Poetry 365

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights
that anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God.
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

Minerva stepped out calmly from my head
And I will be forever crowned with blood
There is reason within and sky above my skull
Where Goddess you were buckling on your arms

Of my misfortunes this is not the worst
This almost mortal wound became a star
The secret sorrow which is my despair
Is more than any other soul could hide

I bear with me a suffering of fire
Just as a glow-worm bears his body’s flame
As in a soldier’s heart France is on fire
Just as rich pollen fills the lily’s heart

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Star, that looked so long among the stones
And picked from them, half iron and half dirt,
One; and bent and put it to her lips
And breathed upon it till at last it burned
Uncertainly, among the stars its sisters—
Breathe on me still, star, sister

The first time Henri died
he rose like Lazarus
sprawled across barbed wire—
the fog strummed him
like the birth of jazz.
I counted my empty slots
in my pistol
until there were none.

The second time Henri died
he died like a song
from the last German opera—
no one heard it,
it didn’t even echo.
I waited for the instrument
of peace and forgetfulness
to play its one note.

Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.

You knew I was coming for you, little one,
when the kettle jumped into the fire.
Towels flapped on the hooks,
and the dog crept off, groaning,
to the deepest part of the woods.

In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up.
Mother scolded the food warm and smooth in the pot
and called you to eat.
But I spoke in the cold trees:
New one, I have come for you, child hide and lie still.

The sumac pushed sour red cones through the air.
Copper burned in the raw wood.
You saw me drag toward you.
Oh touch me, I murmured, and licked the soles of your feet.
You dug your hands into my pale, melting fur.

I stole you off, a huge thing in my bristling armor.
Steam rolled from my wintry arms, each leaf shivered
from the bushes we passed
until they stood, naked, spread like the cleaned spines of fish.

Then your warm hands hummed over and shoveled themselves full
of the ice and the snow. I would darken and spill
all night running, until at last morning broke the cold earth
and I carried you home,
a river shaking in the sun.

I am a frog
I live under a spell
I live at the bottom
Of a green well

And here I must wait
Until a maiden places me
On her royal pillow
And kisses me
In her father’s palace

The story is familiar
Everybody knows it well
But do other enchanted people feel as nervous
As I do? The stories do not tell,

As if they will be happier
When the changes come
As already they are fairly happy
In a frog’s doom?

I have been a frog now
For a hundred years
And in all this time
I have not shed many tears,

I am happy, I like the life,
Can swim for many a mile
(When I have hopped to the river)
And am for ever agile.

And the quietness,
Yes, I like to be quiet
I am habituated
To a quiet life,

But always when I think these thoughts
As I sit in my well
Another thought comes to me and says:
It is part of the spell

To be happy
To work up contentment
To make much of being a frog
To fear disenchantment

Says, It will be heavenly
To be se free,
Cries Heavenly the girl who disenchants
And the royal times, heavenly,
And I think it will be.

Come then, royal girl and royal times,
Come quickly,
I can be happy until you come
But I cannot be heavenly,
Only disenchanted people
Can be heavenly.

We go along together. The dream
laps so pleasantly at our feet;
and everything is distorted in pale
unpleasant renunciations.

We go alone together. The dead
souls, who, like ourselves, crossed over
for the sake of love,
with halting opal footsteps
come out in their rigid mourning dresses
and undulate toward us.

Beloved, we walk on the fragile edge
of a heap of earth.
A wing goes by, anointed with oil,
with purity. But a blow,
falling somewhere I don’t know of,
grinds a hostile
tooth out of every tear.

And a soldier, a huge soldier,
with wounds for epaulets,
gets bold in the heroic evening,
and laughing, he shows at his feet,
like a hideous pile of rags,
the brain of Life.

We go along together, close together,
halting footsteps, undefeated light;
we walk past the mustard lilacs
of a cemetery.

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The wingéd girl shakes her feathers
in a heavy English fog
wafting like perfume
from a flattened rabbit in May.
She’s a medical student
who sings of traipsing through hell.

Today there is not anywhere a war
and Henri has sculpted the sky.
Castle Altaforte rises
like a whoreson dog’s bark.
The wingéd girl licks her wings.