Passed My Hearing Test

1.
The light I couldn't see revealed
Nothing to empty like a vacuum cleaner's bag;
Drums, trumpets, the porches of my ears
Are open, pure, sucking up sound
Like happy leeches: woofers, tweeters,
Forgive me, you were never to blame,
No more than my ears, no more
Than my friends, speaking plain as day
In English or Spanish, one as lost as the other
Somewhere in my heart, the culprit,
Making a sea-sound like a vacant shell.

2.
Like a radio studio: pegboard walls,
Grey and empty, as if to stop distractions:
Bitter walls. Plateglass window
Off to the side and dark,
Except for dials evilly glowing —
There, who but the audiologist
Was beaming me signals through the earphones?
A high beep. I pressed the button.
Less of a beep. I pressed.
Less and less, and yet
The faintest beeps. I pressed the button.
A pause. A trick?
Another range. I pressed the button.
Less and less, and then
The lower range, at last
Hitting the button over and over
As if it were a wing gun,
Hitting it even if I only thought
I heard. Then the other ear.
A high beep. I pressed the button.
Less and less, and finally
Press, press, listening close
In the lower range, and there
I paused, not because
I had lost the sound, but rather
I thought for only a second that I heard
A little whisper, a voice from afar,
A woman's breath in my ear.

3.
This is a dream: I cannot hear a word.
But don't stop singing:
I can read your lips, they move slowly
Like an opening bud.
Out of your black mouth
A puff of smoke rises, greyish-green
And turns to a possum,
The smoke drawn into its soft fur.
It waddles to the woods, and I follow.
There, the possum is worried,
There, he sees it is not a dream.
He runs up a tree and begins eating the moon.
All this night, I will squat by the tree
And howl and howl and howl.


Published in Road Apple Review, Winter 1971-72