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By menopause, it’s not just estrogen my mother lacks. She’s lost her eldest son— that’s me, the one who’s queer—the doctor who once made her very proud. These days, I do my own wash when I’m home, I cook for her so she can take a break from all the chores she now refuses to assign to me. She sits, half-watching Ricki through her tea’s thin steam, her squint of disapproval more denial than it is disgust. She hears much better than she sees—it’s easier to keep out vision than it is to clear the air of sounds—and yet I know it’s age that stultifies her senses too. Enraged because she’s lost so much, I understand why suddenly she looks so stunned as from the television: “. . . Bitch, she stole my boyfriend, my own mother did! . . .” I fold a towel noiselessly. I know she thinks it’s garbage, sinful, crap—just as she thinks that taking estrogen in pills is not what God intended, no matter what the doctors say; or that I’m gay is plain unnatural, she can’t endure such pain. The oven timer rings. The cookies that I’ve baked are done. I’ll make another batch though she won’t touch them: given up for Lent. My mother’s love. I wonder where it went.

Beside the rivers of the midnight town Where four-foot couples love and paupers drown, Shots of quick hell we took, our final kiss, The great and swinging bridge a bower for this. Your cheek lay burning in my fingers’ cup; Often my lip moved downward and yours up Till both adjusted, tightened, locksmith-true: The flesh precise, the crazy brain askew. Roughly the train with grim and piston knee Pounded apart our pleasure, you from me; Flare warned and ticket whispered and bell cried. Time and the locks of bitter rail divide. For ease remember, all that parted lie: Men who in camp of shot or doldrum die, Who at land’s-end eternal furlough take —This for memento as alone you wake.

Like the Idalian queen, Her hair about her eyne, With neck and breast’s ripe apples to be seen, At first glance of the morn In Cyprus’ gardens gathering those fair flowers Which of her blood were born, I saw, but fainting saw, my paramours. The Graces naked danced about the place, The winds and trees amazed With silence on her gazed, The flowers did smile, like those upon her face; And as their aspen stalks those fingers band, That she might read my case, A hyacinth I wished me in her hand.

(After Dr. Haase gave them shots of morphine, Magda gave each child an ampule of potassium cyanide from a spoon.) This is the needle that we give Soldiers and children when they live Near the front in primitive Conditions or real dangers; This is the spoon we use to feed Men trapped in trouble or in need, When weakness or bad luck might lead Them to the hands of strangers. This is the room where you can sleep Your sleep out, curled up under deep Layers of covering that will keep You safe till all harm’s past. This is the bed where you can rest In perfect silence, undistressed By noise or nightmares, as my breast Once held you soft but fast. This is the Doctor who has brought Your needle with your special shot To quiet you; you won’t get caught Off guard or unprepared. I am your nurse who’ll comfort you; I nursed you, fed you till you grew Too big to feed; now you’re all through Fretting or feeling scared. This is the glass tube that contains Calm that will spread down through your veins To free you finally from all pains Of going on in error. This tiny pinprick sets the germ Inside you that fills out its term Till you can feel yourself grow firm Against all doubt, all terror. Into this spoon I break the pill That stiffens the unsteady will And hardens you against the chill Voice of a world of lies. This amber medicine implants Steadfastness in your blood; this grants Immunity from greed and chance, And from all compromise. This is the serum that can cure Weak hearts; these pure, clear drops insure You’ll face what comes and can endure The test; you’ll never falter. This is the potion that preserves You in a faith that never swerves; This sets the pattern of your nerves Too firm for you to alter. I set this spoon between your tight Teeth, as I gave you your first bite; This satisfies your appetite For other nourishment. Take this on your tongue; this do Remembering your mother who So loved her Leader she stayed true When all the others went, When every friend proved false, in the Delirium of treachery On every hand, when even He Had turned His face aside. He shut himself in with His whore; Then, though I screamed outside His door, Said He’d not see me anymore. They both took cyanide. Open wide, now, little bird; I who sang you your first word Soothe away every sound you’ve heard Except your Leader’s voice. Close your eyes, now; take your death. Once we slapped you to take breath. Vengeance is mine, the Lord God saith And cancels each last choice. Once, my first words marked out your mind; Just as our Leader’s phrases bind All hearts to Him, building a blind Loyalty through the nation, We shape you into a pure form. Trapped, our best soldiers tricked the storm, The Reds: those last hours, they felt warm Who stood fast to their station. You needn’t fear what your life meant; You won’t curse how your hours were spent; You’ll grow like your own monument To all things sure and good, Fixed like a frieze in high relief Of granite figures that our Chief Accepts into His true belief, His true blood-brotherhood. You’ll never bite the hand that fed you, Won’t turn away from those that bred you, Comforted your nights and led you Into the thought of virtue; You won’t be turned from your own bed; Won’t turn into that thing you dread; No new betrayal lies ahead; Now no one else can hurt you.

the darkest hour the stars arisen asinine tomb and I left opened to the altogether am I to live among men abandoned I may learn to love again adrift in Jerusalem am I upon strewn palm

The courage to let go of the door, the handle. The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast, a child’s naughtiness, a loud blattering storm that slapped the roof hard, pouring through. The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill, the small bones of children and the brittle bones of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen; the courage to desert the tree planted and only begun to bear; the riverside where promises were shaped; the street where their empty pots were broken. The courage to leave the place whose language you learned as early as your own, whose customs however dan- gerous or demeaning, bind you like a halter you have learned to pull inside, to move your load; the land fertile with the blood spilled on it; the roads mapped and annotated for survival. The courage to walk out of the pain that is known into the pain that cannot be imagined, mapless, walking into the wilderness, going barefoot with a canteen into the desert; stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship sailing off the map into dragons’ mouths, Cathay, India, Siberia, goldeneh medina 2 leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure. So they walked out of Egypt. 3 So they bribed their way out of Russia under loads of straw; so they steamed out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports— out of pain into death or freedom or a different painful dignity, into squalor and politics. We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage, who walked into the strange and became strangers and gave birth to children who could look down on them standing on their shoulders for having been slaves. We honor those who let go of every- thing but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought, who became other by saving themselves. * A popular preacher or an angel who conveys, in mysterious ways, teachings only to scholars worthy ofl such communications (Hebrew). 2. Golden land (Yiddish). 3. A reference to the biblical Exodus out of Egypt.

If you believe in snow, you have to believe in water as it's meant to be, loosed from clouds arranged like asphodel. Because that's what it's like to come back: a slow surfacing, memory spiraling away. You can sleep so long, whole seasons are forgotten like a hospital-room plaster, spidered with cracks in Portugal shapes. You can love sleep like water, love your heavy limbs pushing river and ocean aside. After Maggie woke, the doctors had her stringing bracelets of semiprecious beads, and she couldn't stop counting the kinds of blue. Here, summer, in the high shade of a ginko, she pulls up a handful of stones on silk and we drink grapefruit seltzer, listening to the tinny chime of bubbles rising to the air. She can't remember autumn, so we tell her someday this tree will drop its fan-shaped leaves all at once, golden in the October crush of every plant's frantic strip show. Later we'll see mountains through the scrim of empty branches, and if we can look straight up into the atmosphere, see the same plain old sky revolving. When we ask Maggie what color it is she always says iolite, picturing beads like raindrops, shining azure on the table. She forgets that sometimes things don't stay where you leave them, that the sky fades to white even before snow begins to fall. It's hard, but we have to tell her even sapphires don't glow blue without some kind of help.

If only you’d been a better mother. How could I have been a better mother? I would have needed a better self, and that is a gift I never received. So you’re saying it’s someone else’s fault? The gift of having had a better mother myself, my own mother having had a better mother herself. The gift that keeps on not being given. Who was supposed to give it? How am I supposed to know? Well, how am I supposed to live? I suppose you must live as if you had been given better to live with. Comb your hair, for instance. I cut off my hair, to sell for the money to buy you what you wanted. I wanted nothing but your happiness. I can’t give you that! What would Jesus do? He had a weird mother too . . . Use the myrrh, the frankincense, as if it were given unconditionally, your birthright. It’s a riddle. All gifts are a riddle, all lives are in the middle of mother-lives. But it’s always winter in this world. There is no end to ending. The season of giving, the season when the bears are never cold, because they are sleeping. The bears are never cold, Mama, but I am one cold, cold bear.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering side by side, And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied, The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

I don’t remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years ago or three. The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before. Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive, Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed, For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall. “I kept dreaming of snow and birch forests. Where so little changes you hardly notice how time goes by. This is, you will see, a magic mountain.” Budberg: a familiar name in my childhood. They were prominent in our region, This Russian family, descendants of German Balts. I read none of his works, too specialized. And Chen, I have heard, was an exquisite poet, Which I must take on faith, for he wrote in Chinese. Sultry Octobers, cool Julys, trees blossom in February. Here the nuptial flight of hummingbirds does not forecast spring. Only the faithful maple sheds its leaves every year. For no reason, its ancestors simply learned it that way. I sensed Budberg was right and I rebelled. So I won’t have power, won’t save the world? Fame will pass me by, no tiara, no crown? Did I then train myself, myself the Unique, To compose stanzas for gulls and sea haze, To listen to the foghorns blaring down below? Until it passed. What passed? Life. Now I am not ashamed of my defeat. One murky island with its barking seals Or a parched desert is enough To make us say: yes,oui, si. "Even asleep we partake in the becoming of the world.” Endurance comes only from enduring. With a flick of the wrist I fashioned an invisible rope, And climbed it and it held me. What a procession!Quelles délices! What caps and hooded gowns! Most respected Professor Budberg, Most distinguished Professor Chen, Wrong Honorable Professor Milosz Who wrote poems in some unheard-of tongue. Who will count them anyway. And here sunlight. So that the flames of their tall candles fade. And how many generations of hummingbirds keep them company As they walk on. Across the magic mountain. And the fog from the ocean is cool, for once again it is July. Berkeley, 1975