02-02-2017, 10:21 AM
I got a book of Louise Gluck's collected stuff from "Firstborn" to "A Village Life" -- at some point, I stopped at the end of "Vita Nova", but now I've continued, and so far I'm digging "The Seven Ages", perhaps a bit more than "Vita Nova" (but not anymore than from "The House on Marshland" to "Meadowlands" -- "The Wild Iris" was fucking awesome).
STARS
I'm awake; I am in the world---
I expect
no further assurance.
No protection, no promise.
Solace of the night sky,
the hardly moving
face of the clock.
I'm alone---all
my riches surround me.
I have a bed, a room.
I have a bed, a vase
of flowers beside it.
And a nightlight, a book.
I'm awake; I am safe.
The darkness like a shield, the dreams
put off, maybe
vanished forever.
And the day---
the unsatisfying morning that says
I am your future,
here is your cargo of sorrow:
Do you reject me? Do you mean
to send me away because I am not
full, in your word,
because you see
the black shape already implicit?
I will never be banished. I am the light,
your personal anguish and humiliation.
Do you dare
send me away as though
you were waiting for something better?
There is no better.
Only (for a short space)
the night sky like
a quarantine that sets you
apart from your task.
Only (softly, fiercely)
the stars shining. Here,
in the room, the bedroom.
Saying I was brave, I resisted,
I set myself on fire.
YOUTH
My sister and I at two ends of the sofa,
reading (I suppose) English novels.
The television on, various schoolbooks open,
or places marked with sheets of lined paper.
Euclid, Pythagoras. As though we had looked into
the origin of thought and preferred novels.
Sad sounds of our growing up---
twilight of cellos. No trace
of a flute, a piccolo. And it seemed at the time
almost impossible to conceive of any of it
as evolving or malleable.
Sad sounds. Anecdotes
that were really still lives.
The pages of the novels turning;
the two dogs snoring quietly.
And from the kitchen,
sounds of our mother,
smells of rosary, of lamb roasting.
A world in process
of shifting, of being made or dissolved,
and yet we didn't live that way;
all of us lived out lives
as the simultaneous ritualized enactment
of a great principle, something
felt but not understood.
And the remarks we made were like lines in a play,
spoken with conviction but not from choice.
A principle, a terrifying familial will
that implied opposition to change, to variation,
a refusal even to ask questions---
Now that world begins
to shift and eddy around us, only now
when it no longer exists.
It has become the present: unending and without form.
I hope to get "Faithful and Virtuous Night" soon -- now what I've read from that, "An Adventure" plus a few prose poems, that was absolutely stunning.
Someone from the critical forums also recommended Lucille Clifton's Shapeshifter poems. I looked them up, and they were riveting, but I hope the copy I found was complete.
Shapeshifter Poems -- by Lucille Clifton
1
the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them
2
who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl
laments into the evening who
will protect her this prettylittlegirl
3
if the little girl lies
still enough
shut enough
hard enough
shapeshifter may not
walk tonight
the full moon may not
find him here
the hair on him
bristling
rising
up
4
the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world
STARS
I'm awake; I am in the world---
I expect
no further assurance.
No protection, no promise.
Solace of the night sky,
the hardly moving
face of the clock.
I'm alone---all
my riches surround me.
I have a bed, a room.
I have a bed, a vase
of flowers beside it.
And a nightlight, a book.
I'm awake; I am safe.
The darkness like a shield, the dreams
put off, maybe
vanished forever.
And the day---
the unsatisfying morning that says
I am your future,
here is your cargo of sorrow:
Do you reject me? Do you mean
to send me away because I am not
full, in your word,
because you see
the black shape already implicit?
I will never be banished. I am the light,
your personal anguish and humiliation.
Do you dare
send me away as though
you were waiting for something better?
There is no better.
Only (for a short space)
the night sky like
a quarantine that sets you
apart from your task.
Only (softly, fiercely)
the stars shining. Here,
in the room, the bedroom.
Saying I was brave, I resisted,
I set myself on fire.
YOUTH
My sister and I at two ends of the sofa,
reading (I suppose) English novels.
The television on, various schoolbooks open,
or places marked with sheets of lined paper.
Euclid, Pythagoras. As though we had looked into
the origin of thought and preferred novels.
Sad sounds of our growing up---
twilight of cellos. No trace
of a flute, a piccolo. And it seemed at the time
almost impossible to conceive of any of it
as evolving or malleable.
Sad sounds. Anecdotes
that were really still lives.
The pages of the novels turning;
the two dogs snoring quietly.
And from the kitchen,
sounds of our mother,
smells of rosary, of lamb roasting.
A world in process
of shifting, of being made or dissolved,
and yet we didn't live that way;
all of us lived out lives
as the simultaneous ritualized enactment
of a great principle, something
felt but not understood.
And the remarks we made were like lines in a play,
spoken with conviction but not from choice.
A principle, a terrifying familial will
that implied opposition to change, to variation,
a refusal even to ask questions---
Now that world begins
to shift and eddy around us, only now
when it no longer exists.
It has become the present: unending and without form.
I hope to get "Faithful and Virtuous Night" soon -- now what I've read from that, "An Adventure" plus a few prose poems, that was absolutely stunning.
Someone from the critical forums also recommended Lucille Clifton's Shapeshifter poems. I looked them up, and they were riveting, but I hope the copy I found was complete.
Shapeshifter Poems -- by Lucille Clifton
1
the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them
2
who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl
laments into the evening who
will protect her this prettylittlegirl
3
if the little girl lies
still enough
shut enough
hard enough
shapeshifter may not
walk tonight
the full moon may not
find him here
the hair on him
bristling
rising
up
4
the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world