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Katherine Mansfield
Come, let us all sing very high
And all sing very loud
And keep on singing in the street
Until there’s quite a crowd;
And keep on singing in the house
And up and down the stairs;
Then underneath the furniture
Let’s all play Polar bears;
And crawl about with doormats on,
And growl and howl and squeak,
Then in the garden let us fly
And play at hide and seek;
And “Here we gather Nuts and May,”
“I wrote a Letter” too,
“Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,”
“The Child who lost its shoe”;
Went long.
Still missed
the catch — or rather,
the ball. Caught
nothing.
Didn’t have
to throw it back.
But carrying
it around
was a strain.
My arms still ache
from all that lack.
We were playing hide-&-seek. At the last moment,
I dove under a black rubberized tarp
that had been lying out back for several months.
I heard her finish the count & come looking,
rounding the corner of the house on rapid feet.
The tarp rustled from my heavy breathing.
A beetle made a racket
burrowing out from under from my right ear,
which was pressed against the ground.
She ran past, the beetle wiggled free
& everything grew still.
After a while, I heard the approach of slow footfalls.
This time, I held my breath as if
my life depended on it. The steps came up
to the edge of the tarp & stopped.
“Nobody under there,” I heard her say.
a hand with a king—
after I vomit I look
for good cards
I begin to learn
how a good experiment
is a mystery play,
a game I have my head
free to be troubled by.
And I am one.
we call one another mad
like singing scissors
troubled by a committee of papers
and their mode of mad talk
light is an old acquaintance
come with a pick-axe into the cellar
a mad night-gown of silk
I wear it as an experiment
in walking upright
a private game
let it fall where it will
more real than any answer
that nothing on the stage
We play a game
called Mouth & Ear:
one speaks, the other listens.
It’s simple.
If your words are trees,
mine are finches,
vagrant & garrulous.
In the nest of your ear
their fledglings
sprout fletching.
If my words are fish,
yours are lures,
marvels of ingenuity—
a water-bound being’s
dream of flight.
I rise to the ring of ripples,
Three kids…
masks
just part of their play
every time i caught up
you danced away with that smug little half-smirk-half-grin
because i did the same to you and
so many others
but it's not as funny as i used to think
my heels dig into the dirt
elbow up, eyes ahead
watch her hands
count the wind-up
first, second, third, then home
first, second, third, then home is all i have to go
breathe
play through the pain
run even as her fastball hits you in the gut
and you trip along the bases
and bruise your ribs dodging a tag out
wince and you're benched
fail and you're done
freeze and the crowd of eyes watching will all know what you've been told before
useless
pathetic
She is translucent, undaunted in her courage to spike
the ball of conversation one more time
She cannot ignore what she knows, but moves forward anyway.
Nearly six feet tall, she is grounded by the reality of her own disease.
“Not yet,” she cries, “I am not ready for the fall” and takes one more chance
And winning the game herself
She does not know the meaning of the word “teammate”
In her desire to score,
For there is only one moment left
Which is now, nonetheless
What battle can she ferry through
The sand burning her skin as she goes.
Awkward, alive, ambitious
No sickness can stop her drive
Everyone knows but her
She fights to stay illumined