Becoming Light (17 page)

with that fine frenzy

which commends genius

to posterity,

yet estranges it

from its closest

friends.

Women were friends to all,

& being too friendly

they could not command

the unfriendly prerogatives

of genius,

though some were

geniuses still,

destroying

only themselves

with the torment

of the unfriendly ghost

trapped in a friendly

form.

Oh the women who died

dissembling friendship

for the world!

Oh the women who turned

the dagger inward

when it wished

to go out,

who impaled themselves

on Womanhood itself!

No vampire

could be

as greedy for blood,

no father or husband

as bullying.

A woman punishing herself

with her own pain

is a fierce opponent indeed.

It is self against self,

dagger to dagger,

blood of her blood,

blood of her daughter,

blood of her mother,

her menses, her moon,

all pooled together,

one crimson sea.

It is the awful
auto da fé,

the sublime
seppuku,

Santa Sebastiana

as archer

& victim too.

The arrow flies from her bow.

She runs, fleet as Diana,

& stops it

with her breast.

Enough!

cried the Women-Who-Cared.

Henceforth we will turn

our anger where it belongs.

We will banish the whitest lies.

We will speak the black truth as it is.

Our fathers—we spit back their sperm.

Our husbands—we spit back their names.

Our brothers—we suck back our love.

The self-righteous inherit the earth,

& anger speaks louder than love.

Love is a softness

the weak cannot afford,

& sex a Darwinian bribe.

But who wants the earth as a gift

when it is empty as space,

when women grow hard

as bronze madonnas

& Diana loves only her stag?

When Persephone stays in hell

the entire year,

then how can spring

begin?

For a long time unhappy

with my man,

I blamed men,

blamed marriage, blamed

the whole bleeding world,

Because I could not lie in bed with him

without lying to him

or else to myself,

& lying to myself

became increasingly hard

as my poems

struck rock.

My life & my poems lived apart;

I had to marry them,

& marrying them

meant divorcing him,

divorcing the lie.

Now I lie in bed

with my poems on the sheets

& a man I love

sleeping or reading

at my side.

Because I love him,

I do not think of him

as “Men,”

but as my friend.

Hate generalizes;

love is particular.

He is not Men, man, male—

all those maddening m’s

muttering like machine-gun spittle,

but only a person like me,

dreaming, vulnerable, scared,

his dreams

opening into rooms

where the chairs

are wishes you can sit on

& the rugs are wonderful

with oriental birds.

The first month we lived together

I was mad with joy,

thinking that a person with a penis

could dream, tell jokes, even cry.

Now I find it usual,

& when other women sputter

of their rage,

I look at them blankly,

half comprehending

those poor medieval creatures

from a dark, dark age.

I wonder about myself.

Was I always so fickle?

Must politics always be personal?

If I struck oil,

would I crusade

for depletion allowances?

Erica, Erica,

you are hard on yourself.

Lie back & enjoy the cease-fire.

Trouble will come again.

Sex will grow horns & warts.

The white sheets of this bed

will be splattered with blood.

Just wait.

But I don’t believe it.

There will be trouble enough,

but a different sort.

Meathooks, notebooks,

the whole city sky palely flaming

& spectral bombs

hitting that patch of river

I see from my eastern window.

The poets are dead, the city dying.

Anne, Sylvia, Keats

with his passionate lungs,

Berryman jumping from the bridge & waving,

all the dreamers dead

of their own dreams.

Why have I stayed on as Horatio?

Anne sends poems from the grave,

Sylvia, letters.

John Keats’s ghostly cough

comes through the wall board.

What am I doing here?

Why contend?

I am a corpse who moves a pen that writes.

I am a vessel for a voice that echoes.

I write a novel & annihilate whole forests.

I rearrange the cosmos by an inch.

I began by loving women

& the love turned

to bitterness.

My mother, the bitter,

whose bitter lesson—

trust no one,

especially no one male—

caused me to be naive

for too many years,

in mere rebellion

against that bitterness.

If she was Medea,

I would be Candide

& bleed in every sexual war,

& water my garden with menstrual blood

& grow the juiciest fruits.

(Like the woman

who watered her roses with blood

& won all the prizes,

though no one knew why.)

If she was Lady Macbeth,

I would be Don Quixote—

& never pass up a windmill

without a fight,

& never choose discretion

over valor.

My valor was often foolish.

I was rash

(though others called me brave).

My poems were red flags

To lure the bulls.

The picadors smelled blood

& jabbed my novels.

I had only begun

by loving women—

& ended by hating their deceit,

hating the hate

they feed their daughters,

hating the self-hate

they feed themselves,

hating the contempt

they feed their men,

as they claim weakness—

their secret strength.

For who can be cruder

than a woman

who is cruel

out of her impotence?

& who can be meaner

than a woman

who desires

the only room with a view?

Even in chess

she shouts:

“Off with their heads!”

& the poor king

walks one step forward,

one step back.

But I began

by loving women,

loving myself

despite my mother’s lesson,

loving my ten fingers,

ten toes, my puckered navel,

my lips that are too thick

& my eyes the color of ink.

Because I believed in them,

I found gentle men.

Because I loved myself,

I was loved.

Because I had faith,

the unicorn licked my arm,

the rabbit nestled in my skirts,

the griffin slept

curled up at the bottom

of my bed.

Bitter women,

there is milk under this poem.

What you sow in blood

shall be harvested in honey.

Because my grandmother’s hours

were apple cakes baking,

& dust motes gathering,

& linens yellowing

& seams and hems

inevitably unraveling—

I almost never keep house—

though really I
like
houses

& wish I had a clean one.

Because my mother’s minutes

were sucked into the roar

of the vacuum cleaner,

because she waltzed with the washer-dryer

& tore her hair waiting for repairmen—

I send out my laundry,

& live in a dusty house,

though really I
like
clean houses

as well as anyone.

I am woman enough

to love the kneading of bread

as much as the feel

of typewriter keys

under my fingers—

springy, springy.

& the smell of clean laundry

& simmering soup

are almost as dear to me

as the smell of paper and ink.

I wish there were not a choice;

I wish I could be two women.

I wish the days could be longer.

But they are short.

So I write while

the dust piles up.

I sit at my typewriter

remembering my grandmother

& all my mothers,

& the minutes they lost

loving houses better than themselves—

& the man I love cleans up the kitchen

grumbling only a little

because he knows

that after all these centuries

it is easier for him

than for me.

Assuming our dominance

over the creatures of earth—

dog, cat, sparrow,

tiny field mouse

(who lives in our kitchen

as a blur of light

running past the edges

of our sight)—

how can we understand humility?

The mouse-droppings

in the silverware drawer

annoy us.

The infinite insects

creep out of the walls

one by one,

only to be slammed

under our soles.

Our souls are heavy

with the deaths of animals.

Ocelot, beaver, fox

& even the ugly

slant-eyed mink

give their skins

to women

who are no more beautiful to God

than they.

The lowly roach,

or the tick

that seeks admission to our bed

on the back of a gentle dog,

is beloved by some creator.

Assuming our dominance

has made us mad,

has made the fragrant earth

into a place

where the mice that fill the edges

of our eyes

& scuttle past our countertops

& dreams—

are fears, the lurking fears

of our own kind.

Looking for a home, America,

we have split & crisscrossed

you from your purple seashores

to your nongrip, nonslip

motel bathrooms,

from the casinos at Reno

to the crystalline shores of Lake Tahoe,

from the giant duck in Southampton

(which is really an egg shop)

to the giant hotdog in L.A.

(which is really a hotdog stand)

to the giant artichoke in Castroville, CA,

the heart of the artichoke

country,

& still we are homeless

this 1976.

America,

we have met your brokers.

They are fiftyish ladies in hairnets,

or fiftyish ladies in blue & silver hair like mink coats

or flirty fiftyish ladies

getting blonder every winter.

They tout your federal brickwork

& your random hand-pegged floorboards.

Like witches, they advertise your gingerbread houses,

your “high ranches,” your split-levels,

your Victorians, your widows’ walks,

your whaling towns,

instead of wailing walls,

your Yankee New England spunk,

your hospitality, your tax rates,

your school systems,

with or without busing,

your friendly dogs

& philosophical cats.

America,

we have ridden through your canyons,

passes, dried-up rivers,

past your flooded quarries, through your eroded arroyos.

We have sighted UFOs on the beach

at Malibu

& swum from pool to pool

like any Cheever hero

& lusted in motels like any Updike Christian.

America,

the open road is closing,

a tollbooth blocks the vista,

& even the toilets are pumped

with dimes as well as shit.

The fried clams on Cape Cod

are pressed from clam scraps.

The California carrot cake is rumored

to be made of soy.

The dreaming towers of Gotham

are sunk in garbage,

the bedrock softens,

the buildings list like drunks,

the Thanksgiving balloons are all deflated,

the Christmas trees don’t even pretend to be green.

But we love you, America,

& we’ll keep on hunting.

The dream house that we seek is just next door.

Switzerland is a heaven of chocolates

& tax breaks.

Barbados is sweet & black & tax-free.

Antigua is Britain by the sea.

But we’re sticking around, America,

for the next earthquake,

kissing the ground

for the next Fourth of July.

We love you, America,

& we’ll keep hunting.

There’s a dream house waiting for us somewhere

with blooming cherry trees

& a
FOR SALE
sign,

with picture windows facing the Pacific

& dormer windows facing the Atlantic,

with coconut palms & flaming maples,

with shifting sand dunes

& canyons blazing with mustard,

with rabbits & rattlesnakes & nonpoisonous scorpions,

with raccoons who rattle the garbage

& meekly feeding deer who lap at salt licks

& pheasants who hop across the lawn in two-steps,

with loving dogs & aloof, contemplative cats,

with heated swimming pool & sauna