At the party the husband tried to defeat
his young son.
At croquet, perhaps. Or table tennis.
The wife at the party watched the husband
leaning over the game
or leaning into talk, setting his jaw, winning.
She turned to a listener. Dusk chilled her.
Breezes dragged
her hair across her face. She said,
“My husband is very competitive.”
The listener watched
a highway of loss and fatigue
form in her mind, stretch for miles.
All the women
in that neighborhood are deciduous wives
married to evergreen husbands.
He grew up assuming others
had a right to speak
before he spoke.
He grew up in a region
named Not Really.
He eats too fast in restaurants,
walks too slowly in cities,
does his own repairs.
Elegance makes him claustrophobic;
opulence, morose.
The entitled fascinate him.
He watches them.
Shown evidence who he is and
what he does might
matter, he doubts it.
I know him: he hangs on
Welcome to our vertical facility.
Affliction put you in your current
horizontal state. Our machines
will swallow then disgorge you.
Our nurses will swaddle you,
lay you in a basket of morphine,
float you out upon a reservoir of misery.
Our physicians will take note of you.
Lie flat, please, as little waves
of pain lap, nip at your being.
The field of our day lay ordinarily
before us. Gravity and practice
tethered our thoughts
to checklists. Helium
swelled fabric beyond wrinkled
rainbow to painted light-bulb. Up—
and foreheads; then hats and coiffures,
quickly pigment on the landscape. Cheers
littered the wind. We thought
we knew the limits. But late
in the day the continent of air between
field and cloud shrank to an urgent isthmus.
The causes were final and cited
accurately. In the meantime,
we bartered in good faith with Earth,
starting with sandbags, moving through provisions,
The iron garden-gate
was hard and wondrous to open.
Ornamentation dated it.
Up the walkway then,
into her stifling house,
where she sat in her purple
dress and parchment skin,
saying what she thought
her whole life
had taught. She was too old
to pity, too austere to embrace.
The voice seemed to come
from years ago.
Our minds assured us
we would never grow
that weird if we ever
Two hours before dawn your eyes open
and you tiptoe across cold linoleum
to check the thermometer outside: the thin,
red capillary’s clipped down to thirty-one.
After breakfast you glance at your father’s garden:
it’s going underground: carrots and a few potatoes
duck the frost. After last night’s freezing, leaves
of tomato vines curl and harden like arthritic hands.
From the kitchen in late afternoon, you watch
your father in his dying garden, oak boughs already
yellowing. They toss all around him in northerly gusts.
He patiently surveys the damage.
When you see his cotton shirt pulled taut across his back
as he stoops to pull a carrot, you try to steel yourself
against a quickened fear—perhaps
Today I have to wake up because
tomorrow I have to wake up. I presume
the geometry of a clock. So, I
wake up because I expect to be greeted
by either a circle or some stones. Now I'm out here
with my palms up. How can I be the only
one afraid of piety. I have to
wake up because tomorrow.
Leaf-detritus is pool-clung
Held in
Rankled-water
Battle-aftermath,
Winter beats a hollowed-drum.
It is because
I fear to wake them
behind the bolted door
of dreams.
The starving eyes,
the fragile ribs,
hollow gourds
on Shiva's belt.
They dance as
he dances
upon the
withered plain.
It is because
I fear to
name them.
The night whispers
Mad eyes,
glazed and deep,
slice slowly,
dissecting each
motion.
Lost in
phosphorescent seas
whose waters
we have
long since
forgotten.
The shadow of a lonely willow
Swings
Ghastly, ghastly;
The roads are lost
In the hoary-haired mists of eve ;
A strange green light in the distance
Drifts
As a wandering fay ;
I hear a wild cry
In the dark air,
In the stream,
In the stars.
All the time they were praying
He watched the shadow of a tree
Flicker on the wall.
There is no need of prayer,
He said,
No need at all.
The kin-folk thought it strange
That he should ask them from a dying bed.
But they left all in a row
And it seemed to ease him
To see them go.
There were some who kept on praying
In a room across the hall
And some who listened to the breeze
That made the shadows waver
On the wall.