Authors: Louise Glück
how will it look to you I wonder
once your exile begins? I think your eyes will seek out
its light as opposed to the moon.
Apparently, after so many years, you need
distance to make plain its intensity.
Your hands on the chair, stroking
my body and the wood in exactly the same way.
Like a man who wants to feel longing again,
who prizes longing above all other emotion.
On the beach, voices of the Greek farmers,
impatient for sunrise.
As though dawn will change them
from farmers into heroes.
And before that, you are holding me because you are going awayâ
these are statements you are making,
not questions needing answers.
How can I know you love me
unless I see you grieve over me?
ITHACA
The beloved doesn't
need to live. The beloved
lives in the head. The loom
is for the suitors, strung up
like a harp with white shroud-thread.
He was two people.
He was the body and voice, the easy
magnetism of a living man, and then
the unfolding dream or image
shaped by the woman working the loom,
sitting there in a hall filled
with literal-minded men.
As you pity
the deceived sea that tried
to take him away forever
and took only the first,
the actual husband, you must
pity these men: they don't know
what they're looking at;
they don't know that when one loves this way
the shroud becomes a wedding dress.
TELEMACHUS' DETACHMENT
When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.
PARABLE OF THE HOSTAGES
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
wants to go home, back
to that bony island; everyone wants a little more
of what there is in Troy, more
life on the edge, that sense of every day as being
packed with surprises. But how to explain this
to the ones at home to whom
fighting a war is a plausible
excuse for absence, whereas
exploring one's capacity for diversion
is not. Well, this can be faced
later; these
are men of action, ready to leave
insight to the women and children.
Thinking things over in the hot sun, pleased
by a new strength in their forearms, which seem
more golden than they did at home, some
begin to miss their families a little,
to miss their wives, to want to see
if the war has aged them. And a few grow
slightly uneasy: what if war
is just a male version of dressing up,
a game devised to avoid
profound spiritual questions? Ah,
but it wasn't only the war. The world had begun
calling them, an opera beginning with the war's
loud chords and ending with the floating aria of the sirens.
There on the beach, discussing the various
timetables for getting home, no one believed
it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca;
no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmasâoh unanswerable
affliction of the human heart: how to divide
the world's beauty into acceptable
and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,
how could the Greeks know
they were hostage already: who once
delays the journey is
already enthralled; how could they know
that of their small number
some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,
some by sleep, some by music?
RAINY MORNING
You don't love the world.
If you loved the world you'd have
images in your poems.
John loves the world. He has
a motto: judge not
lest ye be judged. Don't
argue this point
on the theory it isn't possible
to love what one refuses
to know: to refuse
speech is not
to suppress perception.
Look at John, out in the world,
running even on a miserable day
like today. Your
staying dry is like the cat's pathetic
preference for hunting dead birds: completely
consistent with your tame spiritual themes,
autumn, loss, darkness, etc.
We can all write about suffering
with our eyes closed. You should show people
more of yourself; show them your clandestine
passion for red meat.
PARABLE OF THE TRELLIS
A clematis grew at the foot of a great trellis.
Despite being
modeled on a tree, the trellis
was a human invention; every year, in May,
the green wires of the struggling vine
climbed the straightforward
trellis, and after many years
white flowers burst from the brittle wood, like
a star shower from the heart of the garden.
Enough of that ruse. We both know
how the vine grows without
the trellis, how it sneaks
along the ground; we have both seen it
flower there, the white blossoms
like headlights growing out of a snake.
This isn't what the vine wants.
Remember, to the vine, the trellis
was never an image of confinement:
this is not
diminishment or tragedy.
The vine has a dream of light:
what is life in the dirt
with its dark freedoms
compared to supported ascent?
And for a time,
every summer we could see the vine
relive this decision, thus
obscuring the wood, structure
beautiful in itself, like
a harbor or willow tree.
TELEMACHUS' GUILT
Patience of the sort my mother
practiced on my father
(which in his self-
absorption he mistook
for tribute though it was in fact
a species of rageâdidn't he
ever wonder why he was
so blocked in expressing
his native abandon?): it infected
my childhood. Patiently
she fed me; patiently
she supervised the kindly
slaves who attended me, regardless
of my behavior, an assumption
I tested with increasing
violence. It seemed clear to me
that from her perspective
I didn't exist, since
my actions had
no power to disturb her: I was
the envy of my playmates.
In the decades that followed
I was proud of my father
for staying away
even if he stayed away for
the wrong reasons;
I used to smile
when my mother wept.
I hope now she could
forgive that cruelty; I hope
she understood how like
her own coldness it was,
a means of remaining
separate from what
one loves deeply.
ANNIVERSARY
I said you could snuggle. That doesn't mean
your cold feet all over my dick.
Someone should teach you how to act in bed.
What I think is you should
keep your extremities to yourself.
Look what you didâ
you made the cat move.
           But I didn't want your hand there.
           I wanted your hand here.
           You should pay attention to my feet.
           You should picture them
           the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
           Because there's a lot more where those feet come from.
MEADOWLANDS
1
I wish we went on walks
like Steven and Kathy; then
we'd be happy. You can even see it
in the dog.
           We don't have a dog.
           We have a hostile cat.
           I think Sam's
           intelligent; he
           resents being a pet.
           Why is it always family with you?
           Can't we ever be two adults?
Look how happy Captain is, how
at peace in the world. Don't you love
how he sits on the lawn, staring up at the birds? He thinks
because he's white they can't see him.
You know why they're happy? They take
the children. And you know why they can go
on walks with children? Because
they
have
children.
           They're nothing like us; they don't
           travel. That's why they have a dog.
Have you noticed how Alissa always comes back from the walks
holding something, bringing nature
into the house? Flowers in spring,
sticks in winter.
           I bet they're still taking the dog
           when the children are grown up.
           He's a young dog, practically
           a puppy.
           If we don't expect
           Sam to follow, couldn't we
           take him along?
           You could hold him.
TELEMACHUS' KINDNESS
When I was younger I felt
sorry for myself
compulsively; in practical terms,
I had no father; my mother
lived at her loom hypothesizing
her husband's erotic life; gradually
I realized no child on that island had
a different story; my trials
were the general rule, common
to all of us, a bond
among us, therefore
with humanity: what
a life my mother had, without
compassion for my father's
suffering, for a soul
ardent by nature, thus
ravaged by choice, nor had my father
any sense of her courage, subtly
expressed as inaction, being
himself prone to dramatizing,
to acting out: I found
I could share these perceptions
with my closest friends, as they shared
theirs with me, to test them,
to refine them: as a grown man
I can look at my parents
impartially and pity them both: I hope
always to be able to pity them.
PARABLE OF THE BEAST
The cat circles the kitchen
with the dead bird,
its new possession.
Someone should discuss
ethics with the cat as it
inquires into the limp bird:
in this house
we do not experience
will in this manner.
Tell that to the animal,
its teeth already
deep in the flesh of another animal.
MIDNIGHT
Speak to me, aching heart: what
ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
weeping in the dark garage
with your sack of garbage: it is not your job
to take out the garbage, it is your job
to empty the dishwasher. You are showing off again,
exactly as you did in childhoodâwhere
is your sporting side, your famous
ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits
the broken window, a little summer moonlight, tender
murmurs from the earth with its ready sweetnessesâ
is this the way you communicate
with your husband, not answering
when he calls, or is this the way the heart
behaves when it grieves: it wants to be
alone with the garbage? If I were you,
I'd think ahead. After fifteen years,
his voice could be getting tired; some night
if you don't answer, someone else will answer.
SIREN
I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.
I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
your wife to suffer.
I wanted her life to be like a play
in which all the parts are sad parts.
Does a good person
think this way? I deserve
credit for my courageâ
I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
if your wife wouldn't let you go
that proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
wouldn't she want you happy?
I think now
if I felt less I would be
a better person. I was
a good waitress,
I could carry eight drinks.
I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark busâ
in the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
is moving away. With one hand
she's waving; the other strokes
an egg carton full of babies.
The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.
MEADOWLANDS 2
Alissa isn't bringing back
sticks for the house; the sticks
belong to the dog.
MARINA
My heart was a stone wall
you broke through anyway.
My heart was an island garden
about to be trampled by you.
You didn't want my heart;
you were on your way to my body.
None of it was my fault.
You were everything to me,
not just beauty and money.
When we made love
the cat went to another bedroom.
Then you forgot me.
Not for no reason
did the stones
tremble around the walled garden:
there's nothing there now