HALVARD JOHNSON

Halvard Johnson was born in Newburgh, New York, and grew up in
New York City and the Hudson Valley. He has received grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council,
and Baltimore City Arts. He has published many collections of poetry--
Transparencies and Projections, The Dance of the Red Swan, Eclipse, and
Winter Journey--all from New Rivers Press and, now out of print,
archived at the Contemporary American Poetry Archives. Recent
collections include Rapsodie espagnole, G(e)nome, The Sonnet Project,
Theory of Harmony--all from www.xpressed.org--and The English Lesson,
from Unicorn Press. Guide to the Tokyo Subway was published last year
by Hamilton Stone Editions. Johnson has lived and worked in Chicago,
Illinois; El Paso, Texas; Cayey, Puerto Rico; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore,
Maryland, and New York City. For many years he taught overseas in
the European and Far East divisions of the University of Maryland, mostly
in Germany and Japan. He currently lives in New York City, but spends
his quality time mostly in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.

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Sonnet: “Your Eyes Stray”

Your eyes stray over to the verso side of the book
where you learn that short-term prospects are not
indeed good. The hero wanders into a labyrinth
of desire that would have daunted Casanova, or at

least given him pause. The grass is always greener
on the other side of the street, as it’s said. Mellow
as ever, the summer wends its way autumn-ward,
one fedora almost as good as another at covering

that bald spot. And the war strays over yet another
border on its way to wherever it’s going. Insurgents
mount incessant attacks, no matter how much we do
to assuage them. No, sir, the pastorale is not dead.

Willows trail their branches in blood-red streams.
The sheep on the hill wear their furs inside-out.






Sonnet: Just to Say

If reading in the dark is ideal, why should I want
to understand? I am entirely edge now, ready
and waiting, a continent adrift on a sea of magma.
The door to the page unopen, undifferentiated

quantities, each bleeding into another. The lap cuts
strides wherever it goes. I’ll read any poem
with Norway in its title. Turn on the lights and then
turn on the lights. No sound to assign, or arraign.

A cave in the room, its library of books, pages dog-
eared for emphasis. In writing, while taking the
greatest task, something remains to decipher
the heap of Japanese novels by his bed. Equivalent

rejoinders to those gloomy forests of Indiana,
their darkness ideal for the reading of your words.






Sonnet: With No Known Regrets

Proust consciously drifts from one dancehall to another,
modifying Etruscan ruins as he goes. Forgetting where
the bathroom is, he urinates in the foyer, as much to annoy
his hostess as anything else. Ambiguous rejoinders

trim any sense of goodwill that might have arisen, hollow
attempts at camaraderie, without pointing fingers. And yet
distractions proliferate, jumpy quarters rattling in his pocket.
Tense, frothy nights in sprawling neighborhoods nudge him

along on the first few steps of his journey to Golgotha,
that hilltop of intangible punishments. Disingenuously,
Kate reminded him of his obligations, both to herself
and to their children. Paranoiac wrongs smoked clutch

flares, unteachable slumbers snuggled together in warm
bedside manners, breaching the levee, as we’d been warned.






Sonnet: In Fine Fettled Sleep

Between the artificial hills and the more pragmatic
wavelets, back in the analog age, mathematical proofs
proved worthless. Some angular deflections invited
trisections and later even quintisections, among other

impossible feats. Foolproof analogies calibrated our
volt-meters, reminding us of the First Law of Baseball:
There’s no Game Five after four have already been lost.
Humdrum solutions to perfectly humdrum problems.

“Das ist kein Mann!” sings Siegfried italicly, Brünnhilde
resting yet in fire-shielded sleep. What’s most remarkable
fails to surprise us any longer. All true theorums are trivial,
as she once sang. We joke about this with co-workers,

but never to the boss. And yet, keeping the door open just
a crack allows x and not-x to sweetly cohabit the room.

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