Authors: Louise Glück
To let up insults the opponent.
Each player has one pile to the left, five cards in the hand.
It's good to stay inside on days like this,
to stay where it's cool.
And this is better than other games, better than solitaire.
My grandmother thought ahead; she prepared her daughters.
They have cards; they have each other.
They don't need any more companionship.
All afternoon the game goes on but the sun doesn't move.
It just keeps beating down, turning the grass yellow.
That's how it must seem to my mother.
And then, suddenly, something is over.
My aunt's been at it longer; maybe that's why she's playing better.
Her cards evaporate: that's what you want, that's the object: in the end,
the one who has nothing wins.
CONFESSION
To say I'm without fearâ
it wouldn't be true.
I'm afraid of sickness, humiliation.
Like anyone, I have my dreams.
But I've learned to hide them,
to protect myself
from fulfillment: all happiness
attracts the Fates' anger.
They are sisters, savagesâ
in the end, they have
no emotion but envy.
A PRECEDENT
In the same way as she'd prepare for the others,
my mother planned for the child that died.
Bureaus of soft clothes.
Little jackets neatly folded.
Each one almost fit in the palm of a hand.
In the same way, she wondered
which day would be its birthday.
And as each passed, she knew a day as common
would become a symbol of joy.
Because death hadn't touched my mother's life,
she was thinking of something else,
dreaming, the way you do when a child's coming.
LOST LOVE
My sister spent a whole life in the earth.
She was born, she died.
In between,
not one alert look, not one sentence.
She did what babies do,
she cried. But she didn't want to be fed.
Still, my mother held her, trying to change
first fate, then history.
Something did change: when my sister died,
my mother's heart became
very cold, very rigid,
like a tiny pendant of iron.
Then it seemed to me my sister's body
was a magnet. I could feel it draw
my mother's heart into the earth,
so it would grow.
LULLABY
My mother's an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babiesâthese
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say
what she did for my father;
whatever it was, I'm sure it was right.
It's the same thing, really, preparing a person
for sleep, for death. The lullabiesâthey all say
don't be afraid,
that's how they paraphrase
the heartbeat of the mother.
So the living slowly grow calm; it's only
the dying who can't, who refuse.
The dying are like tops, like gyroscopesâ
they spin so rapidly they seem to be still.
Then they fly apart: in my mother's arms,
my sister was a cloud of atoms, of particlesâthat's the difference.
When a child's asleep, it's still whole.
My mother's seen death; she doesn't talk about the soul's integrity.
She's held an infant, an old man, as by comparison the dark grew
solid around them, finally changing to earth.
The soul's like all matter:
why would it stay intact, stay faithful to its one form,
when it could be free?
MOUNT ARARAT
Nothing's sadder than my sister's grave
unless it's the grave of my cousin, next to her.
To this day, I can't bring myself to watch
my aunt and my mother,
though the more I try to escape
seeing their suffering, the more it seems
the fate of our family:
each branch donates one girl child to the earth.
In my generation, we put off marrying, put off having children.
When we did have them, we each had one;
for the most part, we had sons, not daughters.
We don't discuss this ever.
But it's always a relief to bury an adult,
someone remote, like my father.
It's a sign that maybe the debt's finally been paid.
In fact, no one believes this.
Like the earth itself, every stone here
is dedicated to the Jewish god
who doesn't hesitate to take
a son from a mother.
APPEARANCES
When we were children, my parents had our portraits painted,
then hung them side by side, over the mantel,
where we couldn't fight.
I'm the dark one, the older one. My sister's blond,
the one who looks angry because she can't talk.
It never bothered me, not talking.
That hasn't changed much. My sister's still blond, not different
from the portrait. Except we're adults now, we've been analyzed:
we understand our expressions.
My mother tried to love us equally,
dressed us in the same dresses; she wanted us
perceived as sisters.
That's what she wanted from the portraits:
you need to see them hanging together, facing one anotherâ
separated, they don't make the same statement.
You wouldn't know what the eyes were fixed on;
they'd seem to be staring into space.
This was the summer we went to Paris, the summer I was seven.
Every morning, we went to the convent.
Every afternoon, we sat still, having the portraits painted,
wearing green cotton dresses, the square neck marked with a ruffle.
Monsieur Davanzo added the flesh tones: my sister's ruddy; mine, faintly bluish.
To amuse us, Madame Davanzo hung cherries over our ears.
It was something I was good at: sitting still, not moving.
I did it to be good, to please my mother, to distract her from the child that died.
I wanted to be child enough. I'm still the same,
like a toy that can stop and go, but not change direction.
Anyone can love a dead child, love an absence.
My mother's strong; she doesn't do what's easy.
She's like her mother: she believes in family, in order.
She doesn't change her house, just freshens the paint occasionally.
Sometimes something breaks, gets thrown away, but that's all.
She likes to sit there, on the blue couch, looking up at her daughters,
at the two who lived. She can't remember how it really was,
how anytime she ministered to one child, loved that child,
she damaged the other. You could say
she's like an artist with a dream, a vision.
Without that, she'd have been torn apart.
We were like the portraits, always together: you had to shut out
one child to see the other.
That's why only the painter noticed: a face already so controlled, so withdrawn,
and too obedient, the clear eyes saying
If you want me to be a nun, I'll be a nun.
THE UNTRUSTWORTHY SPEAKER
Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.
I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
that's when I'm least to be trusted.
It's very sad, really: all my life, I've been praised
for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.
In the end, they're wastedâ
I never see myself,
standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.
That's why I can't account
for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.
In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless,
we're the cripples, the liars;
we're the ones who should be factored out
in the interest of truth.
When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas
red and bright pink.
If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
to the older daughter, block her out:
when a living thing is hurt like that,
in its deepest workings,
all function is altered.
That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
is also a wound to the mind.
A FABLE
Two women with
the same claim
came to the feet of
the wise king. Two women,
but only one baby.
The king knew
someone was lying.
What he said was
Let the child be
cut in half; that way
no one will go
empty-handed. He
drew his sword.
Then, of the two
women, one
renounced her share:
this was
the sign, the lesson.
Suppose
you saw your mother
torn between two daughters:
what could you do
to save her but be
willing to destroy
yourselfâshe would know
who was the rightful child,
the one who couldn't bear
to divide the mother.
NEW WORLD
As I saw it,
all my mother's life, my father
held her down, like
lead strapped to her ankles.
She was
buoyant by nature;
she wanted to travel,
go to theater, go to museums.
What he wanted
was to lie on the couch
with the
Times
over his face,
so that death, when it came,
wouldn't seem a significant change.
In couples like this,
where the agreement
is to do things together,
it's always the active one
who concedes, who gives.
You can't go to museums
with someone who won't
open his eyes.
I thought my father's death
would free my mother.
In a sense, it has:
she takes trips, looks at
great art. But she's floating.
Like some child's balloon
that gets lost the minute
it isn't held.
Or like an astronaut
who somehow loses the ship
and has to drift in space
knowing, however long it lasts,
this is what's left of being alive: she's free
in that sense.
Without relation to earth.
BIRTHDAY
Every year, on her birthday, my mother got twelve roses
from an old admirer. Even after he died, the roses kept coming:
the way some people leave paintings and furniture,
this man left bulletins of flowers,
his way of saying that the legend of my mother's beauty
had simply gone underground.
At first, it seemed bizarre.
Then we got used to it: every December, the house suddenly
filling with flowers. They even came to set
a standard of courtesy, of generosityâ
After ten years, the roses stopped.
But all that time I thought
the dead could minister to the living;
I didn't realize
this was the anomaly; that for the most part
the dead were like my father.
My mother doesn't mind, she doesn't need
displays from my father.
Her birthday comes and goes; she spends it
sitting by a grave.
She's showing him she understands,
that she accepts his silence.
He hates deception: she doesn't want him making
signs of affection when he can't feel.
BROWN CIRCLE
My mother wants to know
why, if I hate
family so much,
I went ahead and
had one. I don't
answer my mother.
What I hated
was being a child,
having no choice about
what people I loved.
I don't love my son
the way I meant to love him.
I thought I'd be
the lover of orchids who finds
red trillium growing
in the pine shade, and doesn't
touch it, doesn't need
to possess it. What I am
is the scientist,
who comes to that flower
with a magnifying glass
and doesn't leave, though
the sun burns a brown
circle of grass around
the flower. Which is
more or less the way
my mother loved me.
I must learn
to forgive my mother,
now that I'm helpless
to spare my son.
CHILDREN COMING HOME FROM SCHOOL
1.
If you live in a city, it's different: someone has to meet
the child at the bus stop. There's a reason. A child all alone
can disappear, get lost, maybe forever.
My sister's daughter wants to walk home alone; she thinks she's old enough.
My sister thinks it's too soon for such a big change;
the best her daughter gets
is the option to walk without holding hands.
That's what they do; they compromise, which anyone
can manage for a few blocks. My niece gets one hand
totally free; my sister says
if she's old enough to walk this way, she's old enough
to hold her own violin.
2.
My son accuses me
of his unhappiness, not
in words, but in the way
he stares at the ground, inching
slowly up the driveway: he knows
I'm watching. That's why
he greets the cat,