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The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

When two sane persons are together one expects that A will recognize B to be more or less the person B takes himself to be, and vice versa. — R.D. Laing, “The Divided Self” The woman in the attic did not have visitors. The man in the basement gave parties that were popular. The woman in the attic had mononucleosis. The man in the basement had type 1 diabetes. The woman in the attic listened to audiobooks which the man in the basement held in disdain. The door to the attic swelled in some weathers; in order to shut, it had to be slammed. “There is a way in which” was a way in which the man opened sentences, as in “There is a way in which to close a door so it doesn’t slam.” The woman in the attic took cautious walks to build her strength. The man in the basement pointedly said, “Some of us have ailments which are not manufactured.” The man in the basement wrote stories about heroin. The woman in the attic read stories with heroines. The woman in the attic noticed a bruise that ran from the top to the base of her thigh. The bruise looked like Europe. The man in the basement was in love with the sister of the secretive man who loved him more. He whooped at the woman, “You killed your student?” To himself he wept, “I killed my father.” The man in the basement, recently divorced, was left with literally two possessions. The woman in the attic purchased books on psychopathology. The man in the basement produced fecal matter that blocked the pipes in both attic and basement. The woman in the attic produced nothing at all. The woman in the attic was a waste of space. The man in the basement had sex almost daily. The woman in the attic had panic attacks. The man in the basement had only one rule: the woman in the attic was banned from his bedroom. But once she stole in and lay on his bed in his absence (or perhaps he was absent because she was there). The man in the basement moved to the West Coast; the woman in the attic crossed the Atlantic, whereas the house with the attic and basement saw states of fumigation, exorcism, detoxification, and rehabitation.

We mourn the broken things, chair legs wrenched from their seats, chipped plates, the threadbare clothes. We work the magic of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes. We save what we can, melt small pieces of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones for soup. Beating rugs against the house, we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie. I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog, listen for passing cars. All day we watch for the mail, some news from a distant place.

silver & gossamer & porcelain & cobwebs some people are made out of they walk from here to there a limited number of times only— but the bony phone is just dumb plastic it rings not at all i don’t understand: my ideas are universal but my audience is five guys at the shell station people just don’t get it she longs for what makes her grin (tînjeşte dupâ ce rînjeşte) the sweetness of want the repulsiveness of having after days she was returned by the storms of language that had tossed her far & she rearranged her face for the english language— what i heard i did not hear what i saw i did not see i trust my sense to dullness then i kill my joy & cease to be

I have scrawled audible lifelines along the edges of the lint trap, dropping the ball of towel fuzz in the blue bin lined with a thirteen-gallon bag. My sons' wardrobes lounge on their bedroom floors, then sidle down to the basement, where I look forward to the warmth of their waistbands when I pluck them from the dryer. Sometimes I wonder why my husband worries about debt and I wish he wouldn't. Sometimes I wonder how high the alfalfa will grow. Sometimes I wonder if the dog will throw up in the night. Like my mother, I'm learning not to tamper with anger. It appears as reliably as the washing machine thumps and threatens to lurch across the floor away from the electrical outlet. Nothing's worth getting worked up about, except for death. And when I think of the people I have lost, I wish them back into their button-down shirts, their raspberry tights.

Here is the House to hold me — cradle of all the race; Here is my lord and my love, here are my children dear — Here is the House enclosing, the dear-loved dwelling place; Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here? Here for the hours of the day and the hours of the night; Bound with the bands of Duty, rivetted tight; Duty older than Adam — Duty that saw Acceptance utter and hopeless in the eyes of the serving squaw. Food and the serving of food — that is my daylong care; What and when we shall eat, what and how we shall wear; Soiling and cleaning of things — that is my task in the main — Soil them and clean them and soil them — soil them and clean them again. To work at my trade by the dozen and never a trade to know; To plan like a Chinese puzzle — fitting and changing so; To think of a thousand details, each in a thousand ways; For my own immediate people and a possible love and praise. My mind is trodden in circles, tiresome, narrow and hard, Useful, commonplace, private — simply a small back-yard; And I the Mother of Nations! — Blind their struggle and vain! — I cover the earth with my children — each with a housewife's brain.

Such as there was in the littleness of that dawn could not be this. Not, certainly, the hove of an invasion fleet from Angleterre, flotilla wrought of shipwright, chandler, armorer as if Ice Age breeding stocks were on the move. The Planners had their weather oracles, haruspices their entrails. All divined the red planet aligned, full-moon visibility, high tides to clear the beachhead obstacles — but iffy weather.

As much as you deserve it, I wouldn’t wish this Sunday night on you— not the Osco at closing, not its two tired women and shaky security guard, not its bin of flip-flops and Tasmanian Devil baseball caps, not its freshly mopped floors and fluorescent lights, not its endless James Taylor song on the intercom, and not its last pint of chocolate mint ice cream, which I carried down Milwaukee Ave. past a man in an unbuttoned baseball shirt, who stepped out of a shadow to whisper, How are you doing?

How awkward when playing with glue To suddenly find out that you Have stuck nice and tight Your left hand to your right In a permanent how-do-you-do!

How can I keep my maidenhead, My maidenhead, my maidenhead; How can I keep my maidenhead, Among sae mony men, O. The Captain bad a guinea for’t, A guinea for’t, a guinea for’t, The Captain bad a guinea for’t, The Colonel he bad ten, O. But I’ll do as my minnie did, My minnie did, my minnie did, But I’ll do as my minnie did, For siller I’ll hae nane, O. I’ll gie it to a bonie lad, A bonie lad, a bonie lad; I’ll gie it to a bonie lad, For just as gude again, O. An auld moulie maidenhead, A maidenhead, a maidenhead; An auld moulie maidenhead, The weary wark I ken, O. The stretchin’ o’t, the strivin’ o’t, The borin o’t, the rivin’ o’t, And ay the double drivin o’t, The farther ye gang ben, O.