Eleanor Ross Taylor

The self  refuses to appear in this bare place. It fears that mute chair and the still window. The sunlight scares it. There might rise up a sound. The door doesn’t like to move, and the crow out there hesitates; he knows a hole flown into by mistake would make a bite of   him. What was sits standstill in the chair, hangs, stunned, against the dry-eyed light. Nobody in sight. Inanimate things, still  lifeless. This room’s so empty I doubt I’m standing here; there can’t be room for me and total emptiness. Only some far-off sounds persist. The brute truck over the interstate. The flames in the incinerator chewing his old vests.

When I was two feet tall and held the hand above, how could I know how far that limping bond would go, that finger-inch of love.

I make a knife of words. I sit here waiting. I play with crumbs. Her eyes that should look straight at me are toward the window, glazed— husband’s horizon? Not armored. Only armed with pots and pans. Not out of arm’s reach, beyond curtains of doorbells, garden gates. She puts up ironwork in her eyes; it draws a bolt over what’s real— then looks at me. I wish I’d brought my saw.

How will you cut off from Zions, fall on your knees among the lions? What if you cut off from hymns confound worksong with anthem Cut off from Scripture find sense suspect and worship incoherence— distrust the laces and adore the tangled thread? What of you without a holy thing, but every sacrilege of the sacrileged class? Godsave your unsuspecting fists grasping the fiery ladder bare, your forehead fighting a wordless solitaire. Without some future language how can I ask you? If I could ask in Euphorese, Moonskrit, in Ecolow.... What will you do with Grandma’s savings — those relics atticked in your head of  effort, vision? On pain of  death, scratch pictures in the dust as she did — I fear my after-thirst.

Lord sho been good to me My loved hoe handle, and my sweat, heart pounding and the towhee singing. Jill, jerking the hospital sheets, “Damn careless nurses    ... “But golly    ...    a good life. “That student who kept writing me. “That rainy picnic by a road in Burgundy. “Heart thumping, thumping on    ...    more, more....” A squirrel on a post. The nutgrooved skull drops; he claws the dirt. Next winter! Frost thrown down, a stiffened morning, a harsh corrective herb to gnaw, take in. Sho been, Lord, Sho been Whether born of  kiss sublime, victim’s terror, rapist crime, and however ending, nut-gnawers nulled inscrutably, or Caesars, soldiers, friends lammed open-eyed — Lord, good...sho been

snowbound homebound hidebound hamstrung hogtied in a corner up a tree down the river nosedive headway deadmarch footloose pointblank playground

She’s sitting at my little desk, drinking decaf. How’d she get back in? Where’s her blind man gone? (I pray he’s gone— though the desk needs tuning.) What door was unlocked? They all seemed bastioned. I sight through the crack. That’s my favorite cup, with the bite out of it. She’s writing one of my poems. Just who’s sitting at that desk, playing me? Shrubbery, thrashing to get in, lines all panes, long windows split in parallels. My windows set out on separate expeditions. They never meet, no matter how far extended.

Feeling her head pick up her body, question mark, blurred misstamped question mark snakes out of   bed, trying to  jiggle unhappiness as little as possible, not to wake pain, not to raise a shade, if  raising a shade in the dark wakes pain. Under the shade the stars are awake, smiling — ready to frown on unhappiness. And the happiness of  the unconscious is scurrying already from the knife-edge of   light, pain’s night-light, waiting under the door across the hall. Dread’s square hair stiffens, her feet have corners, trying to trick the stairs out of their creaking, and the house out of  groaning before coffee, before resurrection. Death before resurrection is hard; breakfast and the stars belong first; plenty of  time to die all day when everything does groan, and unhappiness shakes itself out like a musty old mare all over the house. Dread says to herself: Serves me right for leaving home, for learning to read; serves me right for children and menopause and cosmetic surgery, and elation in gin. I must travel back through the shade and the black holes and the frowns, through drink and tampon and alphabet to the kitchen and mother and dad and the morning of  the resurrection was the first day.

This timeless blood was here before begat. Infinity runs in your veins— Not mine, nor yours, Nor Eve’s, not Adam’s— Gat of God, And spinning like taffy Godwards back again. Sapped through the centuries to us— Grafting a limb there for the Jesse tree— Remultiplied infinitely, From heart to heart tick-pulsed, Ill clad, ill fed, ill fit— Here, child, do what you can with it. Originally appeared in the July 1968 issue of Poetry magazine.

Only he Remembered the day we met And only I The day we said goodbye: “Last day of  June, our first blackberry pie,” He always said. A wood fire in the summer kitchen, The hottest day.... A squall in the bedroom. I can’t remember. Nor he, The December cube of  clay, The storm the day before, How the bare trees Played Giant Step in the dawn wind, Or how On the other bed, rhythmically Touching her knuckles to the wall, My mother slipped forever into fantasy. Only he Remembered the spoken hate (Its change too sheepish to impart) Saw daggers still growing In bristling clump out of my heart. I beg you, kids—no memorials, please. Don’t write poems to me. Don’t bother. What we said we said. What’s unsaid lacks ears. In this I’m like my father.