The Untrustworthy Speaker
Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. I don’t see anything objectively. I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that’s when I’m least to be trusted.…
4 tygodnie temu
Witchgrass
Something comes into the world unwelcome calling disorder, disorder— If you hate me so much don’t bother to give me a name: do you need one more slur in your language, another way to blame one tribe for everything—…
4 tygodnie temu
The Garden
I couldn’t do it again, I can hardly bear to look at it— in the garden, in light rain the young couple planting a row of peas, as though no one has ever done this before, the great difficulties have never as yet been faced and solved—…
4 tygodnie temu
The Triumph of Achilles
In the story of Patroclus no one survives, not even Achilles who was nearly a god. Patroclus resembled him; they wore the same armor. Always in these friendships one serves the other, one is less than the other: the hierarchy…
4 tygodnie temu
Prism
The assignment was to fall in love. The author was female. The ego had to be called the soul. The action took place in the body. Stars represented everything else: dreams, the mind, etc.…
4 tygodnie temu
Unwritten Law
Interesting how we fall in love: In my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often— so it was in my youth. And always with rather boyish men— unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves: in the manner of Balanchine. Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing.…
4 tygodnie temu
First Memory
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was— for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.
4 tygodnie temu
Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard — this would have been forty years ago — behind, only meadows. Drifts off crocus in the damp grass. I stood at that window: late April. Spring flowers in the neighbor’s yard. How many times, really, did the tree flower on my birthday,…
4 tygodnie temu
Castile
Orange blossoms blowing over Castile children begging for coins I met my love under an orange tree or was it an acacia tree or was he not my love?…
4 tygodnie temu
Circe's Grief
In the end, I made myself Known to your wife as A god would, in her own house, in Ithaca, a voice Without a body: she Paused in her weaving, her head turning First to the right, then left Though it was hopeless of course To trace that sound to any Objective source: I doubt…
4 tygodnie temu
Telemachus’ Detachment
When I was a child looking at my parents’ lives, you know what I thought? I thought heartbreaking. Now I think heartbreaking, but also insane. Also very funny.
4 tygodnie temu
The Undertaking
The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime. There you are—cased in clean bark you drift through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton. You are free. The river films with lilies, shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now all fear gives way: the light…
4 tygodnie temu
Eros
I had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain. I was in a kind of dream, or trance — in love, and yet I wanted nothing. It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again. I wanted only this: the room, the chair, the sound of the rain falling,…
4 tygodnie temu
The Silver Lily
The nights have grown cool again, like the nights of early spring, and quiet again. Will speech disturb you? We’re alone now; we have no reason for silence. Can you see, over the garden—the full moon rises. I won’t see the next full moon.…
4 tygodnie temu
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering…
4 tygodnie temu