134 Winter poems

At four o’clock it’s dark. Today, looking out through dusk at three gray women in stretch slacks chatting in front of the post office, their steps left and right and back like some quick folk dance of kindness, I remembered the winter we spent crying in each other’s laps. What could you be thinking at this moment? How lovely and strange the gangly spines of trees against a thickening sky as you drive from the library humming off-key? Or are you smiling at an idea met in a book the way you smiled with your whole body the first night we talked? I was so sure my love of you was perfect, and the light today reminded me of the winter you drove home each day in the dark at four o’clock and would come into my study to kiss me despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

Why does Mama wear Indira’s red and green earrings? A jinx is the inverse of Jewish artichoke; kinship is the transverse of no opinion coke. Flambé is the reverse of Papa’s poker chips; touché to the universe of acquiescent lips. For the same reason she wears silent Nehru jacket, holy Nehru jacket.

How is it that the snow amplifies the silence, slathers the black bark on limbs, heaps along the brush rows? Some deer have stood on their hind legs to pull the berries down. Now they are ghosts along the path, snow flecked with red wine stains. This silence in the timbers. A woodpecker on one of the trees taps out its story, stopping now and then in the lapse of one white moment into another.

to wake to winter     in the coming out of the time of year when they release the masterpieces, but to be still in the other night. some drown in movies. some prefer the unfinished ungovernable recital, a mystical ecology where one dies in a camp, or rolls out with the dice on the sidewalk among boys with cardboard shields and plays dead in white crinoline. what if paradise was only lifting the veil to flirt. no one perfect, but perfection inserts us so, Pascal thinks a God in his pocket. what if paradise meant walking on the ground of our self estrangement, and the veil of our gaze an unsteady balm was not what we saw through but were,   twisting, untwisting— do you believe.            we were never strictly servants.

Out the window of the bar I’m watching a circle of girls stretching and yawning across the street. It’s late January and 74 degrees. They love the heat because they are a moist heat. Heat loves heat and today is a tease for what comes with spring around here when the glorious birds funnel back up from Mexico. The girls don’t care about birds because they are birds. I recall in high school a half dozen cheerleaders resting on a wrestling mat in short shorts in the gym, me beside them with a silly groin ache. What were they? Living, lovely, warm meat as we all are reaching out of our bodies for someone else.

Glass was the Street - in Tinsel Peril Tree and Traveller stood. Filled was the Air with merry venture Hearty with Boys the Road. Shot the lithe Sleds like Shod vibrations Emphacized and gone It is the Past’s supreme italic Makes the Present mean -

January 2009 1 Snow fallen, another going gone, new come in, open the door: each night I grow young, my friends are well again, my life is all before me, each morning I close a door, another door. 2 Cloud on cloud, gray on gray, snow fallen on snow, tree on tree on unleafed tree— only a river silvered with thin ice and a slash of gold in the late gray sky. 3 Grayed snow slush trudge but snow falling coating filling in for absence Present! child with stringed mittens here to take her place to take over on snow showing up air 4 White sky, whiter sun brushing trees with tints of red, then in the distance streaking mauve gold, filling in between the now filagreed trees, silhouettes against the now red burning sky. 5 As if letting go, dangling down, only down, through a cracked pane, a clear pane, weeping beech branches, roots in air, only the crack slant- ing up or (last night in sleep’s play a long red slide) sloping down 6 down buildings walls houses schools, no one building only bombing, months of little in, now nothing no one out, only down: bodies arms legs in Gaza where the eyeless man tore pillars house himself the people down 7 On this day, this birthday, I wish myself for the first time (who would be a child again?) back at that dining room table with him, his years of little more less back, not as in the note in her birthday book,died 84 yrs of age 8 snow          rain             ice stand         walk            fall little           more           less face            flesh            hand will             is                 was oh               yes              no melt           rain             snow 9 Off the page, sliding or I brush or don’t see you, but without you, so cold, colder than stooped-by-age shoulder, oh flesh, hand, Love, come turn my page. 10 Tempered by age, passion, rage cool, no lost sleep— while in sleep they burn again, your fine hand igniting my thigh, live birds crushed under my feet, then morning grays again, aged back, writing died... of age 11 As body to body fall- ing together we burn again, snow drifts in air, turns, rolls almost horizontal, takes its own slow time off from falling 12 Gun to body, shell to body, bombs to bodies: three, five, now nine hundred bodies, over two hundred children’s bodies, over the border to Gaza to close the already closed border, not to meet, border to border: a border has no body, is only a side. 13 Epiphany missed,not the seen but the coming to see,or star, the minister said, light sensed against the dark, but not even the dark night, or the cold bright, snow roof over the roof below the darkness before— only gray, industrial gunmetal battleship slate gray, and the coming of gray 14 Friend Sleep has betrayed me I’m trapped in a castle with villainess villain two doors open a third slams down before the darkness I’m trapped in a room my friends accuse me I hide my sheets I cannot tell them I’m dying and then awaking I’m hurting (why these dreams?) my betraying self 15 In sleep a holocaust rations trapped in a kitchen ovens coming why not eat them if food is scarce— In Gaza food is scarce, power lost, the UN Compound, a hospital hit today, now over 1000 dead— But see, here,History:the Future: some hope, though still rationed, is Coming Soon. 16 stuck zipper sticky egg wiped off mouth mother’s mouth lined around but pursed now closer why not eat touch again all right merge again then zip: put sleep to sleep 17 Today the train too fast they said too soon they said not yet they said to Washington all right now a black man to the White House on the train. 18 On his way to the Capitol largely built by slaves who baked bricks, cut, laid stone— on his way to stand before the Mall where slaves were held in pens and sold— on his way to a White House partly built by slaves, where another resident, after his Proclamation, wrote: If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. 19 One hundred years later,King said and said to the crowd on the Mall, Now is the time and We can never be satisfied as long as,he dreamed:every valley exalted,all these years until not an end, they said,a beginning 20 O bless hold help keep him safe, let him help us through this cold, let us help him help us through this cold, let its end be O yes a beginning. 21 Cold is in the air, troops are finally out of Gaza where 1300 dead are on or in the ground where olive trees are up- rooted, down, spoons a coloring book limbs shoes in the rubble— In the depths of winter, he said. Today he is In, at work. 22 White roof over the roof, white branches clinging to branches, even the still fallen snow is moving, even icicles shift toward dripping, nothing, not even the cold bodies we are becoming is not moving, not even the ground is not moving, over, on 23 Beyond my windowed wall, gray clouds move over clouds, beyond the Wall that grays Gaza, dust over dust of disturbed bodies, wall with drawn- in windows, winter mirror 24 cold              heart               comfort           shoulder feet               hands             water               drawn in                  from                left                   out take              stay                 sober                stone grave            still                  body                turn on                 light                 open                to warm           up                     front                heart 25 fallen snow shifts blows drifts from tree to ground, leaves the beautiful skeletal limbs open to only all over air wind lifts then lets fall 26 He stumbled but still, she blundered but still, they said what they shouldn’t have said and recovered, of course they are the great but even the small (though all, we early learn, may fall) may leave the mistaken, misspoken behind as late we stumble into our selves. 27 maybe not long, you said, cancer cancer cancer, c’s crashing like waves— waves of frozen foam that day on that lake— you who please don’t go I can late we I can better Love I 28 mouth with you to mouth with you to body with you in body embodied, not yet un- bodied Love I can better no room so warm as with— I think I thought I could I can but not without you 29 In Vietnam: new year of the water buffalo, steady, slow, welcomed with peach blossoms, fruits, red wine— In Gaza: year of the new war, now ended but no room to bury the dead, no place for the living to buy food, water, any ... 30 for the woman who cooks on a fire of sticks, her bag of clothes on a tree for those going home to water their trees, lemon and almond and olive and for those trees 31 snow to rain to ice to melt to freeze frame window grayed in with old self same but new has come can better Love I—going home bless keep clean gray slate not white or black for even these few words, this small rain

Come, come thou bleak December wind, And blow the dry leaves from the tree! Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death And take a Life that wearies me.

Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones. But I leave the bag lying on the floor and I go into my daughter’s bedroom, into the north morning light from her windows, and while this minute she is at school counting or spelling a first useful word I sit down on her unmade bed and I look out the windows at nothing for a while, the unmoving buildings—houses and a church—in the cold street. Across it a dark young man is coming slowly down the white sidewalk with a snowshovel over his shoulder. He’s wearing a light coat, there’s a plastic showercap under his dirty navy blue knit hat, and at a house where the walk hasn’t been cleared he climbs the steps and rings the doorbell and stands waiting, squinting sideways at the wind. Then he half wakes and he says a few words I can’t hear to the storm door that doesn’t open, and he nods his head with the kindly farewell that is a habit he wears as disguise, and he goes back down the steps and on to the next house. All of this in pantomime, the way I see it through windows closed against winter and the faint sounds of winter. My daughter’s cross-eyed piggy bank is also staring out blankly, and in its belly are four dollar bills that came one at a time from her grandmother and which tomorrow she will pull out of the corked mouthhole. (It’s not like the piggy banks you have to fill before you empty them because to empty them you have to smash them.) Tomorrow she will buy a perfect piece of small furniture for her warm well-lit dollhouse where no one is tired or weak and the wind can’t get in. Sitting on her bed, looking out, I didn’t see a bundled-up lame child out of school and even turned out of the house for a while, or a blind woman with burns or a sick bald veteran—people who might have walked past stoop-shouldered with what’s happened and will keep happening to them. So much limping is not from physical pain—the pain is gone now, but the leg’s still crooked. The piggy bank and I see only the able young man whose straight back nobody needs. When he finally gets past where I can see him, it feels as if a kind of music has stopped, and it’s more completely quiet than it was, an emptiness more than a stillness, and I get up from the rumpled bed and I smooth the covers, slowly and carefully, and I look around the room for something to pick up or straighten, and I take a wadded dollar bill from my pocket and put it into the pig and I walk out.

The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the intersperséd vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, And in far other scenes! For I was reared In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.