Becoming Light (19 page)

fingers, toes,

little rose blooming

in a red universe,

which once wanted you less

than emptiness,

but now holds you

fast,

containing your rapid heart

beat under its

slower one

as the earth

contains the sea.

O avocado pit

almost ready to sprout,

tiny fruit tree

within sight

of the sea,

little swimming fish,

little land lover,

hold on!

hold on!

Here, under my heart

you’ll keep

till it’s time

for us to meet,

& we come apart

that we may come

together,

& you are born

remembering

the wavesound

of my blood,

the thunder of my heart,

& like your mother

always dreaming

of the sea.

The whole world is flat.

& I am round.

Even women avert their eyes,

& men, embarrassed

by the messy way

that life turns into life,

look away,

forgetting they themselves

were once this roundness

underneath the heart,

this helpless fish

swimming in eternity.

The sound of O,

not the sound of I

embarrasses the world.

My friends, who voluntarily have made

their bodies flat,

their writings flat as grief,

look at me in disbelief.

What is this large unseemly thing—

a pregnant poet?

an enormous walking O?

Oh take all letters of the alphabet but that!

We speak the Esperanto of the flat!

Condemned to sign

language & silence, pregnant poems

for men to snicker at,

for women to denounce,

I live alone.

My world is round

& bounded by the mountain of my fear;

while all the great geographers agree

the world is flat

& roundness cannot be.

Could I unthink you,

little heart,

what would I do?

Throw you out

with last night’s garbage,

undo my own decisions,

my own flesh

& commit you to the void

again?

Fortunately,

it is not my problem.

You hold on, beating

like a little clock,

Swiss in your precision,

Japanese in your tenacity,

& already having

your own karma,

while I, with myhalf-

hearted maternal urges,

my uncertainty that any creature

ever really creates

another (unless it be

herself), know you

as God’s poem

& myself merely as publisher,

as midwife,

as impresario,

oh, even, if you will,

as loathèd producer

of your
Grand Spectacle
:

you
are the star,

& like your humblest fan,

I wonder

(gazing at your image

on the screen)

who you really are.

Perishable women—

the colonial graveyards

are strewn with your bones,

the islands of the Caribbean

are rich with your deaths.

You perished

like the creatures of the reefs,

bringing forth your kind.

Perishable women—

dying at twenty, twenty-three,

“Beloved wife & Tender Mother,”

long lamented by your husband

(& his wives),

survivors who outlasted you,

then died

the way you died.

Only the men lived on

to perish in the wars,

to die of sharkbite

or of fever, bloody flux,

the smallpox, even leprosy

or gout

(one ate well

on these islands in the sun).

Everyone was perishable;

children died

like flies;

& women died

in giving birth to children

who would die.

God was blamed,

& Nature’s mighty hand

which wrought her handiwork

imperfectly,

& broke a hundred vessels

in the sea

that one whole

cup might be.

Perishable women—

smashed like pots

upon the floor beneath the wheel,

crushed like shells upon the beach,

like husks of coconut,

like bits of bottle glass.

At my age I’d be dead.

You would not be.

I am not interested

in my body—

the part that stinks

& rots & brings forth

life,

the part that the ground

swallows,

death giving birth

to death—

all of life,

considered

from the body’s

point of view,

is a downhill slide

& all our small

preservatives

& griefs

cannot reverse the trend.

All sensualists

turn puritan

at the end—

turning up lust’s soil

& finding bones

beneath the rich volcanic

dirt.

Some sleep in shrouds

& some in coffins;

some swear off

procreation, others turn

vegetarian, or worse:

they live on air—

on sheer platonic meals

of pure ideas;

once gluttons of the flesh,

they now become

gourmets of the mind.

How to resist that

when the spacious earth

swallows her children

so insatiably,

when all our space-age gods

are grounded,

& only the moan of pleasure

or the rasp of pain

can ever satisfy

the body’s appetite?

& yet my body,

in its dubious wisdom,

led to yours;

& you may

puzzle out

this mystery in your turn.

Choose mind, choose body,

choose to wed the two;

many have tried

but few have done the deed.

Through you, perhaps,

I may at last succeed.

On the first night

of the full moon,

the primeval sack of ocean

broke,

& I gave birth to you

little woman,

little carrot top,

little turned-up nose,

pushing you out of myself

as my mother

pushed

me out of herself,

as her mother did,

& her mother’s mother before her,

all of us born

of woman.

I am the second daughter

of a second daughter

of a second daughter,

but you shall be the first.

You shall see the phrase

“second sex”

only in puzzlement,

wondering how anyone,

except a madman,

could call you “second”

when you are so splendidly

first,

conferring even on your mother

firstness, vastness, fullness

as the moon at its fullest

lights up the sky.

Now the moon is full again

& you are four weeks old.

Little lion, lioness,

yowling for my breasts,

growling at the moon,

how I love your lustiness,

your red face demanding,

your hungry mouth howling,

your screams, your cries

which all spell life

in large letters

the color of blood.

You are born a woman

for the sheer glory of it,

little redhead, beautiful screamer.

You are no second sex,

but the first of the first;

& when the moon’s phases

fill out the cycle

of your life,

you will crow

for the joy

of being a woman,

telling the pallid moon

to go drown herself

in the blue ocean,

& glorying, glorying, glorying

in the rosy wonder

of your sunshining wondrous

self.

Love, death, sleeping

with somebody else’s husband

or wife—this

is what poetry is

about—Eskimo, Aztec,

or even Italian

Rinascimento,

or even the highfalutin Greeks

or noble Roman-O’s.

O the constant turmoil

of the human species—

beds, graves, Spring with its

familiar rosebuds, the wrong beds,

the wrong graves, wars

unremembered & boundaries gained

only to be lost & lost

again

& lost roses whose lost

petals

reminded poets to
carpe, carpe

diem
with whoever’s wife

or husband happened to

be handiest!

O Turmoil & Confusion—

you are my Muses!

O longing for a world

without death, without beds

divided by walls between houses!

All the beds float out to sea!

All the dying lovers wave

to the other dying lovers!

One of them writes on his mistress’s skin as he floats.

He is the poet.

Not for this

will his life be spared.

Looking for a place

where we might turn off

the inner dialogue,

the monologue

of futures & regrets,

of pasts not past enough

& futures that may never come

to pass,

we found this boat

bobbing in the blue,

this refuge amid reefs,

this white hull

within this azure sibilance of sea,

this central rocking

so like the rocking

before birth.

Venus was born of the waters,

borne over them

to teach us about love—

our only sail

on the seas of our lives

as death is

our only anchor.

If we return again & again

to the sea

both in our dreams

& for our love affairs

it is because

this element alone

understands our pasts

& futures

as she makes them

one.

Male?

Female?

God doesn’t care

about sex

& the long tree-shaded avenue

toward death.

God says

the worm is as beautiful

as the apple it eats

& the apple as lovely

as the thick trunk

of the tree,

& the trunk of the tree

no more beautiful

than the air

surrounding it.

God doesn’t care

about the battle

between the sexes

with which we amuse ourselves

on our way toward death.

God says:

there are no sexes;

& still we amuse ourselves

arguing about whether or not

She is male

or He

female.

for Ben Barber

After the college

reading,

the eager

students gather.

They ask me

what you need

to be a writer

& I, feeling flippant,

jaunty

(because

I am wearing

an 18th century dress

& think

myself in love

again),

answer:

“Mazel,

determination,

talent,

& true

grit.”

I even

believe it—

looking

as I do

like an

advertisement

for easy

success—

designer dress,

sly smile

on my lips

& silver boots

from

Oz.

Suppose

they saw me

my eyes

swollen

like sponges,

my hand

shaking

with betrayal,

my fear

rampant

in the dark?

Suppose they saw

the fear

of never

writing,

the fear

of being

alone,

the money fear,

the fear fear,

the fear

of succumbing

to fear?

& then

there’s all

I did

not say:

to be

a writer

what you need

is

something

to say:

something

that burns

like a hot coal

in your gut

something

that pounds

like a pump

in your groin

& the courage

to love

like a wound

that never

heals.

You gave me the child

that seamed my belly

& stitched up my life.

You gave me: one book of love poems,

five years of peace

& two of pain.

You gave me darkness, light, laughter

& the certain knowledge

that we someday die.

You gave me seven years

during which the cells of my body

died & were reborn.

Now we have died

into the limbo of lost loves,

that wreckage of memories

tarnishing with time,

that litany of losses

which grows longer with the years,

as more of our friends

descend underground

& the list of our loved dead

outstrips the list of the living.

Knowing as we do

our certain doom,

knowing as we do

the rarity of the gifts we gave

& received,

can we redeem

our love from the limbo,

dust it off like a fine sea trunk

found in an attic

& now more valuable

for its age & rarity

than a shining new one?

Probably not.

This page is spattered

with tears that streak the words