[New-Poetry] The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

[AlMaginnes at aol.com]

One of the best books, if not the best, ever for beginning and even veteran  
poets. I usually use several chapters of it for my creative writing  classes.
 
This is a poem of Hugo's that in many ways made poetry real for me:
 
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

You might come here Sunday on a whim. 
Say your life  broke down. The last good kiss 
you had was years ago. You walk these streets  
laid out by the insane, past hotels 
that didn't last, bars that did, the  tortured try 
of local drivers to accelerate their lives. 
Only churches  are kept up. The jail 
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner 
is always  in, not knowing what he's done.

The principal supporting business now  
is rage. Hatred of the various grays 
the mountain sends, hatred of the  mill, 
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls 
who leave each year  for Butte. One good 
restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out. 
The  1907 boom, eight going silver mines, 
a dance floor built on springs--
all  memory resolves itself in gaze, 
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat  
or two stacks high above the town, 
two dead kilns, the huge mill in  collapse 
for fifty years that won't fall finally down.

Isn't this  your life? That ancient kiss 
still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat  
so accurate, the church bell simply seems 
a pure announcement: ring and  no one comes?

Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium 
and scorn  sufficient to support a town, 
not just Philipsburg, but towns 
of  towering blondes, good jazz and booze 
the world will never let you have  
until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old  man, twenty 
when the jail was built, still laughs 
although his lips  collapse. Someday soon, 
he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up. 
You  tell him no. You're talking to yourself. 
The car that brought you here still  runs. 
The money you buy lunch with, 
no matter where it's mined, is  silver 
and the girl who serves your food 
is slender and her red hair  lights the wall.

And another:
 
Death of the Kapowsin Tavern

I can't ridge it back  again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered  glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
in the  reports. The white school up for sale
for years, most homes abandoned to the  rocks 
of passing boys--the fire, helped by wind
that blew the neon out  six years before,
simply ended lots of ending.

A damn shame. Now, when  the night chill
of the lake gets in a troller's bones
where can the  troller go for bad wine
washed down frantically with beer?
And when wise  men are in style again
will one recount the two-mile glide of cranes
from  dead pines or the nameless yellow
flowers thriving in the useless logs,
or  dots of light all night about the far end
of the lake, the dawn arrival of  the idiot
with catfish--most of all, above the lake
the temple and our  sanctuary there?

Nothing dies as slowly as a scene.
The dusty jukebox  cracking through
the cackle of a beered-up crone--
wagered wine--sudden  need to dance--
these remain in the black debris.
Although I know in time  the lake will send
wind black enough to blow it all away.
 



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