CONTENTS
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Frontispiece
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Change
Robyn
Jack
Jane
Robyn
Robyn
Jack
Jane
Robyn
Robyn
Robyn
Robyn
Discovery
April
Jane
April
Jack
April
Robyn
April
April
Jane
Jack
Robyn
April
Jane
Jack
April
Journey
April
Robyn
April
April
The Crone
April
Robyn
April
Jack
Jane
The King
April
The King
April
The Crone
Robyn
April
The Crone
April
Robyn
The Queen
April
The Queen
April
April
The Crone
Change
April
Robyn
Robyn
The Crone
April
April
Robyn
Epilogue
April
Robyn
A Note about Poetic Form
Sample Chapters from VOICES
Buy the Book
Other Novels in Verse by David Elliott
Escape to Another World
Read the Bloodleaf Series
About the Author
Connect with HMH on Social Media
Copyright © 2021 by David Elliott
Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Rovina Cai
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
hmhbooks.com
Cover illustration © 2021 by Jonathan Bartlett
Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file.
ISBN: 978-0-358-25211-5
eISBN 978-0-358-25208-5
v2.0321
To my COVID companions:
Hester, Jane, Kyoko, Pam, Sinan.
I’m with Proust:
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy”
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
—Carl Jung
I
CHANGE
AND this is the forest
With its primeval trees
And their taciturn trunks
And their hungering roots
Like curious tongues
That kiss the hard stones
And lap the warm rain
And speak to the earth
In the language of trees
* * *
And here are the limbs
Their itinerant twigs
The finely veined leaves
That are unblinking eyes
And the eyes watch the bear
And the eyes watch the back
Of the ravening boar
That runs wild through the forest
And when the wind howls
The eyes tumble down
And leave the trees blind
* * *
Behold the rough bark
With its numberless ears
That cling to the tree
And hear the birth pangs
Of the fox and the deer
And the growl of the cat
And the break of the branch
And the flight of the stag
And the screech of the owl
And the flap of its wing
And the cry of the hare
And the rip of soft flesh
And the silence of blood
AND this is the river
That runs through the forest
And the river’s a rope
That cannot be tied
And the river’s a secret
That cannot be told
And the river’s a riddle
That cannot be guessed
And the river’s a snake
Ever shedding its skin
And the river’s a bow
On the strings of the earth
And the river’s a mouth
That devours the sun
And the river’s a throat
That swallows the moon
And the river’s a song
That sings to itself
In the ancient and sibilant
Language of rivers
AND this is the cottage
That’s built near the river
Its timbers are aching
Its floorboards are cracking
And creaking they’re quaking
From so many boots
Stomping in stamping out
Eight pairs of boots
Stomping in stamping out
So many boots
Stomping in stamping out
Day after day after day after day
And the hearth burns too hot
And the thatch whispers Stop
And the footsteps are heavy
And the joists beg for mercy
But the heels have no pity
And the boots they keep coming
Eight pairs of boots
Stomping in stamping out
Day after day after day after day
AND here are the boys
Who live in the cottage
The eldest is Jack
And the next one is Jack
And the third one’s called Jack
And the fourth’s known as Jack
And the fifth says he’s Jack
And they call the sixth Jack
But the seventh’s not Jack
The seventh is Robyn
And this is his story
ROBYN
They called me Robyn. How did they know from the very start
that the murmuring beat of my infant heart
would not conform to the rhythms of my brothers’?
One no different from the other,
and insensible to the smart
* * *
sting of thorns on the rocky ground. Each of us, it seems, has his part
to play; theirs is earthbound, like our father’s, their feet planted in the dirt.
But I love the sky, its incandescence, its infinity, its colors.
And they called me Robyn.
* * *
The naming of children is a fine and subtle art.
Parents must consider everything the name imparts.
Was it merely accident or the instinct of a mother
that mine hints at altitude and air, flight and feather?
Whether luck or Fate—Fortune’s sly, unyielding counterpart—
they called me Robyn.
AND here is the man
Who lives in the cottage
That’s built near the river
That runs through the forest
He calls himself Jack
* * *
And here is Jack’s axe
With its bright-sharpened tongue
And its brigh
t-sharpened will
And its head-banging anger
Its terrible temper
Its loathing of rest
* * *
And this is Jack’s saw
With its sharp crooked teeth
And its lunatic grin
And its sickening song
And insatiable greed
And its obsessive need
To go forth
and come back
To go forth
To go forth
and come back
To go forth
and come back
AND day after day after day after day
Jack swings the sharp axe
And pulls the sharp saw
And curls the tongues
And tramples the eyes
And deafens the ears
And brings the trees down
He wants to know why
He has seven sons
When night after night after night after night
He falls on his knees
And clasps the scarred hands
That hold the dark beads
And bows the big head
That holds the dark eyes
And shuts out the noise
Of his sons in their sleep
* * *
And prays for a daughter
JACK
I do not ask for much or often,
but give me a daughter to soften
the keenly tapered edge of our lives.
Like an assassin, each day arrives,
shining, silent with his best-loved knives,
impatient to cut us down, impale,
overpower us as we travail.
It’s the blighted fate of men like me
to wrestle with the despondency
yoked to their crippling poverty.
I need to hear a daughter’s laughter,
see a daughter’s gentle smile after
a long day’s labor with seven boys—
the sweating, the hunger, and the noise.
Grant me the tender pleasures, the joys
that only a daughter can impart
to a father’s troubled, loving heart.
Do this and I’ll never ask again.
Amen. Amen. Amen. And amen.
AND this is Jack’s wife
Let’s call her Jane
Jane is a marshal
Her hands are her armies
Her fingers the soldiers
That follow Jane’s orders
To break the hard earth
And plant the hard seeds
And pull the sharp weeds
And bake the coarse bread
And spin the fine thread
And weave the rough cloth
And mend the torn smocks
And the eight pairs of socks
Of her husband and sons
* * *
And when the night comes
And her husband is sleeping
And the Seven are sleeping
And the red cow is sleeping
And the horned goat is sleeping
And the fat hen is sleeping
And the kitten is sleeping
And all the world’s sleeping
Jane lies awake
* * *
And dreams of a daughter
JANE
My boys and their father, they work hard
bringing down the trees, hands bruised and scarred
when a knot may cause the saw to slip.
But at least they have companionship.
There are days that loneliness will grip
and knead me, as if I were but dough.
But if I had a daughter, then . . . oh,
a girl to talk to! Someone like me,
a girl to ease the monotony
of this thrusting masculinity
that each day I am a witness to—
the constant fights to determine who
is strongest, their manners rude and coarse.
I could admonish them till I’m hoarse,
but they’re men, and strangers to remorse.
I love my boys, but I cannot breathe.
Beneath this bridled calm, I seethe.
Some days I wish I could disappear.
I need a girl, a daughter with me here.
AND there’s hair in the milk
And a smell in the cheese
And a snake in Jack’s boot
And worms in the fruit
And a hole in Jane’s pail
And the rye starts to fail
Mold grows on the bread
And the kitten is dead
And there’s spot on the wheat
And rot in the goat
And bloat in the cow
And the thatch has turned black
And the axe bounces back
There are too many Jacks
There are too many Jacks
There are too many Jacks
There are too many Jacks
ROBYN
There are many days I wonder—why me?
Why was I born into this family?
This body? This time? This land? This space?
Did nature play a joke or simply misplace
the instructions about who I was meant to be?
* * *
I am different from them. It’s not hard to see
the disappointment in my father’s face—
part bewilderment, part disgrace.
And there are many days
* * *
I wonder why both my future and my history
feel so much like a mockery.
Am I expected to erase
every longing, every dream, every trace
of who I am, keep hidden everything I know is me?
There are many days I wonder.
BUT the planets spin round
And night tumbles down
And Jack says to Jane
Let us lie close
And let us unbind
All our fear and our sadness
Our worry and trouble
And Jane says to Jack
Come and lie close
And let us unbind
All our fear and our sadness
Our worry and trouble
And when it is done
The night lifts and leaves
A light in the room
* * *
And a girl in Jane’s womb
AND the cow’s milk is sweet
And the goat starts to bleat
And the hen lays her eggs
The dough sighs in relief
And the axe tells a joke
And the saw is relaxed
And the forest is singing
And the wild boar’s singing
And the Jacks all are singing
And all the world’s singing
ROBYN
And I sang too, just like the rest.
Louder even, higher, lest
they discover the secret I was hiding.
Yes, my sister’s birth would bring us an inciting
joy. But joy is a capricious guest,
* * *
a mistress of the brutal jest.
For just as night is pressed
against the clear light of day, I saw an unnatural thing bearing
down upon the empty cradle, waiting.
But I sang too,
* * *
though my heart was throbbing in my chest.
The shadow lingered, its intention veiled, unguessed,
yet how sharply I thought I felt its sour and future sting.
Eyeless, it watched me, silent, smirking
like a snake that finds its way to the woodlark’s nest.
Yet I sang too.
AND the bones grow and harden
And Jane is a garden
And the abdomen swells
And Jane is a bell
And the fingers can curl
And Jane is a world
When she takes to her bed
But high overhead
The thunder complains
And it rains and it rains and it rains and it rains
And the baby won’t come
And it rains and it rains
Day after day
It rains and it rains
And still it won’t come
And it rains and it rains
Jane cries in her pain
Night after night after night after night
AND the river’s a serpent
That swallows the land
And the wind is a serpent
That writhes in the air
And the lightning’s a serpent
That strikes at the trees
* * *
The Jacks fall to their knees
And the earth leaps and bounds
And the thunder resounds
And the sky is a shroud
And the boar’s squeal is loud
And the day turns to night
And the moon gives no light
And the wolves whine and cower
And the morning is sour
And the thatch it is bleeding
And hope is receding
And the trembling world’s pleading
But when all is forsaken
And when all is forlorn
* * *
The baby is born
AND this is the baby
Who lies in the cradle
That rocks in the cottage
That’s built near the river
That runs through the forest
And the baby’s a fish
Whose gills will not pump
And the baby’s a locust
Whose back will not sing
And the baby’s a seed
Whose roots will not push
And her arms will not flex
And her hands will not grasp
And her color is gray