Paul Hoover: California Poets Part 11, Five Poems

Paul Hoover

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Paul Hoover

Five Poems

After John Clare

You have no wall, no house, no bed,

no love to spread your song upon,

no tongue, no mind, no soft rewards:

imagined grief, imagined gain.

You have no woman, lip and bone,

no double life, a single stone to stand upon.

You have no sun, no sign.

The rivers are double-deep,

the shallows overrun.

But you have time, patience, faith,

a life to save and one to waste.

You have half the problem solved,

a fifth of heart, a reef of skin.

Who grieves but you?  No one.

The Fish

The goldfish swims in its bowl

near a window facing the street.

It’s 1959 and Peggy Lee’s “Fever”

passes through the open window.

It’s two in the afternoon forever.

Perhaps the fish can see the street

with its slow-moving cars, 

the man smoking Chesterfields

on his way to church,

and the prim little boy walking

with a white mouse in his hand,

a gift from his maiden aunt.

Circling in its bowl, it seems to see

the giant standing in the room,

wearing the bluest dress her mother could find.

Perhaps the fish is coming up with a theory

relating to one and zero,

unity and difference.

But no, it only swims and eats,

with no concept of escape or recreation.

It’s got it good, in its way,

the way we got it good,

our clothes pressed for school,

father released from jail

and working again in his shed.

The world also goes in a circle,

tilting away from the sun.

It’s out there looking for something

but comes back every year

with little for the finding.

Time, too, goes in circles,

on watches only the old people wear,

the ones who think they’re short on time

and go to the bank for conversation.

Define: Everlasting

Ten women loosen their black hair

from the top of a white wall. 

The hair is taller than us all.

Applause unfolds:  ten strands

you might touch, ten strands

to climb to what paradise?

For nothing is stronger than hair

and if you should climb

what love would you find

or death as in some fable?

For this is not a dream

but exactly like a dream

more vivid than your dreams

of mice running through tunnels

and people eating pie.

All night you climbed

a single braid of hair

and then arrived quickly

in a dusty town with no men,

where there was one garden

containing one flower,

its petals swarming with bees.

The mirrors of that place

suffered all that passed,

your straight shape among

the twisted and the smooth. 

And whatever you passed by,

severed head or maddened river,

you suffered to be calm.

Everything is beautiful,

a blue handful of streets.

The dog’s in his manger,

mouse in his hole,

eating in his sleep.

All the rain that falls

is eternal spare change.

How much to tip

the everlasting waiter

hurrying so slowly—

no, even slower yet.

Seven sparrows in the air,

one on the ground,

seven arrows in the clouds

at any given time.

Seven arrows, seven rows,

do the math and you’ll see.

You’re slipping out of roses

and into your own skin.

Don’t weep a Mussolini,

don’t cry like you have eyes.

You are the one who climbed

the longest strand of hair,

and arrived as you are here,

marsupial and alpine.

Exhibit

Saw her face today

in a 3,000 year old mirror

of polished silver;

saw my face, too,

leaning to see that surface

in a chamber of the exhibit,

in a half-dark museum

that keeps these ancient stones

from returning to history,

when Hatshepsut was King,

a woman as it happens,

with soft, rounded face

and false beard of dominion.

She’s set in stone now,

body wrapped in myrrh.

Her fan-bearer was also

raised among kings

so he might understand

the children of the gods,

their cries when they fall

as soft as his own. 

My wife and I together,

walking as we do,

may seem disconnected

from the worlds we are,

and the worlds we entertain

are dreaming upside down,

worlds of truest form,

death and love and death

and something like hope.

On a rainy afternoon,

this woman of long acquaintance,

a visitor of the exhibit,

steps forward to see herself

in a King’s silver mirror,

where a woman of the court

painted her eyes in kohl

before going out to see

her monuments being made.

As faces cross in time,

they stand for a moment

faceless, and I lean close.

Below, Below

The dog that walked (a belling hound)

To bewitch the night with galling sound

Is citizen now of the underground,

A movie star on the darkest stage,

One for whom no age remains,

No thought of loss or of gain.

Pre-existence has delayed your fate;

Eternity also lies in state; 

Resign your smile, it’s quite too late.

Let the great green world go home;

If called, put the call on hold;

All that’s warm will soon grow cold.

Your friends will seem entirely new,

Enemies blend into the view;

Behold the false, it’s also true.

No more life of falling hard,

All distance near, love too far.

The worst wound is now a scar.

The highest prize has fallen low;

When the answer’s yes, it’s also no;

Where’s love now?  Below, below.

Author Bio:

Paul Hoover has published fifteen books of poetry including Poems in Spanish (2005), Desolation: Souvenir (2012). and, most recently, O, and Green: New and Selected Poems (2021). With Maxine Chernoff, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (2008), which won the PEN-USA Translation Prize in 2009. With Nguyen Do, he has edited and translated the anthology Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (2008) and Beyond the Court Gate:  Selected Poems of Nguyen Trai (2010). With María Baranda, he has also translated The Complete Poetry of San Juan de la Cruz (2017). Editor of Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology and the literary annual, New American Writing, he has also published Fables of Representation: Essays (University of Michigan Press) and the novel, Saigon, Illinois (Random House).