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.