Don Paterson: 2 poems

THE SPACE

after Cavafy

Those houses, cafes, bars ... the old purlieus
I've haunted, year after year -

I conjured you when I was happy, when I was sad:
you were my detail, my inner circumstance.

I have turned you into pure notion.

* * *

THE WRECK

But what lovers we were, what lover,
Even when it was all over -

the deadweight bull-black wines we swung
towards each other rang and rang

like bells of blood, our own great hearts.
We slung the drunk boat out of port

and watched our unreal sober life
unmoor, a continent of grief;

The candlelight strange on our faces
like the silent tiny blazes

And coruscations of its wars.
We blew them out and took the stairs

Into the night for the night's work,
stripped off in the timbered dark,

Gently hooked each other on
like aqualungs, and thundered down

To mine our lovely secret wreck.
We surfaced later, breathless, back

To back, then made our way alone
up the mined beach of the dawn.

Louise Glück: 3 poems

The Fear of Burial

In the empty field, in the morning,
the body waits to be claimed.
The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock--
nothing comes to give it form again.

Think of the body's loneliness.
At night pacing the sheared field,
its shadow buckled tightly around.
Such a long journey.

And already the remote, trembling lights of the village
not pausing for it as they scan the rows.
How far away they seem,
the wooden doors, the bread and milk
laid like weights on the table.

Portrait

A child draws the outline of a body.
She draws what she can, but it is white all through,
she cannot fill in what she knows is there.
Within the unsupported line, she knows
that life is missing; she has cut
one background from another. Like a child,
she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heart
against the emptiness she has created.

Happiness

A man and a woman lie on a white bed.
It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
of lilies; sunlight
pools in their throats.
I watch him turn to her
as though to speak her name
but silently, deep in her mouth--
At the window ledge,
once, twice,
a bird calls.
And then she stirs; her body
fills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.

From Descending Figure (Ecco Press, 1980)

Dream of the Huntress

by Robin Robertson

It is always the same:

she is standing over me

in the forest clearing,

a dab of blood on her cheek

from a rabbit or a deer.

I am aware of nothing

but my mutinous flesh,

and the traps of desire

sent to test it—

her bare arms, bare

shoulders, her loosened hair,

the hard, high breasts,

and under a belt

of knives and fish-lures,

her undressed wound.

Every night the same:

the slashed fetlock,

the buckling under;

I wake in her body

broken, like a gun.

Robin Robertson

Artichoke

The nubbed leaves
come away
in a tease of green, thinning
down to the membrane:
the quick, purpled
beginnings of the male.

Then the slow hairs of the heart:
the choke that guards its trophy,
its vegetable goblet.
The meat of it lies, displayed
up-ended, al-dente,
the stub-root aching in its oil.

Randall Jarrell

A Man Meets a Woman in the Street

Under the separated leaves of shade

Of the gingko, that old tree

That has existed essentially unchanged

Longer than any other living tree,

I walk behind a woman. Her hair's coarse gold

Is spun from the sunlight that it rides upon.

Women were paid to knit from sweet champagne

Her second skin: it winds and unwinds, winds

Up her long legs, delectable haunches,

As she sways, in sunlight, up the gazing aisle.

The shade of the tree that is called maidenhair,

That is not positively known

To exist in a wild state, spots her fair or almost fair

Hair twisted in a French twist; tall or almost tall,

She walks through the air the rain has washed, a clear thing

Moving easily on its high heels, seeming to men

Miraculous...Since I can call her, as Swann couldn't

A woman who is my type, I follow with the warmth

Of familiarity, of novelty, this new

Example of the type,

Reminded of how Lorenz's just-hatched goslings

Shook off the last remnants of the egg

And, looking at Lorenz, realized that Lorenz

Was their mother. Quaking, his little family

Followed him everywhere; and when they met a goose,

Their mother, they ran to him afraid.

Imprinted upon me

Is the shape I run to, the sweet strange

Breath-taking contours that breathe to me: "I am yours,

Be mine!"

Following this new

Body, somehow familiar, this young shape, somehow old,

For a moment I'm younger, the century is younger.

the living Strauss, his moustache just getting gray,

Is shouting to the players: "Louder!

Louder! I can still hear Madame Schumann-Heink-"

Or else, white, bald, the old man's joyfully

Telling conductors they must play Elektra

Like A Midsummer Night's Dream -like a fairy music;

Proust, dying, is swallowing his iced beer

And changing in proof the death of Bergotte

According to his own experience; Garbo,

A commissar in Paris, is listening attentively

To the voice telling how McGillicuddy me McGillivray,

And McGillivray said to McGillicuddy-no, McGillicuddy

Said to McGillivray-that is, McGillivray...Garbo

Says seriously: "I vish dey'd never met."

As I walk behind this woman I remember

That before I flew here-waked in the forest

At dawn, by the piece called Birds Beginning Day

That, each day, birds play to begin the day-

I wished as men wish: "May this day be different!"

The birds were wishing, as birds wish-over and over,

With a last firmness, intensity, reality-

"May this day be the same!"

Ah, turn to me

And look into my eyes, say: "I am yours,

Be mine!"

My wish will have come true. And yet

When your eyes meet my eyes, they'll bring into

The weightlessness of my pure wish the weight

Of a human being: someone to help or hurt,

Someone to be good to me, to be good to,

Someone to cry when I am angry

that she doesn't like Elektra, someone to start on Proust with.

A wish, come true, is life. I have my life.

When you turn just slide your eyes across my eyes

And show in a look flickering across your face

As lightly as a leaf's shade, a bird's wing,

That there is no one in the world quit like me,

That if only...If only...

That will be enough.

But I've pretended long enough: I walk faster

And come close, touch with the tip of my finger

The nape of her neck, just where the gold

Hair stops, and the champagne-colored dress begins.

My finger touches her as the gingko's shadow

Touches her.

Because, after all, it is my wife

In a new dress from Bergdorf's, walking toward the park.

She cries out, we kiss each other, and walk arm in arm

Through the sunlight that's much too good for New York,

The sunlight of our own house in the forest.

Still, though, the poor things need it...We've no need

To start out on Proust, to ask each other about Strauss.

We first helped each other, hurt each other, years ago.

After so many changes made and joys repeated,

Our first bewildered, transcending recognition

Is pure acceptance. We can't tell our life

From our wish. Really I began the day

Not with a man's wish: "May this day be different,"

But with the birds' wish: "May this day

Be the same day, the day of my life."

“A Man Meets a Woman in the Street” from THE COMPLETE POEMS by Randall Jarell