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Risa Bear
This time of year that room is not much visited.
Its herringbone-patterned floor of worn bricks
tilts here and there where rodents have made inroads.
Homemade flats lie heaped in corners; stacks of cells
lean sleepily together; insulation dangles;
tools hang, festooned with webs and dust. Sometimes
when the door has been set ajar, a towhee wanders in,
becomes confused at light from so many windows,
beats itself silly, then rests, is eventually found
and shown the way out. There's not much
an old lady can do but wait, watching for
earlier suns to rise, for petrichor,
for that sudden dislocation brought on
by stepping into sunshine by a southern wall.
Then, after one jonquil blooms by way of
I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbours
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.
I who have never known sorrow
Wait for it morning and evening;
For the footstep of grief on my threshold,
The drip of tears on my hearthstone,
The pitiless hours of lonely, uncomforted woe.
Never a life without sorrow!
But, oh, when will mine be upon me?
When will the years seem long
That now slip happily by me?
The light of the skies be dimmed
To eyes that are weary with weeping?