poetry lamenting war #11

The Lost Pilot
    for my father, 1922-1944


Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example. I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come back for an evening,
down from your compulsive

orbiting, I would touch you,
read your face as Dallas,
your hoodlum gunner, now,

with the blistered eyes, reads
his braille editions. I would
touch your face as a disinterested

scholar touches an original page.
However frightening, I would
discover you, and I would not

turn you in; I would not make
you face your wife, or Dallas,
or the co-pilot, Jim. You

could return to your crazy
orbiting, and I would not try
to fully understand what

it means to you. All I know
is this: when I see you,
as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,
spin across the wilds of the sky
like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were
the residue of a stranger's life,
that I should pursue you.

My head cocked toward the sky,
I cannot get off the ground,
and, you, passing over again,

fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well, or that it was mistake

that placed you in that world,
and me in this; or that misfortune
placed these worlds in us.

--James Tate, The Lost Pilot. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

LINKS:
A biography from the Academy of American Poets.

The American Poems site also has a James Tate page, with a wider selection of his poems to browse through.

Here is what Dana Gioia has to say about James Tate and American surrealism.

Here's an interview (from 1984) by Stanley Wiater.

this is what happens when I let my guard down ...

I buy books. Used bookstore, thank goodness, but a lot of books. I went a little nuts.

( Here's the damage. )

Shouldn't have spent the money, but I'm glad I have the books.