What do they see in the turning of a leaf?
What more to be told before the coming of night?
These two who are far apart and yet so near,
These two together and so much alone
Like stars set somewhere out in darkest space—
The trees may say they have nothing to fear.
The rain may tell of wearing down a stone,
But the moody lovers tremble before a face.
The trees in the window are turning toward sleep,
Their light a changing light at the year’s turning,
And the rain repeats its lonely plaintive phrase.
How can these fragile lovers hope to keep
A crimson leaf from falling, or this burning
Maintain forever some hint of their great days?
Mal du Départ
After you have gone
I walk up and down
The strange chilling tomb
This lively house has suddenly become.
Even your white tulips
Turn brown at the lips,
Their freshness gone,
And ashes on the hearth. I am alone.
Absence infects the air
And it is everywhere.
How can I shake off woe,
On what bed lay me down without you?
What healing sacrament
What ritual invent
And quietly perform
To bring life back and make it warm?
Another day a letter
Might tell you I am better,
The invalid has taken
Some food, is less forlorn and shaken.
But for today it’s true
That I can hardly draw
A solitary breath
That does not hurt me like a little death.
II
Jealousy
When I was a child
I walked a forest floor
Charred black after the great trees burned.
The air was acrid.
Among old roots the fire still crept.
Sometimes a small blue flame
Licked at the soles of my feet,
While overhead
Birds hunted their nests.
Fifty years ago
I saw what it means to burn.
I met the destructive flame,
But only now I am old
Have I come to know
Its name.
Control
Hold the tiger fast in check
Put the leash around his neck.
Make it known a growl will tighten
The collar. Browbeat. Frighten.
Set the tiger on a tightrope.
Make him walk it, make him cope.
Punish any slightest fumble.
Make him walk it. Watch him tremble.
Yours the power to use or not
Once the fierce soul has been caught.
Yours to beat without forgiveness
What is wild with fear and loss.
You may have complete control
There will be no roar or growl.
But can you look into those eyes
Where the smothered fire lies?
Tame the tiger. Break his pride.
You will find yourself outside
With all those who can destroy
Tiger love and tiger joy.
Outside in the awful dark,
Smothered every smallest spark
Where nothing blesses or can bless,
How will you bear the loneliness?
Along a Brook
Water over sand,
I did not take your hand.
Water over stone,
We were each alone,
In the green keep
Of the wood we walked
As though half asleep.
Only birds talked.
Only dogs played
Among rock and root
In the dappled shade
And moss underfoot.
In the grave place
Could not take your hand.
I had lost my face.
Water over sand.
Water over stone.
How far did I go
Through the thick pain
Into darker shadow?
But I found my face
When I looked at you
In the grave place—
When I could look through
To the stubborn child
Who cannot be wrong,
And forgave the child,
And could sing my song.
Beggar, Queen, and Ghost
I have been a beggar with a begging bowl.
I have been a queen with a golden crown.
I have been so hungry I ate my soul,
But never outcast and never thrown down
Since I was alive
And able to give.
But never the beggar and never the queen
Could live without hope behind a closed door,
And the hungry poor never felt this pain,
In the place where I could not give of my store,
Not a crown of glory
Nor a beggar’s story.
There the beggar laid down his bowl and cried.
There the queen took off her golden crown.
There the woman who ate her soul nearly died.
There buried so deep all praise and renown
That the lonely guest
Had become a ghost.
And there I learned that hell is the place
Where I cannot give (like a barren wife?)
Where the soul is locked in behind a face,
Where none of my riches can flow into life,
Devalued, outcast,
Queen, beggar, and ghost.
The Country of Pain
In the country of pain we are each alone.
Only joy brings communion, the light game
When passion tosses the ball high in air
And we forget Medusa who turns love to stone,
And Circe who knows every pig by name,
And manic-depressive Eros in despair.
In the country of pain there is no defence.
Tears scandalize. If we try to get through
To some rock of truth we are chastised
Like children whose anguish may be immense,
And told not to make scenes when all we know
Is terrible loss and true love ill-used.
In the country of pain we are animals
Who cannot understand a sudden blow
Or trust in a redeemer. There is none.
For pain is the country of lost souls
Which the gods flee because they know
They cannot re-humanize the pig or stone.
What redeemer now could return lost joys
Imprisoned by an ethos, beaten down,
The things made cheap within a damaged psyche,
The mysterious, magical, fantastic toys
Love showers on us with beautiful abandon
When manic-depressive Eros has a high?
For always what looked like an easy game
Becomes too frightening for innocence to play.
The country of Eros becomes the country of pain,
And the beglamored pigs who gladly came
To Circe’s call die in some horrible way
As Medusa begins her cold cruel reign.
Out of Touch
That flowed so fast and clear
Packed down, polluted,
The goddess in despair.
The dry mouth burns
In this infernal drought.
The goddess flees and turns
Not to be caught.
Animal pride is broken.
Children are murderers,
The deprived overtaken
By strange disorders.
The goddess turns away
From cages like these.
Hers love
’s fierce joy and play
Not its bleak miseries.
At the Black Rock
Anger’s the beast in me.
In you it is pride.
When they meet they lock.
There is no pity.
At the black rock
Where the beasts hide
Love turns to hate
In a cruel war,
And once it’s begun
It is always too late
To be patient or fair.
And no one can win.
Let us go to the rock
Where the beasts hide
And kneeling there, pray
For some heart-cracking shock
To set us both free
From anger and pride.
At the cold impasse
Tame the anguished cries,
Mend what has been torn,
Bring the animals peace
Where they stand forlorn
With love in their eyes.
Can I do it? Can you?
It means yielding all.
It means going naked
No refuge but rue,
Admitting stark need—
Eden after the fall.
III
The Turning of the Wind
Love waits for a turning of the wind.
Elusive, patient, every early morning,
Although the humid heat has not been kind,
Love waits for clear air, an end to mourning.
There is a wall. What wind to blow it down?
What power cleanse the awful fetid air
And burn the haze away, what brilliant sun
To show us the rich landscape is still there?
We cannot hear each other. Truth gets lost.
Lack of rapport has damaged the whole range
Of what we might redeem that pain has cost.
So love waits for the wind to change.
After the Storm
The roar of big surf and above it all night
The peepers singing out so sweet and frail!
Above the pounding roar that wears down rock
They dare, they try to connect through the gale.
And if that relentless boom might seem to mock
Those who still risk their hope before daylight,
That song suggests something is going right.
Whatever locked love cannot bear to do,
The tree frogs can, and spring is breaking through.
Love
Fragile as a spider’s web
Hanging in space
Between tall grasses,
It is torn again and again.
A passing dog
Or simply the wind can do it.
Several times a day
I gather myself together
And spin it again.
Spiders are patient weavers.
They never give up.
What keeps them at it?
Hunger, no doubt,
And hope.
Of Molluscs
As the tide rises, the closed mollusc
Opens a fraction to the ocean’s food,
Bathed in its riches. Do not ask
What force would do, or if force could.
A knife is of no use against a fortress.
You might break it to pieces as gulls do.
No, only the rising tide and its slow progress
Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true.
You who have held yourselves closed hard
Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears
And hostile to a touch or tender word—
The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears.
Now you are floated on this gentle flood
That cannot force or be forced, welcome food
Salt as your tears, the rich ocean’s blood,
Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love.
June Wind
I watched wind ripple the field’s supple grasses.
For once earth is alive while restless ocean
Lies still beyond it like a flat blue screen.
I watch the wind burnishing as it passes,
Lifting soft waves, an ecstasy of motion,
A long glissando through the static green.
These waves crash on no rock; rooted, they stay,
As restless love, that ocean, changes over
And comes to land, alive, a shining field
Caught in wind’s captivating gentle play
As though a harp played by a subtle lover—
And the tormented ocean has been stilled.
The Summer Tree
In all the summer glut of green,
Serrated leaves, a dark and shifty screen,
Catalpa flowers, unseasonal surprise,
To tense the landscape up for drowsy eyes.
We come alive beholding points of white,
Among the leaves, immense rosettes alight.
The blessing of pure form that opens space
And makes us stop and look in sudden peace.
Late Autumn
On random wires the rows of summer swallows
Wait for their lift-off. They will soon be gone
Before All Saints and before All Hallows,
The changing time when we are most alone.
Disarmed, too vulnerable, full of dread,
And once again as naked as the trees
Before the dark, precarious days ahead,
And troubled skies over tumultuous seas.
When we are so transparent to the dead
There is no wall. We hear their voices speak,
And as the small birds wheel off overhead
We bend toward the earth suddenly weak.
How to believe that all will not be lost?
Our flowers, too, not perish in the blight?
Love, leave me your South against the frost.
Say “hush” to my fears, and warm the night.
The Geese
The geese honked overhead.
I ran to catch the skein
To watch them as they fled
In a long wavering line.
I caught my breath, alone,
Abandoned like a lover
With winter at the bone
To see the geese go over.
It happens every year
And every year some woman
Haunted by loss and fear
Must take it as an omen,
Must shiver as she stands
Watching the wild geese go,
With sudden empty hands
Before the cruel snow.
Some woman every year
Must catch her breath and weep
With so much wildness near
At all she cannot keep.
Autumn Sonnets