And her heartbeat is slow
And her eyes are closed tight
And she’s silent as prayer
And gasping for air
And the axe wants to cry
And the thatch wants to cry
And the wild boar’s crying
And Jane she is crying
And Jack he is crying
And the Jacks they are crying
And Robyn is crying
But the baby’s not crying
The baby is dying
JACK
So this is Your answer to my prayer?
Not joy or solace but bleak despair
when I have done everything I can
to be a dutiful, honest man?
This is Your blessing? Your so-called plan?
To give my daughter life but not breath?
To honor her birth and mourn her death
all in the course of a single day
is how You have chosen to repay
my virtue and devotion? You say
we mortals can never understand
Your mysterious ways. In Your grand
and sacred scheme, all will be revealed.
Our pain comforted. Our grief repealed.
Our sins forgiven. Our sorrow healed.
And You ask me to believe it’s true.
You demand that I have faith in You.
You and Your sanctimonious jokes.
You are nothing but a cruel hoax!
JANE
No one can feel more heartache than I.
I gave her life. Must I watch her die
helpless, suffering, gasping for air?
My daughter! It’s more than I can bear,
an anguish that mothers everywhere
fear—this dead and stiffening sorrow.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
each hour of the raw future defiled,
each empty minute unreconciled
to the presence of an absent child
whose blood and heartbeat are all my own.
Her flesh is my flesh! Her bone, my bone!
Every endless, lifeless hour the same.
Every mote of dust whispering her name.
It’s a feral grief I cannot tame.
But his pain is from a different page,
its columns filled with blasphemous rage,
an imprudent and destructive thing.
I fear for what the future may bring.
ROBYN
Everyone thinks it should be me.
Everyone knows. Everyone can see:
What’s happening isn’t just or fair.
How is it that she struggles for air,
suffering from some unnamed malady,
* * *
while he, so wrong, an anomaly,
breathes with such impunity? How can that be
when she, so right, is suffering there?
Everyone thinks it should be me
* * *
who fades from life and memory.
They shake their heads; they all agree.
Me for whom they say a prayer.
Me whose bones lay white and bare
throughout vacant eternity.
Everyone thinks it. It should be me.
AND here is the priest
With his Latin and linen
His cincture and tonsure
His alb and his incense
His prayers and his penance
His sign of the cross
And his story of loss
* * *
And the axe bows its head
And the saw shuts its mouth
And the thatch genuflects
And the wild boar kneels
And the hallowed trees kneel
And Jack and Jane kneel
And all the Jacks kneel
And Robyn too kneels
* * *
But the priest doesn’t kneel
The priest stamps his heel
He cannot repeat
The abracadabra
He cannot perform
His arcane ministrations
He cannot baptize
Jack and Jane’s daughter
* * *
Until he has water
AND Jack cries to his sons
Run to the river
And fetch the priest water
He will not provide
For your sister’s long journey
Without its deep magic
And do not delay
For time is a river
A dissolute lover
Caressing the boulders
Until they are pebbles
That sink to the bottom
And chant the death rattle
For what they once were
And what might have been
JACK says to his brothers
I am the eldest
So I’ll fetch the water
For that is my privilege
My duty and honor
The pride of my birthright
My charge and commission
So it has been
And so it will be
* * *
Tradition is prison
Says next-in-line Jack
So I’ll fetch the water
For I am the fastest
Lean and most nimble
I’ll bring the priest water
Before you begin
And Father will know
That I am a man
* * *
But I am the planet
The next Jack announces
Whose orbit he spins to
The breath of his laughter
The blood of his soul
So I’ll fetch the water
To prove that I love him
* * *
The fourth Jack is silent
He frowns and conspires
I’ll fetch the water
While these blockheads argue
Then Father will see
That I am his favorite
* * *
The fifth Jack declares
That he’ll fetch the water
He’s not sure he means it
He fears the deep river
Its buried ambitions
Its chilly affections
Its unnatural talents
And interrogations
* * *
Let me fetch the water
The last Jack announces
For I love our sister
And closely remember
The dark salty ocean
Where last she floated
Before the great flood
That carried her here
To die in her cradle
A fish without water
Washed up on the strand
Of this earthly sphere
ROBYN
But it is I who grab the dinted pail.
I run as if it is the Holy Grail
to the waiting river’s edge and dip it in.
But then I hear the jealous din—
my brothers. Like a destructive gale
* * *
they descend while our frail
infant sister, choking and pale,
lies in her cradle, dying and thin.
It is I who grab the dinted pail
* * *
and I who let it go. I who cannot prevail.
I who fumble, quail,
and watch the bucket drop and spin
beneath the river’s thirsty skin.
I try to save my sister, try, but fail.
It is I who grab the dinted pail.
JACK stares at his sons
With loathing and rancor
Each one is a fool
A blister a canker
And Robyn’s a weakling
Girlish and slender
Too light on his feet
Too feeling too tender
And the others are brutes
Uncouth and unthinking
Jack sees the pail sinking
&n
bsp; And beyond retrieving
And his daughter is dying
And the thatch it is crying
And the axe it is grieving
And Jane beyond reaching
And beyond retrieving
She’s sobbing and wailing
Imploring beseeching
She falls to the ground
Convulsing and keening
And the priest shakes his head
* * *
And the girl is near dead
And the universe shrugs
Without sense without meaning
AND Anger’s a beetle
That feasts on the soul
And Sorrow its grub
They swallow Jack whole
He raises his arms
And cries to the heavens
Why have You cursed us
When we have begged You
To give us a daughter
What have we done
That You have so plagued us
Why must they live
While she lies here dying
Our daughter our prize
Our one consolation
These boys are a torment
No better than ravens
Eaters of carrion
Scourge of the sky
* * *
He utters these words
And seven new birds
Appear overhead
Not there before
And the boys are no more
AND six fly together
A maelstrom of beak
And talon and feather
And the sky it is bruised
With the beat of their wings
And the air it is pierced
With the clack of their beaks
And the rasp of their kra-a-a-a-a
And the croak and the screech
Of the anguish of flight
Where are the legs
To carry us home
Where are the backs
To help us stand straight
Where is the skin
To bring us our pleasure
Who is our father
Where shall we go
What is our mother
How can we know
Where to sleep
What to eat
How to live
Where to fly
And when the end comes
Who will pray for our souls
As they drift through the void
Of the unfeeling sky
BUT one flies alone
In the luminous space
His wings are a wonder
Of genius and grace
He wheels in bright silence
He does not complain
He soars in the gap
Between pleasure and pain
And wonders at nature’s
Cosmic mistake
His father’s invective
Alive in his smallness
The change in perspective
The bones that are hollow
The back that is feathered
He dips like a swallow
No longer tethered
No longer bound
By his feet on the earth
By a home on the ground
ROBYN
what I agony bones
happened legs
dying pain intensifying cannot see
my hands my arms atrophy
brothers crying
frightened dying
body now solidifying how can this be
has gravity abandoned
me
JACK watches the ravens
Circle and spiral
Higher and higher
Smaller and smaller
The shrill strident choir
Diminishing fading
Until there is only
The squalor of silence
And the heavens are empty
And the forest is empty
And the wild boar’s empty
And the horned goat is empty
And the fat hen is empty
And the red cow is empty
And Jack he is empty
And Jane she is empty
And the cottage is empty
BUT the cradle’s not empty
Therein lies the baby
Jack and Jane’s daughter
Their treasure their prize
Their one consolation
Her brothers now vanished
A strange delegation
To all things that fly
JANE runs to the cradle
And falls to her knees
She cannot take in
What she hears
What she sees
The baby is breathing
And pink as a rose
The baby is cooing
Her arms they are dancing
Her legs are conducting
Her lungs they are pumping
Her heart is thump-thumping
* * *
Jane watches her daughter
Take in the sweet air
The cottage rejoices
The saw says a prayer
The priest disappears
He is no longer needed
Jack and Jane’s plea
Has not gone unheeded
The sons have departed
A daughter emerged
A new life has started
As others were purged
THE arms of the balance
Eternally shifting
For some they are falling
* * *
For others they’re lifting
ROBYN
earth far below
the wind sighing
are these wings? Can
I be flying?
What is this dream? I dare
not guess. I think it might be happiness.
II
DISCOVERY
IN the deep river
Days settle and drown
They surrender in silence
As they go down
Months caught in whirlpools
Break up on the rocks
Years drift away
Past shipyards and docks
Like all rusted trappings
Of humanity
Pale and exhausted
They dissolve in the sea
And re-form as coral
Starfish baleen
The river is surging
* * *
The girl is fifteen
APRIL
My mother always says they named me April
because I was like spring—a new beginning.
They were unhappy, alone, she said, until
the day I came into their lives, stuck, spinning
like the wooden tops that Father made
when I was just a girl in braids.
But is that really true? I often wonder
if there is something hidden under
their fond attention, their sweet and loving words.
I can’t explain . . . I wish I could say why,
but lately when I look up at the sky,
and especially when I watch the patterns made by circling birds,
I am struck with the unquiet feeling
that there’s something they’re not saying, something they’re concealing.
JANE
I will not let my daughter suffer.
It’s my duty to act as the buffer—
like a shield against a driving rain—
between my girl and needless pain.
A mother’s contract is to maintain
her balance, ignore what she’s feeling.
There are times I find myself reeling
at the loss of my beautiful boys.
But every clever woman employs
tricks to silence the terrible noise
that’s exploding daily in her head.
So, at night, when I lie in my bed
I say their
names again and again,
denouncing that obscene moment when
my husband’s rage banished my young men.
She will never learn about that day,
which is the reason I say
that if I lie, it must be understood!
I do it only for her own good.
APRIL
I’ve asked about this brooding mystery.
I want to know what they are hiding;
the secret that they keep from me
hangs like an invisible veil dividing
us. I can see deception in their eyes.
But they insist it’s otherwise
and say it’s only my imagination.
And yet this powerful sensation
will neither fade nor depart.
It’s there especially with my father.
I know there’s something bothering
him, some bitter pain locked deep within his heart.
And the thing that gives me greatest pause?
The awful fear that I’m the cause.
JACK
I can never tell her what occurred.
I was angry and each angry word—
a wolf bursting from its musky den.
I am no different from many men;
I have a man’s red temper, and when
it sometimes gets the better of me,
any fair-minded person can see
I am not the one who is at fault.