Otherwise Page 2

  bells and fire; her crows calling stridently​

  all night; India with her sandalwood​

  smoke, and graceful gods, many-headed and many-​

  armed, has taken away the one who blessed​

  and kept me.

  The thing is done, as surely​

  as if my luggage had been stolen from the train.​

  Men and women with faces as calm as lakes at dusk​

  have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know​

  where to find him.

  What is Brahman? I don’t know Brahman.

  I don’t know saccidandana, the bliss​

  of the absolute and unknowable.

  I only know that I have lost the Lord​

  in whose image I was made.

  Whom shall I thank for this pear,​

  sweet and white? Food is God, Prasadam,​

  God’s mercy. But who is this God?

  The one who is not this, not that?

  The absurdity of all religious forms​

  breaks over me, as the absurdity of language​

  made me feel faint the day I heard friends​

  giving commands to their neighbor’s dog​

  in Spanish. ... At first I laughed,​

  but then I became frightened.

  They have taken away my Lord, a person​

  whose life I held inside me. I saw him​

  heal, and teach, and eat among sinners.

  I saw him break the sabbath to make a higher​

  sabbath. I saw him lose his temper.

  I knew his anguish when he called, “I thirst!”​

  and received vinegar to drink. The Bible​

  does not say it, but I am sure he turned​

  his head away. Not long after he cried, “My God,​

  my God, why have you forsaken me?”

  I watched him reveal himself risen​

  to Magdalene with a single word: “Mary!”

  It was my habit to speak to him. His goodness​

  perfumed my life. I loved the Lord, he heard​

  my cry, and he loved me as his own.

  A man sleeps on the pavement, on a raffia mat—​

  the only thing that has not been stolen from him.​

  This stranger who loves what cannot be understood​

  has put out my light with his calm face.

  Shall the fire answer my fears and vapors?

  The fire cares nothing for my illness,

  nor does Brahma, the creator, nor Shiva who sees

  evil with his terrible third eye; Vishnu,

  the protector, does not protect me.

  I’ve brought home the smell of the streets​

  in the folds of soft, bright cotton garments.

  When I iron them the steam brings back​

  the complex odors that rise from the gutters,​

  of tuberoses, urine, dust, joss, and death.

  On a curb in Allahabad the family gathers​

  under a dusty tree, a few quilts hung​

  between lightposts and a wattle fence​

  for privacy. Eleven sit or lie around the fire

  while a woman of sixty stirs a huge pot.

  Rice cooks in a narrow-necked crock

  on the embers. A small dog, with patches of bald,

  red skin on his back, lies on the corner

  of the piece of canvas that serves as flooring.

  Looking at them I lose my place.

  I don’t know why I was born, or why

  I live in a house in New England, or why I am

  a visitor with heavy luggage giving lectures

  for the State Department. Why am I not

  tap-tapping with my fingernail

  on the rolled-up window of a white Government car,

  a baby in my arms, drugged to look feverish?

  Rajiv did not weep. He did not cover​

  his face with his hands when we rowed past​

  the dead body of a newborn nudging the grassy​

  banks at Benares—close by a snake​

  rearing up, and a cast-off garland of flowers.

  He explained. When a family are too poor​

  to cremate their dead, they bring the body​

  here, and slip it into the waters of the Ganges​

  and Yamuna rivers.

  Perhaps the child was dead​

  at birth; perhaps it had the misfortune​

  to be born a girl. The mother may have walked​

  two days with her baby’s body to this place​

  where Gandhi’s ashes once struck the waves

  with a sound like gravel being scuffed​

  over the edge of a bridge.

  “What shall we do about this?” I asked​

  my God, who even then was leaving me. The reply​

  was scorching wind, lapping of water, pull​

  of the black oarsmen on the oars. ...

  The Sick Wife

  The sick wife stayed in the car​

  while he bought a few groceries.

  Not yet fifty,

  she had learned what it’s like​

  not to be able to button a button.

  It was the middle of the day—

  and so only mothers with small children

  or retired couples

  stepped through the muddy parking lot.

  Dry cleaning swung and gleamed on hangers​

  in the cars of the prosperous.

  How easily they moved—

  with such freedom,

  even the old and relatively infirm.

  The windows began to steam up.

  The cars on either side of her​

  pulled away so briskly​

  that it made her sick at heart.

  UNCOLLECTED POEMS

  What It’s Like

  And once, for no special reason,

  I rode in the back of the pickup,​

  leaning against the cab.

  Everything familiar was receding​

  fast—the mountain,​

  the motel, Huldah Currier’s​

  house, and the two stately maples. ...

  Mr. Perkins was having a barn sale,​

  and cars from New Jersey and Ohio​

  were parked along the sandy shoulder​

  of Route 4. Whatever I saw​

  I had already passed.. . .

  (This must be what life is like​

  at the moment of leaving it.)

  Indolence in Early Winter

  Let them all divorce, remarry​

  and divorce again!

  Forgive me if I doze off in my chair.

  I should have stoked the stove

  an hour ago. The house

  will go cold as stone. Wonderful!

  I won’t have to go on​

  balancing my checkbook.

  Unanswered mail piles up

  in drifts, precarious,

  and the cat sets everything sliding

  when she comes to see me.

  I am still here in my chair,​

  buried under the rubble​

  of failed marriages, magazine​

  subscription renewal forms, bills,​

  lapsed friendships....

  This kind of thinking is caused​

  by the sun. It leaves the sky earlier​

  every day, and goes off somewhere,​

  like a troubled husband,​

  or like a melancholy wife.

  Breakfast at the Mount Washington Hotel

  In the valley a warm spring rain....

  Mount Washington, blue, but with snow​

  still gleaming in the ravines,​

  looks equably down on the old hotel,​

  which is painted white, and on dreary days​

  seems to emit light. Its long porch,​

  weathered like the deck of a ship, proffers​

  empty wicker rocking chairs​

  madly ajo
g in the mizzly breeze.

  At the turn of the century

  those who arrived by motorcar

  came to a separate entrance,

  so the horses on the bridlepaths

  would not be frightened. All very grand .. .

  and by now slightly shabby

  in a European way.

  Only the young—just married, and looking​

  shyly down—or the prosperous stay here.​

  We are the anomaly.

  The waiter comes with coffee . . . the cups​

  are large, and thin at the edge. In the easy​

  silence of our twelfth anniversary​

  we look out at the mountain. Swallows dip​

  and tilt under the portico. After all​

  it’s time for them

  to choose a mate and build a nest. ...

  A tense man in a three-piece suit​

  sets out round metal tables in the rain.​

  Everything is in place. After Memorial Day​

  the real summer season will begin.

  At the IGA: Franklin, New Hampshire

  This is where I would shop​

  if my husband worked felling trees​

  for the mill, hurting himself badly​

  from time to time; where I would bring​

  my three kids; where I would push​

  one basket and pull another​

  because the boxes of diapers and cereal​

  and gallon milk jugs take so much room.

  I would already have put the clothes

  in the two largest washers next door

  at the Norge Laundry Village. Done shopping,

  I’d pile the wet wash in trash bags

  and take it home to dry on the line.

  And I would think, hanging out the baby’s​

  shirts and sleepers, and cranking the pulley​

  away from me, how it would be​

  to change lives with someone,​

  like the woman who came after us​

  in the checkout, thin, with lots of rings​

  on her hands, who looked us over openly.

  Things would have been different​

  if I hadn’t let Bob climb on top of me​

  for ninety seconds in 1979.

  It was raining lightly in the state park​

  and so we were alone. The charcoal fire​

  hissed as the first drops fell. . . .

  In ninety seconds we made this life—

  a trailer on a windy hill, dangerous jobs​

  in the woods or night work at the packing plant;​

  Roy, Kimberly, Bobby; too much in the hamper,​

  never enough in the bank.