LEAVING CAMP

The campers wake before the sun
in their cabins on the lake.
The saddest day has now begun--
the roses tremble on the stake.

No pick-pock of the tennis ball
disturbs the silence of the day,
no berries stud the bush this fall;
the baskets all are stored away.

The crunch of tires on the drive,
the hugs hello and tales exchanged--
the adults and their world arrive,
and everything you know has changed.


IVYLAND

The last time I saw you, children
rushed at each other in the twilight that never seemed
to end. These days
I wake at dawn, still in my body, and the slow
ache of your absence goes through me.

BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING

Rows of unsharpened pencils
in their little cardboard containers,
stiff-backed notebooks, wide-ruled,
with oversize margins for the diligent
students of life as it is.

This is how it was: me,
in the vainglorious shade
of the oak, my Homer and Ossian
tucked neatly in my leather satchel
beside the pencil case and peanut butter
sandwich, waiting for the bus
under the chemical blue of the sky.


THE GHOST

I am the ghost. Once, like you,
I wore a cloak of human flesh,
and when it no longer fit, they
drained my blood and buried me
at Rosehill. They marked the plot,
like all the others, with a wooden cross.

One night, out of sheer
boredom, I walked back
to town, to the house
where I used to live. That sound
the pipes make on winter mornings,
and why your dog comes back
with his tail between his legs, and why
you always seem to have trouble
sleeping--look no further. It is I.

AUTUMN RAIN

I couldn’t sleep last night
or this morning. The clock
ticks slowly on the bedside table.
I imagine the sound
each cold drop of rain makes
as it falls on the burnished leaves
of the linden tree.

Nothing feels right
now that you’re gone, the arrangement
of silverware on the kitchen table, the way
this lambswool sweater irritates my skin
after a bath, how little
occurrences become catastrophes: the dog
coming in from the rain, a bird’s wing
in his teeth, the feathers rimmed with blood.

FOG

Fog blurs the faces in the family portraits.
Nothing separates their fate from yours.

Days like this, a part of you breaks off,
speaks in a voice tainted by poor health,

impending war. The dog scratches at the door,
whines to be let out. You let him out.

The sky drops over the chalk cliffs. Lobstermen
come back with empty traps, maybe a boot

that floated up from the carcass of a whale.
On the jetty, someone has left a wetsuit,

arms spread wide on that vacant space of rock,
as if embracing a thing which has no name.

THE SISTERS

Quietly, with great dignity,
she draws up her knees
in a corner of the room and opens
The Sorrows of Young Werther.

The other two are polishing their nails
as the TV blares. The eldest
doesn't hear it. Autumn comes.
Werther revisits his hometown, rejoices
in the linden tree's maternal
shade. Already within him, the snow
has begun to fall.

A shard of empathy
breaks off and lodges in her heart.

LULLABY

for J.M.

The river flows into the star;
the fullness holds the lack:
and should I choose to travel far
you’d always take me back.

Of all the things you love me for
my darkness is the one
that always seems to pour and pour
and never quite be done.

So leave me to these quiet things,
your breath, the starry night—
wait until the mock-dove sings,
and we will be all right.


THE HOMECOMING

Imperceptibly August slides on
into the twilight of the year,
the hard blue sky
and the cold autumn rains.

I’ve been away for years.

The shady avenues, the leaves
so green they’re gold, the sorrows
of the schoolyard, and the quiet
child governed solely by his feelings—

I’ve known them all: they haven’t
changed, resistant
to perception; they shake it off
like Homer his translations.


THE BLOOD-VASE

Days pass
like light through a prism.

On the table, the little ceramic vase
narrows itself to hold no more
than a few drops of blood.

I saw you this morning
when you came in from the garden
after pruning the roses; I saw you
hold your cut finger
over the vase, which closed around it
like the last days of a childhood.


LITTLE TRAGEDIES

Oedipus

Once I held my mother
in her darkest place;
now the light surrounds us,
I cannot see her face.

Hamlet

Blue-and-diamond dawn
breaks me open there,
at Wittenberg, at home:
I suffer everywhere.

Werther

And so I lose myself
inside your lambent gaze—
those things we can’t say now,
unsayable always.


NIGHT PIECE

The fan clicks rhythmically
on the ceiling as the lamp
braids the long hair
of darkness: on the dresser,
remnants of a girlhood:
a silver Celtic knot
on a chain with a broken
clasp, a bottle of pomegranate
lotion, three-quarters
empty, abandoned letters
to boys who died at war.

LULLABY

Don't pray at the arbor, don't wish on a star:
when night descends, don't be afraid--
you have a Creator, of course you were made,
and I, my darling, will never be far.

Loss is beautiful. Even if it never
returns, that other self which you've let go of
like a balloon into the glare above
the gold dome of the capitol, it takes its place,
quietly, among the stars.

THE PONDS OF BOSTON

Some pitted by rain like spotted mirrors, others
green and smoky as Venetian glass,
choked with weeds and hidden
in the woods, some shallow as the palm
of a hand, and clear to the bottom, bright
with koi; still others dark and turbid, stirred
from underneath, some salty to the taste
like tears, brittle surfaces on which the water lily
and the hyacinth unfold, proliferate—
(and if a church bell were to strike, they would
shatter like a pane of glass—)

Across Chandler's Pond, the medieval
stone towers of Boston College; in a darkened
room a student reads about the future
from the past, his life shining quietly
within him like a lamp turned low—the brief
gleam of a flashlight, the cottages
reflected darkly in the water, afraid almost
of themselves

LITTLE TRAGEDIES

All the wonders and complexities a star can hold
you can hold—
no human wish exceeds you

*

Beloved, you who do not
exist, you who never were
but always dwelt in me
the unextinguished flame

*

And so I lose myself inside your gaze—
what is unsayable now
is unsayable forever



THE LEAVING

To die. To speak that word.
There is so much in death I do not
understand, the bright room
stripped away, the pain
receding like a distant ship, and still
we cling to one another, as if
even in our leaving we are
not alone.


JAMAICA POND SUITE

1

The sun plays piano on the water, unsure
of what keys to strike, a timid
student, hiding every now and then
behind a cloud as from its master.

We instruct it into being with our vision--touch
here, then there--scintillating the pond
to fullest splendor.

2

Love, you said, is a portrait of Hope
reaching into the ether, unsure
of what she grasps--what lies beyond
the painting, this canopy of blue? Up there,
no hand can touch her, no beloved
can obstruct her sight.

3

Lovers, when they separate, are
children again--with no one to cling to, no one
to keep them from their thoughts, they
descend into themselves, into that corpus of unknown
desires, and rise again, the hyacinth
unfolding on the water.

FOR THADE CORREA

This morning when you lift the veil
of sleep and take her hand and drink
from her eyes as from a deep Germanic
pool, feel again the stirrings
of her voice which were infused in you
without your noticing.

*

As August recedes into the slow
September of your thoughts, do not
wish again for the fullness of summer,
the shining pond between the trees,
but hold it within you, unbroken
and invisible as a circle drawn in water.

*

Remember that nothing is ever lost, only
transfigured: the river flowing back
into the unseen spring, the errant
star returning to the fold at dawn,
the horns of the stag
breaking mercilessly into bloom.

CAIRO

City of false gods and prophets, home of
Sutekh, precursor to Baal, the one who
dazzles, the pillar of stability. City
that speaks in whispers, city whose voice
is the creaking of melon carts in the dusty streets
of the bazaar, the muezzin’s call to prayer
that shatters the palaces of air between the mosques
and minarets frail as the spine of a bird,
city that watches you like a beggar with one
glass eye and a toothless sneer, watches you
undress after luncheon in the hotel room
of your beloved, holds her up to you like a mirror
and again you are alone. Earlier today
you followed a man dressed all in white
whose wife makes purses from the hides of ostriches
and crocodiles. You know the Nile
intimately, you are its dearest friend, you floated
downstream in a straw basket before
you were born. City whose song is a lament
for Antinous, city whose heavy, inverted stars
are the sorrows of Hadrian. The continent of Africa
sways on a gold chain around your neck. Jesus
takes your arm, walks beside you, and
tells you things He never told His disciples.
Cars go counterclockwise around the traffic circle
outside your window as the Coca-Cola marquee
embeds itself like rhinestones in the fabric
of the evening sky. Taxis
flash their beams in the interminable twilight.
You sit on the end of your bed, you think of her, you hold
the country of Egypt and all its curiosities
like blue dice in the palm of your hand. Down in the lobby
the turbaned men sit for hours smoking hookah; the scent
of melon, of lotus perfume, drifts through your open
window, and your private demons rage. Pharaoh’s
armies march into the city, leaving behind
muddy handprints, child-sized, on the walls
of an abandoned leather factory. You hear
a woman calling on her God, charming a rare
music from the deep silence of her mandolin. Your room
is the calm center of the world.

EVENING

Evening falls like rain
on the village square as the fruit dims
in the pewter bowl on the shore
of the kitchen island. The vintage
breathes a little, loosening its cork
in the air like the tenor
clearing his throat before the silent crowd.
Tonight the tide goes for a walk while
the seaside mansions dream, and a boat,
hard against the Chinese lantern of the sky,
opens its saffron sails.