Authors: Louise Glück
Not long ago, I caught him pausing to pose
Before the landing mirror in grandiose semi-profile.
It being impossible to avoid encounter on the stairs
I thought it best to smile
Openly, as though we two held equal shares
In the indiscretion. But his performance of a nod
Was labored and the infinite
politesse
of rose palm
Unfurled for salutation fraud-
ulent. At any rate, lately there's been some
Change in his schedule. He receives without zeal
Now, and, judging by his refuse, eats little but oatmeal.
MY LIFE BEFORE DAWN
Sometimes at night I think of how we did
It, me nailed in her like steel, her
Over-eager on the striped contour
Sheet (I later burned it) and it makes me glad
I told herâin the kitchen cutting homemade breadâ
She always did too muchâI told her Sorry baby you have had
Your share. (I found her stain had dried into my hair.)
She cried. Which still does not explain my nightmares:
How she surges like her yeast dough through the door-
way shrieking It is I, love, back in living color
After all these years.
THE LADY IN THE SINGLE
Cloistered as the snail and conch
In Edgartown where the Atlantic
Rises to deposit junk
On plush, extensive sand and the pedantic
Meet for tea, amid brouhaha
I have managed this peripheral still,
Wading just steps below
The piles of overkill:
Jellyfish. But I have seen
The slick return of one that oozed back
On a breaker. Marketable sheen.
The stuffed hotel. A shy, myopic
Sailor loved me once, near here.
The summer house we'd taken for July
Was white that year, bare
Shingle; he could barely see
To kiss, still tried to play
Croquet with the familyâlike a girl almost,
With loosed hair on her bouquet
Of compensating flowers. I thought I was past
The memory. And yet his ghost
Took shape in smoke above the pan roast.
Five years. In tenebris the catapulted heart drones
Like Andromeda. No one telephones.
THE CRIPPLE IN THE SUBWAY
For awhile I thought had gotten
Used to it (the leg) and hardly heard
That down-hard, down-hard
Upon wood, cement, etc. of the iron
Trappings and I'd tell myself the memories
Would also disappear, tick-
ing jump-ropes and the bike, the bike
That flew beneath my sister, froze
Light, bent back its
Stinging in a flash of red chrome brighter
Than my brace or brighter
Than the morning whirling past this pit
Flamed with rush horror and their thin
Boots flashing on and on, all that easy kidskin.
NURSE'S SONG
As though I'm fooled. That lacy body managed to forget
That I have eyes, ears; dares to spring her boyfriends on the child.
This afternoon she told me, “Dress the baby in his crochet
Dress,” and smiled. Just that. Just smiled,
Going. She is never here. O innocence, your bathinet
Is clogged with gossip, she's a sinking ship,
Your mother. Wouldn't spoil her breasts.
I hear your deaf-numb papa fussing for his tea. Sleep, sleep,
My angel, nestled with your orange bear.
Scream when her lover pats your hair.
SECONDS
Craved, having so long gone
Empty, what he had, hardness
That (my boy half-grown)
Still sucked me toward that ring, that bless-
ing. Though I knew how it is sickness
In him: lounging in gin
He knots some silken threat until
He'll twist my arm, my wordsâmy son
Stands rigid in the doorway, seeing all,
And then that fast fist rips across my only
Child, my life ⦠I care, I care.
I watch the neighbors coming at me
With their views. Now huge with cake their
White face floats above its cup; they smile,
Sunken women, sucking at their tea â¦
I'd let my house go up in flame for this fire.
LETTER FROM OUR MAN IN BLOSSOMTIME
Often an easterly churns
Emerald feathered ferns
Calling to mind Aunt Rae's decrepit
Framed fan as it
Must have flickered in its heyday.
Black-eyed Susans rim blueberry. Display,
However, is all on the outside. Let me describe the utter
Simplicity of our housekeeping. The water
Stutters fits and starts in both sinks, remaining
Dependably pure ice; veining
The ceiling, a convention of leaks
Makes host of our home to any and all weather. Everything creaks:
Floor, shutters, the door. Still,
We have the stupendously adequate scenery to keep our morale
Afloat. And even Margaret's taking mouseholes in the molding
Fairly well in stride. But O my friend, I'm holding
Back epiphany. Last night,
More acutely than for any first time, her white
Forearms, bared in ruthless battle with the dinner, pierced me; I saw
Venus among those clamshells, raw
Botticelli: I have known no happiness so based in truth.
THE CELL
(
Jeanne des Anges, Prioress of the Ursuline nuns, Loudun, France: 1635
)
It's always there. My back's
Bulging through linen: God
Damaged meâmade
Unfit to guide, I guide.
Yet are they silent at their work.
I walk
The garden in the afternoon, who hid
Delusions under my habits
For my self was empty ⦠But HE did
It, yes.
           My Father,
Lying here, I hear
The sun creak past granite
Into air, still it is night inside.
I hide and pray. And dawn,
Alone all ways, I can feel the fingers
Stir on me again like bless-
ing and the bare
Hump mount, tranquil in darkness.
THE ISLANDER
Sugar I am
CALLING
you. Not
Journeyed all these years for this:
You stalking chicken in the subways,
Nights hunched in alleys all to get
That pinch ⦠O heartbit,
Fastened to the chair.
The supper's freezing in the dark.
While I, my prince, my prince â¦
Your fruit lights up.
I watch your hands pulling at the grapes.
LETTER FROM PROVENCE
Beside the bridge's photogen-
ic lapse into air you'll
Find more interesting material.
In July the sun
Flatters your Popes' delicate
City as always, turning granite
Gold. The slum's at standstill then,
Choking with droppings. Still
Its children are not entirely hostile;
Proffer smiles
At intervals most charmingly. I gave
Them chocolate, softened in the heat,
Which they would not
Go near. We heard they live on love.
MEMO FROM THE CAVE
O love, you airtight bird,
My mouse-brown
Alibis hang upside-down
Above the pegboard
With its dangled pots
I don't have chickens for;
My lies are crawling on the floor
Like families but their larvae will not
Leave this nest. I've let
Despair bed
Down in your stead
And wet
Our quilted cover
So the rot-
scent of its pussy-foot-
ing fingers lingers, when it's over.
FIRSTBORN
The weeks go by. I shelve them,
They are all the same, like peeled soup cans â¦
Beans sour in their pot. I watch the lone onion
Floating like Ophelia, caked with grease:
You listless, fidget with the spoon.
What now? You miss my care? Your yard ripens
To a ward of roses, like a year ago when staff nuns
Wheeled me down the aisle â¦
You couldn't look. I saw
Converted love, your son,
Drooling under glass, starving â¦
We are eating well.
Today my meatman turns his trained knife
On veal, your favorite. I pay with my life.
LA FORCE
Made me what I am.
Gray, glued to her dream
Kitchen, among bones, among these
Dripping willows squatted to imbed
A bulb: I tend her plot. Her pride
And joy she said. I have no pride.
The lawn thins; overfed,
Her late roses gag on fertilizer past the tool
House. Now the cards are cut.
She cannot eat, she cannot take the stairsâ
My life is sealed. The woman with the hound
Comes up but she will not be harmed.
I have the care of her.
THE GAME
And yet I've lived like this for years.
All since he quit meâcaught the moon as round as aspirin
While, across the hall, the heartfelt murmurs
Of the queers ⦠I see my punishment revolving in its den:
Around. Around. There should have been
A lesson somewhere. In Geneva, the ferocious local whore
Lay peeled for absolution with a tricot membrane
Sticking to her skin. I don't remember
How it happened that I saw. The place was filthy. She would sit
And pick her feet until they knocked. Like Customs. She'd just wait.
IIIÂ Â Â Â Â COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY
COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
PHENOMENAL SURVIVALS OF DEATH IN NANTUCKET
I
Here in Nantucket does the tiny soul
Confront the water. Yet this element is not foreign soil;
I see the water as extension of my mind,
The troubled part, and waves the waves of mind
When in Nantucket they collapsed in epilepsy
On the bare shore. I see
A shawled figure when I am asleep who says, “Our lives
Are strands between the miracles of birth
And death. I am Saint Elizabeth.
In my basket are knives.”
Awake I see Nantucket, the familiar earth.
II
Awake I see Nantucket but with this bell
Of voice I can toll you token of regions below visible:
On the third night came
A hurricane; my Saint Elizabeth came
Not and nothing could prevent the rent
Craft from its determined end. Waves dent-
ed with lightning launched my loosed mast
To fly downward, I following. They do not tell
You but bones turned coral still smell
Amid forsaken treasure. I have been past
What you hear in a shell.
III
Past what you hear in a shell, the roar,
Is the true bottom: infamous calm. The doctor
Having shut the door sat me down, took ropes
Out of reach, firearms, and with high hopes
Promised that Saint Elizabeth carried
Only foodstuffs or some flowers for charity, nor was I buried
Under the vacation island of Nantucket where
Beach animals dwell in relative compatibility and peace.
Flies, snails. Asleep I saw these
Beings as complacent angels of the land and air.
When dawn comes to the sea's
IV
Acres of shining white body in Nantucket
I shall not remember otherwise but wear a locket
With my lover's hair inside
And walk like a bride, and wear him inside.
From these shallows expands
The mercy of the sea.
My first house shall be built on these sands,
My second in the sea.
EASTER SEASON
There is almost no sound ⦠only the redundant stir
Of shrubs as perfumed temperatures embalm
Our coast. I saw the spreading gush of people with their palms.
In Westchester, the crocus spreads like cancer.
This will be the death of me. I feel the leaves close in,
Promise threaten from all sides and above.
It is not real. The green seed-pod, flaky dove
Of the bud descend. The rest is risen.
SCRAPS
We had codes
In our house. Like
Locks; they said
We never lock
Our door to you.
And never did.
Their bed
Stood, spotless as a tub â¦
I passed it every day
For twenty years, until
I went my way. My chore
Was marking time. Gluing
Relics into books I saw
Myself at seven learning
Distance at my mother's knee.
My favorite snapshot of my
Father shows him pushing forty
And lyrical
Above his firstborn's empty face.
The usual miracle.
THE TREE HOUSE
The pail droops on chain, rotten,
Where the well's been
Rinsed with bog, as round and round
The reed-weed rockets down Deer Island
Amid frosted spheres of acid: berry pick-
ing. All day long I watched the land break
Up into the ocean. Happened long ago,
And lostâwhat isn'tâbits of jetty go
Their private ways, or sink, trailing water.
Little's left. Past this window where
My mother's basil drowned
In salad, I can see our orchard, balsams
Clenched around their birds. The basil flourished on