Let Evening Come Read online

  not red. It was white,​

  or had no color of its own.

  Oh, but my mind was finical.

  It put the teacher perpetually​

  in the wrong. Called on, however,​

  I said aloud: “The cup is red.”

  “But it’s not,” I thought,​

  like Galileo Galilei​

  muttering under his beard. . . .

  At the Public Market Museum:​

  Charleston, South Carolina

  A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy,​

  receives my admission and points the way.​

  Here are gray jackets with holes in them,​

  red sashes with individual flourishes,​

  things soft as flesh. Someone sewed​

  the gold silk cord onto that gray sleeve​

  as if embellishments​

  could keep a man alive.

  I have been reading War and Peace,​

  and so the particulars of combat​

  are on my mind—the shouts and groans​

  of men and boys, and the horses’ cries​

  as they fall, astonished at what​

  has happened to them.

  Blood on leaves,​

  blood on grass, on snow; extravagant​

  beauty of red. Smoke, dust of disturbed​

  earth; parch and burn.

  Who would choose this for himself?

  And yet the terrible machinery​

  waited in place. With psalters​

  in their breast pockets, and gloves​

  knitted by their sisters and sweethearts,​

  the men in gray hurled themselves​

  out of the trenches, and rushed against​

  blue. It was what both sides​

  agreed to do.

  Lines for Akhmatova

  The night train from Moscow, beginning to slow,​

  pulled closer to your sleeping city.

  A sound like tiny bells in cold air . . . Then​

  the attendant appeared with glasses of strong tea.​

  “Wake up, ladies! This is Leningrad.”

  The narrow canals gleam black and still​

  under ornate street lamps, and in the parks​

  golden leaves lie on the sandy paths​

  and wooden benches. By light of day​

  old women dressed in black sweep them away​

  with birch stick brooms.

  Your work, your amorous life, your scholarship—​

  everything happened here, where the Party​

  silenced you for twenty-five years​

  for writing about love—a middle-class activity.

  Husband and son, lovers, dear companions​

  were imprisoned or killed, emigrated or died.

  You turned still further inward,​

  imperturbable as a lion-gate, and lived on​

  stubbornly, learning Dante by heart.

  In the end you outlived the genocidal​

  Georgian with his mustache thick as a snake.

  And in triumph, an old woman, you wrote:

  I can’t tell if the day is ending, or the world,​

  or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

  Heavy Summer Rain

  The grasses in the field have toppled,​

  and in places it seems that a large, now​

  absent, animal must have passed the night.​

  The hay will right itself if the day

  turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.

  None of your blustering entrances​

  or exits, doors swinging wildly​

  on their hinges, or your huge unconscious​

  sighs when you read something sad,​

  like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,​

  where he traveled after Clover died.

  Everything blooming bows down in the rain:​

  white irises, red peonies; and the poppies​

  with their black and secret centers​

  lie shattered on the lawn.

  September Garden Party

  We sit with friends at the round​

  glass table. The talk is clever;​

  everyone rises to it. Bees​

  come to the spiral pear peelings​

  on your plate.

  From my lap or your hand​

  the spice of our morning’s privacy​

  comes drifting up. Fall sun​

  passes through the wine.

  While We Were Arguing

  The first snow fell—or should I say​

  it flew slantwise, so it seemed​

  to be the house

  that moved so heedlessly through space.

  Tears splashed and beaded on your sweater.​

  Then for long moments you did not speak.​

  No pleasure in the cups of tea I made​

  distractedly at four.

  The sky grew dark. I heard the paper come​

  and went out. The moon looked down​

  between disintegrating clouds. I said​

  aloud: “You see, we have done harm.’’

  Dry Winter

  So little snow that the grass in the field

  like a terrible thought

  has never entirely disappeared. . . .

  On the Aisle

  Leaving Maui—orchids on our plates,

  whales seen from the balcony at cocktail hour,

  and Mai Tais bristling with fruit—

  we climb through thirty-two thousand feet

  with retired schoolteachers, widows on tours,

  and honeymooners. The man and woman next to me,

  young, large, bronze, and prosperous,

  look long without fear or shame

  into each other’s faces.

  Anxious, I am grateful for rum, my last​

  island draught, and the circulation​

  of the blood, and I begin Gogol’s story​

  about a painter whose love of luxury​

  destroys his art. People pull down​

  their window shades, shutting out the sun,​

  and a movie called Clue comes on.

  I continue to read in my pillar of light​

  like a village schoolmistress, while​

  from the dark on my right comes​

  the sound of kissing. It would be a lie​

  to say I didn’t sneak a look.

  On the slow approach to rainy San Francisco​

  I find I had things figured wrong:

  “Don’t worry, ok? He’s still out of town.”

  I stop speculating about their occupations​

  and combined income. They fall silent again.

  We hit the runway and bounce three times.

  After what seems too long the nose comes down;

  I feel the brakes go on. Their grief is real​

  when my seatmates part at the gate. He has​

  a close connection to Tucson,​

  and runs for it.

  At the Winter Solstice

  The pines look black in the half-​

  light of dawn. Stillness. . .

  While we slept an inch of new snow​

  simplified the field. Today of all days​

  the sun will shine no more​

  than is strictly necessary.

  At the village church last night​

  the boys—shepherds and wisemen—​

  pressed close to the manger in obedience,​

  wishing only for time to pass;​

  but the girl dressed as Mary trembled​

  as she leaned over the pungent hay,​

  and like the mother of Christ​

  wondered why she had been chosen.

  After the pageant, a ruckus of cards,​

  presents, and homemade Christmas sweets.​

  A few of us stayed to clear the bright​

  scraps and ribbons from the pews,​

  and lift the pu
lpit back in place.

  When I opened the hundred-year-old Bible​

  to Luke’s account of the Epiphany​

  black dust from the binding rubbed off​

  on my hands, and on the altar cloth.

  The Guest

  I had opened the draft on the stove​

  and my head was tending downward when​

  a portly housefly dropped on the page​

  in front of me. Confused by the woodstove’s​

  heat, the fly, waking ill-tempered, lay​

  on its back, flailing its legs and wings.

  Then it lurched into the paper clips.

  The morning passed, and I forgot about​

  my guest, except when the buzz rose​

  and quieted, rose and quieted—tires​

  spinning on ice, chain saw far away,​

  someone carrying on alone. . ..

  Father and Son

  August. My neighbor started cutting wood​

  on cool Sabbath afternoons, the blue​

  plume of the saw’s exhaust wavering over​

  his head. At first I didn’t mind the noise​

  but it came to seem like a species of pain.

  From time to time he let the saw idle,​

  stepping back from the logs and aromatic​

  dust, while his son kicked the billets​

  down the sloping drive toward the shed.

  In the lull they sometimes talked.

  His back ached unrelentingly, he assumed​

  from all the stooping. Sundays that fall​

  they bent over the pile of beech and maple,​

  intent on getting wood for winter, the last,​

  as it happened, of their life together.

  Three Crows

  Three crows fly across a gun-metal​

  sky. Turgenev, in love for forty years​

  with Pauline Viardot. . .

  Paris, Baden, wherever she and Louis lived​

  the writer followed, writing books​

  in which love invariably goes awry.

  The men hunted small game companionably.

  Spring rain, relentless as obsession:​

  the mountain streams run swift and full.

  The red tassels of blossoming maples​

  hang bright against wet black bark.

  “I lived,” he said, “all my life​

  on the edge of another’s nest.”

  Spring Snow

  A thoughtful snow comes falling . . .​

  seems to hang in the air before​

  concluding that it must fall​

  here. Huge aggregate flakes

  alight on the muddy ruts​

  of March, and the standing​

  water that thaws by day​

  and freezes by night.

  Venus is content to shine unseen​

  this evening, having risen serene​

  above springs, and false springs.

  But I, restless after supper, pace

  the long porch while the snow falls,​

  dodging the clothesline I won’t​

  use until peonies send up red,​

  plump, irrepressible spear

  Ice Out

  As late as yesterday ice preoccupied​

  the pond—dark, half-melted, waterlogged.​

  Then it sank in the night, one piece,​

  taking winter with it. And afterward​

  everything seems simple and good.

  All afternoon I lifted oak leaves​

  from the flowerbeds, and greeted​

  like friends the green-white crowns​

  of perennials. They have the tender,​

  unnerving beauty of a baby’s head.

  How I hated to come in! I’ve left​

  the windows open to hear the peepers’​

  wildly disproportionate cries.

  Dinner is over, no one stirs. The dog​

  sighs, sneezes, and closes his eyes.

  Going Away

  Like Varya in The Cherry Orchard​

  I keep the keys, and go around locking​

  the new deadbolts, meant to ward off​

  antique thieves: loud, satisfying clicks.

  When I am walking down some broad, linden-​

  lined boulevard where people pass​

  whole afternoons at tables in dappled​

  shade, and where the cries of news vendors

  mean nothing to me, I’ll be glad​

  that I’ve overwatered all the plants,​

  stopped the mail, and wound the clock​

  to tick and chime as if I were at home.

  The dog has understood the melancholy​

  meaning of open satchels and has hurled​

  himself down by the door, hoping not to be​

  left in the silent house, like Firs. . . .

  Now Where?

  It wakes when I wake, walks​

  when I walk, turns back when I​

  turn back, beating me to the door.

  It spoils my food and steals​

  my sleep, and mocks me, saying,​

  “Where is your God now?”

  And so, like a widow, I lie down​

  after supper. If I lie down​

  or sit up it’s all the same:

  the days and nights bear me along.​

  To strangers I must seem​

  alive. Spring comes, summer;

  cool clear weather; heat, rain. . . .

  Letter to Alice

  Twilight. A few bats loop out of the barn,​

  dip and veer, feeding on flies and midges​

  in humid air. Before the storm​

  I top-dressed the perennials with manure,​

  ashes from the stove, and bonemeal.

  The rain soaking through the black​

  and white makes a mad, elemental tea.

  I bought the bonemeal up in New London,​

  where the streets are crowded for the summer​

  with stately Episcopalians—and I’ve noticed​

  that it hardly smells.

  We made less than usual on the Church Fair supper,​

  held this year in the Blazing Star Grange,​

  because of rain. Down in the valley​

  were land-rich but cash-poor, shorter,​

  stouter, and lower-church.

  By now the blackflies are biting more out of habit​

  than desire, and graduation night is over.

  I’ve picked up all the beer cans​

  from the pond road to the bridge.

  The fully open peonies seem overcome by rain​

  and carnality. I should stake them: white​

  doubles with a raspberry fleck​

  at the heart, blooming without restraint

  in the moist summer night. I planted them​

  just last fall, and this is a good showing​

  for their first year. More flowers, more art.

  Write!

  After an Illness, Walking the Dog

  Wet things smell stronger,

  and I suppose his main regret is that

  he can sniff just one at a time.

  In a frenzy of delight​

  he runs way up the sandy road—​

  scored by freshets after five days​

  of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

  When I whistle he halts abruptly​

  and steps in a circle,​

  swings his extravagant tail.

  Then he rolls and rubs his muzzle​

  in a particular place, while the drizzle​

  falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace​

  and goldenrod bend low.

  The top of the logging road stands open​

  and bright. Another day, before​

  hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,​

  leaving word first at home.

  The footing is ambiguous.

/>   Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,​

  panting, and looks up with what amounts​

  to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,​

  nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

  A sound commences in my left ear​

  like the sound of the sea in a shell;​

  a downward vertiginous drag comes with it.

  Time to head home. I wait​

  until were nearly out to the main road​

  to put him back on the leash, and he​

  —the designated optimist-​

  imagines to the end that he is free.

  Wash Day

  How it rained while you slept! Wakeful,

  I wandered around feeling the sills,​

  followed closely by the dog and cat.

  We conferred, and left a few windows​

  open a crack.

  Now the morning is clear​

  and bright, the wooden clothespins​

  swollen after the wet night.

  The monkshood has slipped its stakes​

  and the blue cloaks drag in the mud.

  Even the daisies—good-hearted​

  simpletons—seem cast down.

  We have reached and passed the zenith.

  The irises, poppies, and peonies, and the old​

  shrub roses with their romantic names​

  and profound attars have gone by​

  like young men and women of promise​

  who end up living indifferent lives.

  How is it that every object in this basket​