Poemunity — your poem community

1 Nose only above water; an hour in the ice melt; paw in a beaver trap, northern leaping through— the outlet sieving, setter- retriever staked to her trip, The stake of her young life run to nose level. Farmers adjacent to the lake call ’round for the owner; at least they call around, and a man in a pickup pulls her out, her crushed paw limp in the blazing sun. Shivering on our pantry floor, wrapped in a snowsuit, I see her dam the clamped paw staked to the sleeve, licking for breaks, a light trickle of blood spilling from a torn nail. 2 Next spring she will tramp down our wire, stamp on six goslings, swim for teal, run down blackbirds, drag deer bones in our garden. She limps on the compost pile, shakes at the vet, fishes under makeshift docks, ferrets out mink, frog, green snake, any animal scrimmage without stakes: listen to her spayed name— warned, thwarted, disregarded, beautiful— last of her line.

A small stand of trees, unremarkable. I don't know their names. They're like a knot of folks waiting for a train, or for a store to open —a gathering, that's all. They don't seem to know each other. They didn't plan to be together there in a field of weeds. Yet, on second look, they are remarkable, having stood the invisible winds of winter, stood the bitter season that comes to each alone, that separateness of sickness —mind and soul—there in the bent of trees. The trees seem to know all about winter. Seem to have winter in their bones. Perhaps someone else would see them differently, a different reflection, a family gathering, not just a knot. Some might see them that way. Some might see them differently. And I too, perhaps, on a different day. The others around me, others by the window, silently looking out —I can see us reflected in the window when the light is just right. Another stand of trees, a knot, not planning to be together here in a field of weeds.

Sankt Georg, what was it, questionable, doubtful, shady, twilit, a something area, something  Jan said, and he was born in Hamburg, and went to school here, so he would know. A little isthmus between the Alster with its freshwater sailors and the railway station, always a reliable drag on things anywhere in Europe (the transients, the drugs, the preset collisions between the foolish young and the unscrupulous old), though this one piped classical music — 
not anymore — to the forecourt, where taxi drivers got out and walked their Mercs around in neutral because they were hours without a fare and were saving diesel (which was all very well in summer), and the immediate, somehow always slightly grubby or compromised view of three theatres, two museums, and le Carré’s bunker hotel, but, hey, it was classy while it lasted, and you could get to Milan or Moscow if you had to. Then the Polizeibezirk of underage Puppenstrich about the time B. came here from the country, still often the only girl not on the game, among whores and winos and people “with an immigration background” looking grim and wearing subfusc and doing the messages, as we once said. Then gays — is there a pink euro, like a pink pound, and the Pink Pistols and gray wolves? — intrepid advance guard of gentrification. So up the rents, send in the heavies, firebomb the buildings, locals out, make improvements, and up the rents again, same everywhere. A natty pellucid pissoir in the Hanser Platz that it would take Paris to pull off, drunks round the monument (“reel around the fountain”), hardy trees and hardier women, little roosters, little rosters in the apartment block for cleaning the common parts, little brass squares set in the ground for individual fascist outrages, with the victims’ names, the massy church at the end of the street — St. George’s, the AIDS church, the rainbow flag, the incendiary community paper called the Dragon. Sudden sad flurries of flowers, the curt pairs of dates, a grown-out bleached person with one leg. The main drag changed utterly, meaning as usual stylistic diktat from elsewhere and the birth of an interchangeably frippish hideousness. Three hat shops, an empty tea bar (tax write-off? money laundry?) boasting sixteen varieties of macaroons, endless places to stop (if you even wanted to stop) on the narrow pavement between the heedless cars and the nosy passersby, expensive ready-cooked food shops with names like Mom’s, gone the hardware store that stocked everything and was staffed by people who advised you where to find it for even less, out of business, or moved away to less promising parts. The photo shops, the record store, bookshop. All gone. And behind that, the Steindamm, our belly and balls, twinned with Kabul, or Mombasa, or Abuja. Telephone shops if you wanted to call anywhere with a red, green, and black flag (launch pad of Ali Ağca and his crew of martyrs), casinos, thorny or hairy vegetables, fetish stores, Alphonso mangoes from Pakistan, video brothels, limitless mint and parsley and cilantro, hourly hotels, cracked olives and fresh cheese, old girls with three words of German, newly baked flatbread. The birds strike up between three and four (it’s the Northern light), while at lit intersections they never stop. Twilit, doubtful, shady, something. Questionable.

Listen, Sanoe Dewy lehua bud Here I am Waiting for your voice. The answer comes I am satisfied Softly, sweetheart You excite my whole being. My body is waiting Waiting there in yearning belief How are we to fulfill The desire of our thoughts? Calling to you, my water lily Budding for the two of us Here close by is a compliment The manu comes to deliver. The Queen is listening The aroma of the scents comes together Mixes and rises upward So similar, so alike.

I go separately The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands it is the dungaree darkness with China stitched where the westerly winds and the traveler’s checks the evensong of salesmen the glistening paraphernalia of twin suitcases where no one speaks English. I go separately It is the wind, the rubber wind when we brush our teeth in the way station a climate to beard. What forks these roads? Who clammers o’er the twain? What murmurs and rustles in the distance in the white branches where the light is whipped piercing at the crossing as into the dunes we simmer and toss ourselves awhile the motor pants like a forest where owls from their bandaged eyes send messages to the Indian couple. Peaks have you heard? I go separately We have reached the arithmetics, are partially quenched while it growls and hints in the lost trapper’s voice She is coming toward us like a session of pines in the wild wooden air where rabbits are frozen, O mother of lakes and glaciers, save us gamblers whose wagon is perilously rapt.

Someone decapitated all Birds of Paradise along Ocean Avenue; strollers and shoes trample the discarded beaks. She keeps walking. At noon a hallway speaker booms Code Blue Code Blue one minute before her grandson is born. In the evening, a nurse hands him to her: clean, swaddled, murmuring: the fullness of his being spears her. Why didn’t I pick them up? she wonders, arms tightening around the infant, whispers I still carry you! to her son when he comes to take his child.

There’s a woman kissing a cowboy across the street. His eight-year-old son watches from the bus stop bench. She’s really planting one on him, his Stetson in danger. It must have been some weekend. Seeing no room in that embrace for himself, the boy measures his future, legs straight out in front of him. Both hands hold onto a suitcase handle, thin arms ready to prove themselves.

Do I still long for my virginity? — Fragment 107 I never longed for my virginity. I heard it on the radio after the hurricane. There, in the aftermath, was the voice of a man — once the sweet, screwed-up boy whose hooded, jessed spirit I tried to possess with the ruthlessness I mistook for power. Here he was on NPR, so gentle, so familiar with devastation, his timbre woke the teenage falconer in me who once saw his kindness as weakness, saw a boy as an unfledged goshawk — a creature to trap and be trapped with in darkened mews. I knew the rules: neither of us could sleep until the molting bird grew ravenous enough to take the raw mouse from my hand. Breaking the falcon broke us both, left us scared and less aware of  love than fear.

So it is: sleep comes not on my eyelids. Nor in my eyes, with shaken hair and white Aloof pale hands, and lips and breasts of iron, So she beholds me. And yet though sleep comes not to me, there comes A vision from the full smooth brow of sleep, The white Aphrodite moving unbounded By her own hair. In the purple beaks of the doves that draw her, Beaks straight without desire, necks bent backward Toward Lesbos and the flying feet of Loves Weeping behind her. She looks not back, she looks not back to where The nine crowned muses about Apollo Stand like nine Corinthian columns singing In clear evening. She sees not the Lesbians kissing mouth To mouth across lute strings, drunken with singing, Nor the white feet of the Oceanides Shining and unsandalled. Before her go cryings and lamentations Of barren women, a thunder of wings, While ghosts of outcast Lethean women, lamenting, Stiffen the twilight.

All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids, Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather, Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron Stood and beheld me. Then to me so lying awake a vision Came without sleep over the seas and touched me, Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too, Full of the vision, Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; Saw the reluctant Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her, Looking always, looking with necks reverted, Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder Shone Mitylene; Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her Make a sudden thunder upon the waters, As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing Wings of a great wind. So the goddess fled from her place, with awful Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her; While behind a clamour of singing women Severed the twilight. Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion! All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish, Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo; Fear was upon them, While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not. Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent, None endured the sound of her song for weeping; Laurel by laurel, Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead, Round her woven tresses and ashen temples White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer, Ravaged with kisses, Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever. Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song. Yea, by her name too Called her, saying, "Turn to me, O my Sappho;" Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids, Heard not about her Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing, Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment, Saw not her hands wrung; Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings, Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen, Fairer than all men; Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers, Full of songs and kisses and little whispers, Full of music; only beheld among them Soar, as a bird soars Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel, Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion, Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders, Clothed with the wind's wings. Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered Roses, awful roses of holy blossom; Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces Round Aphrodite, Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent; Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song. All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion, Fled from before her. All withdrew long since, and the land was barren, Full of fruitless women and music only. Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset, Lulled at the dewfall, By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of, Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight, Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting, Purged not in Lethe, Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven, Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity, Hearing, to hear them.