Constance Read online

  Evening came....

  While he dozed, fitfully, still stupefied

  by anesthetics, I tried to read,

  my feet propped on the rails of the bed.

  Odette’s chrysanthemums

  were revealed to me, ranks of them

  in the house where Swann, jealousy

  constricting his heart, made late-night calls.

  And while I read, pausing again​

  and again to look at him, the smell​

  of chrysanthemums sent by friends​

  wavered from the sill, mixing​

  with the smells of drastic occasions​

  and disinfected sheets.

  He was too out of it

  to press the bolus for medication.

  Every eight minutes, when he could have

  more, I pressed it, and morphine dripped

  from the vial in the locked box

  into his arm. I made a hive

  of eight-minute cells

  where he could sleep without pain,

  or beyond caring about pain.

  Over days the IVs came out,​

  and freedom came back to him—​

  walking, shaving, sitting in a chair.

  The most ordinary gestures seemed

  cause for celebration.

  Hazy with analgesics, he read​

  the Boston Globe, and began to talk​

  on the telephone.

  Once the staples were out,

  and we had the discharge papers

  in hand, I brought him home, numbed up

  for the trip. He dozed in the car,

  woke, and looked with astonishment

  at the hills, gold and quince

  under October sun, a sight so

  overwhelming that we began to cry,

  he first, and then I.

  Climb

  From the porch of our house we can see​

  Mt. Kearsarge, the huge, black-green​

  presence that tells us where we are,​

  and what the weather is going to be.

  By night we see the red beacon​

  on the fire warden’s tower, by day​

  the tower itself, minute with distance.

  Yesterday I climbed it with a friend​

  just home from the hospital.

  She’d thought the second coming was at hand,​

  and found herself in a private​

  room, tastefully appointed, on a ward​

  she couldn’t leave.

  We talked and panted, stopped to look​

  at the undersides of sage and pink​

  opalescent mushrooms. Our shirts​

  were wet with effort.

  At last, we sprawled on the gray granite​

  ledges, with veins and blotches of pink​

  and silver-green lichen, growing like fur.

  We looked for our houses; shreds of clouds​

  floated between our heads; and we saw from above​

  the muscular shoulders of a patient hawk.

  Back

  We try a new drug, a new combination​

  of drugs, and suddenly​

  I fall into my life again

  like a vole picked up by a storm

  then dropped three valleys

  and two mountains away from home.

  I can find my way back. I know​

  I will recognize the store​

  where I used to buy milk and gas.

  I remember the house and barn,​

  the rake, the blue cups and plates,​

  the Russian novels I loved so much,

  and the black silk nightgown​

  that he once thrust

  into the toe of my Christmas stocking.

  Moving the Frame

  Impudent spring has come

  since your chest rose and fell

  for the last time, bringing

  the push and ooze of budding peonies,

  with ants crawling over them

  exuberantly.

  I have framed the picture

  from your obituary. It must have been

  taken on a hot graduation day:

  You’re wearing your academic robes​

  —how splendid they were—​

  and your hair and beard are curly​

  with sweat. The tassel sways. ...

  No matter how I move your face

  around my desk,

  your eyes don’t meet my eyes.

  There was one hard night

  while your breath became shallower

  and shallower, and then

  you were gone from us. A person

  simply vanishes! I came home

  and fell deeply asleep for a long

  time, but I woke up again.

  Fear of Death Awakens Me

  . . . or it’s a cloud-shadow passing over Tuckerman Ravine, darkening the warm ledges and alpine vegetation, then moving on. Sunlight reasserts itself, and that dark, moving lane is like something that never happened, something misremembered, dreamed in anxious sleep.

  Or it’s like swimming unexpectedly into cold water in a spring-fed pond. Fear locates in my chest, instant and profound, and I speed up my stroke, or turn back the way I came, hoping to avoid more cold.

  III

  Peonies at Dusk

  Winter Lambs

  All night snow came upon us​

  with unwavering intent—​

  small flakes not meandering​

  but driving thickly down. We woke​

  to see the yard, the car and road​

  heaped unrecognizably.

  The neighbors’ ewes are lambing​

  in this stormy weather. Three​

  lambs born yesterday, three more​

  expected . . .

  Felix the ram looked​

  proprietary in his separate pen​

  while fatherhood accrued to him.

  The panting ewes regarded me​

  with yellow-green, small-​

  pupiled eyes.

  I have a friend who is pregnant—​

  plans gone awry—and not altogether​

  pleased. I don’t say she should​

  be pleased. We are creation’s​

  property, its particles, its clay​

  as we fall into this life,​

  agree or disagree.

  Not Here

  Searching for pillowcases trimmed​

  with lace that my mother-in-law​

  once made, I open the chest of drawers​

  upstairs to find that mice​

  have chewed the blue and white linen​

  dishtowels to make their nest,​

  and bedded themselves​

  among embroidered dresser scarves​

  and fingertip towels.

  Tufts of fibers, droppings like black​

  caraway seeds, and the stains of birth​

  and afterbirth give off the strong​

  unforgettable attar of mouse​

  that permeates an old farmhouse​

  on humid summer days.

  A couple of hickory nuts

  roll around as I lift out

  the linens, while a hail of black

  sunflower shells

  falls on the pillowcases,

  yellow with age, but intact.

  I’ll bleach them and hang them in the sun​

  to dry. There’s almost no one left​

  who knows how to crochet lace. . . .

  The bright-eyed squatters are not here.​

  They’ve scuttled out to the fields​

  for summer, as they scuttled in​

  for winter—along the wall, from chair

  to skirted chair, making themselves​

  flat and scarce while the cat​

  dozed with her paws in the air,​

  and we read the mail​

  or evening paper, unaware.

  Coats

  I saw him leaving
the hospital​

  with a woman’s coat over his arm.​

  Clearly she would not need it.

  The sunglasses he wore could not​

  conceal his wet face, his bafflement.

  As if in mockery the day was fair,​

  and the air mild for December. All the same​

  he had zipped his own coat and tied​

  the hood under his chin, preparing​

  for irremediable cold.

  In Memory of Jack

  Once, coming down the long hill​

  into Andover on an autumn night​

  just before deer season, I stopped​

  the car abruptly to avoid a doe.

  She stood, head down, perhaps twenty

  feet away, her legs splayed

  as if she meant to stand her ground.

  For a long moment she looked​

  at the car, then bolted right at it,​

  glancing off the hood with a crash,​

  into a field of corn stubble.

  So I rushed at your illness, your​

  suffering and death—the bright​

  lights of annihilation and release.

  Insomnia at the Solstice

  The quicksilver song​

  of the wood thrush spills​

  downhill from ancient maples​

  at the end of the sun’s single most​

  altruistic day. The woods grow dusky​

  while the bird’s song brightens.

  Reading to get sleepy ... Rabbit​

  Angstrom knows himself so well,​

  why isn’t he a better man?

  I turn out the light, and rejoice​

  in the sound of high summer, and in air​

  on bare shoulders—do Ice, dolce—​

  no blanket, or even a sheet.

  A faint glow remains over the lake.

  Now come wordless contemplations​

  on love and death, worry about​

  money, and the resolve to have the vet​

  clean the dog’s teeth, though​

  he’ll have to anesthetize him.

  An easy rain begins, drips off​

  the edge of the roof, onto the tin​

  watering can. A vast irritation rises. . . .

  I turn and turn, try one pillow,​

  two, think of people who have no beds.

  A car hisses by on wet macadam.

  Then another. The room turns​

  gray by insensible degrees. The thrush

  begins again its outpouring of silver​

  to rich and poor alike, to the just​

  and the unjust.

  The dog’s wet nose appears​

  on the pillow, pressing lightly,​

  decorously. He needs to go out.

  All right, cleverhead, let’s declare​

  a new day.

  Washing up, I say​

  to the face in the mirror,

  “You’re still here! How you bored me​

  all night, and now I’ll have​

  to entertain you all day. . . .”

  Peonies at Dusk

  White peonies blooming along the porch​

  send out light

  while the rest of the yard grows dim.

  Outrageous flowers as big as human​

  heads! They’re staggered​

  by their own luxuriance: I had​

  to prop them up with stakes and twine.

  The moist air intensifies their scent,​

  and the moon moves around the barn​

  to find out what it’s coming from.

  In the darkening June evening​

  I draw a blossom near, and bending close​

  search it as a woman searches​

  a loved one’s face.

  The Secret

  In a glass case marked “Estate Jewelry”​

  I see a ring that seems familiar,​

  remembered, though I’ve never seen​

  anything like it.

  I ask the clerk, stout and garrulous​

  behind the counter, to take it out.

  The honeybee, with opal body, garnet​

  head, and golden wings, slides past​

  my knuckle burled with middle age.

  That one antenna is broken​

  only endears it to me. Still​

  it climbs into the flower’s throat,​

  and flies, heavy with nectar, back​

  to its queen. . . .

  For weeks I have felt on the point​

  of learning a mystery, but now​

  my agitation has dropped away.

  IV

  Watch Ye, Watch Ye

  and be ready to meet me,​

  for lo, I come at noonday.

  Fear ye not, fear ye not​

  for with my hand I will lead you on,​

  and safely I’ll guide your little boat​

  beyond this vale of sorrow.

  Shaker Hymn

  Three Small Oranges

  My old flannel nightgown, the elbows out,​

  one shoulder torn. . . . Instead of putting it​

  away with the clean wash, I cut it up​

  for rags, removing the arms and opening​

  their seams, scissoring across the breast​

  and upper back, then tearing the thin​

  cloth of the body into long rectangles.​

  Suddenly an immense sadness ...

  Making supper, I listen to news​

  from the war, of torture where the air​

  is black at noon with burning oil,​

  and of a market in Baghdad, bombed​

  by accident, where yesterday an old man​

  carried in his basket a piece of fish​

  wrapped in paper and tied with string,​

  and three small hard green oranges.

  A Portion of History

  The sweet breath of someone’s laundry​

  spews from a dryer vent. A screen door​

  slams. “Carry it?”—a woman’s voice—​

  “You’re going to carry it!?” Now I hear​

  the sound of casters on the sidewalk.

  Car doors close softly, engines​

  turn over and catch. A boy on his bike​

  delivers papers, I hear the smack​

  of the New York Times in its blue plastic​

  sheath, hitting the wooden porches.

  In the next street a garbage truck cries out.​

  A woman jogs by, thrusting a child​

  in a stroller ahead of her, her arms​

  straight as shafts, the baby’s fair​

  head bobbing wildly on its frail stem.

  Potato

  In haste one evening while making dinner​

  I threw away a potato that was spoiled​

  on one end. The rest would have been

  redeemable. In the yellow garbage pail​

  it became the consort of coffee grounds,​

  banana skins, carrot peelings.

  I pitched it onto the compost​

  where steaming scraps and leaves​

  return, like bodies over time, to earth.

  When I flipped the fetid layers with a hay​

  fork to air the pile, the potato turned up​

  unfailingly, as if to revile me—

  looking plumper, firmer, resurrected​

  instead of disassembling. It seemed to grow​

  until I might have made shepherd’s pie​

  for a whole hamlet, people who pass the day​

  dropping trees, pumping gas, pinning​

  hand-me-down clothes on the line.

  Sleepers in Jaipur

  A mango moon climbs the dark​

  blue sky. In the gutters of a market​

  a white, untethered cow browses​

  the day’s leavings—wilted greens,​

  banana peels, spilt rice,​

 
; a broken basket.

  The sleepers, oh, so many sleepers. ..​

  They lie on rush mats in their hot​

  stick hut. The man and woman​

  want to love wildly, uproariously;​

  instead, they are quiet and efficient​

  in the dark. Bangles ring​

  as his mother stirs in her sleep.

  Who can say what will come of​

  the quickening and slowing​

  of their breaths on each other’s​

  necks, of their deep shudders?​

  Another sleeper, a gift of God,​

  ribs and shoulders to be clothed​

  in flesh . . .

  In the dusty garden the water​

  she carried from the well in a jug​

  balanced on her black hair​

  stares back at the moon​

  from its cool terra-cotta urn.

  Gettysburg: July i, 1863

  The young man, hardly more

  than a boy, who fired the shot

  had looked at him with an air

  not of anger but of concentration,

  as if he were surveying a road,

  or feeding a length of wood into a saw:

  It had to be done just so.

  The bullet passed through​

  his upper chest, below the collarbone.​

  The pain was not what he might​

  have feared. Strangely exhilarated​

  he staggered out of the pasture​

  and into a grove of trees.

  He pressed and pressed​

  the wound, trying to stanch​

  the blood, but he could only press​

  what he could reach, and he could​

  not reach his back, where the bullet​

  had exited.

  He lay on the earth​

  smelling the leaves and mosses,​

  musty and damp and cool​