Authors: Louise Glück
to create debt.
Actual people! Actual human beings
sitting on our chairs in our living room!
I'll tell you what: I'll learn
bridge.
Don't think of them as guests, think of them
as extra chickens. You'd like it.
If we had more furniture
you'd have more control.
TELEMACHUS' BURDEN
Nothing
was exactly difficult because
routines develop, compensations
for perceived
absences and omissions. My mother
was the sort of woman
who let you know she was suffering and then
denied that suffering since in her view
suffering was what slaves did; when
I tried to console her,
to relieve her misery, she
rejected me. I now realize
if she'd been capable of honesty
she would have been
a Stoic. Unfortunately
she was a queen, she wanted it understood
at every moment she had chosen
her own destiny. She would have had to be
insane to choose that destiny. Well,
good luck to my father, in my opinion
a stupid man if he expects
his return to diminish
her isolation; perhaps
he came back for that.
PARABLE OF THE SWANS
On a small lake off
the map of the world, two
swans lived. As swans,
they spent eighty percent of the day studying
themselves in the attentive water and
twenty percent ministering to the beloved
other. Thus
their fame as lovers stems
chiefly from narcissism, which leaves
so little leisure for
more general cruising. But
fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit
slimy water; whatever the filth was, it
clung to the male's plumage, which turned
instantly gray; simultaneously,
the true purpose of his neck's
flexible design revealed itself. So much
action on the flat lake, so much
he's missed! Sooner or later in a long
life together, every couple encounters
some emergency like this, some
drama which results
in harm. This
occurs for a reason: to test
love and to demand
fresh articulation of its complex terms.
So it came to light that the male and female
flew under different banners: whereas
the male believed that love
was what one felt in one's heart
the female believed
love was what one did. But this is not
a little story about the male's
inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan's
sleazy definition of purity. It is
a story of guile and innocence. For ten years
the female studied the male; she dallied
when he slept or when he was
conveniently absorbed in the water,
while the spontaneous male
acted casually, on
the whim of the moment. On the muddy water
they bickered awhile, in the fading light,
until the bickering grew
slowly abstract, becoming
part of their song
after a little longer.
PURPLE BATHING SUIT
I like watching you garden
with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favorite part of you,
the part furthest away from your mouth.
You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off at ground level
when you should pull it up by the roots.
How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured? Watching you
stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think
you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that's wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.
PARABLE OF FAITH
Now, in twilight, on the palace steps
the king asks forgiveness of his lady.
He is not
duplicitous; he has tried to be
true to the moment; is there another way of being
true to the self?
The lady
hides her face, somewhat
assisted by shadows. She weeps
for her past; when one has a secret life,
one's tears are never explained.
Yet gladly would the king bear
the grief of his lady: his
is the generous heart,
in pain as in joy.
Do you know
what forgiveness means? It means
the world has sinned, the world
must be pardonedâ
REUNION
When Odysseus has returned at last
unrecognizable to Ithaca and killed
the suitors swarming the throne room,
very delicately he signals to Telemachus
to depart: as he stood twenty years ago,
he stands now before Penelope.
On the palace floor, wide bands of sunlight turning
from gold to red. He tells her
nothing of those years, choosing to speak instead
exclusively of small things, as would be
the habit of a man and woman long together:
once she sees who he is, she will know what he's done.
And as he speaks, ah,
tenderly he touches her forearm.
THE DREAM
           I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed we were married again.
           You talked a lot. You kept saying things like
this is realistic.
           When I woke up, I started reading all my old diaries.
I thought you hated diaries.
           I keep them when I'm miserable. Anyway,
           all those years I thought we were so happy
           I had a lot of diaries.
           Do you ever think about it? Do you ever wonder
           if the whole thing was a mistake? Actually,
           half the guests said that at the wedding.
           I'll tell you something I never told you:
           I took a valium that night.
           I kept thinking of how we used to watch television,
           how I would put my feet in your lap. The cat would sit
           on top of them. Doesn't that still seem
           an image of contentment, of well-being? So
           why couldn't it go on longer?
Because it was a dream.
OTIS
A beautiful morning; nothing
died in the night.
The Lights are putting up their bean tepees.
Rebirth! Renewal! And across the yard,
very quietly, someone is playing Otis Redding.
Now the great themes
come together again: I am twenty-three, riding the subways
in pursuit of Chassler, of my lost love, clutching
my own record, because I have to hear
this exact sound no matter where I land, no matter
whose apartmentâwhose apartments
did I visit that summer? I have no idea
where I'm going, about to leave New York, to live
in paradise, as I have then
no concept of change, no slightest sense of what would
happen to Chassler, to obsessive need, my one thought being
the only grief that touched mine was Otis' grief.
Look, the tepees
are standing: Steven
has balanced them the first try.
Now the seeds go in, there is Anna
sitting in the dirt with the open packet.
This is the end, isn't it?
And you are here with me again, listening with me:
the sea
no longer torments me; the self
I wished to be is the self I am.
THE WISH
Remember that time you made the wish?
           I make a lot of wishes.
The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.
           What do you think I wished?
I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.
           I wished for what I always wish for.
           I wished for another poem.
PARABLE OF THE GIFT
My friend gave me
a fuchsia plant, expecting
much of me, in cold April
judgment not to leave it
overnight in nature, deep
pink in its plastic
basketâI have
killed my gift, exposed
flowers in a mass of leaves,
mistaking it
for part of nature with
its many stems: what
do I do with you now,
former living thing
that last night still
resembled my friend, abundant
leaves like her fluffy hair
although the leaves had
a reddish cast: I see her
climbing the stone steps in spring dusk
holding the quivering
present in her hands, with
Eric and Daphne following
close behind, each
bearing a towel of lettuce leaves:
so much, so much to celebrate
tonight, as though she were saying
here is the world, that should be
enough to make you happy.
HEART'S DESIRE
           I want to do two things:
           I want to order meat from Lobel's
           and I want to have a party.
You hate parties. You hate
any group bigger than four.
           If I hate it
           I'll go upstairs. Also
           I'm only inviting people who can cook.
           Good cooks and all my old lovers.
           Maybe even your ex-girlfriends, except
           the exhibitionists.
If I were you,
I'd start with the meat order.
           We'll have buglights in the garden.
           When you look into people's faces
           you'll see how happy they are.
           Some are dancing, maybe
           Jasmine in her Himalayan anklet.
           When she gets tired, the bells drag.
           It will be spring again; all
           the tulips will be opening.
The point isn't whether or not
the guests are happy.
The point is whether or not
they're dead.
           Trust me: no one's
           going to be hurt again.
           For one night, affection
           will triumph over passion. The passion
           will all be in the music.
           If you can hear the music
           you can imagine the party.
           I have it all planned: first
           violent love, then
           sweetness. First
Norma
           then maybe the Lights will play.
VITA NOVA (1999)
TO
KATHRYN DAVIS
KAREN KENNERLY
and
ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT
TO
TOM
and
VERA KREILKAMP
The master said
You must write what you see.
But what I see does not move me.
The master answered
Change what you see.
VITA NOVA
You saved me, you should remember me.
The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.
When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.
I remember sounds like that from my childhood,
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.
Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake's edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.
Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes
and then unused, buried.
Islands in the distance. My mother
holding out a plate of little cakesâ
as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age
hungry for life, utterly confidentâ
By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green
pieced into the dark existing ground.
Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.
AUBADE
The world was very large. Then
the world was small. O
very small, small enough
to fit in a brain.
It had no color, it was all
interior space: nothing
got in or out. But time
seeped in anyway, that
was the tragic dimension.
I took time very seriously in those years,
if I remember accurately.
A room with a chair, a window.