Octogenarian, Jack Foley, is a California poet who has published thirteen books of poetry, three books of critical essays, a book of stories, and a two-volume “chronoencyclopedia” of California poetry, Visions & Affiliations: California Poetry from 1940 to 2005. He became known through his multivoiced performances with his late wife, Adelle, and has presented poetry on Berkeley radio station KPFA since 1988. He currently resides in Oakland with his new life partner, Sangye Land. His most recent poetry books, all published in 2024, are Collisions, Ekphrazz (a book of ekphrastic poetry, a collaboration with collagist Mark Fisher) and Telling It Slant. A lyricist as well as a poet, Foley has also produced Songs for a Nickel, a CD of songs with lyrics by Foley and music by composers Tony Perez and Warren Wechsler.
STORY
the man
followed the woman
into death
hoping to bring her back.
there was a door
or something he called a door
that led to a long corridor
lit with torches.
flickering light everywhere
until, finally,
another door.
an endless
meadow appeared.
flowers he had never seen
bloomed riotously.
no one was there
but there was a table
filled with food.
something told him
not to eat
though he felt
a sudden, ravenous hunger.
“Had you eaten,”
said a voice,
“you would have joined us.”
he turned
and there was something like
a hologram speaking to him.
he felt a sudden revulsion
but answered,
“I am searching for my wife.”
“I know,” said the vision,
“you will find her there.”
he pointed to a small tree
Orpheus had not seen before.
lying there, dreaming,
was Eurydice, the wind stirring
her hair. Orpheus
took down his lute
and began to play.
all around Eurydice flowers appeared,
at once enclosing, protecting, trapping her.
she woke and seeing him, smiled.
“We have lived this story,” she said,
“thousands of times.
Each time you rescue me
and turn
and I remain
among the dead.
It will be no different
this time,
though I am ready to follow you
if you ask.”
he stopped playing and beckoned to her.
they walked slowly towards the door
that had led to the meadow.
as they walked
they began to age
gradually at first and then quickly
from youth to age to old age.
both had difficulty walking
even the short space that led to the door
to the upper world.
Orpheus
could no longer sing, his breath
was so short.
Eurydice began
to lose her beauty
becoming an old, old woman.
Orpheus muttered, only half heard by his wife,
“The door is not far,
The door is not far,”
and then, without meaning to,
without wishing it,
compelled by the story,
he turned.
the old, old woman behind him
vanished without a sound.
...
there is a moment
what windy trails we follow
in every authentic poem or story
as we age
at which the poem or story
what enterprises hollow
tells the author
these darkening trails we follow
why they wrote it
songs grow deep and hollow
we may call this moment
turn the page!
climax
what windy trails we follow
revelation
as we age
the moment at which mind
is mirror
***
FALL
Break then
Plummet––
Crack!
I fell
crashing into Vallombrosa––caught!––
but not by Milton’s simile
and not for naught
Limbless and forlorn
I had no love to give
nor any purgative
So let the born be borne:
I vanished in a bog
Dolor, doloris, singing thus
it was not less calamitous
it was not less that leaf and leaf
mourned that I should come to grief
Upon this doleful bog
I fell amuck agog
repeating leaf by leaf
the paradigm of Grief
––No, no: mendacities!
These dead leaves tell no tale
All lamentation done
one is not anyone:
a thunderclap and off!
2
Here where the leaves lie thick
thus sang my elegy
and trembled to the quick
To what finality?
Inextricate so long,
I lingered in the wind
Before I turned to dust
I drifted (ah!)
Superfluous
NOTE: This poem arose from my reading of Paradise Lost. Milton wrote his poem in English but he wrote it for an audience that was fluent in Latin and Greek, so there is a good deal of linguistic wordplay in the poem. One simple example: “Until one greater Man / Restore us and regain the blissful Seat.” We are fallen. Christ will “restore us.” The word “restore” derives from the Latin, sto, stare, to stand up. We are “fallen”: Christ will “re-store,” stand us up again. The speaker of my poem is a leaf in Autumn who has just fallen, and the Vallombrosa passage in Paradise Lost is referenced. Like Milton, I filled my poem with words derived from Latin and even included one neologism. The concluding word, “superfluous,” derives from the Latin for “flowing over.” The metaphor is of a glass of liquid: when you are filling the glass, the liquid that “flows over” once the glass is filled is “superfluous.” But the word “superfluous” might mean, not only “flowing over” but “overflowing”––a word that might have a much more positive meaning than “flowing over.” I’m overflowing over with joy. Shakespeare too plays with the relationship of Latin to Anglo Saxon––and creates a new Latinate word in the process. From Macbeth:
this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Multitudinous and incarnadine––richly and impressively Latinate. Green and red––back to the Anglo Saxon.
***
PAIRING: UNKNOWINGLY/THE DYING
UNKNOWINGLY THE DYING
Some years ago, I write for the dying
I was chatting with some people at a party: Wherever they are, whoever they are,
“Jacktalk.” All with the knowledge that they will die.
An acquaintance— They are my kin.
Someone I knew only slightly They are the ones I know,
And had never harmed in any way— The ones who know me.
Walked up to me and said, They are the
Firmly, with no trace of good humor or irony, coruscations of time.
“I hate you.”
I turned from the friends How many
To whom I had been speaking, As one ages
Looked at him, and said, Walk into the dark
Not unkindly, Before.
“I know,” Not to “Heaven”
Then turned back to my conversation. Or “Shangri-la
Having no idea how to respond, Or “Brigadoon”
He hesitated for a moment, Or “Paradise”––
Then walked away, Names for what we do not
Awash with confusion. Know.
He “hated” me
Not for anything We know
I had done to him We die.
But simply for being
As and who I was.
At 84, trying to understand
The meaning
Of what I have done
Or accomplished
In my seventy-
Year engagement with poetry,
I look back at his gesture
With gratitude
And think of it
As one of the finest compliments
I have ever received,
Akin to the description
Of Bernard Shaw:
“He hasn’t
An enemy in the world
But all of his friends
Dislike him.”
I had disturbed this man sufficiently
So that he wished to attain
The very Being with which
I, unknowingly?
Daily
Walked in the world.
NOTE: PAIRINGS is a sequence in which two (sometimes more) poems meet on the page in the way that persons might meet on the street. For the most part, they stand across the page from one another in the way that people stand across from one another as they speak. They have things in common and things that separate them. In many ways they illuminate each other. The “unit” in these pieces is not the individual poem but the meeting––sometimes the collision––of the poems. Cell phones destroy the formatting of Pairings so they need to be viewed on a computer screen: full screen.
