Repairs

After “The Repair Shop” by John Fuller and “The Repair Shop” by Simon Armitage, TLS, August 19 & 26, 2022

First thing Monday,
I took my body to the repair shop.
In the waiting room, reading, I saw,
In the far universe the temperature is
300 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.
I thought ridiculously, there are
places in the universe colder than death.
Is there any life there, imagination,
indigestion?
There cannot be any floods or rainbows.
There are many kinds of darkness,
if there’s a body there, anybody,
what does a body there look like? No one
swims with or without a bathing suit.

On the way to the repair shop,
I drove past Catholic, Baptist, Anglican churches,
a mosque and synagogue.
After a half an hour or so, gone from life,
a man in overalls suggested, “Leave your car,
come back on Friday at 4 o’clock.”
I said, “Okay. Please, can you drive me home?”
Out of context, I added, “Walking up a hill
to a bench under a maple tree, I get out of breath.
God knows my writing needs a repair shop.”
The man in overalls followed,
“I repair, I don’t sell electric cars.”
“My body is a used car,” I explained,
“my legs are tires, one flat, a rear tire needs air.”
(Something about him seemed mythological.)

Waiting for someone to drive me, I was aware.
Yesterday I went to a concert
I rolled down my used body’s
driver’s side window that was my soul.
I opened the door, I knew the arias.
I could not hear the highest notes.
I heard the Basso Profundo through the rolled down
window, my soul now down in the door.
I thought the man in overalls smiled
something like a ferryman on the Styx.
My theology is a game.
Only a maniac would think
a soul is an automobile window!

A kind Mexican young lady drove me home
picked me up on Friday. I paid my bill,
still, I limped to an air pump I found
on my one good foot, with my one good eye.
I said, “I’m an automobile that stalls.
Do I still need my battery,
my heart repaired?”
I looked through my dead soul to the world.
I need to tell the truth.
Virgil, Dante, Milton, are not zeroes.
It’s sad I’m ashamed when I think.

Stick around a while, I’ll tell you how I do it.
My pacemaker is set at fifty beats a minute.
I have to tell time by a clock without hands or chimes.
there’s air in the word repair. I’ll sing an Irish ayre.

Whatever my soul is, I know it was not a window,
I’m not that dirty. For air,
I roll down my window and see behind me
a skull again through the side view mirror.
Yes, “I took my body to a repair shop.”
Listen to my first line.
I stole half a line from John Fuller.
Stealing a line from a poem is not a felony.
It’s a melody. There’s air in the word repair.
I’ll sing an Irish ayre.

I took my body to a repair shop.
I say in free verse,
A poor thief stole a bud from a garden,
stopped its flowering.
Chance brought him to a scarecrow
who was a policeman judge.
The unfortunate thief was sentenced to life
in a cell without summers. Chilly December
is the longest month of the year.
December is repaired by Christmas.

I drove myself out of the repair shop,
thankful some of me can still be repaired.
The truth is everyday I celebrate Thanksgiving.

Stanley Moss died on July 5. Soon, a selection of poems 1947–2024, will be published later this year

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