Dana Gioia

I So this is where the children come to die, hidden on the hospital’s highest floor. They wear their bandages like uniforms and pull their iv rigs along the hall with slow and careful steps. Or bald and pale, they lie in bright pajamas on their beds, watching another world on a screen. The mothers spend their nights inside the ward, sleeping on chairs that fold out into beds, too small to lie in comfort. Soon they slip beside their children, as if they might mesh those small bruised bodies back into their flesh. Instinctively they feel that love so strong protects a child. Each morning proves them wrong. No one chooses to be here. We play the parts that we are given—horrible as they are. We try to play them well, whatever that means. We need to talk, though talking breaks our hearts. The doctors come and go like oracles, their manner cool, omniscient, and oblique. There is a word that no one ever speaks. II

My love, how time makes hardness shine. They come in every color, pure or mixed gray-green of basalt, blood-soaked jasper, quartz, granite and feldspar, even bits of glass, smoothed by the patient jeweller of the tides. Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried, shaven by glaciers, wind-carved, heat-cracked, stratified, speckled, bright in the wet surf— no two alike, all torn from the dry land tossed up in millions on this empty shore. How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers. It glints among the shattered oyster shells, gutted by gulls, bleached by salt and sun— the broken crockery of living things. Cormorants glide across the quiet bay. A falcon watches from the ridge, indifferent to the burdens I have carried here. No point in walking farther, so I sit, hollow as driftwood, dead as any stone.

This is my past where no one knows me. These are my friends whom I can’t name— Here in a field where no one chose me, The faces older, the voices the same. Why does this stranger rise to greet me? What is the joke that makes him smile, As he calls the children together to meet me, Bringing them forward in single file? I nod pretending to recognize them, Not knowing exactly what I should say. Why does my presence seem to surprise them? Who is the woman who turns away? Is this my home or an illusion? The bread on the table smells achingly real. Must I at last solve my confusion, Or is confusion all I can feel?

The present that you gave me months ago is still unopened by our bed, sealed in its rich blue paper and bright bow. I’ve even left the card unread and kept the ribbon knotted tight. Why needlessly unfold and bring to light the elegant contrivances that hide the costly secret waiting still inside?

Echo of the clocktower, footstep in the alleyway, sweep of the wind sifting the leaves. Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur of autumn's opulence, blade of lightning harvesting the sky. Keeper of the small gate, choreographer of entrances and exits, midnight whisper traveling the wires. Seducer, healer, deity or thief, I will see you soon enough— in the shadow of the rainfall, in the brief violet darkening a sunset— but until then I pray watch over him as a mountain guards its covert ore and the harsh falcon its flightless young.

Pity the beautiful, the dolls, and the dishes, the babes with big daddies granting their wishes. Pity the pretty boys, the hunks, and Apollos, the golden lads whom success always follows. The hotties, the knock-outs, the tens out of ten, the drop-dead gorgeous, the great leading men. Pity the faded, the bloated, the blowsy, the paunchy Adonis whose luck’s gone lousy. Pity the gods, no longer divine. Pity the night the stars lose their shine.

If we could only push these walls apart, unfold the room the way a child might take apart a box and lay it flat upon the floor— so many corners cleared at last! Or else could rip away the roof and stare down at the dirty rooms, the hallways turning on themselves, and understand at last their plan— dark maze without a minotaur, no monsters but ourselves. Yet who could bear to see it all? The slow descending spirals of the dust against the spotted windowpane, the sunlight on the yellow lace, the hoarded wine turned dark and sour, the photographs, the letters—all the crowded closets of the heart. One wants to turn away—and cry for fire to break out on the stairs and raze each suffocating room. But the walls stay, the roof remains strong and immovable, and we can only pray that if these rooms have memories, they are not ours.

Most of what happens happens beyond words. The lexicon of lip and fingertip defies translation into common speech. I recognize the musk of your dark hair. It always thrills me, though I can't describe it. My finger on your thigh does not touch skin— it touches your skin warming to my touch. You are a language I have learned by heart. This intimate patois will vanish with us, its only native speakers. Does it matter? Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire performed the sorcery we most required. They bound us in a spell time could not break. Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy. What must be lost was never lost on us.

And in the end, all that is really left Is a feeling—strong and unavoidable— That somehow we deserved something better. That somewhere along the line things Got fouled up. And that letter from whoever’s In charge, which certainly would have set Everything straight between us and the world, Never reached us. Got lost somewhere. Possibly mislaid in some provincial station. Or sent by mistake to an old address Whose new tenant put it on her dresser With the curlers and the hairspray forgetting To give it to the landlord to forward. And we still wait like children who have sent Two weeks’ allowance far away To answer an enticing advertisement From a crumbling, yellow magazine, Watching through years as long as a childhood summer, Checking the postbox with impatient faith Even on days when mail is never brought.

Now you hear what the house has to say. Pipes clanking, water running in the dark, the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort, and voices mounting in an endless drone of small complaints like the sounds of a family that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore. But now you must listen to the things you own, all that you’ve worked for these past years, the murmur of property, of things in disrepair, the moving parts about to come undone, and twisting in the sheets remember all the faces you could not bring yourself to love. How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark.