James Tate: C or D

James Tate

Deaf Girl Playing

This is where I once saw a deaf girl playing in a field.
Because I did not know how to approach her without startling
her, or how I would explain my presence, I hid. I felt
so disgusting, I might as well have raped the child, a grown
man on his belly in a field watching a deaf girl play.
My suit was stained by the grass and I was an hour late
for dinner. I was forced to discard my suit for lack of
a reasonable explanation to my wife, a hundred dollar suit!
We're not rich people, not at all. So there I was, left
to my wool suit in the heat of summer, soaked through by
noon each day. I was an embarrassment to the entire firm:
it is not good for the morale of the fellow worker to flaunt
one's poverty. After several weeks of crippling tension,
my supervisor finally called me into his office. Rather than
humiliate myself by telling him the truth, I told him I
would wear whatever damned suit I pleased, a suit of armor
if I fancied. It was the first time I had challenged his
authority. And it was the last. I was dismissed. Given
my pay. On the way home I thought, I'll tell her the truth,
yes, why not! Tell her the simple truth, she'll love me
for it. What a touching story. Well, I didn't. I don't
know what happened, a loss of courage, I suppose. I told
her a mistake I had made had cost the company several
thousand dollars, and that, not only was I dismissed, I
would also somehow have to find the money to repay them
the sum of my error. She wept, she beat me, she accused
me of everything from malice to impotency. I helped her
pack and drove her to the bus station. It was too late to
explain. She would never believe me now. How cold the
house was without her. How silent. Each plate I dropped
was like tearing the very flesh from a living animal. When
all were shattered, I knelt in a corner and tried to imagine
what I would say to her, the girl in the field. What could
I say? No utterance could ever reach her. Like a thief
I move through the velvet darkness, nailing my sign
on tree and fence and billboard. DEAF GIRL PLAYING. It is
having its effect. Listen. In slippers and housecoats
more and more men will leave their sleeping wives' sides:
tac tac tac: DEAF GIRL PLAYING: tac tac tac: another
DEAF GIRL PLAYING. No one speaks of anything but nails
and her amazing linen.

I know nothing about this guy but in working my way through a book of harry mathews short stories I came across one where the entire story was this poem as the first half and a letter that some poet wrote to his mom in the 19th century as the second half, but they were seamlessly integrated to form one whole thing, and I mean although mathews never says he didn't really write anything, the story had quite an incredible effect on me. This poem's great too tho so that's probably why.

wow, he's really galloping in that one. i don't understand though, is it harry matthews or JT you're talking about w/the poem/letter combo?

this - mp3 - is one of my favourite poems.

I didn't get into Tate at first, and then I've absolutely loved his last few books. The Ghost Soldiers is as good a book as any about the wartime dreamlife of the 2000s.

mathews did the poem/letter combo, using the above poem as the first part