood beside me when I placed Hebrew letters on the air and learned about death the way we all learn there is the grandfather inside of us God, saint and poet, Sor Juana, her tongue a serpent, her teeth digging in to stone, your aunt worked at Woolworths in the olden days, there were white horses and blue cavaliers, conquistadors of tequila, mad balalaika men on D street, odd whorehouse money like rain, a mist from the Rim of the World up above the sky, I saw Aunt Gertie by the parakeet cages in back of the store in her green smock, she'd ask if I'd seen Richie today downtown in those days. . . I have no way of explaining a cup of freeway or a dish of mountains, how to use and abuse or amuse or accuse or re-use or burrow into that death machine unambiguous as the century you held fell like beads from a rosary so many sisters, brothers, cousins and fathers mothers, amusing reapers, dark clowns, old warriors, street scrappers, engineers of duende in your life here's your history Mister Mystery. . . where's your hysterical campaign? where's your who? your he? your she? your me? I tried to bring you back but they've got dream-flowers in your head, ashes on your ashes dust on your tongue NEELI CHERKOVSKI JANUARY 1996