Authors: Louise Glück
Spirit, invited to leave the body,
to stand exposed a moment,
trembling, as before
your presentation to the divineâ
spirit lured out of solitude
by the promise of grace,
how will you ever again believe
the love of another being?
My soul withered and shrank.
The body became for it too large a garment.
And when hope was returned to me
it was another hope entirely.
CONDO
I lived in a tree. The dream specified
pine, as though it thought I needed
prompting to keep mourning. I hate
when your own dreams treat you as stupid.
Inside, it was
my apartment in Plainfield, twenty years ago,
except I'd added a commercial stove.
Deep-rooted
passion for the second floor! Just because
the past is longer than the future
doesn't mean there is no future.
The dream confused them, mistaking
one for the other: repeated
scenes of the gutted houseâVera was there,
talking about the light.
And certainly there was a lot of light, since
there were no walls.
I thought: this is where the bed would be,
where it was in Plainfield.
And deep serenity flooded through me,
such as you feel when the world can't touch you.
Beyond the invisible bed, light
of late summer in the little street,
between flickering ash trees.
Which the dream changed, adding, you could say,
a dimension of hope. It was
a beautiful dream, my life was small and sweet, the world
broadly visible because remote.
The dream showed me how to have it again
by being safe from it. It showed me
sleeping in my old bed, first stars
shining through bare ash trees.
I have been lifted and carried far away
into a luminous city. Is this what having means,
to look down on? Or is this dreaming still?
I was right, wasn't I, choosing
against the ground?
IMMORTAL LOVE
Like a door
the body opened and
the soul looked out.
Timidly at first, then
less timidly
until it was safe.
Then in hunger it ventured.
Then in brazen hunger,
then at the invitation
of any desire.
Promiscuous one, how will you find
god now? How will you
ascertain the divine?
Even in the garden you were told
to live in the body, not
outside it, and suffer in it
if that comes to be necessary.
How will god find you
if you are never in one place
long enough, never
in the home he gave you?
Or do you believe
you have no home, since god
never meant to contain you?
EARTHLY LOVE
Conventions of the time
held them together.
It was a period
(very long) in which
the heart once given freely
was required, as a formal gesture,
to forfeit liberty: a consecration
at once moving and hopelessly doomed.
As to ourselves:
fortunately we diverged
from these requirements,
as I reminded myself
when my life shattered.
So that what we had for so long
was, more or less,
voluntary, alive.
And only long afterward
did I begin to think otherwise.
We are all humanâ
we protect ourselves
as well as we can
even to the point of denying
clarity, the point
of self-deception. As in
the consecration to which I alluded.
And yet, within this deception,
true happiness occurred.
So that I believe I would
repeat these errors exactly.
Nor does it seem to me
crucial to know
whether or not such happiness
is built on illusion:
it has its own reality.
And in either case, it will end.
EURYDICE
Eurydice went back to hell.
What was difficult
was the travel, which,
on arrival, is forgotten.
Transition
is difficult.
And moving between two worlds
especially so;
the tension is very great.
A passage
filled with regret, with longing,
to which we have, in the world,
some slight access or memory.
Only for a moment
when the dark of the underworld
settled around her again
(gentle, respectful),
only for a moment could
an image of earth's beauty
reach her again, beauty
for which she grieved.
But to live with human faithlessness
is another matter.
CASTILE
Orange blossoms blowing over Castile
children begging for coins
I met my love under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?
I read this, then I dreamed this:
can waking take back what happened to me?
Bells of San Miguel
ringing in the distance
his hair in the shadows blond-white
I dreamed this,
does that mean it didn't happen?
Does it have to happen in the world to be real?
I dreamed everything, the story
became my story:
he lay beside me,
my hand grazed the skin of his shoulder
Mid-day, then early evening:
in the distance, the sound of a train
But it was not the world:
in the world, a thing happens finally, absolutely,
the mind cannot reverse it.
Castile: nuns walking in pairs through the dark garden.
Outside the walls of the Holy Angels
children begging for coins
When I woke I was crying,
has that no reality?
I met my love under an orange tree:
I have forgotten
only the facts, not the inferenceâ
there were children somewhere, crying, begging for coins
I dreamed everything, I gave myself
completely and for all time
And the train returned us
first to Madrid
then to the Basque country
MUTABLE EARTH
Are you healed or do you only think you're healed?
I told myself
from nothing
nothing could be taken away.
But can you love anyone yet?
When I feel safe, I can love.
But will you touch anyone?
I told myself
if I had nothing
the world couldn't touch me.
In the bathtub, I examine my body.
We're supposed to do that.
And your face too?
Your face in the mirror?
I was vigilant: when I touched myself
I didn't feel anything.
Were you safe then?
I was never safe, even when I was most hidden.
Even then I was waiting.
So you couldn't protect yourself?
The absolute
erodes; the boundary, the wall
around the self erodes.
If I was waiting I had been
invaded by time.
But do you think you're free?
I think I recognize the patterns of my nature.
But do you think you're free?
I had nothing
and I was still changed.
Like a costume, my numbness
was taken away. Then
hunger was added.
THE WINGED HORSE
Here is my horse Abstraction,
silver-white, color of the page,
of the unwritten.
Come, Abstraction,
by Will out of Demonic Ambition:
carry me lightly into the regions of the immortal.
I am weary of my other mount,
by Instinct out of Reality,
color of dust, of disappointment,
notwithstanding
the saddle that went with him
and the bronze spurs, the bit
of indestructible metal.
I am weary of the world's gifts, the world's
stipulated limits.
And I am weary of being opposed
and weary of being constantly contradicted by the material, as by
a massive wall where all I say can be
checked up on.
Then come, Abstraction,
take me where you have taken so many others,
far from here, to the void, the star pasture.
Bear me quickly,
Dream out of Blind Hope.
EARTHLY TERROR
I stood at the gate of a rich city.
I had everything the gods required;
I was ready; the burdens
of preparation had been long.
And the moment was the right moment,
the moment assigned to me.
Why were you afraid?
The moment was the right moment;
response must be ready.
On my lips,
the words trembled that were
the right words. Trembledâ
and I knew that if I failed to answer
quickly enough, I would be turned away.
THE GOLDEN BOUGH
Even the goddess of love
fights for her children, her vanity
notwithstanding: more than other heroes,
Aeneas flourished; even the road back upward from hell
was simplified. And the sacrifice of love
less painful than for the other heroes.
His mind was clear: even as he endured sacrifice,
he saw its practical purpose. His mind was clear,
and in its clarity, fortified against despair,
even as grief made more human a heart
that might otherwise have seemed immutable. And beauty
ran in his veins: he had no need
for more of it. He conceded to other visions
the worlds of art and science, those paths that lead
only to torment, and instead gathered
the diverse populations of earth
into an empire, a conception
of justice through submission, an intention “to spare the humble
and to crush the proud”: subjective,
necessarily, as judgments necessarily are.
Beauty ran in his veins; he had no need for more of it.
That and his taste for empire:
that much can be verified.
EVENING PRAYERS
I believe my sin
to be entirely common:
the request for help
masking request for favor
and the plea for pity
thinly veiling complaint.
So little at peace in the spring evening,
I pray for strength, for direction,
but I also ask
to survive my illness
(the immediate one)ânever mind
anything in the future.
I make this a special point,
this unconcern for the future,
also the courage I will have acquired by then
to meet my suffering alone
but with heightened fortitude.
Tonight, in my unhappiness,
I wonder what qualities this presumes
in the one who listens.
And as the breeze stirs
the leaves of the little birch tree,
I construct a presence
wholly skeptical and wholly tender,
thus incapable of surprise.
I believe my sin is common, therefore
intended; I can feel
the leaves stir, sometimes
with words, sometimes without,
as though the highest form of pity
could be irony.
Bedtime,
they whisper.
Time to begin lying.
RELIC
Where would I be without my sorrow,
sorrow of my beloved's making,
without some sign of him, this song
of all gifts the most lasting?
How would you like to die
while Orpheus was singing?
A long death; all the way to Dis
I heard him.
Torment of earth
Torment of mortal passionâ
I think sometimes
too much is asked of us;
I think sometimes
our consolations are the costliest thing.
All the way to Dis
I heard my husband singing,
much as you now hear me.
Perhaps it was better that way,
my love fresh in my head
even at the moment of death.
Not the first responseâ
that was terrorâ
but the last.
NEST
A bird was making its nest.
In the dream, I watched it closely:
in my life, I was trying to be
a witness not a theorist.
The place you begin doesn't determine
the place you end: the bird
took what it found in the yard,
its base materials, nervously
scanning the bare yard in early spring;
in debris by the south wall pushing
a few twigs with its beak.
Image
of loneliness: the small creature
coming up with nothing. Then
dry twigs. Carrying, one by one,
the twigs to the hideout.
Which is all it was then.
It took what there was:
the available material. Spirit
wasn't enough.
And then it wove like the first Penelope
but toward a different end.
How did it weave? It weaved,
carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs
with any suppleness, any flexibility,
choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.
Early spring, late desolation.
The bird circled the bare yard making
efforts to survive
on what remained to it.
It had its task:
to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,
patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude
of the exposed tree in the steady coldness
of the outside world.
I had nothing to build with.
It was winter: I couldn't imagine
anything but the past. I couldn't even
imagine the past, if it came to that.
And I didn't know how I came here.