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THE WILD IRIS, Copyright  1992, Louise Gl?ck

AVERNO, Copyright  2006, Louise Gl?ck

FAITHFUL AND VIRTUOUS NIGHT,

Copyright  2014, Louise Gl?ck

All rights reserved



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The wild iris


At the end of my suffering

there was a door.



Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.



Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.



It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.



Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.



You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:



from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.




 


  

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Matins


The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves

of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.

Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils, Ice Wings,

Cantatrice; dark

leaves of the wild violet. Noah says

depressives hate the spring, imbalance

between the inner and the outer world. I make

another case  being depressed, yes, but in a sense

passionately

attached to the living tree, my body

actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace,

in the evening rain

almost able to feel

sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is

an error of depressives, identifying

with a tree, whereas the happy heart

wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for

the part, not the whole.







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Matins


Unreachable father, when we were first

exiled from heaven, you made

a replica, a place in one sense

different from heaven, being

designed to teach a lesson: otherwise

the same  beauty on either side, beauty

without alternative  Except

we didnt know what was the lesson. Left alone,

we exhausted each other. Years

of darkness followed; we took turns

working the garden, the first tears

filling our eyes as earth

misted with petals, some

dark red, some flesh colored 

We never thought of you

whom we were learning to worship.

We merely knew it wasnt human nature to love

only what returns love.







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Trillium


When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark

seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees

thick with many lights.



I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.

And as I watched, all the lights of heaven

faded to make a single thing, a fire

burning through the cool firs.

Then it wasnt possible any longer

to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.



Are there souls that need

deaths presence, as I require protection?

I think if I speak long enough

I will answer that question, I will see

whatever they see, a ladder

reaching through the firs, whatever

calls them to exchange their lives 



Think what I understand already.

I woke up ignorant in a forest;

only a moment ago, I didnt know my voice

if one were given me

would be so full of grief, my sentences

like cries strung together.

I didnt even know I felt grief

until that word came, until I felt

rain streaming from me.







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Lamium


This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.



The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.



Living things dont all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: asilver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.



But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.







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Snowdrops


Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.



I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didnt expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring 



afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.







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lear morning


Ive watched you long enough,

I can speak to you any way I like 



Ive submitted to your preferences, observing patiently

the things you love, speaking



through vehicles only, in

details of earth, as you prefer,



tendrils

of blue clematis, light



of early evening 

you would never accept



a voice like mine, indifferent

to the objects you busily name,



your mouths

small circles of awe 



And all this time

I indulged your limitation, thinking



you would cast it aside yourselves sooner or later,

thinking matter could not absorb your gaze forever 



obstacle of the clematis painting

blue flowers on the porch window 



I cannot go on

restricting myself to images



because you think it is your right

to dispute my meaning:



I am prepared now to force

clarity upon you.




 


  

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Spring Snow


Look at the night sky:

I have two selves, two kinds of power.



I am here with you, at the window,

watching you react. Yesterday

the moon rose over moist earth in the lower garden.

Now the earth glitters like the moon,

like dead matter crusted with light.



You can close your eyes now.

I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,

and the demand behind them.

I have shown you what you want:

not belief, but capitulation

to authority, which depends on violence.




 


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End of Winter


Over the still world, a bird calls

waking solitary among black boughs.



You wanted to be born; I let you be born.

When has my grief ever gotten

in the way of your pleasure?



Plunging ahead

into the dark and light at the same time

eager for sensation



as though you were some new thing, wanting

to express yourselves



all brilliance, all vivacity



never thinking

this would cost you anything,

never imagining the sound of my voice

as anything but part of you 



you wont hear it in the other world,

not clearly again,

not in birdcall or human cry,



not the clear sound, only

persistent echoing

in all sound that means goodbye, goodbye 

the one continuous line

that binds us to each other.




 


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Matins


Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful

are always lied to since the weak are always

driven by panic. I cannot love

what I cant conceive, and you disclose

virtually nothing: are you like the hawthorn tree,

always the same thing in the same place,

or are you more the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up

a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,

and the next year, purple in the rose garden? You must see

it is useless to us, this silence that promotes belief

you must be all things, the foxglove and the hawthorn tree,

the vulnerable rose and tough daisy  we are left to think

you couldnt possibly exist. Is this

what you mean us to think, does this explain

the silence of the morning,

the crickets not yet rubbing their wings, the cats

not fighting in the yard?







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Matins


I see it is with you as with the birches:

I am not to speak to you

in the personal way. Much

has passed between us. Or

was it always only

on the one side? I am

at fault, at fault, I asked you

to be human  I am no needier

than other people. But the absence

of all feeling, of the least

concern for me  I might as well go on

addressing the birches,

as in my former life: let them

do their worst, let them

bury me with the Romantics,

their pointed yellow leaves

falling and covering me.







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Scilla


Not I, you idiot, not self, but we, we  waves

of sky blue like

a critique of heaven: why

do you treasure your voice

when to be one thing

is to be next to nothing?

Why do you look up? To hear

an echo like the voice

of god? You are all the same to us,

solitary, standing above us, planning

your silly lives: you go

where you are sent, like all things,

where the wind plants you,

one or another of you forever

looking down and seeing some image

of water, and hearing what? Waves,

and over waves, birds singing.







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Retreating Wind


When I made you, I loved you.

Now I pity you.



I gave you all you needed:

bed of earth, blanket of blue air 



As I get further away from you

I see you more clearly.

Your souls should have been immense by now,

not what they are,

small talking things 



I gave you every gift,

blue of the spring morning,

time you didnt know how to use 

you wanted more, the one gift

reserved for another creation.



Whatever you hoped,

you will not find yourselves in the garden,

among the growing plants.

Your lives are not circular like theirs:



your lives are the birds flight

which begins and ends in stillness 

which begins and ends, in form echoing

this arc from the white birch

to the apple tree.




 


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The Garden


I couldnt do it again,

I can hardly bear to look at it 



in the garden, in light rain

the young couple planting

a row of peas, as though

no one has ever done this before,

the great difficulties have never as yet

been faced and solved 



They cannot see themselves,

in fresh dirt, starting up

without perspective,

the hills behind them pale green, clouded with

flowers 



She wants to stop;

he wants to get to the end,

to stay with the thing 



Look at her, touching his cheek

to make a truce, her fingers

cool with spring rain;

in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus 



even here, even at the beginning of love,

her hand leaving his face makes

an image of departure



and they think

they are free to overlook

this sadness.







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The Hawthorn Tree


Side by side, not

hand in hand: I watch you

walking in the summer garden  things

that cant move

learn to see; I do not need

to chase you through

the garden; human beings leave

signs of feeling

everywhere, flowers

scattered on the dirt path, all

white and gold, some

lifted a little by

the evening wind; I do not need

to follow where you are now,

deep in the poisonous field, to know

the cause of your flight, human

passion or rage: for what else

would you let drop

all you have gathered?







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Love in Moonlight


Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair

on another person, which is called

baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul 

meaning for this moment they acquired souls 

outside, a summer evening, a whole world

thrown away on the moon: groups of silver forms

which might be buildings or trees, the narrow garden

where the cat hides, rolling on its back in the dust,

the rose, the coreopsis, and, in the dark, the gold

dome of the capitol

converted to an alloy of moonlight, shape

without detail, the myth, the archetype, the soul

filled with fire that is moonlight really, taken

from another source, and briefly

shining as the moon shines: stone or not,

the moon is still that much of a living thing.




   


    



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April


No ones despair is like my despair 


You have no place in this garden

thinking such things, producing

the tiresome outward signs; the man

pointedly weeding an entire forest,

the woman limping, refusing to change clothes

or wash her hair.



Do you suppose I care

if you speak to one another?

But I mean you to know

I expected better of two creatures

who were given minds: if not

that you would actually care for each other

at least that you would understand

grief is distributed

between you, among all your kind, for me

to know you, as deep blue

marks the wild scilla, white

the wood violet.







      


    

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Violets


Because in our world

something is always hidden,

small and white,

small and what you call

pure, we do not grieve

as you grieve, dear

suffering master; you

are no more lost

than we are, under

the hawthorn tree, the hawthorn holding

balanced trays of pearls: what

has brought you among us

who would teach you, though

you kneel and weep,

clasping your great hands,

in all your greatness knowing

nothing of the souls nature,

which is never to die: poor sad god,

either you never have one

or you never lose one.







   

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Witchgrass


Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder 



If you hate me so much

dont bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything 



as we both know,

if you worship

one god, you only need

one enemy 

Im not the enemy.



Only a ruse to ignore

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure. One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you cant rest until

you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion 

It was not meant

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.



I dont need your praise

to survive. I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And Ill be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.



I will constitute the field.




 


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The Jacobs Ladder


Trapped in the earth,

wouldnt you too want to go

to heaven? I live

in a ladys garden. Forgive me, lady;

longing has taken my grace. I am

not what you wanted. But

as men and women seem

to desire each other, I too desire

knowledge of paradise  and now

your grief, a naked stem

reaching the porch window.

And at the end, what? A small blue flower

like a star. Never

to leave the world! Is this

not what your tears mean?




 


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Matins


You want to know how I spend my time?

I walk the front lawn, pretending

to be weeding. You ought to know

Im never weeding, on my knees, pulling

clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact

Im looking for courage, for some evidence

my life will change, though

it takes forever, checking

each clump for the symbolic

leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already

the leaves turning, always the sick trees

going first, the dying turning

brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform

their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?

As empty now as at the first note.

Or was the point always

to continue without a sign?







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Matins


What is my heart to you

that you must break it over and over

like a plantsman testing

his new species? Practice

on something else: how can I live

in colonies, as you prefer, if you impose

a quarantine of affliction, dividing me

from healthy members of

my own tribe: you do not do this

in the garden, segregate

the sick rose; you let it wave its sociable

infested leaves in

the faces of the other roses, and the tiny aphids

leap from plant to plant, proving yet again

I am the lowest of your creatures, following

the thriving aphid and the trailing rose  Father,

as agent of my solitude, alleviate

at least my guilt; lift

the stigma of isolation, unless

it is your plan to make me

sound forever again, as I was

sound and whole in my mistaken childhood,

or if not then, under the light weight

of my mothers heart, or if not then,

in dream, first

being that would never die.







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Song


Like a protected heart,

the blood-red

flower of the wild rose begins

to open on the lowest branch,

supported by the netted

mass of a large shrub:

it blooms against the dark

which is the hearts constant

backdrop, while flowers

higher up have wilted or rotted;

to survive

adversity merely

deepens its color. But John

objects, he thinks

if this were not a poem but

an actual garden, then

the red rose would be

required to resemble

nothing else, neither

another flower nor

the shadowy heart, at

earth level pulsing

half maroon, half crimson.







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Field Flowers


What are you saying? That you want

eternal life? Are your thoughts really

as compelling as all that? Certainly

you dont look at us, dont listen to us,

on your skin

stain of sun, dust

of yellow buttercups: Im talking

to you, you staring through

bars of high grass shaking

your little rattle  O

the soul! the soul! Is it enough

only to look inward? Contempt

for humanity is one thing, but why

disdain the expansive

field, your gaze rising over the clear heads

of the wild buttercups into what? Your poor

idea of heaven: absence

of change. Better than earth? How

would you know, who are neither

here nor there, standing in our midst?




 


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The Red Poppy


The great thing

is not having

a mind. Feelings:

oh, I have those; they

govern me. I have

a lord in heaven

called the sun, and open

for him, showing him

the fire of my own heart, fire

like his presence.

What could such glory be

if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,

were you like me once, long ago,

before you were human? Did you

permit yourselves

to open once, who would never

open again? Because in truth

I am speaking now

the way you do. I speak

because I am shattered.




 




  

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Clover


What is dispersed

among us, which you call

the sign of blessedness

although it is, like us,

a weed, a thing

to be rooted out 



by what logic

do you hoard

a single tendril

of something you want

dead?



If there is any presence among us

so powerful, should it not

multiply, in service

of the adored garden?



You should be asking

these questions yourself,

not leaving them

to your victims. You should know

that when you swagger among us

I hear two voices speaking,

one your spirit, one

the acts of your hands.









   

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Matins


Not the sun merely but the earth

itself shines, white fire

leaping from the showy mountains

and the flat road

shimmering in early morning: is this

for us only, to induce

response, or are you

stirred also, helpless

to control yourself

in earths presence  I am ashamed

at what I thought you were,

distant from us, regarding us

as an experiment: it is

a bitter thing to be

the disposable animal,

a bitter thing. Dear friend,

dear trembling partner, what

surprises you most in what you feel,

earths radiance or your own delight?

For me, always

the delight is the surprise.







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Heaven and Earth


Where one finishes, the other begins.

On top, a band of blue; underneath,

a band of green and gold, green and deep rose.



John stands at the horizon: he wants

both at once, he wants

everything at once.



The extremes are easy. Only

the middle is a puzzle. Midsummer 

everything is possible.



Meaning: never again will life end.



How can I leave my husband

standing in the garden

dreaming this sort of thing, holding

his rake, triumphantly

preparing to announce this discovery



as the fire of the summer sun

truly does stall

being entirely contained by

the burning maples

at the gardens border.




  


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The Doorway


I wanted to stay as I was,

still as the world is never still,

not in midsummer but the moment before

the first flower forms, the moment

nothing is as yet past 



not midsummer, the intoxicant,

but late spring, the grass not yet

high at the edge of the garden, the early tulips

beginning to open 



like a child hovering in a doorway, watching the others,

the ones who go first,

a tense cluster of limbs, alert to

the failures of others, the public falterings



with a childs fierce confidence of imminent power

preparing to defeat

these weaknesses, to succumb

to nothing, the time directly



prior to flowering, the epoch of mastery



before the appearance of the gift,

before possession.




 


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Midsummer


How can I help you when you all want

different things  sunlight and shadow,

moist darkness, dry heat 



Listen to yourselves, vying with one another 



And you wonder

why I despair of you,

you think something could fuse you into a whole 



the still air of high summer

tangled with a thousand voices



each calling out

some need, some absolute



and in that name continually

strangling each other

in the open field 



For what? For space and air?

The privilege of being

single in the eyes of heaven?



You were not intended

to be unique. You were

my embodiment, all diversity



not what you think you see

searching the bright sky over the field,

your incidental souls

fixed like telescopes on some

enlargement of yourselves 



Why would I make you if I meant

to limit myself

to the ascendant sign,

the star, the fire, the fury?




 


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Vespers


Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.

Here, in Vermont, country

of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,

it would mean you existed.



By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist

exclusively in warmer climates,

in fervent Sicily and Mexico and California,

where are grown the unimaginable

apricot and fragile peach. Perhaps

they see your face in Sicily; here, we barely see

the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself

to share with John and Noah the tomato crop.



If there is justice in some other world, those

like myself, whom nature forces

into lives of abstinence, should get

the lions share of all things, all

objects of hunger, greed being

praise of you. And no one praises

more intensely than I, with more

painfully checked desire, or more deserves

to sit at your right hand, if it exists, partaking

of the perishable, the immortal fig,

which does not travel.







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Vespers


In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are,

in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible

for these vines.







     

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Vespers


More than you love me, very possibly

you love the beasts of the field, even,

possibly, the field itself, in August dotted

with wild chicory and aster:

I know. I have compared myself

to those flowers, their range of feeling

so much smaller and without issue; also to white sheep,

actually gray: I am uniquely

suited to praise you. Then why

torment me? I study the hawkweed,

the buttercup protected from the grazing herd

by being poisonous: is pain

your gift to make me

conscious in my need of you, as though

I must need you to worship you,

or have you abandoned me

in favor of the field, the stoic lambs turning

silver in twilight; waves of wild aster and chicory shining

pale blue and deep blue, since you already know

how like your raiment it is.







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Daisies


Go ahead: say what youre thinking. The garden

is not the real world. Machines

are the real world. Say frankly what any fool

could read in your face: it makes sense

to avoid us, to resist

nostalgia. It is

not modern enough, the sound the wind makes

stirring a meadow of daisies: the mind

cannot shine following it. And the mind

wants to shine, plainly, as

machines shine, and not

grow deep, as, for example, roots. It is very touching,

all the same, to see you cautiously

approaching the meadows border in early morning,

when no one could possibly

be watching you. The longer you stand at the edge,

the more nervous you seem. No one wants to hear

impressions of the natural world: you will be

laughed at again; scorn will be piled on you.

As for what youre actually

hearing this morning: think twice

before you tell anyone what was said in this field

and by whom.







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End of Summer


After all things occurred to me,

the void occurred to me.



There is a limit

to the pleasure I had in form 



I am not like you in this,

I have no release in another body,



I have no need

of shelter outside myself 



My poor inspired

creation, you are

distractions, finally,

mere curtailment; you are

too little like me in the end

to please me.



And so adamant 

you want to be paid off

for your disappearance,

all paid in some part of the earth,

some souvenir, as you were once

rewarded for labor,

the scribe being paid

in silver, the shepherd in barley



although it is not earth

that is lasting, not

these small chips of matter 



If you would open your eyes

you would see me, you would see

the emptiness of heaven

mirrored on earth, the fields

vacant again, lifeless, covered with snow 



then white light

no longer disguised as matter.




 


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Vespers


I dont wonder where you are anymore.

Youre in the garden; youre where John is,

in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel.



This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort,

fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes

I work beside him, doing the shade chores,

weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch

from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes

lamps of the first lilies: all this time,

peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,

not as sustenance the flower holds

but like bright light through the bare tree.







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Vespers


Even as you appeared to Moses, because

I need you, you appear to me, not

often, however. I live essentially

in darkness. You are perhaps training me to be

responsive to the slightest brightening. Or, like the poets,

are you stimulated by despair, does grief

move you to reveal your nature? This afternoon,

in the physical world to which you commonly

contribute your silence, I climbed

the small hill above the wild blueberries, metaphysically

descending, as on all my walks: did I go deep enough

for you to pity me, as you have sometimes pitied

others who suffer, favoring those

with theological gifts? As you anticipated,

I did not look up. So you came down to me:

at my feet, not the wax

leaves of the wild blueberry but your fiery self, a whole

pasture of fire, and beyond, the red sun neither falling

nor rising 

I was not a child; I could take advantage of illusions.







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Vespers


You thought we didnt know. But we knew once,

children know these things. Dont turn away now 

we inhabited

a lie to appease you. I remember

sunlight of early spring, embankments

netted with dark vinca. I remember

lying in a field, touching my brothers body.

Dont turn away now; we denied

memory to console you. We mimicked you, reciting

the terms of our punishment. I remember

some of it, not all of it: deceit

begins as forgetting. I remember small things, flowers

growing under the hawthorn tree, bells

of the wild scilla. Not all, but enough

to know you exist: who else had reason to create

mistrust between a brother and sister but the one

who profited, to whom we turned in solitude? Who else

would so envy the bond we had then

as to tell us it was not earth

but heaven we were losing?







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Early Darkness


How can you say

earth should give me joy? Each thing

born is my burden; I cannot succeed

with all of you.



And you would like to dictate to me,

you would like to tell me

who among you is most valuable,

who most resembles me.

And you hold up as an example

the pure life, the detachment

you struggle to achieve 



How can you understand me

when you cannot understand yourselves?

Your memory is not

powerful enough, it will not

reach back far enough 



Never forget you are my children.

You are not suffering because you touched each other

but because you were born,

because you required life

separate from me.




 


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Harvest


It grieves me to think of you in the past 



Look at you, blindly clinging to earth

as though it were the vineyards of heaven

while the fields go up in flames around you 



Ah, little ones, how unsubtle you are:

it is at once the gift and the torment.



If what you fear in death

is punishment beyond this, you need not

fear death:



how many times must I destroy my own creation

to teach you

this is your punishment:



with one gesture I established you

in time and in paradise.







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The White Rose


This is the earth? Then

I dont belong here.



Who are you in the lighted window,

shadowed now by the flickering leaves

of the wayfarer tree?

Can you survive where I wont last

beyond the first summer?



All night the slender branches of the tree

shift and rustle at the bright window.

Explain my life to me, you who make no sign,



though I call out to you in the night:

I am not like you, I have only

my body for a voice; I cant

disappear into silence 



And in the cold morning

over the dark surface of the earth

echoes of my voice drift,

whiteness steadily absorbed into darkness



as though you were making a sign after all

to convince me you too couldnt survive here



or to show me you are not the light I called to

but the blackness behind it.




 


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Ipomoea


What was my crime in another life,

as in this life my crime

is sorrow, that I am not to be

permitted to ascend ever again,

never in any sense

permitted to repeat my life,

wound in the hawthorn, all

earthly beauty my punishment

as it is yours 

Source of my suffering, why

have you drawn from me

these flowers like the sky, except

to mark me as a part

of my master: I am

his cloaks color, my flesh giveth

form to his glory.







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Presque Isle


In every life, theres a moment or two.

In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea

or in the mountains.



On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.



Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:

on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,

my finger pressing your lips.

The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau flaking

a little.



That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,

with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.

A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over

the edge of the bed.

It hasnt dissolved back into nothing, into reality.

Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.



Early morning: aman calling a small boy back from

the water.

That small boy  he would be twenty now.



Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with auburn.

Muslin, flicker of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.




-


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Retreating Light


You were like very young children,

always waiting for a story.

And Id been through it all too many times;

I was tired of telling stories.

So I gave you the pencil and paper.

I gave you pens made of reeds

I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense

meadows.

I told you, write your own story.



After all those years of listening

I thought youd know

what a story was.



All you could do was weep.

You wanted everything told to you

and nothing thought through yourselves.



Then I realized you couldnt think

with any real boldness or passion;

you hadnt had your own lives yet,

your own tragedies.

So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,

because apparently tools alone werent enough.



You will never know how deeply

it pleases me to see you sitting there

like independent beings,

to see you dreaming by the open window,

holding the pencils I gave you

until the summer morning disappears into writing.



Creation has brought you

great excitement, as I knew it would,

as it does in the beginning



And I am free to do as I please now,

to attend to other things, in confidence

you have no need of me anymore.




 


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Vespers


I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me

to love the world, making it impossible

to turn away completely, to shut it out completely

ever again 

it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,

birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer

roses:

you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection

with earth 

why would you wound me, why would you want me

desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved

for hope

I would refuse to see that finally

nothing was left to me, and would believe instead

in the end you were left to me.







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Vespers: Parousia


Love of my life, you

are lost and I am

young again.



A few years pass.

The air fills

with girlish music;

in the front yard

the apple tree is

studded with blossoms.



I try to win you back,

that is the point

of the writing.

But you are gone forever,

as in Russian novels, saying

a few words I dont remember 



How lush the world is,

how full of things that dont belong to me 



I watch the blossoms shatter,

no longer pink,

but old, old, a yellowish white 

the petals seem

to float on the bright grass,

fluttering slightly.



What a nothing you were,

to be changed so quickly

into an image, an odor 

you are everywhere, source

of wisdom and anguish.




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Vespers


Your voice is gone now; I hardly hear you.

Your starry voice all shadow now

and the earth dark again

with your great changes of heart.



And by day the grass going brown in places

under the broad shadows of the maple trees.

Now, everywhere I am talked to by silence



so it is clear I have no access to you;

I do not exist for you, you have drawn

a line through my name.



In what contempt do you hold us

to believe only loss can impress

your power on us,



the first rains of autumn shaking the white lilies 



When you go, you go absolutely,

deducting visible life from all things



but not all life,

lest we turn from you.







   ,     .

     ,

   

    .



    




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