Louise Gluck1. Firstborn
The Wound
The air stiffens to a crust.
From bed I watch
Clots of flies, crickets
Frisk and titter. Now
The weather is such grease.
All day I smell the roasts
Like presences. You
Root into your books.
You do your stuff.
In here my bedroom walls
Are paisley, like a plot
Of embryos. I lie here,
Waiting for its kick.
My love. My tenant.
As the shrubs grow
Downy, bloom and seed.
The hedges grow downy
And seed and moonlight
Burbles through the gauze.
Sticky curtains. Faking scrabble
With the pair next door
I watched you clutch your blank.
They’re both on Nembutal,
The killer pill.
And I am fixed. Gone careful,
Begging for the nod,
You hover loyally above my head. I close
My eyes. And now
The prison falls in place:
Ripe things sway in the light,
Parts of plants, leaf
Fragments…
You are covering the cot
With sheets. I fell
No end. No end. It stalls
In me. It’s still alive.
The Racer’s Widow
The elements have merged into solicitude.
Spasms of violets rise above the mud
And weed and soon the birds and ancients
Will be starting to arrive, bereaving points
South. But never mind. It is not painful to discuss
His death. I have been primed for this,
For separation, for so long. But still his face assaults
Me, I can hear that car careen again, the crowd coagulate on asphalt
In my sleep. And watching him, I feel my legs like snow
That let him finally let him go
As he lies draining there. And see
How even he did not get to keep that lovely body.
Bridal Piece
Our honeymoon
He planted us by
Water. It was March. The moon
Lurched like searchlights, like
His murmurings across my brain—
He had to have his way. As down
The beach the wet wind
Snored…I want
My innocence. I see
My family frozen in the doorway
Now, unchanged, unchanged. Their rice congeals
Around his car. He locked our bedroll
In the trunk for laughs, later, at the deep
End. Rockaway. He reaches for me in his sleep.
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 ruth—
less battle with dinner, pierced me; I saw
Venus among those clamshells, raw
Botticelli: I have known no happiness so based in truth.
Phenomenal Survivals of Death in Nantucket
I.
Here in Nantucket does the tiny sol
Confront 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 shall.
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
Our 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 pace.
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.
To Florida
Southward floated over
The vicious little houses, down
The land. Past Carolina, where
The bloom began
Beneath their throbbing clouds, they fed us
Coldcuts, free. We had our choice.
Below, the seasons twist; years
Roll backward toward the can
Like film, and the mistake appears,
To scale, soundlessly. The signs
Light up. Across the aisle
An old man twitches in his sleep. His mind
Will firm in time. His health
Will meet him at the terminal.
2. The House on Marshland
All Hallows
Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
Gretel in Darkness
This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas…
Now, far from women’s arms
and memory of women, in our father’s hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.
No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln—
Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.
The Magi
Towards world’s end, through the bare
beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
watched the same sign come forward as they pass
cities sprung around this route their gold
engraved on the desert, and yet
held our peace, these
being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
nothing changed: roofs, the barn
blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.
Flowering Plum
In spring from the black branches of the flowering plum tree
the woodthrush issues its routine
message of survival. Where does such happiness come from
as the neighbors’ daughter reads into that singing,
and matches? All afternoon she sits
in the partial shade of the plum tree, as the mild wind
floods her immaculate lap with blossoms, greenish white
and white, leaving no mark, unlike
the fruit that will inscribe
unraveling dark stains in heavier winds, in summer.
Northwood Path
For my part
we are as we were
on the path
that afternoon:
it is
October, I can see
the sun sink
drawing out
our parallel
shadows. And you,
for example what
were you thinking, so
attentive to your
shoes? I recall
we spoke of
your car
the whole length
of the woods:
in so much withering
the pokeweed had
branched into its
purplish berry—so
desire called
love into being.
But always the choice
was on both sides
characteristic,
as you said,
in the dark you came
to need,
you would do it again
The Fire
Had you died when we were together
I would have wanted nothing of you.
Now I think of you as dead, it is better.
Often, in the cool early evenings of the spring
when, with the first leaves,
all that is deadly enters the world,
I build a fire for us of pine and apple wood;
repeatedly,
the flames flare and diminish
as the night comes on in which
we see one another so clearly—
And in the days we are contented
as formerly
in the long grass,
in the woods’ green doors and shadows.
And you never say
Leave me
since the dead do not like being alone.
Under Taurus
We were on the pier, you desiring
that I see the Pleiades. I could see
everything but what you wished.
Now I will follow. There is not a single cloud; the stars
appear, even the invisible sister. Show me where to look,
as though they will stay where they are.
Instruct me in the dark.
3. Descending Figure
The Garden
1. The Fear of Birth
One sound. Then the hiss and whir
of houses gliding into their places.
And the wind
leafs through the bodies of animals—
But my body that could not content itself
with health—why should it be sprung back
into the chord of sunlight?
It will be the same again.
This fear, this inwardness,
until I am forced into a field
without immunity
even to the least shrub that walks
stiffly out of the dirt, trailing
the twisted signature of its root,
even to a tulip, a red claw.
And then the losses,
one after another,
all supportable.
2. The Garden
The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
the ecstatic reds of the roses,
so that you will come to it with your lovers.
And the willows—
see how it has shaped these green
tents of silence. Yet
there is still something you need,
your body so soft, so alive, among the stone animals.
Admit that it is terrible to be like them,
beyond harm.
3. The Fear of Love
That body lying beside me like obedient stone—
once it eyes seemed to be opening,
we could have spoken.
At that time it was winter already.
By day the sun rose in its helmet of fire
and at night also, mirrored in the moon.
Its light passed over us freely,
as though we had lain down
in order to leave no shadows,
only these two shallow dents in the snow.
And the past, as always, stretched before us,
Still, complex, impenetrable.
How long did we lie there
as, arm in arm in their cloaks of feathers,
the gods walked down
from the mountain we built for them?
4. Origins
As though a voice were saying
You should be asleep by now—
But there was no one. Nor
had the air darkened,
though the moon was there,
already filled in with marble.
As though, in a garden crowded with flowers,
a voice had said
How dull they are, these golds,
so sonorous, so repetitious
until you closed your eyes,
lying among them, all
stammering flame:
And yet you could not sleep,
poor body, the earth
still clinging to you—
5. The Fear of Burial
In the empty field, in the morning,
the body waits to be claimed.
The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock—
nothing comes to give it form again.
Think of the body’s loneliness.
At night pacing the sheared field,
its shadow buckled tightly around.
Such a long journey.
And already the remote, trembling lights of the village
not pausing for it as they scan the rows.
How far away they seem,
the wooden doors, the bread and milk
laid like weights on the table.
Pieta
Under the strained
fabric of her skin, his heart
stirred. She listened,
because he had no father.
So she knew
he wanted to stay
in her body, apart
from the world
with its cries, its
roughhousing,
but already the men
gather to see him
born: they crowd in
or kneel at worshipful
distance, like
figures in a painting
whom the star lights, shining
steadily in its dark context.
Epithalamium
There were others; their bodies
were a preparation.
I have come to see it as that.
As a stream of cries.
So much pain in the world—the formless
grief of the body, whose language
is hunger—
And in the hall, the boxed roses:
what they mean
is chaos. Then begins
the terrible charity of marriage,
husband and wife
climbing the green hill in gold light
until there is no hill,
only a flat plain stopped by the sky.
Here is my hand, he said.
But that was long ago.
Here is my hand that will not harm you.
Night Piece
He knows he will be hurt.
The warnings come to him in bed
because repose threatens him: in the camouflaging
light of the nightlight, he pretends to guard
the flesh in which his life is summarized.
He spreads his arms. On the wall, a corresponding figure
links him to the darkness he cannot control.
In its forms, the beasts originate
who are his enemies. He cannot sleep
apart from them.
Porcelain Bowl
It rules out use:
in a lawn chair, the analogous
body of a woman is arranged,
and in this light
I cannot see what time has done to her.
A few leaves fall. A wind parts the long grass,
making a path going nowhere. And the hand
involuntarily lifts; it moves across her face
so utterly lost—
The grass sways,
as though that motion were
an aspect of repose.
Pearl white
on green. Ceramic
hand in the grass.
5. Sacred Objects
Today in the field I saw
the hard, active buds of the dogwood
and wanted, as we say, to capture them,
to make them eternal. That is the premise
of renunciation: the child,
having no self to speak of,
comes to life in denial—
I stood apart in that achievement,
in that power to expose
the underlying body, like a god
for whose deed
there is no parallel in the natural world.
Aubade
Today above the gull’s call
I heard you waking me again
to see that bird, flying
so strangely over the city,
not wanting
to stop, wanting
the blue waste of the sea—
Now it skirts the suburb,
the noon light violent against it:
I feel its hunger
as your hand inside me,
a cry
so common, unmusical—
Ours were not
different. They rose
from the unexhausted
need of the body
fixing a wish to return:
the ashen dawn, our clothes
not sorted for departure.
Aphrodite
A woman exposed as rock
has this advantage:
she controls the harbor.
Ultimately, men appear,
weary of the open.
So terminates, they feel,
a story. In the beginning,
longing. At the end, joy.
In the middle, tedium.
In time, the young wife
naturally hardens. Drifting
from her side, in imagination,
the man returns not to a drudge
but to the goddess he projects.
On a hill, the armless figure
welcomes the delinquent boat,
her thighs cemented shut, barring
the fault of the rock.
World Breaking Apart
I look out over the sterile snow.
Under the white birch tree, a wheelbarrow.
The fence behind it mended. On the picnic table,
mounded snow, like the inverted contents of a bowl
whose dome the wind shapes. The wind,
with its impulse to build. And under my fingers,
the square white keys, each stamped
with its single character. I believed
a mind’s shattering released
the objects of its scrutiny: trees, blue plums in a bowl,
a man reaching for his wife’s hand
across a slatted table, and quietly covering it,
as though his will enclosed it in that gesture.
I saw them come apart, the glazed clay
begin dividing endlessly, dispersing
incoherent particles that went on
shining forever. I dreamed of watching that
the way we watched the stars on summer evenings,
my hand on your chest, the wine
holding the chill of the river. There is no such light.
And pain, the free hand, changes almost nothing.
Like the winter wind, it leaves
settled forms in the snow. Known, identifiable—
except there are no uses for them.
3. The Covenant
Out of fear, they built a dwelling place.
But a child grew between them
as they slept, and they tried
to feed themselves.
They set it on a pile of leaves,
the small discarded body
wrapped in the clean skin
of an animal. Against the black sky
they saw the massive argument of light.
Sometimes it woke. As it reached its hands
they understood they were the mother and father,
there was no authority over them.
4. The Triumph of Achilles
Mock Orange
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—
and the cry that always escapes,
the low humiliating
premise of union—
In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tire antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.
How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?
2. Metamorphosis
My father has forgotten me
in the excitement of dying.
Like a child who will not eat,
he takes no notice of anything.
I sit at the edge of his bed
while the living circle us
like so many tree stumps.
Once, for the smallest
fraction of an instant, I thought
he was alive in the present again;
then he looked at me
as a blind man stares
straight into the sun, since
whatever it could do to him
is done already.
Then his flushed face
turned away from the contract.
[Poem unknown, fragment]
It was untrustworthy springtime
he was seen moving
among us like one of us
in green Judea, covered with the veil of life,
among the olive trees, among the many shapes
[Poem unknown, fragment]
3. Lord, who gave me
my solitude, I watch
the sun descending:
in the marketplace
the stalls empty, the remaining children
bicker at the fountain—
But even at night, when it can’t be seen,
the flame of the sun
still heats the pavements.
That’s why, on earth,
so much life’s sprung up,
because the sun maintains
steady warmth at its periphery.
Does this suggest your meaning:
that the game resumes,
in the dust beneath
the infant god of the fountain;
there is nothing fixed,
there is no assurance of death—
4. I take my basket to the brazen market,
to the gathering place.
I ask you, how much beauty
can a person bear? It is
heavier than ugliness, even the burden
of emptiness is nothing beside it.
Crates of eggs, papaya, sacks of yellow lemons—
I am not a strong woman. It isn’t easy
to want so much, to walk
with such a heavy basket, either
bent reed, or willow.
8. Song of Invisible Boundaries
Last night I dreamed we were in Venice;
today, we are in Venice. Now, lying here,
I think there are no boundaries to my dreams,
nothing we wont share.
So there is nothing to describe. We’re interchangeable
with anyone, in joy
changed to a mute couple.
Then why did we worship clarity,
to speak, in the end, only each other’s names,
to speak, as now, not even whole words,
only vowels?
Finally, this is what we craved,
this lying in the bright light without distinction—
we who would leave behind
exact records.
Horse
What does this horse give you
that I cannot give you?
I watch you when you are alone,
when you ride into the field behind the dairy,
your hands buried in the mare’s
dark mane.
Then I know what lies behind your silence:
scorn, hatred of me, of marriage. Still,
you want me to touch you; you cry out
as brides cry, but when I look at you I see
there are no children in your body.
Then what is there?
Nothing, I think. Only haste
to die before I die.
In a dream, I watched you ride the horse
Over the dry fields and then
dismount: you two walked together;
in the dark, you had no shadows.
But I felt them coming towards me
since at night they go anywhere,
they are their own masters.
Look at me. You think I don’t understand?
What is the animal
if not passage out of this life.
5. Ararat
[Unknown]
In our family, everyone loves flowers.
That’s why the graves are so odd:
no flowers, just padlocks of grass,
and in the center, plaques of granite,
the inscriptions terse, the shallow letters
sometimes filling with dirt.
To clean them out, you use your handkerchief.
With my sister, it’s different,
it’s an obsession. Weekends, she sits on my mother’s porch,
reading catalogues. Every autumn, she plants bulbs by the
brick stoop;
every spring, waits for flowers.
No one discusses cost. It’s understood
my mother pays; after all,
it’s her garden, every flower
planted for my father. They both see
the house as his true grave.
Not everything thrives on Long Island.
Sometimes the summer gets too hot’
sometimes a heavy rain beats down the flowers.
That’s how the poppies died, after one day,
because they’re very fragile.
My mother’s tense, upset about my sister:
Now she’ll never know how beautiful they were,
pure pink, with no dark spots. That means
she’d going to feel deprived again.
But for my sister, that’s the condition of love.
She was my father’s daughter:
the face of love, to her,
is the face of turning away.
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 generosity—
After ten years, the roses stopped.
But all that time I thought
The deal 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.
Paradise
I grew up in a village: now
it’s almost a city.
People came from the city, wanting
something simple, something
better for the children.
Clean air; nearby
a little stable.
All the streets
named after sweethearts or girl children.
Our house was gray, the sort of place
you buy to raise a family.
My mother’s still there, all alone.
When she’s lonely, she watches television.
The houses get closer together,
the old trees dies or get taken down.
In some ways, my father’s
close, too; we call
a stone by his name.
Now, above his head, the grass blinks,
in spring, when the snow has melted.
Then the lilac blooms, heavy, like clusters of grapes.
They always said
I was like my father, the way he showed
contempt for emotion.
They’re the emotional ones,
my sister and my mother.
More and more
my sister comes from the city,
weeds, tidies the garden. My mother
lets her take over: she’s the one
who cares, the one who does the work.
To her, it looks like country—
the clipped lawns, strips of colored flowers.
She doesn’t know what it once was.
But I know. Like Adam,
I was the firstborn.
Believe me, you never heal,
you never forget the ache in your side,
the place where something was taken away
to make another person.
6. The Wild Iris
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overheard, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Matins
The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves
of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.
Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils,
Ice Wings, Cantatrice; dark
leaves of the wild violet. Noah says
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and outer world. I make
another case—being depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace,
in the evening rain
almost able to feel sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.
Matins
Unreachable father, when we were first
exiled from heaven, you made
a replica, a place in one sense
different from heaven, being
designed to teach a lesson: otherwise
the same—beauty on either side, beauty
without alternative—Except
we didn’t know what was the lesson. Left alone,
we exhausted each other. Years
of darkness followed; we took turns
working the garden, the first tears
filling our eyes as earth
misted with petals, some
dark red, some flesh colored—
We never thought of you
whom we were learning to worship.
We merely knew it wasn’t human nature to love
only what returns love.
Lamium
This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.
The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.
Living things don’t all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.
But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.
Matins
Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful
are always lied to since the weak are always
driven by panic. I cannot love
what I can’t conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing: are you like the hawthorn tree,
always the same thing in the same place,
or are you more the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up
a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,
and the next year, purple in the rose garden? You must see
it is useless to us, this silence that promotes belief
you must be all things, the foxglove and the hawthorn tree,
the vulnerable rose and tough daisy—we are left to think
you couldn’t possibly exist. Is this
what you mean us to think, does this explain
the silence of the morning,
the crickets not yet rubbing their wings, the cats
not fighting in the yard?
Scilla
Not I, you idiot, not self, but we, we—waves
of sky blue like
a critique of heaven: why
do you treasure your voice
when to be one thing
is to be next to nothing?
Why do you look up? To hear
an echo like the voice
of god? You are all the same to us,
solitary, standing above us, planning
your silly lives: you go
where you are sent, like all things,
where the wind plants you,
one or another of you forever
looking down and seeing some image
of water, and hearing what? Waves,
and over waver, birds singing.
The Garden
I couldn’t do it again,
I can hardly bear to look at it—
in the garden, in light rain
the young couple planting
a row of peas, as though
no one has ever done this before,
the great difficulties have never as yet
been faced and solved—
They cannot see themselves,
in fresh dirt, starting up
without perspective,
the hills behind them pale green, clouded with flowers—
She wants to stop;
he wants to get to the end,
to stay with the thing—
Look at her, touching his cheek
to make a truce, her fingers
cool with spring rain;
in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus—
even here, even at the beginning of love,
her hand leaving his face makes
an image of departure
and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.
The Hawthorn Tree
Side by side, not
hand in hand; I watch you
walking in the summer garden—things
that can’t move
learn to see; I do not need
to chase you through
the garden; human beings leave
signs of feeling
everywhere, flowers
scattered on the dirt path, all
white and gold, some
lifted a little by
the evening wind; I do not need
to follow where you are now,
deep in the poisonous field, to know
the cause of your flight, human
passion or rage: for what else
would you let drop
all you have gathered?
Matins
You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I’m looking for courage, for some evidence
my life will change, though
it takes forever, checking
each clump for the symbolic
leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already
the leaves turning, always the sick trees
going first, the dying turning
brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform
their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?
As empty now as at the first note.
Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?
Field Flowers
What are you saying? That you want
eternal life? Are your thoughts really
as compelling as all that? Certainly
you don’t look at us, don’t listen to us,
on your skin
stain of sun, dust
of yellow buttercups: I’m talking
to you, you staring through
bars of high grass shaking
your little rattle— O
the soul! the soul! Is it enough
only to look inward? Contempt
for humanity is one thing, but why
disdain the expansive
field, your gaze rising over the clear heads
of the wild buttercups into what? Your poor
idea of heaven: absence
of change. Better than earth? How
would you know, who are neither
here nor there, standing in our midst?
The Red Poppy
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
Clover
What is dispersed
among us, which you call
the sign of blessedness
although it is, like us,
a weed, a thing
to be routed out—
by what logic
do you hoard
a single tendril
of something you want
dead?
If there is any presence among us
so powerful, should it not
multiply, in service
of the adored garden?
You should be asking
these questions yourself,
not leaving them
to your victims. You should know
that when you swagger among us
I hear two voices speaking,
one your spirit, one
the acts of your hands.
Vespers
Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.
By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
exclusively in warmer climates,
in fervent Sicily and Mexico and California,
where are grown the unimaginable
apricot and fragile peach. Perhaps
they see your face in Sicily; here, we barely see
the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself
to share with John and Noah the tomato crop.
If there is justice in some other world, those
like myself, whom nature forces
into the lives of abstinence, should get
the lion’s share of all things, all
objects of hunger, greed being
praise of you. And no one praises
more intensely than I, with more
painfully checked desire, or more deserves
to sit at your right hand, if it exists, partaking
of the perishable, the immortal fig,
which does not travel.
Vespers
More than you love me, very possibly
you love the beasts of the field, even,
possibly, the field itself, in August dotted
with wild chicory and aster:
I know. I have compared myself
to those flowers, their range of feeling
so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep,
actually gray: I am uniquely
suited to praise you. Then why
torment me? I study the hawkweed,
the buttercup protected from the grazing herd
by being poisonous: is pain
your gift to make me
conscious in my need of you, as though
I must need you to worship you,
or have you abandoned me
in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning
silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining
pale blue and deep blue, since you already know
how like your raiment it is.
End of Summer
After all things occurred to me,
the void occurred to me.
There is a limit
to the pleasure I had in form—
I am not like you in this,
I have no release in another body,
I have no need
of shelter outside myself—
My poor inspired
creation, you are
distractions, finally,
mere curtailment; you are
too little like me in the end
to please me.
And so adamant—
you want to be paid off
for your disappearance,
all paid in some part of the earth,
some souvenir, as you were once
rewarded for labor,
the scribe being paid
in silver, the shepherd in barley
although it is not earth
that is lasting, not
these small chips of matter—
If you would open your eyes
you would see me, you would see
the emptiness of heaven
mirrored on earth, the fields
vacant again, lifeless, covered with snow—
then white light
no longer disguised as matter.
Harvest
It grieves me to think of you in the past—
Look at you, blindly clinging to earth
as though it were the vineyards of heaven
while the fields go up in flames around you—
Ah, little ones, how unsubtle you are:
it is at once the gift and the torment.
If what you fear in death
is punishment beyond this, you need not
fear death:
how many times must I destroy my own creation
to teach you
this is your punishment:
with one gesture I establish you
in time and in paradise.
Ipomoea
What was my crime in another life,
as in this life my crime
is sorrow, that I am not to be
permitted to ascend ever again,
never in any sense
permitted to repeat my life,
would in the hawthorn, all
earthly beauty my punishment
as it is yours—
Source of my suffering, why
have you drawn from me
these flowers like the sky, except
to mark me as a part
of my master: I am
his cloak’s color, my flesh giveth
form to his glory.
Vespers
End of August. Heat
like a tent over
John’s garden. And some things
have the nerve to be getting started,
clusters of tomatoes, stands
of late lilies—optimism
of the great stalks—imperial
gold and silver: but why
start anything
so close to the end?
Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies
winter will kill, that won’t
come back in spring. Or
are you thinking
I spend too much time
looking ahead, like
an old woman wearing
sweaters in summer;
are you saying I can
flourish, having
no hope
of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory
of the open throat, white,
spotted with crimson.
Lullaby
Time to rest now; you have had
enough excitement for the time being.
Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies
in the room, flickering here and there, here and there,
and summer’s deep sweetness filling the open window.
Don’t think of these things anymore.
Listen to my breathing, your own breathing
like the fireflies, each small breath
a flare in which the world appears.
I’ve sung to you for long enough in the summer night.
I’ll win you over in the end; the world can’t give you
this sustained vision.
You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be
taught to love
silence and darkness.
7. Meadowlands
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.
Odysseus’ Decision
The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time
begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the narrative
sea, at dawn when its pull is strongest.
What has brought us here
will lead us away; our ship
sways in the tined harbor water.
Now the spell is ended.
Give him back his life,
sea that can only move forward.
Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard—
this would have been
forty years ago—behind,
only meadow. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at the window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts—
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
Circe’s Grief
In the end, I made myself
known to your wife as
a god would, in her own house, in
Ithaca, a voice
without a body; she
paused in her weaving, her head turning
first to the right, then left
though it was hopeless of course
to trace that sound to any
objective source: I doubt
she will return to her loom
with what she knows now. When
you see her again, tell her
this is how a god says goodbye:
if I am in her head forever
I am in your life forever.
8. Vita Nova
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 cakes—
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 confident—
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.
The Open Grave
My mother made my need,
my father my conscience.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
Therefore it will cost me
bitterly to lie,
to prostrate myself
at the edge of a grave.
I say to the earth
be kind to my mother,
now and later.
Save, with your coldness,
the beauty we all envied.
I became an old woman.
I welcomed the dark
I used to fear.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
The New Life
I slept the sleep of the just,
later the sleep of the unborn
who come into the world
guilty of many crimes.
And what these crimes are
nobody knows at the beginning.
Only after many years does one know.
Only after long life is one prepared
to read the equation.
I begin now to perceive
the nature of my soul, the soul
I inhabit as punishment.
Inflexible, even in hunger.
I have been in my other lives
too hasty, too eager,
my haste a source of pain in the world.
Swaggering as a tyrant swaggers;
for all my amorousness,
cold at heart, in the manner of the superficial.
I slept the sleep of the just;
I lived the life of a criminal
slowly repaying an impossible debt.
And I died having answered for
one species of ruthlessness.
Formaggio
The world
was whole because
it shattered. When in shattered,
then we knew what it was.
It never healed itself.
But in the deep fissures, smaller worlds appeared:
it was a good thing that human beings made them;
human beings know what they need,
better than any god.
On Huron Avenue they became
a block of stores; they became
Fishmonger, Formaggio. Whatever
they were or sold, they were
alike in their function: they were
visions of safety. Like
a resting place. The salespeople
were like parents; they appeared
to live there. On the whole,
kinder than parents.
Tributaries
feeding into a large river: I had
many lives. In the provisional world,
I stood where the fruit was,
flats of cherries, clementines,
under Hallie’s flowers.
I had many lives. Feeding
into a river, the river
feeding into a great ocean. If the self
becomes invisible has it disappeared?
I thrived. I lived
not completely alone, alone
but not completely, strangers
surging around me.
That’s what the sea is:
we exist in secret.
I had lives before this, stems
of a spray of flowers: they became
one thing, held by a ribbon at the center, a ribbon
visible under the hand. Above the hand,
the branching future, stems
ending in flowers. And the gripped fist—
that would be the self in the present.
Descent to the Valley
I found the years of the climb upward
difficult, filled with anxiety.
I didn’t doubt my capacities:
rather, as I moved toward it,
I feared the future, the shape of which
I perceived. I saw
the shape of a human life:
on the one side, always upward and forward
into the light; on the other side,
downward into the mists of uncertainty.
All eagerness undermined by knowledge.
I have found it otherwise.
The light of the pinnacle, the light that was,
theoretically, the goal of the climb,
proves to have been poignantly abstract:
my mind, in its ascent,
was entirely given over to detail, never
perception of form; my eyes
nervously attending to footing.
How sweet my life now
in its descent to the valley,
the valley itself not mist-covered
but fertile and tranquil.
So that for the first time I find myself
able to look ahead, able to look at the world,
even to move toward it.
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 house—Vera 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?
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 the 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.
Everyone else much farther along.
I was back at the beginning
at a time in life we can’t remember beginnings.
The bird
collected twigs in the apple tree, relating
each addition to existing mass.
But when was there suddenly mass?
It took what it found after the others
were finished.
The same materials—why should it matter
to be finished last? The same materials, the same
limited good. Brown twigs,
broken and fallen. And in one,
a length of yellow wool.
Then it was spring and I was inexplicably happy.
I knew where I was: on Broadway with my bag of groceries.
Spring fruit in the stores: first
cherries at Formaggio. Forsythia
beginning.
First I was at peace.
Then I was contented, satisfied.
And then flashes of joy.
And the season changed—for all of us,
of course.
And as I peered out my mind grew sharper.
And I remember accurately
the sequence of my responses,
my eyes fixing on each thing
from the shelter of the hidden self:
first, I love it.
Then, I can use it.
Lament
A terrible thing is happening—my love
is dying again, my love who has died already:
died and been mourned. And music continues,
music of separation: the trees
become instruments.
How cruel the earth, the willows shimmering,
the birches bending and sighing.
How cruel, how profoundly tender.
My love is dying; my love
not only a person, but an idea, a life.
What will I live for?
Where will I find him again
if not in grief, dark wood
from which the lute is made.
Once is enough. Once is enough
to say goodbye on earth.
And to grieve, that too, of course.
Once is enough to say goodbye forever.
The willows shimmer by the stone fountain,
paths of flowers abutting.
Once is enough: why is he living again?
And so briefly, and only in dream.
My love is dying; parting has started again.
And through the veils of the willows
sunlight rising and glowing,
not the light we knew.
And the birds singing again, even the mourning dove.
Ah, I have sung this son. By the stone fountain
the willows are singing again
with unspeakable tenderness, trailing their leaves
in the radiant water.
Clearly they know, they know. He is dying again,
and the world also. Dying the rest of my life,
so I believe.
Vita Nova
In the splitting up dream
we were fighting over who would keep
the dog,
Blizzard. You tell me
what that name means. He was
a cross between
something big and fluffy
and a dachshund. Does this have to be
the male and female
genitalia? Poor Blizzard,
why was he a dog? He barely touched
the hummus in his dogfood dish.
Then there was something else,
a sound. Like
gravel being moved. Or sand?
The sands of time? Then it was
Erica with her maracas,
like the sands of time
personified. Who will
explain this to
the dog? Blizzard,
Daddy needs you; Daddy’s heart is empty,
not because he’s leaving Mommy but because
the kind of love he wants Mommy
doesn’t have, Mommy’s
too ironic—Mommy wouldn’t do
the rhumba in the driveway. Or
is this wrong. Supposing
I’m the dog, as in
my child-self, unconsolable because
completely pre-verbal? With
anorexia! O Blizzard,
be brave dog—this is
all material; you’ll wake up
in a different world,
you will eat again, you will grow up into a poet!
Life is very weird, no matter how it ends,
very filled with dreams. Never
will I forget your face, your frantic human eyes
swollen with tears.
I thought my life was over and my heart was broken.
Then I moved to Cambridge.
9. The Seven Ages
The Sensual World
I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.
Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
Subtly, not to say with connivance.
I was not prepared: I stood in my grandmother’s kitchen,
holding out my glass. Stewed plums, stewed apricots—
the juice poured off into the glass of ice.
And the water added, patiently, in small increments,
the various cousins discriminating, tasting
with each addition—
aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:
the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,
more light passing through it.
Delight, then solace. My grandmother waiting,
to see if more was wanted. Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,
the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs
fully exposed, awakened, fully alive—
Deep immersion, and with it
mysterious safety. Far away, the fruit glowing in its glass bowls.
Outside the kitchen, the sun setting.
I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,
not a suspension; the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:
you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.
Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth—
Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meanwhile, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.
from Birthday
And thinking—which meant, I remember, the attempts of the mind
to prevent change.
from Birthday
That is the problem of silence:
one cannot test one’s ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.
Copper Beech
Why is the earth angry at heaven?
If there’s a question, is there an answer?
On Dana Street, a copper beech.
Immense, like the tree of my childhood,
but with a violence I wasn’t ready to see then.
I was a child like a pointed finger,
then an explosion of darkness;
my mother could do nothing with me.
Interesting, isn’t it,
the language she used.
The copper beech rearing like an animal.
Frustration, rage, the terrible wounded pride
of rebuffed love—I remember
rising from the earth to heaven. I remember
I had two parents,
one harsh, one invisible. Poor
clouded father, who worked
only in gold and silver.
from Civilization
Darkness. Here and there a few fires in doorways,
wind whipping around the corners of buildings—
Ripe Peach
1
There was a time
only certainty gave me
any joy. Imagine—
certainty, a dead thing.
2
And then the world,
the experiment.
The obscene mouth
famished with love—
it is like love:
the abrupt, hard
certainty of the end—
3
In the center of the mind,
the hard pit,
the conclusion. As though
the fruit itself
never existed, only
the end, the point
midway between
anticipation and nostalgia—
4
So much fear.
So much terror of the physical world.
The mind frantic
guarding the body from
the passing, the temporary,
the body straining against it—
5
A peach on the kitchen table.
A replica. It is the earth,
the same
disappearing sweetness
surrounding the stone end,
and like the earth
available—
6
An opportunity
for happiness: earth
we cannot possess
only experience—And now
sensation: the mind
silenced by fruit—
7
They are not
reconciled. The body
here, the mind
separate, not
merely a warden:
it has separate joys.
It is the night sky,
the fiercest stars are its
immaculate distinctions—
8
Can it survive? Is there
light that survives the end
in which the mind’s enterprise
continues to live: thought
darting about the room,
above the bowl of fruit—
9
Fifty years. The night sky
filled with shooting stars.
Light, music
from far away—I must be
nearly gone. I must be
stone, since the earth
surrounds me—
10
There was
a peach in a wicker basket.
There was a bowl of fruit.
Fifty years. Such a long walk
from the door to the table.
10. Averno
The Night Migrations
This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations.
It grieves me to think
the dead won’t see them—
these thing we depend on,
they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it wont need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.
October
4.
The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn; the unspeakable
has entered them.
This is the light of autumn, nor the light that says
I am reborn.
Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered.
This is the present, an allegory of waste.
So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate:
the ideal burns in you like a fever.
Or not like fever, like a second heart.
The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.
They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space
of the mind.
They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.
And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly
in anticipation of silence.
The ear gets used to them.
They eye gets used to disappearances.
You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.
A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;
it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.
How privileged you are, to be still passionately
Clinging to what you love;
The forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.
Maestoso, doloroso:
This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.
from Persephone the Wanderer
Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.
from Persephone the Wanderer
My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—
What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?
from Prism
When you fall in love, my sister said,
it’s like being struck by lightning.
She was speaking hopefully,
to draw the attention of the lightning.
Crater Lake
There was a war between good and evil.
We decided to call the body good.
That made death evil.
It turned the soul
against death completely.
Like a foot soldier wanting
to serve a great warrior, the soul
wanted to side with the body.
It turned against the dark,
against the forms of death
it recognized.
Where does the voice come from
that says suppose the war
is evil, that says
suppose the body did this to us,
made us afraid of love—
The Evening Star
Tonight, for the first time in many years,
there appeared to me again
a vision of the earth’s splendor:
in the evening sky
the first star seemed
to increase in brilliance
as the earth darkened
until at last it could grow no darker.
And the light, which was the light of death,
Seemed to restore to earth
its power to console. There were
no other stars. Only the one
whose name I knew
as in my other life I did her
injury: Venus
star of the early evening,
to you I dedicate
my vision, since on this blank surface
you have cast enough light
to make my thought
visible again.
Landscape
5.
After the sun set
we road quickly, in the hope of finding
shelter before darkness.
I could see the stars already,
first in the eastern sky:
we rode, therefore,
away from the light
and toward the sea, since
I had heard of a village there.
After some time, the snow began.
Not thickly at first, then
steadily until the earth
was covered with a white film.
The way we traveled showed
clearly when I turned my head—
for a short while it made
a dark trajectory across the earth—
Then the snow was thick, the path vanished.
The horse was tired and hungry;
he could no longer find
sure footing anywhere. I told myself:
I have been lost before, I have been cold before.
The night has come to me
exactly this way, as a premonition—
And I thought: if I am asked
to return here, I would like to come back
as a human being, and my horse
to remain himself. Otherwise
I would not know how to begin again.
A Myth of Innocence
One summer she goes into field as usual
stopping for a bit at the pool where she often
looks at herself, to see
if she detects any changes. She sees
the same person, the horrible mantle
of daughterliness still clinging to her.
The sun seems, in the water, very close.
That’s my uncle spying again, she thinks—
everything in nature is in some way her relative.
I am never alone, she thinks,
turning the thought into a prayer.
Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.
No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her, right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.
This is the last moment she remembers clearly.
Then the dark god bore her away.
She also remembers, less clearly,
the chilling insight that from this moment
she couldn’t live without him again.
The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was.
She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,
I was abducted, but it sounds
Wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.
Then she says, I was not abducted.
Then she days, I offered myself, I wanted
to escape my body. Even, sometimes,
I willed this. But ignorance
cannot will knowledge. Ignorance
wills something imagined, which it believes exists.
All the different nouns—
She says them in rotation.
Death, husband, god, stranger.
Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.
I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.
She can’t remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.
Telescope
There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.
You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.
You’re not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participate in their stillness, their immensity.
Then you’re in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.
You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.
You see again how far away
each thing is from every other thing.
