For My Muse
My muse, my sister, my self,
looked me in the face;
her eyes were clear
and richly colored as gems.
She removed the golden ring
from my—from her—finger,
the royal ring and signet,
the first gift of the spring
when I became a woman.
It seemed like an inspiration:
I let her take it away.
Muse, sister, self!
You see what kind of happiness they have,
young women, wives, widows . . .
better to have your body broken
on the wheel than be broken in to serve a man.
I understand. Even I
have this much power of divination:
the daisy’s tender petal will be torn,
someone will love or love me not.
All born on earth
learn love hurts.
A candle burns in my window all night
to guide in—no one at all.
There’s no one I long for like that.
And no, I don’t want to know
what a kiss feels like.
No, no, no.
Tomorrow the mirror will tell me,
with a silver smile, “The color of your eyes has dulled,
they’re no longer clear with innocence.”
I’ll shyly reply, “My sister,
my self, my muse took away
my ring of self-sovereignty.
It seemed like an inspiration
and I let her strip off
the golden gift God gave me.”
A Lady and Her Maid
I
Isn’t it sad when things are forgotten?
Everyone mourns for something lost,
for the dreams we dreamed in the springtime of life,
shattered past repairing, like Pierretta’s pitcher
in the well-known fable by La Fontaine.
Pierretta the milkmaid was walking to market,
she carried on her head a pitcher of milk,
nicely balanced, intending to sell it.
She’d buy herself a chicken with the profits,
earn enough from its eggs over time
to buy her own cow—
thoughts of her eventual wealth
set her dancing.
That golden pitcher filled with dreams
slipped from her head, broke on the road,
gray clay shards in a puddle of white.
Try she did to gather the fragments:
too badly smashed to ever glue back.
That’s how it goes with young people’s dreams . . .
Today a lady said to her maid,
“Can you imagine, Alyssa,
how very tiresome my life’s become?
“I hardly stay awake through the tedium of meals,
I forget to eat, to drink. Well you know
I’m even forgetting to paint on a face:
I nearly went out with unpencilled eyebrows!
“Oh, Alyssa, Alyssa, can’t you suggest
some remedy? A way to get him back?
If you could, I’d give you whatever you asked,
even this house, even all my best dresses!
“I dreamed of him. He was wearing a crown.
What does it mean? I’m afraid to even sleep.”
In Alyssa’s locket is a curl of dark hair.
I don’t suppose
you can imagine
whose.
II
“How late it is, no wonder I’m yawning.”
“Madame should take her gentle rest.
I’ll see to it the red wig’s perfectly curled
for my lovely, slender mistress.
“I’ll work in those all pretty green ribbons,
fasten them at the side with the pearl clasp.
I know who it’s for. I read Madame’s note,
‘I’ll wait for you by the maple tree,
my mysterious count!’
“My lady knows just how to slyly
half-suppress a laugh
from behind the lace of a carnival mask!
And yes, madame has instructed me
to be sure her garters are perfumed.”
An early sunbeam falls from the little window
on the dark dress laid out for her ladyship;
that patch of sunlight glides across the fabric
as the hours pass and Madame—in such a dream,
as one dreams in the springtime of one’s life—
is already in the arms of her mysterious count
in the shade of the maple.
Masquerade Ball in the Garden
Moonlight glitters on the place roof,
silvers the river’s ripples.
The prince is kissing the hand of the marquise,
so soft, so cool, so exquisitely perfumed.
“Oh, Prince,” she curtsys, smiling,
“you will be my partner for the quadrille?”
Behind her pale carnival mask
she slowly grows paler still,
feeling the heat of her own desire,
anticipating his.
The gazebo is screened by poplar trees
their leaves appear to shimmer
in the summer night’s breeze;
below these noble trees, lowly hedges
stand, lackey-like, at the entrance.
The only indication there’s anyone within
are their overheard words.
“For you, ma belle,
I’d wrest Baghdad from the Arab,
reclaim Constantinople from the Turk!
Don’t deny me this little victory . . . . ”
Then, later, “How rarely you smile, Marquise!
I wonder now how I ever dared embrace
so imposing a woman!” A long silence follows.
The gazebo is dark, the night wears on,
one begins to feel its chill. Then, she,
“Very well, shall we go join the dance?”
They return to where the colored lanterns glimmer,
in the boughs of maples and elms,
and a pair of ladies in green gowns play cards
with two medieval monks who are losing gallantly.
A pallid Pierrot with an azalea bouquet,
meets the couple with a grin, “My Prince,
the ostrich feather’s bent in the the hat of the marquise,
I don’t suppose you’re to blame?”
Evening in My Room
I say now such things
as one’s only able to say
soundlessly to one’s own soul,
things that perhaps one ought not even think.
Now—while a lost bee drones around
the vase of pallid chrysanthemums,
under the impression
he’s yet in a meadow—in this stuffy room
oppressively scented by dried flowers, herbs
and spices in sachets embalming
my linens in wardrobe and chest;
I recall, and relive, and rehearse such words,
to myself alone, in this narrow room
with its too-little window, this room that holds
the memory of love, remembers,
without penitence, times gone by—
despite the framed embroidered motto
hanging over the bed, asking God’s mercy
in fine round-lettered calligraphic French,
“No,” I say to my soul, “Don’t even touch this,
don’t seek out hints, or sad last traces
of that story so old it feels like a fable!”
The glossy cloaks of the brilliantly
tinted Sèvres figurines
grow dull with day’s waning.
A last sunbeam falls
from the little window, yellow and heavy, catches
the richly tinted bouquet of dahlias,
traps them in its amber.
As in in a dream, I hear the sound
of someone’s violin,
and tentative notes on the harpsichord.
The Gray-Eyed King
Sacred is this unholy pain;
eternal, but not beginningless—
he died yesterday, the gray-eyed king.
The air was heavy, the sunset dull red,
my husband came home and, in passing, he said,
“Did you know? The gray-eyed king is dead.
They found his body by a great old oak,
the other hunters carried him home.
“Think of his poor queen! Young as she was,
last night was enough to turn her hair gray.”
My husband found his pipe by the hearth,
left for a night job.
I sat there and I stared
and stared at my daughter’s gray eyes.
The poplar trees outside the window
whispered to me in a rustling of leaves,
“Your king, your gray-eyed king is gone,
never in this world will you see him more.”
Fisherman
Your sleeves are rolled up to the elbows;
your eyes are bluer than ice;
the strong, the overwhelming smell of tar
from your fishnets becomes you
as does your laborer’s tan.
The collar of your blue work shirt
is always, always open,
a couple of buttons undone;
the fisherwomen stare and sigh
and blush at what they find themselves thinking.
Even that girl of thirteen
who pushes a barrow of fish through the streets—
come evening, she wanders
out on the cape
as though she were lost.
Her face is drawn, her arms feel weak,
her eyes are sunken and dull.
She stands there, looking out to sea,
so long, so still, the crabs grow bold,
crawl out, one even climbs
over her foot.
She doesn’t notice its tickling,
much less does she now
reach out a hand to catch it;
the blood is thudding in her head: she’s hurt,
her body aches with craving
His Tastes
There were three things in the world he did like:
a song sung at sunset,
the sight of white peacocks,
and faded old maps of the New World.
He didn’t care for the sound of children crying,
too-sweet tea, or females being emotional
. . . I can’t believe I was his wife.
No letter came today either . . .
No letter came today either.
Maybe he forgot. Maybe he moved
and never even got my last note.
Springtime charges the air with gladness
as would a silvery trill of laughter.
Boats in the bay are swayed by the waves.
No letter came from him again today.
It feels like he was just here,
so in love, so good to me, so much mine—
but that was when the world was white with winter.
There’s a kind of toxic sadness only springtime brings.
It’s already spring,
and it still feels as though he were just here.
I hear the gentle melodic tremor
of a bow drawn across violin stings;
it throbs like the heart of someone who’s dying,
so painfully plaintive. I’m half afraid
my own heart will break before I can finish
writing these few shaky lines.
Caption for an Unfinished Portrait
Don’t feel sorry for me, don’t sigh:
it’s a criminal waste of sympathy.
Here, on a beige square of canvas,
in my half-finished picture,
I vaguely, strangely materialize,
like a sad, uncertain apparition.
The arms are raised at an unnatural angle.
It looks painful. There’s a frightened kind of smile
in the eyes. I really couldn’t have looked otherwise,
awaiting his dread pleasure.
That’s how he wanted me. He made me be like that.
His unemotional, toneless words
were even more cruel, so spoken.
If my lips in the picture look terribly red,
it’s because my cheeks went white with terror..
If he was at fault, he didn’t commit
any mortal sin. And he left. He’s far away,
gazing into someone else’s eyes,
while I sit here, awake
in a kind of dreamless sleep,
not dead, but really not alive.
Sugary, the scent . . .
Sugary, the scent of the purpling grapes;
springtime breezes tease;
the air’s so clear, it makes the eye drunk
with distance. Your voice is dull and glum,
but I’m not feeling sorry
for you or anyone.
Spiders are stretching their nets
in the berry bushes; green vines are reaching
upwards, still supple, thin and new.
Like tiny icebergs in the gleaming blue waters
of the river, swim the clouds
of the brightly blue reflected sky.
The sun’s in mid-heaven, so brightly white.
If you need to whisper how much you suffer
go tell it to the waves, lean down very close
when you do it; maybe a ripple
will reward your lips with a wet little kiss.
Poem in the Style of I. F. Annensky
The east was just beginning to brighten
into blue in the hour
when I said goodbye to you,
my first little folly of a romance.
All you said was, “I won’t forget.”
I wasn’t so quick to believe you then . . . .
Faces appear in one’s life, faces fade,
you no longer recall what they looked like;
those closest to you once, they feel so far away.
How did it come about
that I somehow managed to turn down
the corner of this particular page?
Now the book always falls open
to this early chapter, and it’s as though
irretrievable years hadn’t passed
and it’s still that very moment of farewell.
Once I claimed my heart was made of stone.
Now I know better. It’s fire.
I’ll never know now,
did I fall for you all on my own,
or was it because you loved me first?
For My Friend Vera
A light mist filled the park, flaring gas lamps
made bright blurs by the gates;
all I remember clearly
out of all that indistinctness
is your easy-going, friendly glance
for me, a just-met stranger.
Your hurt, unguessed by everyone else,
I recognized at once: so like my own.
You saw your pain in me: the hastened heart,
the troubled breath, all the symptoms
of someone poisoned by love.
I will always treasure, celebrate the day
which made us friends as close
as only those can be who’ve suffered the same.
Whenever you call, you know I’ll come;
you never blamed me or thought me at fault,
and you were the only one.
Like the cuckoo in the clock . . .
Like the cuckoo in the clock,
I seem nearly alive.
I don’t envy birds in the forest,
I just crow out the hours
when my clock is wound.
Only on an enemy
would I wish this existence.
But in fact, I don’t wish anything.
I have less wants than a pet,
I’m only a toy.
Funeral
I’m scouting locations, looking for one
that might be just right for a grave.
Any thoughts? It should be someplace sunny.
A field in the countryside
would be bright enough,
but the winds blow so cold . . . .
The coast might do, though a rocky beach
can seem pretty dismal at times.
Still, that’s what she would have preferred.
She was always fond of quiet, isolated places—
and the beach does get sun—that’s rather a plus.
Maybe I’ll build a little house
to shelter her here, as if building a home
for us both, for all the years to come—
a house with a little door
between two windows, and, inside, a lamp
like the one you’d light for an icon
in a far corner of the room,
burning red like our home’s dark heart.
You know, in her delirium,
when she was in so much pain,
she thought she already saw
the plains of paradise;
but the monk at her bedside scolded,
“Such presumptuous visions
aren’t meant for sinners!”
Her face went white in her last agony,
she whispered she didn’t care about heaven,
she only wanted to go with me . . . .
And here we are, both of us free,
to be together forever,
with the waves rolling blue at our feet,
by the surf-roaring shore of the sea,
her tomb by the sounding sea.
Garden
Last night iced the garden;
it sparkles, crackles underfoot.
He left, and I know he regrets it,
but there’s really no path back.
The winter sun is pale and dull,
like a little round white window
in the dull pale winter sky—
like a window on the past
with his ghostly plaintive face
pressed against the glass.
The bad things happening here
take away my trust, they feel
like the omens they are.
The footprints he left
last night, when he left,
still show through the frost on the path.
The sinking sun’s dim, dying face,
sheds a slant-wise white good-night
on the winter-mute field.
No more does one hear
the sad harrowing cries
of the last late-migrating cranes.
At the Pond
Slender shepherd boy,
you see, I’m losing my mind.
I remember you, your cloak and your staff—
to my cost. If don’t even have the strength
to stand. Far off I hear your flute
playing a tune I thought I knew.
It all seemed a dream when we parted,
when I said how I’d wait for you,
how I wanted to be with you.
“You’ll be with me in hell!” you laughed.
I can’t even stand up now. I fall.
I still hear your flute
and the tune I thought I knew.
Oh, the mill-pond water’s
deep enough to drown even grief;
for this humiliation
I’m pretty sure it’ll do.
That’s why I came, why without a cry
I’ll disappear here, while your flute, far away,
plays a tune I thought I knew.
Three times . . .
Three times she returned to torment me;
the third time I woke, in pain, with a cry.
I saw her slender hands, almost recognized
those red lips, that malicious smile.
She said, “Who were you kissing
just before sunrise, swearing
that this farewell would kill you too?
No less than the darkness down there by the gate,
your sobs concealed your joy
at having such spice-hot, delicious power.
You know, yes, you do, that man you led on
to his doom—he really will die.”
The voice was as thrillingly shrill as a hawk’s,
and weirdly like that of someone I knew.
I doubled over, shivered at feeling
the wind from the wing of death.
I drew around me, for protection, the bedclothes;
they felt like the heavy netting
of a spider’s inevitable web.
I knew this apparition:
my own form, repeating my words,
my—now unforgivable—lies.