Poems 1962-2012 (17 page)

you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth—

why would you wound me, why would you want me

desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope

I would refuse to see that finally

nothing was left to me, and would believe instead

in the end you were left to me.

VESPERS: PAROUSIA

Love of my life, you

are lost and I am

young again.

A few years pass.

The air fills

with girlish music;

in the front yard

the apple tree is

studded with blossoms.

I try to win you back,

that is the point

of the writing.

But you are gone forever,

as in Russian novels, saying

a few words I don't remember—

How lush the world is,

how full of things that don't belong to me—

I watch the blossoms shatter,

no longer pink,

but old, old, a yellowish white—

the petals seem

to float on the bright grass,

fluttering slightly.

What a nothing you were,

to be changed so quickly

into an image, an odor—

you are everywhere, source

of wisdom and anguish.

VESPERS

Your voice is gone now; I hardly hear you.

Your starry voice all shadow now

and the earth dark again

with your great changes of heart.

And by day the grass going brown in places

under the broad shadows of the maple trees.

Now, everywhere I am talked to by silence

so it is clear I have no access to you;

I do not exist for you, you have drawn

a line through my name.

In what contempt do you hold us

to believe only loss can impress

your power on us,

the first rains of autumn shaking the white lilies—

When you go, you go absolutely,

deducting visible life from all things

but not all life,

lest we turn from you.

VESPERS

End of August. Heat

like a tent over

John's garden. And some things

have the nerve to be getting started,

clusters of tomatoes, stands

of late lilies—optimism

of the great stalks—imperial

gold and silver: but why

start anything

so close to the end?

Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies

winter will kill, that won't

come back in spring. Or

are you thinking

I spend too much time

looking ahead, like

an old woman wearing

sweaters in summer;

are you saying I can

flourish, having

no hope

of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory

of the open throat, white,

spotted with crimson.

SUNSET

My great happiness

is the sound your voice makes

calling to me even in despair; my sorrow

that I cannot answer you

in speech you accept as mine.

You have no faith in your own language.

So you invest

authority in signs

you cannot read with any accuracy.

And yet your voice reaches me always.

And I answer constantly,

my anger passing

as winter passes. My tenderness

should be apparent to you

in the breeze of the summer evening

and in the words that become

your own response.

LULLABY

Time to rest now; you have had

enough excitement for the time being.

Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies

in the room, flickering here and there, here and there,

and summer's deep sweetness filling the open window.

Don't think of these things anymore.

Listen to my breathing, your own breathing

like the fireflies, each small breath

a flare in which the world appears.

I've sung to you long enough in the summer night.

I'll win you over in the end; the world can't give you

this sustained vision.

You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be taught to love

silence and darkness.

THE SILVER LILY

The nights have grown cool again, like the nights

of early spring, and quiet again. Will

speech disturb you? We're

alone now; we have no reason for silence.

Can you see, over the garden—the full moon rises.

I won't see the next full moon.

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant

time was endless. Snowdrops

opened and closed, the clustered

seeds of the maples fell in pale drifts.

White over white, the moon rose over the birch tree.

And in the crook, where the tree divides,

leaves of the first daffodils, in moonlight

soft greenish-silver.

We have come too far together toward the end now

to fear the end. These nights, I am no longer even certain

I know what the end means. And you, who've been with a man—

after the first cries,

doesn't joy, like fear, make no sound?

SEPTEMBER TWILIGHT

I gathered you together,

I can dispense with you—

I'm tired of you, chaos

of the living world—

I can only extend myself

for so long to a living thing.

I summoned you into existence

by opening my mouth, by lifting

my little finger, shimmering

blues of the wild

aster, blossom

of the lily, immense,

gold-veined—

you come and go; eventually

I forget your names.

You come and go, every one of you

flawed in some way,

in some way compromised: you are worth

one life, no more than that.

I gathered you together;

I can erase you

as though you were a draft to be thrown away,

an exercise

because I've finished you, vision

of deepest mourning.

THE GOLD LILY

As I perceive

I am dying now and know

I will not speak again, will not

survive the earth, be summoned

out of it again, not

a flower yet, a spine only, raw dirt

catching my ribs, I call you,

father and master: all around,

my companions are failing, thinking

you do not see. How

can they know you see

unless you save us?

In the summer twilight, are you

close enough to hear

your child's terror? Or

are you not my father,

you who raised me?

THE WHITE LILIES

As a man and woman make

a garden between them like

a bed of stars, here

they linger in the summer evening

and the evening turns

cold with their terror: it

could all end, it is capable

of devastation. All, all

can be lost, through scented air

the narrow columns

uselessly rising, and beyond,

a churning sea of poppies—

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me

how many summers I live to return:

this one summer we have entered eternity.

I felt your two hands

bury me to release its splendor.

MEADOWLANDS (1996)

TO ROBERT AND FRANK

Let's play choosing music. Favorite form.

Opera.

Favorite work.

Figaro. No. Figaro and Tannhauser. Now it's your turn:

sing one for me.

PENELOPE'S SONG

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,

do now as I bid you, climb

the shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;

wait at the top, attentive, like

a sentry or look-out. He will be home soon;

it behooves you to be

generous. You have not been completely

perfect either; with your troublesome body

you have done things you shouldn't

discuss in poems. Therefore

call out to him over the open water, over the bright water

with your dark song, with your grasping,

unnatural song—passionate,

like Maria Callas. Who

wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite

could you possibly fail to answer? Soon

he will return from wherever he goes in the meantime,

suntanned from his time away, wanting

his grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,

you must shake the boughs of the tree

to get his attention,

but carefully, carefully, lest

his beautiful face be marred

by too many falling needles.

CANA

What can I tell you that you don't know

that will make you tremble again?

Forsythia

by the roadside, by

wet rocks, on the embankments

underplanted with hyacinth—

For ten years I was happy.

You were there; in a sense,

you were always with me, the house, the garden

constantly lit,

not with light as we have in the sky

but with those emblems of light

which are more powerful, being

implicitly some earthly

thing transformed—

And all of it vanished,

reabsorbed into impassive process. Then

what will we see by,

now that the yellow torches have become

green branches?

QUIET EVENING

You take my hand; then we're alone

in the life-threatening forest. Almost immediately

we're in a house; Noah's

grown and moved away; the clematis after ten years

suddenly flowers white.

More than anything in the world

I love these evenings when we're together,

the quiet evenings in summer, the sky still light at this hour.

So Penelope took the hand of Odysseus,

not to hold him back but to impress

this peace on his memory:

from this point on, the silence through which you move

is my voice pursuing you.

CEREMONY

I stopped liking artichokes when I stopped eating

butter. Fennel

I never liked.

One thing I've always hated

about you: I hate that you refuse

to have people at the house. Flaubert

had more friends and Flaubert

was a recluse.

           Flaubert was crazy: he lived

           with his mother.

Living with you is like living

at boarding school:

chicken Monday, fish Tuesday.

           I have deep friendships.

           I have friendships

           with other recluses.

           Why do you call it rigidity?

           Can't you call it a taste

           for ceremony? Or is your hunger for beauty

           completely satisfied by your own person?

Another thing: name one other person

who doesn't have furniture.

           We have fish Tuesday

           because it's fresh Tuesday. If I could drive

           we could have it different days.

           If you're so desperate

           for precedent, try

           Stevens. Stevens

           never traveled; that doesn't mean

           he didn't know pleasure.

Pleasure maybe but not

joy. When you make artichokes,

make them for yourself.

PARABLE OF THE KING

The great king looking ahead

saw not fate but simply

dawn glittering over

the unknown island: as a king

he thought in the imperative—best

not to reconsider direction, best

to keep going forward

over the radiant water. Anyway,

what is fate but a strategy for ignoring

history, with its moral

dilemmas, a way of regarding

the present, where decisions

are made, as the necessary

link between the past (images of the king

as a young prince) and the glorious future (images

of slave girls). Whatever

it was ahead, why did it have to be

so blinding? Who could have known

that wasn't the usual sun

but flames rising over a world

about to become extinct?

MOONLESS NIGHT

A lady weeps at a dark window.

Must we say what it is? Can't we simply say

a personal matter? It's early summer;

next door the Lights are practicing klezmer music.

A good night: the clarinet is in tune.

As for the lady—she's going to wait forever;

there's no point in watching longer.

After awhile, the streetlight goes out.

But is waiting forever

always the answer? Nothing

is always the answer; the answer

depends on the story.

Such a mistake to want

clarity above all things. What's

a single night, especially

one like this, now so close to ending?

On the other side, there could be anything,

all the joy in the world, the stars fading,

the streetlight becoming a bus stop.

DEPARTURE

The night isn't dark; the world is dark.

Stay with me a little longer.

Your hands on the back of the chair—

that's what I'll remember.

Before that, lightly stroking my shoulders.

Like a man training himself to avoid the heart.

In the other room, the maid discreetly

putting out the light I read by.

That room with its chalk walls—