Poems 1962-2012 (5 page)

caked with dew like little virgins, the azalea bush

ejects its first leaves, and it is spring again.

The willow waits its turn, the coast

is coated with a faint green fuzz, anticipating

mold. Only I

do not collaborate, having

flowered earlier. I am no longer young. What

of it? Summer approaches, and the long

decaying days of autumn when I shall begin

the great poems of my middle period.

STILL LIFE

Father has his arm around Tereze.

She squints. My thumb

is in my mouth: my fifth autumn.

Near the copper beech

the spaniel dozes in shadows.

Not one of us does not avert his eyes.

Across the lawn, in full sun, my mother

stands behind her camera.

FOR JANE MYERS

Sap rises from the sodden ditch

and glues two green ears to the dead

birch twig. Perilous beauty—

and already Jane is digging out

her colored tennis shoes,

one mauve, one yellow, like large crocuses.

And by the laundromat

the Bartletts in their tidy yard—

as though it were not

wearying, wearying

to hear in the bushes

the mild harping of the breeze,

the daffodils flocking and honking—

Look how the bluet falls apart, mud

pockets the seed.

Months, years, then the dull blade of the wind.

It is spring! We are going to die!

And now April raises up her plaque of flowers

and the heart

expands to admit its adversary.

GRATITUDE

Do not think I am not grateful for your small

kindness to me.

I like small kindnesses.

In fact I actually prefer them to the more

substantial kindness, that is always eyeing you,

like a large animal on a rug,

until your whole life reduces

to nothing but waking up morning after morning

cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks.

POEM

In the early evening, as now, a man is bending

over his writing table.

Slowly he lifts his head; a woman

appears, carrying roses.

Her face floats to the surface of the mirror,

marked with the green spokes of rose stems.

It is a form

of suffering: then always the transparent page

raised to the window until its veins emerge

as words finally filled with ink.

And I am meant to understand

what binds them together

or to the gray house held firmly in place by dusk

because I must enter their lives:

it is spring, the pear tree

filming with weak, white blossoms.

THE SCHOOL CHILDREN

The children go forward with their little satchels.

And all morning the mothers have labored

to gather the late apples, red and gold,

like words of another language.

And on the other shore

are those who wait behind great desks

to receive these offerings.

How orderly they are—the nails

on which the children hang

their overcoats of blue or yellow wool.

And the teachers shall instruct them in silence

and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out,

drawing to themselves the gray limbs of the fruit trees

bearing so little ammunition.

JEANNE D'ARC

It was in the fields. The trees grew still,

a light passed through the leaves speaking

of Christ's great grace: I heard.

My body hardened into armor.

                                                       Since the guards

gave me over to darkness I have prayed to God

and now the voices answer I must be

transformed to fire, for God's purpose,

and have bid me kneel

to bless my King, and thank

the enemy to whom I owe my life.

DEPARTURE

My father is standing on a railroad platform.

Tears pool in his eyes, as though the face

glimmering in the window were the face of someone

he was once. But the other has forgotten;

as my father watches, he turns away,

drawing the shade over his face,

goes back to his reading.

And already in its deep groove

the train is waiting with its breath of ashes.

GEMINI

There is a soul in me

It is asking

to be given its body

It is asking

to be given blue eyes

a skull matted

with black hair

that shape

already formed & detaching

So the past put forth

a house filled with

asters & white lilac

a child

in her cotton dress

the lawn, the copper beech—

such of my own lives

I have cast off—the sunlight

chipping at the curtains

& the wicker chairs

uncovered, winter after winter,

as the stars finally

thicken & descend as snow

II     THE APPLE TREES

THE UNDERTAKING

The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.

There you are—cased in clean bark you drift

through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.

You are free. The river films with lilies,

shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now

all fear gives way: the light

looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill

as arms widen over the water; Love,

the key is turned. Extend yourself—

it is the Nile, the sun is shining,

everywhere you turn is luck.

POMEGRANATE

First he gave me

his heart. It was

red fruit containing

many seeds, the skin

leathery, unlikely.

I preferred

to starve, bearing

out my training.

Then he said Behold

how the world looks, minding

your mother. I

peered under his arm:

What had she done

with color & odor?

Whereupon he said Now
there

is a woman who loves

with a vengeance, adding

Consider she is in her element:

the trees turning to her, whole

villages going under

although in hell

the bushes are still

burning with pomegranates.

At which

he cut one open & began

to suck. When he looked up at last

it was to say My dear

you are your own

woman, finally, but examine

this grief your mother

parades over our heads

remembering

that she is one to whom

these depths were not offered.

BRENNENDE LIEBE

—
1904

Dearest love: The roses are in bloom again,

cream and rose, to either side of the brick walk.

I pass among them with my white umbrella

as the sun beats down upon the oval plots like pools

in the grass, willows and the grove

of statuary. So the days go by. Fine days

I take my tea beneath the elm

half turned, as though you were beside me saying

Flowers that could take your breath away …

And always on the tray

a rose, and always the sun branded on the river

and the men in summer suits, in linen, and the girls,

their skirts circled in shadow … Last night

I dreamed that you did not return.

Today is fair. The little maid filled a silver bowl

shaped like a swan with roses for my bedside,

with the dark red they call
Brennende Liebe,

which I find so beautiful.

ABISHAG

1.

At God's word David's kinsmen cast

through Canaan:

It was understood

the king was dying

as they said

outright

so that my father turned to me saying

How much have I ever asked of you

to which I answered

Nothing

as I remembered

So the sun rose from his shoulders:

blue air, the desert, the small

yellowing village

When I see myself

it is still as I was then,

beside the well, staring

into the hollowed gourd half filled

with water, where the dark braid

grazing the left shoulder was recorded

though the face

was featureless

of which they did not say

She has the look of one who seeks

some greater and destroying passion:

They took me as I was.

Not one among the kinsmen touched me,

not one among the slaves.

No one will touch me now.

2.

In the recurring dream my father

stands at the doorway in his black cassock

telling me to choose

among my suitors, each of whom

will speak my name once

until I lift my hand in signal.

On my father's arm I listen

for not three sounds:
Abishag,

but two:
my love—

I tell you if it is my own will

binding me I cannot be saved.

And yet in the dream, in the half-light

of the stone house, they looked

so much alike. Sometimes I think

the voices were themselves

identical, and that I raised my hand

chiefly in weariness. I hear my father saying

Choose, choose.
But they were not alike

and to select death, O yes I can

believe that of my body.

12. 6. 71

You having turned from me

I dreamed we were

beside a pond between two mountains

It was night

The moon throbbed in its socket

Where the spruces thinned

three deer wakened & broke cover

and I heard my name

not spoken but cried out

so that I reached for you

except the sheet was ice

as they had come for me

who, one by one, were likewise

introduced to darkness

And the snow

which has not ceased since

began

LOVE POEM

There is always something to be made of pain.

Your mother knits.

She turns out scarves in every shade of red.

They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm

while she married over and over, taking you

along. How could it work,

when all those years she stored her widowed heart

as though the dead come back.

No wonder you are the way you are,

afraid of blood, your women

like one brick wall after another.

NORTHWOOD PATH

For my part

we are as we were

on the path

that afternoon:

it is

October, I can see

the sun sink

drawing out

our parallel

shadows. And you,

for example what

were you thinking, so

attentive to your

shoes? I recall

we spoke of

your car

the whole length

of the woods:

in so much withering

the pokeweed had

branched into its

purplish berry—so

desire called

love into being.

But always the choice

was on both sides

characteristic,

as you said,

in the dark you came

to need,

you would do it again

THE FIRE

Had you died when we were together

I would have wanted nothing of you.

Now I think of you as dead, it is better.

Often, in the cool early evenings of the spring

when, with the first leaves,

all that is deadly enters the world,

I build a fire for us of pine and apple wood;

repeatedly

the flames flare and diminish

as the night comes on in which

we see one another so clearly—

And in the days we are contented

as formerly

in the long grass,

in the woods' green doors and shadows.

And you never say

Leave me

since the dead do not like being alone.

THE FORTRESS

There is nothing now. To learn

the lesson past disease

was easier. In God's hotel I saw

my name and number stapled to a vein

as Marcy funneled its corrective air

toward Placid. I can breathe

again. I watch the mountain under siege

by ice give way to blocks of dungeons,

ovens manned by wives. I understand.

They coil their hair, they turn their

music on as, humming to herself, the night-

nurse smoothes her uniform. This is

the proper pain. The lights are out. Love

forms in the human body.

HERE ARE MY BLACK CLOTHES

I think now it is better to love no one

than to love you. Here are my black clothes,

the tired nightgowns and robes fraying

in many places. Why should they hang useless

as though I were going naked? You liked me well enough

in black; I make you a gift of these objects.

You will want to touch them with your mouth, run

your fingers through the thin

tender underthings and I

will not need them in my new life.

UNDER TAURUS

We were on the pier, you desiring

that I see the Pleiades. I could see

everything but what you wished.

Now I will follow. There is not a single cloud; the stars

appear, even the invisible sister. Show me where to look,