Poems 1962-2012 (7 page)

A child draws the outline of a body.

She draws what she can, but it is white all through,

she cannot fill in what she knows is there.

Within the unsupported line, she knows

that life is missing; she has cut

one background from another. Like a child,

she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heart

against the emptiness she has created.

TANGO

1.

On evenings like this

twenty years ago:

We sit under the table,

the adults' hands

drum on our heads. Outside,

the street,

the contagious vernacular.

              Remember

how we used to dance? Inseparable,

back and forth across the living room,

Adios Muchachos,
like an insect

moving on a mirror: envy

is a dance, too; the need to hurt

binds you to your partner.

2.

You thrashed in the crib,

your small mouth circling

the ancient repetitions.

I watched you through the bars,

both of us

actively starving. In the other room

our parents merged into the one

totemic creature:

Come,
she said.
Come to Mother.

You stood. You tottered toward

the inescapable body.

3.

A dark board covers the sun.

Then the fathers come,

their long cars move slowly down the street,

parting the children. Then

the street is given over to darkness.

The rest follows: the labored

green of the yards, the little gardens

darned with green thread—

The trees also, whose shadows

were blue spokes.

But some the light chooses.

How they tremble

as the moon mounts them, brutal and sisterly:

I used to watch them,

all night absorbed in the moon's neutral silver

until they were finally blurred, disfigured …

4.

What was it like to be led?

I trusted no one. My name

was like a stranger's,

read from an envelope.

But nothing was taken from me

that I could have used.

For once, I admit that.

In the hall, posed

for the record's

passionate onset, ages

five and seven:

You were the gold sun on the horizon.

I was the judgment, my shadow

preceded me, not wavering

but like a mold that would be used again.

Your bare feet

became a woman's feet, always

saying two things at once.

Of two sisters

one is always the watcher,

one the dancer.

SWANS

You were both quiet, looking out over the water.

It was not now; it was years ago,

before you were married.

The sky above the sea had turned

the odd pale peach color of early evening

from which the sea withdrew, bearing

its carved boats: your bodies were like that.

But her face was raised to you,

against the dull waves, simplified

by passion. Then you raised your hand

and from beyond the frame of the dream

swans came to settle on the scaled water.

The sea lay mild as a pool. At its edge,

you faced her, saying

These are yours to keep.
The horizon burned,

releasing its withheld light.

And then I woke. But for days

when I tried to imagine you leaving your wife

I saw her motionless before your gift:

always the swans glide unmenacing across

the rigid blue of the Pacific Ocean, then rise

in a single wave, pure white and devouring.

NIGHT PIECE

He knows he will be hurt.

The warnings come to him in bed

because repose threatens him: in the camouflaging

light of the nightlight, he pretends to guard

the flesh in which his life is summarized.

He spreads his arms. On the wall, a corresponding figure

links him to the darkness he cannot control.

In its forms, the beasts originate

who are his enemies. He cannot sleep

apart from them.

PORTLAND
, 1968

You stand as rocks stand

to which the sea reaches

in transparent waves of longing;

they are marred, finally;

everything fixed is marred.

And the sea triumphs,

like all that is false,

all that is fluent and womanly.

From behind, a lens

opens for your body. Why

should you turn? It doesn't matter

who the witness is,

for whom you are suffering,

for whom you are standing still.

PORCELAIN BOWL

It rules out use:

in a lawn chair, the analogous

body of a woman is arranged,

and in this light

I cannot see what time has done to her.

A few leaves fall. A wind parts the long grass,

making a path going nowhere. And the hand

involuntarily lifts; it moves across her face

so utterly lost—

                            The grass sways,

as though that motion were

an aspect of repose.

                                 Pearl white

on green. Ceramic

hand in the grass.

DEDICATION TO HUNGER

1.
From the Suburbs

They cross the yard

and at the back door

the mother sees with pleasure

how alike they are, father and daughter—

I know something of that time.

The little girl purposefully

swinging her arms, laughing

her stark laugh:

It should be kept secret, that sound.

It means she's realized

that he never touches her.

She is a child; he could touch her

if he wanted to.

2.
Grandmother

“Often I would stand at the window—

your grandfather

was a young man then—

waiting, in the early evening.”

That is what marriage is.

I watch the tiny figure

changing to a man

as he moves toward her,

the last light rings in his hair.

I do not question

their happiness. And he rushes in

with his young man's hunger,

so proud to have taught her that:

his kiss would have been

clearly tender—

Of course, of course. Except

it might as well have been

his hand over her mouth.

3.
Eros

To be male, always

to go to women

and be taken back

into the pierced flesh:

                  I suppose

memory is stirred.

And the girl child

who wills herself

into her father's arms

likewise loved him

second. Nor is she told

what need to express.

There is a look one sees,

the mouth somehow desperate—

Because the bond

cannot be proven.

4.
The Deviation

It begins quietly

in certain female children:

the fear of death, taking as its form

dedication to hunger,

because a woman's body

is
a grave; it will accept

anything. I remember

lying in bed at night

touching the soft, digressive breasts,

touching, at fifteen,

the interfering flesh

that I would sacrifice

until the limbs were free

of blossom and subterfuge: I felt

what I feel now, aligning these words—

it is the same need to perfect,

of which death is the mere byproduct.

5.
Sacred Objects

Today in the field I saw

the hard, active buds of the dogwood

and wanted, as we say, to capture them,

to make them eternal. That is the premise

of renunciation: the child,

having no self to speak of,

comes to life in denial—

I stood apart in that achievement,

in that power to expose

the underlying body, like a god

for whose deed

there is no parallel in the natural world.

HAPPINESS

A man and woman lie on a white bed.

It is morning. I think

Soon they will waken.

On the bedside table is a vase

of lilies; sunlight

pools in their throats.

I watch him turn to her

as though to speak her name

but silently, deep in her mouth—

At the window ledge,

once, twice,

a bird calls.

And then she stirs; her body

fills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.

Almost over this room

the sun is gliding.

Look at your face,
you say,

holding your own close to me

to make a mirror.

How calm you are. And the burning wheel

passes gently over us.

III     LAMENTATIONS

AUTUMNAL

Public sorrow, the acquired

gold of the leaf, the falling off,

the prefigured burning of the yield:

which is accomplished. At the lake's edge,

the metal pails are full vats of fire.

So waste is elevated

into beauty. And the scattered dead

unite in one consuming vision of order.

In the end, everything is bare.

Above the cold, receptive earth

the trees bend. Beyond,

the lake shines, placid, giving back

the established blue of heaven.

                                     The word

is
bear
: you give and give, you empty yourself

into a child. And you survive

the automatic loss. Against inhuman landscape,

the tree remains a figure for grief; its form

is forced accommodation. At the grave,

it is the woman, isn't it, who bends,

the spear useless beside her.

AUBADE

Today above the gull's call

I heard you waking me again

to see that bird, flying

so strangely over the city,

not wanting

to stop, wanting

the blue waste of the sea—

Now it skirts the suburb,

the noon light violent against it:

I feel its hunger

as your hand inside me,

a cry

so common, unmusical—

Ours were not

different. They rose

from the unexhausted

need of the body

fixing a wish to return:

the ashen dawn, our clothes

not sorted for departure.

APHRODITE

A woman exposed as rock

has this advantage:

she controls the harbor.

Ultimately, men appear,

weary of the open.

So terminates, they feel,

a story. In the beginning,

longing. At the end, joy.

In the middle, tedium.

In time, the young wife

naturally hardens. Drifting

from her side, in imagination,

the man returns not to a drudge

but to the goddess he projects.

On a hill, the armless figure

welcomes the delinquent boat,

her thighs cemented shut, barring

the fault in the rock.

ROSY

When you walked in with your suitcase, leaving

the door open so the night showed

in a black square behind you, with its little stars

like nailheads, I wanted to tell you

you were like the dog that came to you by default,

on three legs: now that she is again no one's,

she pursues her more durable relationships

with traffic and cold nature, as though at pains

to wound herself so that she will not heal.

She is past being taken in by kindness,

preferring wet streets: what death claims

it does not abandon.

You understand, the animal means nothing to me.

THE DREAM OF MOURNING

I sleep so you will be alive,

it is that simple.

The dreams themselves are nothing.

They are the sickness you control,

nothing more.

I rush toward you in the summer twilight,

not in the real world, but in the buried one

where you are waiting,

as the wind moves over the bay, toying with it,

forcing thin ridges of panic—

And then the morning comes, demanding prey.

Remember? And the world complies.

Last night was different.

Someone fucked me awake; when I opened my eyes

it was over, all the need gone

by which I knew my life.

And for one instant I believed I was entering

the stable dark of the earth

and thought it would hold me.

THE GIFT

Lord, You may not recognize me

speaking for someone else.

I have a son. He is

so little, so ignorant.

He likes to stand

at the screen door, calling

oggie, oggie,
entering

language, and sometimes

a dog will stop and come up

the walk, perhaps

accidentally. May he believe

this is not an accident?

At the screen

welcoming each beast

in love's name, Your emissary.

WORLD BREAKING APART

I look out over the sterile snow.

Under the white birch tree, a wheelbarrow.

The fence behind it mended. On the picnic table,

mounded snow, like the inverted contents of a bowl

whose dome the wind shapes. The wind,