Bloom’s Photograph

^{—for Joseph Brodsky}

In Reykjavik that year the bomb

talks failed, but we survived among

the sweet dead leaves that lay along

the esplanade before Grant’s Tomb.

They spiraled into wind-banked heaps

between the benches and the faded

grass; the season escalated

elsewhere, but here the clever hopes

blew lightly down. Safe beside

each other, we were reading James Joyce

when across the street a white Rolls Royce

pulled up outside a church. A bride

walked out into the light, exalted—

as if the future, gowned in white

had made a sudden promise in spite

of Reykjavik. This vision, gilt

by autumn light, had interrupted

Molly Bloom’s adulteries

had stopped the fading of the leaves

until the newlyweds abruptly

went their way. That faded shot

of Mrs. Bloom her husband keeps

adulterates this bride: one sweep

of the wind and the greenest leaf does not

survive. The scene must change. Ulysses

Grant, in the heat of battle, was known

to sit absorbed, cool as stone

composing letters home to Mrs.

Grant, to say all he privately

believed was going up in smoke.

Puffing on a cigar, he soaked

the fields with blood in Tennessee

buried his conscience in each glass

of whiskey, and finally told Lee

at Appomattox that victory

was sad—he did not care to pass

humiliation on—he lived

without illusions. So grant us all

another cold and golden fall

and knowledge as to how to leave

the scene. The bride took off her dress

that night while gangs of boys played ball

against the mausoleum wall.

We shut the book on Molly’s Yes.